Moyu Taguchi, Kamen Rider Black’s Katsumi Kida

A few years ago I started working as a TV reporter and wanted a fresh start. There was also someone else in the business with the same name, and people mixed us up all the time.

Before Rider I was a model, signed with a modeling agency. But I had come to Tokyo wanting to act, so every month I bought Gekkan De-View to look for acting auditions. One day I saw the casting call for Kamen Rider Black. I didn't think I'd get it, but I figured I'd apply just to see what happened. I filled out the form and mailed it myself.

I wanted to know what a big audition was like. I'd watched Kamen Rider, I love motorcycles and I was interested in action, but it never crossed my mind that I'd actually end up working on it. Then I got a call, and it came from my agency: “Taguchi, did you send in an application?” I'd put the agency's name on my profile, so the production called them.

Not at all, since I'd already done uncredited bit parts. But because I'd applied behind their backs, they were pretty surprised. When I made the shortlist there were still four of us girls, and I thought that since they'd picked me, I'd be happy just to appear in an episode or two, even if I wasn't a regular. Then the agency told me: “You got it. The character's name is Katsumi Kida.” And I asked, “Is she the villain?” (laughs)

“Katsumi Kida” sounds like a tough woman's name, doesn't it? There were four of us, I was the oldest and the others were all so cute. I didn't see myself as the type who screams “kyaaa!” And I had no idea what the character was supposed to be.

Exactly (laughs).

I was surprised and thrilled. Back then they still shot on film, and since I'd come to Tokyo wanting to act, that was something I dreamed about. The atmosphere on set was scary (laughs), but it was fun, so the year never felt like a burden.

As a model, people tell you “you look gorgeous!”, you feel good and you give them your best. That's how the crew works. At the film studio they'd say things like “we could do just fine without you,” and I'd be stunned. After enough of that you get used to it, and in a way you get thicker skin. Studio crews are rough, they curse and they work you hard (laughs). But if you do things properly, greet everyone and put your heart into it, they'll come around. Every time.

I'm not easily intimidated either. I was never the kind of girl who gets yelled at by the director or the lighting guy, bursts into tears and wants to quit. The more they yelled, the more I thought, “Oh yeah? Watch me.” Over time the crew got nicer and started asking if I was hurt, because I was always rolling around on the ground. When Akemi Inoue, who played Kyoko Akizuki, was captured by Gorgom, she ended up inside a cute soap bubble. In my case, a monster disguised as a bus driver would just jump me out of nowhere (laughs). But when the crew shouted “Are you okay?!”, it felt worth it. That's how I made friends with everyone. The set was tough and fun at the same time (laughs). That year really toughened me up inside.

In the modeling world, even when you meet someone for the first time, you say “Hiii!” as if you've known each other forever, and that's that. On an acting set, actors don't greet each other that warmly even after working together a few times. There's this sense that people don't get familiar until they really know each other, and that suited me better. I only figured that out after doing both, but as a model I was always uncomfortable when people who weren't my friends talked to me as if they were. I'd rather someone be a bit curt until we're close and then have a real conversation. I loved being on set, where I could just be myself and speak my mind.

There are lots of little things, but the ones that stand out are the episodes where I had more screen time, like “Declaration of War of Love and Death” (episode 36) and “Memories of the Yubari Sky” (episode 37). In the first one there's a scene where Bishium's attack nearly brings a sign down on a child, and I scoop the kid up to save them. That day of all days I was wearing a skirt, and then I realized there was no crash mat. I guess the shot didn't call for a stunt double, but for me it was quite the action scene.

In “The Stifling Trap of Hell” (episode 19) there was a scene where, if I remember right, I was holding up Susumu Kurobe, who played Professor Kuromatsu, and I had to look shocked. He told me very quietly: “Taguchi, that reaction was too big. You can show surprise just by moving your eyes.” That moved me so much. I treasure it.

As a memory of the whole experience, there's the dubbing. I also do voice work, dubbing characters in anime and foreign films, but Rider is the only time I ever dubbed my own performance. I'm really too young to have known the era of post-synced sound... I think going through that is why I was able to do voice work later on.

It was. And speaking of Toei's character, I think I'm probably the last generation that knew the old atmosphere of the Oizumi studio. On another job I met someone who'd done sound effects at Oizumi around the same time, and we hit it off just because we'd both known that place. I find that strange, and precious too. Having known the old movie people.

Hmm... Very Showa, you know? Not bright and breezy, a little damp even, but full of warm, generous people who were strict and loving at the same time. There were lots of gruff people who were deeply kind underneath. One crew member with a really scary face fed the stray cats that lived at the studio every single day.

It was a whole different era. I was happy to get to be part of it, even just a little. Seeing the studio in those days gave me something people who didn't see it will never have.

I did reporting, I did narration, and I spent a while figuring out what I wanted to do. These days I'm with Kiraboshi, a production company that only represents actors, no TV personalities.

Yes. There I've watched lots of senior actors turn into a character right in front of me, in an instant, as a display of skill, and it made me think that actors are craftsmen. On set, the lighting guy is a craftsman, the camera operator is a craftsman, the sound engineer is a craftsman. Each one brings their own skill, and together they make a piece of work. So I came to see our job as actors as becoming exactly the person we're asked to play. Before that I was always wondering what acting really meant, and understanding this took a weight off.

There was a time when I looked down a little on reenactment segments for TV shows, but I changed my mind. If I show up and they tell me, “You're the mother of a second grader and a fifth grader,” then that day, in that moment, I live there as that mother. The next day, if they ask me to be the lawyer accompanying a boy, I become a lawyer on the spot. It's so much fun. I don't think I'd ever watched really good actors up close before that. Maybe I didn't even realize I'd been searching for myself. I wanted to be me all the time and only thought about how to express myself.

Exactly. Showing my skill is what gives me joy. And as I get older, there are fewer and fewer roles I can't play. I still have a long way to go, but now I see what's around me and I can do much more than before. In the last few years, acting has become really interesting to me.

Not long ago I did a reenactment where I played a woman possessed by a fox spirit. In the meeting, the director said something like, “Do it roughly like this. Think you can manage, Taguchi?” When we shot it, I did it the way I used to on Rider, and he loved it (laughs). The girls acting with me got genuinely scared, and in the dressing room they said, “Taguchi, you're really good at that...” (laughs). I told them it's my job (laughs).

I owe that to Rider. If I hadn't done the show, I don't think I could have pulled it off. Getting strangled by monsters and possessed, all of that paid off. I was never the sweet girlfriend tending the wounds and asking, “Kotaro, are you all right?” (laughs). It was a really fun job.

Seven. I showed him the tapes from when he was little, and around four or five he started to get it. He seems proud of it, but he doesn't really feel like that's me on the screen.

No way. But he is interested in acting. He says things like, “Cool, I want to jump off something high. But actually they jump from somewhere low, right?” Then he says he wants to try it, and I tell him he doesn't need to (laughs).

Right. Maybe because he sometimes comes along when I work.

No, no, he won't. He wants to be a train driver. He's an otaku, a train otaku. When I travel alone for work and there's a train you don't normally get to see, I use my free time to take pictures of it for him.

Yes (laughs). On days off I'll say, “Let's go to Ueno Station today,” and we stand at the front of the sleeper train taking pictures alongside the grown-ups. When there's a factory tour, I sign us up. The day before yesterday I asked him if he'd rather go to the Transportation Museum or ride the Keikyu line, and he picked the Keikyu, so we rode up front on the Wing.

Could be. They put new trains on the Yamanote line and the design of the front car changed, remember? When only a few were running, I waited for one at Shinagawa Station. Train after train went by and none of them was the new one. I said, “It didn't come, did it?”, and he said, “That's okay, Mom, we got to see the Odoriko today.” I asked him if he thought I was an otaku, and he said yes. I told him Mommy isn't an otaku, and he said, “Huh? Aren't you a train otaku?” Maybe I am, a little. Lately I get there before him to take the pictures (laughs). I've photographed every color of car on the Inokashira line. When I went to Kagawa, I got the Anpanman train too.

I've been friends with director Ryuta Tasaki since Black, when he was an assistant director, so I take a peek now and then. He gave me tickets to the movies from the last two years, and I sent him my thoughts. About last year's, the Ryuki one, I wrote that I loved the idea of everything having been created by a little girl. But I try not to watch too much, because it becomes a habit. Today's Kamen Rider shows don't really feel like they're made for kids, do they?

(laughs)

After everything, I'm still acting. When I think about it... acting is the work I can keep doing without ever thinking of quitting, like a calling. Saying Black was my starting point sounds trite, but if I hadn't done Rider, I might have quit acting at some point. I got this far because of that year. I've never really thought about it... In a word, it's the source of my pride.

And now the real conversation starts, off the record... (laughs).