Tsutsumi Shinichi is known primarily as a stage actor. It appears after Yamato nadeshiko (2000) he has gained much attention in Japan, though his performance in _"Pure" (1996)_, in 1996, garnered good attention for his sensitive portrayal of the orphaned journalist Sawatari Toru. Tsutsumi trained for the stage with the theatre project Tokyo in the early '90s after leaving the JAC where he had met his mentors, 'Hiroyuki Ada' and Tamasaburô Bandô, through whom he drew much inspiration. At the JAC, he had started out with the intent of learning how to play action roles, of which we still see much of in his wonderful film roles for the actor/director SABU, but his destiny has since unfolded to deliver more of this talented, unassuming and sincere actor through his sensitive and detailed acting style. Tsutsumi struggled to find his path in his teens, skipping school before returning to complete his high school out of a sense duty and filial piety to his mother. At 18 he left to join the JAC Kyoto, and at 20, he finally arrived in Tokyo to join the JAC branch there. Life was difficult and he worked at other jobs but by 1990 he had joined the theatre project Tokyo, and there met David Leveaux, with whom he trained and honed his skills as an actor. The 1990s was a prolific decade in the theatre for him and aside from the TPT, he worked also with Hideki Noda - their latest collaboration was in June 2001 for the play sakura no mori. At present he is starring in Koi no chikara (2002). Tsutsumi works alongside his close and long time associate and friend Eri Fukatsu. In May, Tsutsumi will move on to his next work, a stage performance in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, which will be directed by the acclaimed Yukio Ninagawa . Later this year, his next film with Sabu, Drive (2002), will be released. in it, he plays a salaryman who is kidnapped by a bunch of bank robbers. Tsutsumi Shinichi is a classically trained actor who has brought his considerable talent to bear in his stage, drama and film roles, but more than all this is his sense of professionalism - his will to create, through being a part of the ensemble, the beauty of the work as a whole. Mldesu.