Great Gidayu

Great Gidayu (26 December 1958 - 7 September 2026) was a Japanese comedian, musician and actor, born Suzuki Masayuki in Itabashi, Tokyo. For more than forty years he was the large, long-haired musician inside Beat Takeshi's comic army, nicknamed the Army's Benkei. He died at 67 in Tokyo on 7 September 2026, a day his own morning blog was still talking about rain over the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and worry for Niijima. Cause of death was not made public. TAP announced the death the next day, 8 September 2026. He is not the singer Masayuki Suzuki (Martin), and he is not the actor Takanori Jinnai.

He graduated from private Keika High School and left Asia University without a degree. At university he played drums in a music circle and formed an amateur band, Raijin, aiming at a life as a professional musician. His uncle was former sumo komusubi Kunidaka Kunio. Parents' given names, siblings, and a precise childhood address beyond Itabashi are not made public in sources reviewed. Blood type B is listed on his official Ameba profile, cited on Japanese Wikipedia. There is no English Wikipedia article. The Japanese article is the bio base.

He was a listener of Beat Takeshi's All Night Nippon. When he asked to become a disciple he offered drumming as his skill and joined Takeshi's backing band Secret Police, but a regular drummer was already in place, so he played percussion. The stage name came later, a joke on the masked wrestler The Great Kabuki: a heavy build and lank hair, with "kabuki" swapped for the narrative-music word "gidayu." He became a formal member of Takeshi Gundan when the troupe moved from eight to ten, entering with Ide Rakkyo, though his face was already on the variety shows of the golden age, including Oretachi Hyokkin Famiry, Super Jockey, Takeshi's Castle, and later Kitano Fan Club, Kitano Fuji, and Adachi-ku's Takeshi, the World's Kitano. Japanese Wikipedia dates the professional years 1982 to 2026. Some obituaries say he became a formal disciple in 1983.

Music stayed the spine of the act. He helped shape the melody of Takeshi's "Asakusa Kid," wrote lyrics and music for "Ballade" on the 1985 live album Yasen Byoin, and composed songs for Fumie Hosokawa, Kanako Nakajo, and Noriko Hidaka, plus a 1992 Acecook Super Cup commercial featuring Takeshi and Rie Miyazawa. On Kitano Fan Club he played guitar for the Kameari Brothers bit. In 2014 he opened THE MANZAI with a drum feature. He later supported Makita Sports's band Makita Gakkyu. From 2014 he performed rakugo as Natsume-tei Toseki, joined the Boys Variety Association, and often headlined seats at Asakusa Toyokan.

On screen he is the biker, the "fat uncle," in Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro (1999). Other film credits include Ikinai (as Nose), Vivienne Armed Jet (2017, as Kim), Goodbye, Bad Magazines (2022, as the company president), and Ishioka Taro (2023). He was a regular comic relief in Yukio Ninagawa productions and, in the 2006 revival of Titus Andronicus, played the clown at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Britain. Radio work ran from Ijuin Hikaru's Sunday secret base to a long show with Fujita Yumiko, then 2026 Komae FM and Asakusa bar-radio archives that were still posting in the weeks before he died. Fujita Yumiko is a credited co-host, not a documented spouse.

He loved cats. On a Kitano Fan Club home visit, Takeshi complained that the apartment, shared then with his partner, smelled so strongly of cats he could hardly breathe. In 2002 he married a longtime partner. They divorced in 2006. He wrote on his official site that they would not reach a fourth anniversary, that the cause was entirely his, and that he had failed as a husband. The former spouse's name is not made public. Children are not named in Japanese Wikipedia, TAP's notice, or the obituaries reviewed. Searches that ask about a daughter do not match a verified name. Later home: a fourth-floor walk-up in Nakano Ward, the Yayoi-cho area on his X profile, with no elevator. His X bio listed cats and rock ginger. Office: TAP, whose president is fellow Army member Tsumami Edamame. Edamame is a colleague, not a relative.

Illness became part of the public life, not a retirement. Diagnosed with diabetes in 1995, at 36, he later said his father had also had diabetes and had died of a ruptured esophageal varix. The father's given name is not made public. In a 2026 conversation published by Shueisha Online he recalled collapsing after a film because he could not read the subtitles, then a Monday blood test of 630 mg/dL. He stopped clinic visits because, he said, diabetes does not hurt. Kidney failure followed. From 2007 he lived on hemodialysis for diabetic nephropathy, typically three times a week, four to five hours a session, and wrote the 2009 essay Tonyo da yo, okkasan! The book's address to "okkasan" is a comic address, not a documented biography of his mother. He wished for night-time and home dialysis so working patients could fit treatment to life, and he kept apologizing to Toyokan audiences when a vein procedure or a session forced a night off. Politics and party affiliation are not documented. The public stance that is documented is practical: name the disease, keep the stage, tell other patients they are not alone.

In 2019 he won the Q-cut championship on All Star Kouyasai and received a special entertainment prize at the 19th Beat Takeshi Entertainment Awards. No national honour or imperial decoration is recorded. On 23 August 2024 he had a myocardial infarction and a surgery he described, on X on 2 September 2024, as lasting about ten hours. In July 2026 he checked into a police hospital for subclavian vein dilation, a repeat procedure tied to dialysis access, and apologized for missing Toyokan that day. He kept posting. Official YouTube archives of the Komae FM show and Asakusa bar radio were still going up from 21 August through 4 September 2026.

On the morning of 7 September 2026 the blog went up around 6 a.m. That afternoon a former Takeshi disciple, asked by phone to help tidy the apartment, found him seated and unconscious near the third-floor stairs of the four-storey Nakano walk-up. He was taken to hospital and pronounced dead the same day. There was no obvious external injury. Hospital name was not made public. TAP said the funeral would be for close relatives only, and that the office statement was the official notice. Eguchi Tomomi, Edamame's wife, said a cause could not yet be stated because police examination and camera checks were unfinished. Resting place was not made public. Diabetes, dialysis, and the 2024 heart attack are illnesses he chose to publish. They are not a stated cause of the 2026 death.

Documented public controversies are few and old, and they belong to the troupe as much as to him. Japanese Wikipedia states he took part in the 1986 Friday magazine assault with Takeshi and others, carrying a fire extinguisher. That incident is a known scandal of the Army. On Kitano Engeikan (30 March 2014) a parody "Kusuri Rumba" named entertainers arrested for banned-drug use. Names were bleeped and Takeshi hit the button to end the bit. Gidayu said he had been working yose so long he had lost track of what television would allow. A 2011 Gaki no Tsukai segment showed him angry, with Ide Rakkyo, at junior Army member Mimata Matazo's half-hearted Takeshi impression. A 2002 variety bit, seated underwater, is likened on the Japanese Wikipedia page to a well-known image. It is not family and it is not politics. No criminal case of his own is recorded in the obituaries or Wikipedia page reviewed.

He is survived in the public record by that Army family of colleagues, an unnamed former spouse, and his uncle Kunidaka Kunio. What remains is the laugh that would not sit still: a man who jumped into a breath-holding tank because the sign said so, and who kept a guitar on the Asakusa stage between dialysis sessions. The last blog post, written the morning he died, is already being quoted as the signature: rain, the vanished Tokyo city hall tower, and worry for Niijima.