Born in
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Tsuruta was raised in
Osaka by his grandmother, following his parents' divorce. A delinquent in high school, he finished second from the bottom of his class. Tsuruta was studying at
Kansai University when he was drafted into the
Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service in 1944. After the war he joined 's theater troupe and made his film debut at
Shochiku in 1948 with
Yūkyō no Mure, gaining a female following for playing handsome leads. He left Shochiku in 1952 to start his own production company. Prior, a romance with actress
Keiko Kishi made headlines and Shochiku forced the two to end the relationship. He was
attacked by the yakuza in 1953. He notably played
Sasaki Kojirō in
Toho's
Samurai Trilogy (1954–1956), opposite
Toshirō Mifune. He joined
Toei in 1960, and found success with 1963's
Jinsei Gekijo: Hishakaku. In his book
The Yakuza Movie Book : A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films,
Mark Schilling cites this film for starting the
ninkyo eiga trend of chivalrous
yakuza films. For the next decade Tsuruta was Toei's leading and hardest working star of yakuza films, starring or guest-starring in a different film every month at his peak. Memorable films include
Bakuto (1964) and
Nihon Kyokakuden Ketto Kanda Matsuri (1966). Tsuruta was also a successful singer, scoring hits with such songs as "Kizudarake no Jinsei". However, in the 1970s he struggled and his performances were criticized when the yakuza genre shifted to a modern, more realistic setting. He made his last film in 1985,
Saigo no Bakuto. Kōji Tsuruta died from lung cancer on June 16, 1987, at the age of 62. ==Selected filmography==