Early life Takanori Iwata was born into an upper-class family in
Nagoya on 6 March 1989. Both his grandfather and father are graduates of
Keio University, so he was expected to follow the family's tradition. To live up to such an expectation, he started to attend
juku ("cram school") after classes when he was still in elementary school while also meeting with a
tutor at home at the same time. Eventually, he successfully enrolled in Keio Futsubu School (an all-male junior high school) and moved from Nagoya to Tokyo with his mother to attend it. He was admitted to Keio Senior High School subsequently, and began to play
Lacrosse as an extra-curricular activity. He chose Lacrosse because it is only available as an
extra-curricular activity for high school or higher education, so he thought he could have what it took to play on the same level as everyone else. He even made it to the
short list of the Japan national Lacrosse team for
the AFC U-19 Championship. Iwata started dancing (
Krumping) after seeing
RIZE, an American documentary film about Clowning and
Krumping. He used "GUN" as his stage name, which is another pronunciation for the first character (岩) of his first name Iwata (岩田). He performed publicly for the first time at the
cultural festival in his senior 3, and he was so overwhelmed by the elation of dancing that he decided to quit Lacrosse and focused on dancing in university. After his enrollment in the Faculty of Law at
Keio University, Iwata joined Dancing Crew JADE, a dance club on campus, and later became its 22nd leader. He met Krump dance group Twiggz Fam at a dance battle event held by JUN aka Twiggz, the pioneer of the Japanese Krump scene. He joined the group after the event and used the alias Boi Twiggz as a member of Twiggz Fam. In 2009, he also participated in 2009 Mr Keio Contest, an event whose winners are determined via online voting.
Career Iwata did not initially pursue a career in dancing. Like any other normal university students, he already had a job offer from a big company in his final year of university.
Naoki Kobayashi, the appointed leader of the new group and Iwata's friend from Twiggz Fam, invited him to participate in the
audition for performers of Sandaime J Soul Brothers. Despite the objection of his parents, Iwata declined the job offer he previously got from a big company and pursued a career in the world of entertainment instead. On 10 November, Iwata made his major debut as a member of Sandaime J Soul Brothers with the release of the group's first single, "Best Friend's Girl", which debuted at number three on the
Oricon Singles Chart. In September 2013, Iwata started his acting career with the play "Attack No.1". On 6 March 2014, his 25th birthday, Iwata released his first
photo-book G Takanori Iwata Sandaime J Soul Brothers from Exile Tribe. Meanwhile, on 27 April 2014, Iwata was chosen to join Exile as a new performer along with four othernew members after he won the "EXILE PERFORMER BATTLE AUDITION" final held in
Nippon Budokan. He joined Exile while remaining a member of Sandaime J Soul Brothers. In 2015, Iwata appeared in two
NTV dramas,
Wild Heroes in April and
High＆Low: The Story of S.W.O.R.D. in October. Starring alongside
Exile Tribe's members
Takahiro,
Sho Aoyagi, Shuhei Nogae, Masayasu Yagi, Taiki Sato, and
Keiji Kuroki, he played Harutaro Saeki("Choko"), a former bad boy and a handsome
Karaoke manager who was loved by all older women in town in
Wild Heroes. On 21 October, the first season of the drama
High＆Low: The Story of S.W.O.R.D. was broadcast, which was part of the
High&Low franchise, the action and music franchise produced by the Exile Tribe. Iwata played Cobra, leader of Sanno Hoodlum Squad, which was one of the gangs that controlled the S.W.O.R.D. area in the world of the
High&Low franchise. As the
High&Low franchise continued to produce more films,concerts, games, manga in the following years, Iwata continued to reprise his role in those follow-ups. In 2016, Iwata appeared opposite
Mitsuki Takahata in the romance film
Shokubutsu Zukan ("Evergreen Love"). As the mysterious herbs lover Itsuki, he fell in love with Mitsuki Takahata 's character Sayaka, an office girl. This was the first time he got a leading role in a film, for which he won many awards, including the Best New Artist Award at the 41st
Hochi Film Awards, the New Actor Award at the 26TH
Japan Movie Critics Awards, and the Newcomer of the Year Award as well as Popularity Award at the 40th
Japan Academy Film Prize for his role as Itsuki. He also appeared in the TBS's TV drama
Suna no Tou ("Tower of Sand") as Kohei Ubukata, the childhood friend of heroin Aki. In 2017, Iwata got a lead role in
Fate Detector, one of the four mystery stories of
Yo Nimo kimyô na Monogatari: Autumn 2017 Special. He also reprised his role as Cobra in the film
High&Low The Movie 2 / End Of Sky released in August and
High&Low The Movie 3 / Final Mission released in November. (
Cinema Fighters is a joint project by
Exile Hiro,
Tetsuya Bessho, who is the representative director of SSFF & ASIA, and lyricist Masato Odake.). He also starred in the film
Kyonen no Fuyu, Kimi to Wakare ("Last Winter We Parted") as Kyosuke Yakumo, the freelance writer looking for the truth behind a burned to death murder case involving a beautiful blind woman. The film was released on 10 March. On 15 April,
Gakeppuchi Hoteru ("Hotel on the Brink") began to broadcast, in which he led as Deputy Manager Naoya Ukai of "Hotel Grande Inversao", the mysterious man who saved the hotel from bankruptcy. This was his first lead role in a TV drama. He also appeared in
Naomi Kawase's
Vision, a film starred by
Juliette Binoche and released on 8 June 2019. On 22 June, the anthology film
Uta Monogatari: Cinema Fighters Project, the second film of the
Cinema Fighters project, was released. Iwata starred in one of the six stories of the anthology, Funky, which was directed and written by
Yuya Ishii. Then, co-starred with
Hana Sugusaki, he appeared in the romance film
Perfect World, which was released on 5 October. The romance was based on the manga of the same title by Rie Aruga, which depicted a love story between office girl
Tsugumi Kawana and her disable lover, Itsuki Ayukawa, who was bound to the
wheelchair after an accident. Iwata spent lots of time practicing how to use a
wheelchair properly and learned about the life of disabled people, while he also learned to play
wheelchair basketball. At the end of the year, he appeared as Akira Baba in TV special
Enjo Bengonin ("Attorney for the Flamed") alongside
Yôko Maki and
Riisa Naka. He won the Yujiro Ishihara Newcomer Award at The 31st
Nikkan Sports Film Award for his performance in
Last Winter We Parted,
Vision and
Perfect World. In 2019, Iwata appeared in
Yuya Ishii's
Machida-kun no Sekai (
Almost a Miracle). Although he turned 30 this year, he played a high school student, who was also a boy model and the popular kid in school, in the unique world of the film. He published his third photo-book
Spin on 2 August, which was photographed by his
Vision co-star, Japanese actor and photographer
Masatoshi Nagase. The photo-book was so popular that a second impression was announced even before the book official release day on 2 August. In July, Iwata was cast in Fuji TV's drama
Sherlock, a Japanese adaption of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes. The story was about a
Sherlock Holmes based in modern Tokyo, and Iwata portrayed Junichi Wakamiya, a
psychiatrist and the Japanese version of
Dr. Watson. His character got this slightly unusual name so that the abbreviation for the name would be J.W., the same as
John H. Watson. The TV drama started broadcasting on 7 October 2019. In 2020, Iwata appeared in
Yu Irie's new original film
AI Collapse (AI Houkai) as Elite Police officer Makoto Sakuraba, who focused on
cybercrime. The film was released on 31 January 2020. He also appeared in
Shinji Aoyama's
Living in the Sky, in which he played actor Morinori Tokito, who started a relationship with the heroin. The film was released on 23 October. Starting with the July issue of
Elle Japan, which went on sale on 28 May, Iwata landed a regular column "ASK! Gun-chan: Takanori Iwata's
Counseling Room" on the magazine to answer all kinds of questions from readers. He also made a guest appearance in crime drama Cold Case: Shinjitsu no Tobira's third season alongside
Kasumi Arimura as Kouharu Shiromoto, the head of publicity who supports the famous actress Misa Takifune behind the scenes. The episode was broadcast on 5 December. He played
Zhao Yun in Fukuda Yuichi's
The Untold Tale of the Three Kingdoms, which was released on 11 December. Apart from acting, he also works as a voice actor to read the
diaries left by a young soldier who lost his life in a suicide mission in the last days of the
Pacific War in"
Kamikaze: Why did those young men take off?", which was aired on 11 December and is an episode of the NHK documentary show
Historical Anecdote. On the same day, the spin-off drama
Re: The End of the Nameless World ~Half a Year Later was broadcast on Japanese streaming service platform dTV. On 15 September 2021, he debuted as a singer with the single
korekara. == Personal life ==