James Yaegashi

James Yaegashi is a Japanese-American actor born in Yokohama and raised in Yamagata, the son of an American mother and a Japanese father. After completing high school, he relocated to the United States to study acting and directing at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He moved to New York City with his wife in 1998 and has been based there since.

Yaegashi's Broadway career spanned from 2003 to 2013 and included appearances in Take Me Out, A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. In the stage production of Breakfast at Tiffany's, he portrayed Mr. Yunioshi, a role with a notable history of being performed in yellowface, most famously by Mickey Rooney in the film adaptation. Yaegashi drew a distinction between the source material and the film, noting that Yunioshi is written as a Nisei — a Japanese-American from California — while Rooney's screen portrayal depicted the character as if he had recently immigrated. Yaegashi cited the importance of portraying ethnic characters authentically as part of his decision to take on the role.

Beyond the stage, Yaegashi appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, first in a minor capacity in the Netflix series Daredevil and later in a more prominent role as Robert Minoru in the Hulu series Runaways, based on the Marvel Comics series of the same name. His voice acting work includes the character Wu Zi Mu, a Chinese Triad leader in the 2004 action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as well as an undercover police officer named Charlie in Grand Theft Auto IV and its 2009 expansion pack The Lost and Damned. Yaegashi is married with two children and is bilingual.