Career
He was also an essayist. In 1950 he helped form the film company Kindai Eiga Kyokai with Shindo and Kozaburo Yoshimura. He served in the Japanese military in China in the Second Sino-Japanese War and considered himself to have narrowly escaped from death.
He was a keen reader of detective stories and a fan of jazz music
He wrote a series of semi-autobiographical essays under the title Sanmon Yakusha (三文役者), meaning "third rate actor". Kaneto Shindo wrote a biography of Tonoyama called Sanmon yakusha no shi, meaning "The death of a third-rate actor", which he also filmed as By Player.