Career
He appeared in more than eighty films from 1921 to 1970. Starting out in Asakusa Opera, Watanabe shifted to film in 1921, joining Makino Educational Pictures, a precursor to Makino Film Productions. Moving to other studios, he eventually settled at Shochiku"s Kamata studio in 1925 and eventually became established as a comic star, often appearing in Torajiro Saito"s films.
He eventually joined the revue company of Roppa Furukawa and made films at Toho.
In the postwar, he appeared in a number of films by Akira Kurosawa.