Japanese character actor who achieved his greatest acclaim in the role of "Gorobei" in Akira Kurosawa's Shichinin no samurai (1954). Inaba began in the theatre after the Second World War, joining the Haiyu-Za company and appearing in plays such as The Cherry Orchard and The Threepenny Opera. His film debut came in 1954, and he worked steadily in the following years as a character actor, usually of a good-hearted type. He died from a heart attack in 1998.