Noriyuki "Pat" Morita (June 28, 1932 – November 24, 2005) was an American actor and comedian. He began his career as a stand-up comedian, before becoming known to television audiences for his recurring role as diner owner Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi on the sitcom series Happy Days from 1975 to 1983. Morita was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of martial arts mentor Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid (1984), which would be the first of a media franchise in which Morita was the central player.
Morita was the series lead actor in the television program Mr. T and Tina and in Ohara, a police-themed drama. The two shows made history for being among the few TV shows with an Asian-American series lead. He also played recurring or featured roles as Captain Sam Pak on M*A*S*H, Ah Chew in Sanford and Son, and Mike Woo on The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Morita was the voice of The Emperor of China in the Disney animated film Mulan (1998), and its sequel Mulan II (2004).
Aside from his 1985 Oscar nod, Morita was twice nominated for Golden Globe Awards (Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for The Karate Kid and Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film for the made-for-television film Amos), and an Emmy Award (also for Amos). In 1994, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry. In 2015, Morita was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame.
Morita was born on June 28, 1932, in Isleton, California, to Japanese immigrants. His father, Tamaru, born in 1897, immigrated to California from Kumamoto Prefecture on the Japanese island of Kyushu in 1915. Tamaru's wife, Momoe, born in 1903, immigrated to California in 1913. Noriyuki, as Pat was named, had a brother named Hideo (Harry) who was 12 years older.
Morita developed spinal tuberculosis (Pott disease) at age two and spent the bulk of the next nine years in the Weimar Institute in Weimar, California, and later at the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco. For long periods, he was wrapped in a full-body cast and was told that he would never walk. During his time at a sanatorium near Sacramento, Morita befriended a visiting priest who would often joke that, if Morita ever converted to Catholicism, the priest would rename him to "Patrick Aloysius Ignatius Xavier Noriyuki Morita." Released from the hospital at age 11 after undergoing extensive spinal surgery and learning how to walk, Morita was transported from the hospital directly to the Gila River camp in Arizona to join his interned family. After about a year and a half, Morita was transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center.
After World War II ended, Morita moved back to the Bay Area and he graduated from Armijo High School in Fairfield, California, in 1949. For a time after the war, the family operated Ariake Chop Suey, a restaurant in Sacramento, California, jokingly described by Morita years later as "a Japanese family running a Chinese restaurant in a black neighborhood with a clientele of blacks, Filipinos and everybody else who didn't fit in any of the other neighborhoods". Morita would entertain customers with jokes and serve as master of ceremonies for group dinners. After Morita's father was killed in 1956 by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from an all-night movie, Morita and his mother kept the restaurant going for another three or four years. Needing a regular job to support his wife and a newly born child, Morita became a data processor in the early 1960s with the Department of Motor Vehicles and other state agencies, graduating to a graveyard shift job at Aerojet General. In due time, he was a department head at another aerospace firm, Lockheed, handling the liaison between the engineers and the programmers who were mapping out lunar eclipses for Polaris and Titan missile projects.
However, Morita suffered from occupational burnout and decided to quit his job and try show business. He began working as a stand-up comedian at small clubs in Sacramento as well as San Francisco, taking the stage name "Pat Morita," in part due to the presence of comedians including Pat Henry and Pat Cooper, in addition due to memories of the priest he had befriended as a boy. Morita struggled for many years in comedy, until fellow performer—ventriloquist Hank Garcia—told him to try his luck in Los Angeles. Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce's mother, acted as his agent and manager after he moved to Los Angeles, and booked him in the San Fernando Valley and at the Horn nightclub in Santa Monica. Morita sometimes worked as the opening act for singers Vic Damone and Connie Stevens and for his mentor, the comedian Redd Foxx. Morita used the nickname "The Hip Nip."
Despite having some Japanese-speaking roles throughout his acting career, Morita himself hardly spoke the language fluently, as he and his family primarily used English at home as his native language, making him isolated from his Japanese-speaking relatives and peers, especially his parents who were immigrants.
Morita's first movie roles were as a henchman in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and a similar role in The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968), starring Don Knotts. He also appeared in the fourth episode of the 1st season of The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969) and in the first episode of the second season of Columbo (1972). Morita had other notable recurring television roles on Sanford and Son (1974–1976) as Ah Chew, a good-natured friend of Lamont Sanford, and as South Korean Army Captain Sam Pak on the sitcom M*A*S*H (1973, 1974). He was also cast as Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka in the war film Midway (1976).
Morita had a recurring role in the mid-1970s on Happy Days as Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi (the new Japanese owner of Arnold's Drive-In) starting in season three (1975–76). The story line was that Takahashi had purchased the Milwaukee eatery from the original Arnold but adopted the former's first name, explaining that it was too expensive for him to purchase the additional neon sign letters required to rename it "Takahashi's".
As the new owner, Morita moonlighted as a martial arts instructor, teaching self-defense classes at the drive-in after hours. He also played "Arnold" as a guest star during seasons four and six before returning as a recurring character for season 10 (1982–83) and as a guest star in the final 11th season. Morita also reprised the character of Arnold on Blansky's Beauties in 1977.
During the 1970s, Morita gained particular fame on Happy Days before his work as Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid films. The original preferred choice was Toshiro Mifune, who had appeared in the Akira Kurosawa films Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), and The Hidden Fortress (1958), but Mifune did not speak English. Morita later auditioned for the role, but was initially rejected for the part due to his close association with stand-up comedy, and with the character Arnold from Happy Days. Producer Jerry Weintraub in particular did not want Morita, as he saw him as a comedic actor. Morita eventually tested five times before Weintraub himself offered him the role, ultimately winning it because he grew a beard and patterned his accent after his uncle. After Morita was cast and although he had been using the name Pat for years, Weintraub suggested that Morita be billed with his given name to sound "more ethnic".
In the first film, The Karate Kid (1984), Morita was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a corresponding Golden Globe Award, for his role as the wise karate teacher Mr. Miyagi who taught bullied teenager Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) the art of Goju-ryu karate. He was recognized as Noriyuki "Pat" Morita at the 57th Academy Awards ceremony. He reprised the role twice more with Macchio in The Karate Kid Part II (1986) and The Karate Kid Part III (1989). From 1989 to 1990, Morita voiced Mr. Miyagi in the animated series, The Karate Kid, narrating the plot of each episode before the opening. In 1994, he starred in The Next Karate Kid with Hilary Swank (as bullied teenager Julie Pierce) instead of Macchio.