Ichirō Kataoka, born in 1977, graduated from Nihon University and began his training with the famous Japanese film narrator Midori Sawato in 2002. He is the most famous and also the most internationally active film counter (benshi) of his generation. He has already performed in Croatia, Germany and Australia, among other countries. Kataoka has a wide repertoire of styles. He has appeared as a benshi in several films and also works as a voice actor for animation and video games.

In 2020 he published the monograph Katsudō Shashin Benshi: Eiga ni Tamashii wo fukikonda Hitobito (活動写真弁史　映画に魂を吹き込む人びと) (The story of the film narrators: people who breathed life into the cinema).