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Cinema Ozu (Appendix C): Kinuyo Tanaka, Actress

Kinuyo Tanaka performed in light operas as a pre-teen before getting into the movies at the tender age of 14. In her late twenties, she became involved with noted silent film director Hiroshi Shimizu. They never legally married, but they lived as commonlaw spouses for a few years. Shimizu happened to be a close friend of Ozu, who himself was just starting to direct features in the late 1920's. In 1929, Takada played "the wife" in the mostly-lost I Graduated, But... for Ozu. Two years later, she co-starred in Japan's first talkie, The Neighbor's Wife and Mine (1931).

She played various supporting roles in films throughout the early 30's, including two Ozu silent films (I Flunked, But... and Young Miss). She moved up to more consistent featured supporting and co-starring roles in '32 and '33. You can see her stock rising in the parts she plays in Ozu's Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?, Woman of Tokyo, and especially Dragnet Girl. She was extremely active in many films throughout the 30's on, until she took a short hiatus in 1942.

Tanaka as the girl who works in the Soda Shop in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

She picked back up with her acting in 1944. She worked with Ozu again a few years later on 1948's A Hen in the Wind, and then once again in 1950's The Munekata Sisters (neither of which is available on DVD in the US). Her acting roles in sound films from this period are much better known than her silent work, especially the fifteen films she made with Kenji Mizoguchi. Among that stretch of films, the best-known to Western audiences are Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff. Both of them are available on DVD in the US from Criterion, and they're both tremendous films that I give my highest recommendation.

Takada's history-making claim to fame is that she became Japan's first female film director in 1953 with Love Letter. She would end up making only six films (the last one was 1962's Love Under the Crucifix), but that's progress when you consider the state of Japanese feminism in the 1950's.

Her collaboration with Mizoguchi ended abruptly when he voted against Nikkatsu hiring her on for her second directing gig. I've yet to get a solid lead on why he did this, whether out of sexism or...something else. Regardless, she ended up getting her second film off the ground eventually.

She continued acting while directing her features. Her final film with Ozu was 1958's Equinox Flower. She later appeared in Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard (1965), and kept on acting until the year before her death in 1977.

Cinema Ozu articles related to Kinuyo Tanaka:
(5b): Salvaged I Graduated, But...
(7a): I Flunked, But...
(7b): Flunked Significance
(9): The 3 Lost Films of 1930
(15): Dreams of...The Soda Shop Girl
(17): Tokyo Woman of the Night
(18a): Dragnet Girl Goes Bang-Bang

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but even more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.