Hideko Takamine
Hideko Takamine | |
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Hideko Takamine
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Born | Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan |
March 27, 1924
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Tokyo, Japan |
Cause of death | Lung cancer |
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1929–1979 |
Spouse(s) | Zenzo Matsuyama (1955–2010) |
Awards | Japan Academy Prize Lifetime Achievement Award 1996 Mainichi Film Concours Best Actress 1962 Happiness of Us Alone 1958 Times of Joy and Sorrow 1956 Floating Clouds 1955 Twenty-Four Eyes |
Hideko Takamine (高峰 秀子 Takamine Hideko?, March 27, 1924 – December 28, 2010) was a Japanese actress who began as a child actor and maintained her fame in a career that spanned half a century.
Life and career
Takamine was born in Hakodate, Hokkaidō in 1924. Her first role was in the Shochiku studio's 1929 film Mother (Haha), which brought her tremendous popularity as a child actor. Soon she was billed as Japan's Shirley Temple. After moving to the Toho studio in 1937, her dramatic roles in Kajirō Yamamoto's Tsuzurikata kyōshitsu and Uma brought her added fame as a girl star.[1] Some of her film appearances from the 1930s and 1940s were lost during the Second World War when Japan's film archives were damaged by bombing and fires.
In 1950, she made what was considered a very daring move by breaking with the Japanese studio system, leaving the Shin Toho Studio and becoming a much sought-after freelance actress.[citation needed] Her films with directors Keisuke Kinoshita and Mikio Naruse during the 1950s and early 1960s made her Japan's top star. Her performance as a dedicated small town teacher observing her students' lives over several decades in Kinoshita's The Twenty-four Eyes (1954) is credited with that film's tremendous success and enduring popularity in Japan. Another powerful performance was as a tenant farmer's daughter who is raped and forced to marry the cruel landlord's crippled son in the 1961 film Immortal Love.
Takamine was especially favored by director Mikio Naruse, starring in a dozen of his films and portraying strong-willed, hardworking women struggling in poverty or lowly positions, and often held down by the traditional family system.[citation needed] Some of her more moving roles include the tragic, love-struck heroine in Floating Clouds (1955) and an aging Ginza bar hostess desperate to escape her circumstances in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960).
She married director-writer Zenzo Matsuyama in 1955, but set a precedent by choosing not to give up her acting career. She made many of her most memorable films in the 1960s and retired from making movies in 1979.[citation needed]
After retiring as an actress, she published her autobiography and several essay collections.[2] She died of lung cancer on 28 December 2010 at the age of 86.[1]
Filmography
(incomplete)
- Tokyo Chorus (1931)
- Hideko the Bus-Conductor (1941)
- Horse (1941)
- Ahen senso (1943)
- Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946)
- Ginza Kankan Musume (1949)
- The Munekata Sisters (Munekata kyōdai) (1950)
- Carmen Comes Home (1951)
- Lightning (1952)
- Entotsu no mieru basho (1953)
- Twenty-four Eyes (1954)
- Floating Clouds (1955)
- Nagareru (1956)
- A Wife's Heart (1956)
- Untamed (1957)
- Yorokobi mo kanashimi mo ikutoshitsuki aka The Lighthouse or Times of Joy and Sorrow or Years of Joy and Sorrow (1957)
- Rickshaw Man (1958)
- When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
- Daughters, Wives and a Mother (Musume Tsuma Haha) (1960)
- Immortal Love (1961)
- Burari Bura-bura Monogatari (1962)
- A Wanderer's Notebook (1962)
- A Woman's Life (Onna no rekishi) (1963)
- Yearning (1964)
References
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hideko Takamine. |
- Eiga Stars IV :: Hideko Takamine Eiga Stars: Portraits of Japanese Divas in Fan Magazines of the 1950s photo gallery
- University of Waterloo, Spring 1994 KINEMA profile
- San Francisco Chronicle, "Director Mikio Naruse retrospective takes insightful plunge into a postwar Japan in flux", December 28, 2005.
- Hideko Takamine at the Internet Movie Database
- Hideko Takamine at the Japanese Movie Database (Japanese)
- Obituary, Hideko Takamine, Lauded Japanese Actress, Dies at 86 at The New York Times
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- Articles with hCards
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- 1924 births
- 2010 deaths
- Japanese actresses
- People from Hakodate, Hokkaido
- Deaths from lung cancer
- Cancer deaths in Japan
- 20th-century Japanese actresses
- Japanese child actresses
- Japanese film actresses
- Japanese autobiographers
- Women autobiographers