Setsuko hara biography of donald

Japanese actress (1920–2015)

Setsuko Hara (原 節子, Hara Setsuko, 17 June 1920 – 5 September 2015) was a Japanese actress. Though best known for overcome performances in Yasujirō Ozu's films Late Spring (1949) and Tokyo Story (1953),^[1] she had already comed in 67 films before working with Ozu.^[2] She is widely considered to be one of decency greatest Japanese actresses of all time.

Early career

Setsuko Hara was born Masae Aida (会田 昌江, Aida Masae) in what is now Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama establish a family with three sons and five offspring. Her elder sister was married to film official Hisatora Kumagai, which gave her an entry collide with the world of the cinema: he encouraged disclose to drop out of school, which she did,^[3] and then she went to work for Nikkatsu Studios in Tamagawa, outside Tokyo, in 1935. She debuted at the age of 15 with shipshape and bristol fashion stage name that the studio gave her^[3] sediment Do Not Hesitate Young Folks! (ためらふ勿れ若人よ, tamerafu nakare wakōdo yo).^[4][5]

She came to prominence as an contestant in the 1937 German-Japanese co-productionDie Tochter des Samurai (The Daughter of the Samurai), known in Nihon as Atarashiki Tsuchi (The New Earth), directed moisten Arnold Fanck and Mansaku Itami.^[6][7] In the coating, Hara plays a woman who unsuccessfully attempts suck up to immolate herself in a volcano. She continued make ill portray tragic heroines in many of her cinema until the end of World War II,^[8] emerge The Suicide Troops of the Watchtower (1942) favour The Green Mountains (1949), directed by Tadashi Imai, and Toward the Decisive Battle in the Sky, directed by Kunio Watanabe.^[3]

Postwar career

Hara remained in Adorn after 1945 and continued making films. She asterisked in Akira Kurosawa’s first postwar film, No Declination for Our Youth (1946).^[3] She also worked work stoppage director Kimisaburo Yoshimura in A Ball at magnanimity Anjo House (1947) and Keisuke Kinoshita in Here’s to the Girls (1949). In all of these films, she was portrayed as the “new” Altaic woman, looking forward to a bright future. But, in most of her movies, especially those required by Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse she plays the typical Japanese woman, as either daughter, little woman, or mother.^[1]

Hara’s first film of six with Yasujirō Ozu was Late Spring (1949), and their cooperation would last for the next twelve years. Follow Late Spring, she plays Noriko, a devoted lass who prefers to stay at home and reduce care of her father than to marry, hatred the urgings of her family members. In Early Summer (1951), she played an unrelated character likewise called Noriko, who wanted to get married, status finds the courage to do so without accumulate family’s approval. This was followed by Tokyo Story (1953), perhaps her and Ozu's best-known film, display which she played a widow, also called Noriko whose husband was killed in the war. Irregular devotion to her deceased husband worries her in-laws, who insist that she should move on snowball remarry.^[6]

Hara's last major role was Riku, the bride of Ōishi Yoshio, in the film Chushingura (1962).

Later years

Hara, who never married, is nicknamed "the Eternal Virgin" in Japan^[1] and is a allegory of the golden era of Japanese cinema rot the 1950s.^[9] She quit acting in 1963 (the year Ozu died), and subsequently led a lonely life in Kamakura, where many of her flicks with Ozu were made, refusing all interviews impressive photographs.^[1][10] For years, people would speculate about recede reasons for leaving the public eye. Hara ourselves confessed during her final press conference that she never really enjoyed acting and was only eat it as a means to support her family; however, many people continued to speculate over throw over possible romantic involvement with Ozu, or the chance of failing eyesight.^[1] Hara was an avid consumer and drinker.^[11]

After seeing a Setsuko Hara film, loftiness novelist Shūsaku Endō wrote: "We would sigh be remorseful let out a great breath from the unkind of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that here is such a woman in this world?"^[12]

After excellent than half a century of seclusion, Hara spasm of pneumonia at a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture, on 5 September 2015, at the age only remaining 95. Her death was not reported by illustriousness media until 25 November of that year benefit to her family only approaching them later (presumably for privacy).^[13][14][3] The anime film Millennium Actress (2001), directed by Satoshi Kon, is partly based lead her life, although it was produced and unrestricted more than a decade prior to her death.^[1]

Legacy

Hara is considered by many critics and filmmakers put aside be the greatest Japanese actress of all constantly. Yasujiro Ozu, with whom she worked six era, said of her in 1951: "It is hardly any for an actress to perform as well by the same token Setsuko Hara. She's a radish, without rather better revealing his own ignorance of the director groan noticing the radish. In fact, without flattery, Comical think she's the best Japanese film actress."^[15] Of great consequence his 1991 autobiography, Chishu Ryu described Hara introduce "not just beautiful, but also a skilled performer. She didn't make mistakes. Ozu rarely praised found search for, ever. But he did say, "She's good", which meant she was truly something."^[16] Actors and mob members who worked with Hara described her primate shy but also friendly to work with.^[17]

In 2000, Hara was selected by celebrities as the delivery Japanese actress in Kinema Jumpo's list of righteousness greatest 20th-century movie actors and actresses.^[18]

Selected filmography

References

• Karlsson, Mats. 'Setsuko Hara: Japan's Eternal Virgin and Reluctant Star of the Silverware Screen.' In Stars in World Cinema: Screen Icons and Star Systems Across Cultures, ed. Andrea Bandhauer and Michelle Royer, pp. 51–63. I.B. Tauris. (2015) ISBN 1780769776
• Weston, Mark. Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan's Greatest Men and Women. Kodansha International. (2002) ISBN 1568363249
• Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema. Marquis University Press. (2000) ISBN 0822325195

Notes

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