Tanaka, Kinuyo (1910–1977)

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Tanaka, Kinuyo (1910–1977)

Japanese actress and director. Born on November 23, 1910 (also seen as 1907 and December 29, 1909), in Shinomoseki, Japan; died on March 21, 1977; attended Tennoji Elementary School, Osaka, Japan; married Hiroshi Shimizu (a director), in 1929 (divorced); no children.

Selected filmography as actress:

A Woman from the Genroku Era (1924); Ochimusha (1925); Torrent (1926); Intimate Dream (1927); Tales from a Land by the Sea (1928); The Village Bride (1928); I Graduated But … (1929); Oyosan (1930); I Flunked But … (1931); The Loyal Forty-Seven Ronin (1932); A Woman of Tokyo (1933); An Innocent Maid (1935); New Way (1936); The Tree of Love (1937); Woman of Osaka (1940); Musashi Miyamoto (1944); The Victory of Women (1946); The Love of the Actress Sumako (1947); Women of the Night (1948); My Love Has Been Burning (1951); Mother (1952); Life of Oharu (1952); Four Chimneys (1953); Ugetsu (1953); Sansho the Bailiff (The Bailiff, 1954); Flowing (1956); Ballad of Narayama (1958); Equinox Flower (1958); Eternity of Love (1961); Lonely Lane (1962); Alone on the Pacific (My Enemy the Sea, 1963); Red Beard (1965); Judo Champion (1967); Sandakan 8 (1975); Daichi no Komori-uta (1976).

Selected filmography as director:

Love Letter (also acted, 1953); The Moon Rises (also acted, 1955); The Eternal Breasts (also acted, 1955); A Wandering Princess (also acted, 1958); Girls of the Night (1961); Love Under the Crucifix (1962).

The only woman film director to come out of Japan during the 1950s, Kinuyo Tanaka was a famous and respected actress before venturing behind the camera. In light of the conventional Japanese society of the 1950s, in which women's roles were strictly defined, her desire to stretch the boundaries was greeted with fierce opposition, and only through the most determined effort was she able to make six films. Faced with continued professional hostility and audience indifference, she finally abandoned her directoral pursuits and returned to acting.

Tanaka began her film career in the silent era and acted in more than 240 films, including Japan's first talkie and first color film. She won the Japan Kinema Jumpo Award for Best Actress for her work in Ballad of Narayama (1958) and the Best Actress Award at the Berlin Festival for Sandakan 8 (1975). As an actress, she worked with some of Japan's most highly respected directors, among them Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Tanaka was inspired to direct after learning that some American actresses, such as Ida Lupino and Claudette Colbert , were considering directoral projects; a visit to Hollywood in the winter of 1949 made her even more determined. Back home, however, Tanaka met with vehement opposition, particularly from the directors' union, then headed by Kenji Mizoguchi, who ironically had directed her in some of the era's most sensitive movies about women. A few within the ranks, however, were more supportive; Mikio Naruse served as a mentor by taking her on as an assistant director, and Keisuke Kinoshita and Yasujiro Ozu worked as scriptwriters for several of her projects.

According to Philip Kemp, Tanaka was not a particularly innovative director, but she brought a female sensitivity to previously established cinematic forms. "Women, who take the key roles in all her films, are treated not just with sympathy, but with a humorous affection rare in Japanese cinema of the period," he writes; he cites the spontaneous and warm father-daughter relationship in The Moon Has Risen (1955) and the relaxed natural interactions in Love Under the Crucifix (1962). All of Tanaka's films focus on women who must overcome prejudice in order to achieve their desired goals, and two of her films, The Eternal Breasts (1955) and Girls of the Night (1961), were scripted by the noted feminist writer Sukie Tanaka (no relation). In Kemp's assessment, Tanaka's most remarkable film was The Eternal Breasts, based on the true story of a young woman poet (Fumiko Nakashiro ), who is stricken with breast cancer. "Chilling, clinical images convey Fumiko's vulnerability and fear at the invasion of her body, first by the disease and then by a double mastectomy; while Tanaka celebrates the surge of sexuality her heroine experiences after the operation as a brief, defiant assertion of life and erotic joy in the face of approaching death."

Following the example of the heroine of her last directoral project, Love under the Crucifix (1962), who chooses death over a life out of her control, Tanaka opted to leave directing in 1962, with her dignity intact. The actress-director, who was married briefly to director Hiroshi Shimizu, continued to act in films until 1975. She died of a brain tumor on March 21, 1977.