Hideko Takamine

She was married to screenwriter Zenzo Matsuyama , and her career spanned half a century, including nearly two hundred films. Hideko Takamine, who was born in Hakodate on March 27, 1924, immediately made her debut on the screens, since she was only five years old when she could be seen in Haha , by Hotei Nomura. Because of her child actress career and her participation in light musical comedies, she would be described as a Japanese Shirley Temple , and precisely being her child, she would make the silent film Tokyo Chorus (1931) for Yasujiro Ozu . However, her most important film with this master of Japanese cinema is undoubtedly The Munekata Sisters.(1950), where he coincided with another great actress, Kinuyo Tanaka .

Takamine knew how to handle the transition from child and youth roles to adults. From her light and inconsequential roles in popular “hang out” movies, she became a powerful symbol of the new Japanese woman born from her country’s defeat in World War II. In the effort of the American occupiers to democratize the country, the cinema was a wonderful tool, and the actress would embody the ideal of a modern and independent female, capable of making her own decisions. Thus, with the popular Keisuke Kinoshita she starred in Carmen Comes Home (1951), the first Japanese color film where she was a dancer, and the sequel to it, Carmen Falls in Love (1952). It was also touching to see her as a school teacher under Kinoshita inTwenty Four Eyes (1954).

Perhaps the actress’s happiest directorial collaboration, however, was with Mikio Naruse , with whom she made the postwar torn-love drama Floating Clouds (1955) and the geisha story When a Woman Climbs the Ladder ( 1960). Other titles to remember are The Man with the Trolley (1958), by Hiroshi Inagaki , also one of broken love, and his participation in the last installment of Masaki Kobayashi ‘s war trilogy , The Human Condition III: The Soldier’s Prayer ( 1961).

Naruse embodied her image of an independent woman in real life, as she was one of the first actresses who, instead of having a contract with the studios, negotiated her jobs film by film. The last one she made was for Kinoshita, to whom she owed so much. It was in 1979, and it was titled My Son, My Son . The actress left the screens at the age of 55.