Celebrity Biographies
Kirin Kiki
Veteran Japanese actress Kirin Kiki passed away on September 15, 2018 in Tokyo at the age of 75 as a result of cancer that was diagnosed several years ago. She already knew about her disease when she worked on “A Tokyo Pastry Shop” and various titles by Hirokazu Koreeda, who considered her her fetish actress. For years she was the most representative Japanese grandmother on the screen.
Born on January 15, 1943, in the Kanda district of the Japanese capital, Keiko Nakatani –real name of Kirin Kiki– was the daughter of a renowned musician, master of the biwa, an instrument similar to a lute.
She began her career as an actress in the early 1960s, as a member of the Bungakuza theater company, first as Chiho Yūki, as a stage name. She became popular in her country for comedy roles in series such as Jikan desu yo and Terauchi Kantarō ikka . At a charity show she was asked to auction something of hers, but she claimed that she didn’t have anything of hers, so she ended up auctioning off her name, so she had to change it to Kirin Kiki .
She began her fruitful association with Hirokazu Koreeda , the most representative current director of her country, in 1997, with Still Walking , where she played the role of an elderly mother, a housewife with genius, who received her two children. The two collaborated again on five more titles, Like Father, Like Son , Miracle , Our Little Sister , After the Storm , and A Family Affair , winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which opens in Spain on the 21st of december.
In 2004 he made it publicly known that he had cancer, which had spread through his body. Despite the fact that she underwent a mastectomy, there was no way to get rid of the dreaded disease. Despite everything, she has continued working all these years, to the point that she leaves a film in post-production, Nichinichi Kore Kojitsu , by Tatsushi Ohmori, where she plays the teacher of a young university student.
She married fellow actor Shin Kishida, whom she met working on stage, but ended up divorcing in 1968. She then shared her life with Yuda Uchida, although the relationship ended shortly. With the latter, she had Yayako Uchida, who played the same character as her, as a young man, in Tokyo tawa . She in turn, she has a daughter, Kyara Uchida , who has appeared with her grandmother in Miracle and A Cake Shop in Tokyo . “I don’t live to act, I live to be human, acting is something that happens in the middle of my path,” she said in an interview. “In my private life, not everything is as beautiful as it is in public, we all seem better on the surface. But peace can be found if you accept yourself.”