Yōko Sugi

Yōko Sugi
杉葉子
Sugi (left) and Setsuko Hara in Aoi sanmyaku
Born (1928-10-28) 28 October 1928 (age 96)
Koishikawa, Bunkyō ward, Tokyo, Japan
Died15 May 2019(2019-05-15) (aged 90)
Tokyo, Japan
OccupationActress

Yōko Sugi (杉葉子, Sugi Yōko, 8 October 1928 – 15 May 2019) was a Japanese actress mainly active in the 1950s, who appeared in films of Mikio Naruse, Kinuyo Tanaka and Tadashi Imai.[1][2]

Biography

Sugi was born on 28 October 1928 in what is now Bunkyō ward, Tokyo, Japan. In 1945 she graduated from a Japanese high school in Shanghai.[3]

After returning to Japan in 1947, Sugi auditioned at Toho studio's "New Face" competition and received a contract.[4] She gave her debut in Tadashi Imai's 1949 Aoi sanmyaku, and performed in several other coming of age films.[4] She repeatedly appeared in films of Mikio Naruse such as Repast, Husband and Wife (Sugi's only starring role in a Naruse film, replacing Setsuko Hara)[5] and Sound of the Mountain, and in Kinuyo Tanaka's The Eternal Breasts and The Moon Has Risen.[1]

In 1962, Sugi married an American, retired from the entertainment industry, and moved to the United States, where she worked at the New Otani Hotel in Los Angeles.[4] Occasionally returning to Japan, she appeared in films like Shirō Toyoda's The Twilight Years. She served as a Japanese Cultural Envoy to the United States for the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2005.[6]

Sugi moved back to Japan in 2017. She died on 15 May 2019 of colon cancer in Tokyo.[3][4]

Filmography (selected)

References

  1. ^ a b "杉葉子". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 21 July 2023.
  2. ^ "杉葉子". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 21 July 2023.
  3. ^ a b "俳優の杉葉子さん死去「青い山脈」ヒロイン役 90歳 (Actress Yoko Sugi dies at 90)". The Asahi Shimbun (in Japanese). 23 May 2019. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d "Japanese film actress Yoko Sugi dies at 90". The Mainichi. 24 May 2019. Archived from the original on 24 May 2019. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  5. ^ Russell, Catherine (2008). The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-8223-4290-8.
  6. ^ "List of Japan Cultural Envoys". Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved 15 August 2019.