<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:13px">Dear KineJapaners,</span><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">A little follow-up here about Hara Setsuko : </div><div style="font-size:13px">as a tribute, the Film theater inside the Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan (The Museum of Kyoto / 京都府京都文化博物館) </div><div style="font-size:13px">will be screening about twelve of her movies, several times for each one of them, from January 5th to 28th.</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">And later on, in March, Movix Kyoto will be screening a restored digital copy of "Tokyo Monogatari".</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">You'll find the scanned movie list attached to this mail but you can also find it online at this address : </div><div style="font-size:13px"><a href="http://www.bunpaku.or.jp/exhi_film/schedule/" target="_blank">http://www.bunpaku.or.jp/exhi_film/schedule/</a><br></div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">I don't know if anyone from the list will have the possibility to go,</div><div style="font-size:13px">I just thought it's nice to hear that her movies are getting a chance to be seen on a large screen like this.</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Wishing you all a nice and happy day,</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Best,</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Lucile</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2015-12-17 15:19 GMT+09:00 lucile druet <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lucile.druet@gmail.com" target="_blank">lucile.druet@gmail.com</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Dear KineJapaners,<div><br></div><div>A little follow-up here about Hara Setsuko : </div><div>as a tribute, the Film theater inside the Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan (The Museum of Kyoto / 京都府京都文化博物館) </div><div>will be screening about twelve of her movies, several times for each one of them, from January 5th to 28th.</div><div><br></div><div>And later on, in March, Movix Kyoto will be screening a restored digital copy of "Tokyo Monogatari".</div><div><br></div><div>You'll find the scanned movie list attached to this mail but you can also find it online at this address : </div><div><a href="http://www.bunpaku.or.jp/exhi_film/schedule/" target="_blank">http://www.bunpaku.or.jp/exhi_film/schedule/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>I don't know if anyone from the list will have the possibility to go,</div><div>I just thought it's nice to hear that her movies are getting a chance to be seen on a large screen like this.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Wishing you all a nice and happy day,</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div>Lucile</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2015-12-01 21:41 GMT+09:00 Roger Macy <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:macyroger@yahoo.co.uk" target="_blank">macyroger@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:HelveticaNeue,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,Sans-Serif;font-size:16px"><div><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:HelveticaNeue,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,Sans-Serif;font-size:16px"><div>Dear KineJapaners,</div><div>The obituaries for Hara Setsuko in the English newspapers are now all published. Mostly they are not in great depth, were not written by Japanese specialists and do not situate her fame in Japan at all.</div><div><br clear="none"></div><div>However, there is one honourable exception. <i>The Independent </i>had on file an obituary written by James Kirkup, whose own obituary in 2009 was noted here. The piece was written for a full-sized broadsheet, at 2,500 words and brings out a nostalgia within me for a style and depth of writing that seems to have irrevocably passed in journalism.</div><div><br clear="none"></div><div>For the edition of Thursday 26th November, <i>The Independent</i> cut it down to its current page size of 1500 words. It still unquestionably surpasses the competition and notably addresses Hara's relationship with Ozu, particularly at the end.</div><div><br clear="none"></div><div><i>The Independent</i> agreed that I could show the unabridged version to scholars, that would otherwise be lost to the record, so I am providing it here. I've marked the parts that were cut in blue, but I'm not sure that 'KineJapan' transmits colour, so I'll also attach a doc file.</div><div><div>Written some twenty years ago, it deploys some unfamiliar english translations of the titles but these will not distract readers here.</div><div>Roger<br></div></div><div><br clear="none"></div><div>The link to the published version is here
<div><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/setsuko-hara-actress-adored-in-japan-and-abroad-for-her-sensitivity-and-best-known-for-her-work-with-a6749256.html" target="_blank">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/setsuko-hara-actress-adored-in-japan-and-abroad-for-her-sensitivity-and-best-known-for-her-work-with-a6749256.html</a></span></div><div dir="ltr">
</div></div><div><br clear="none"></div><div>
</div>
<div style="margin-top:0cm;text-align:center;layout-grid-mode:char" align="center"><u><span style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">by James Kirkup July 1998
SETSUKO HARA (Masae Aida) film actress.</span></u></div>
<div style="text-align:center" align="center"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Born Yokohama
17 June, 1920. Died Kamakura.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">She was the
Garbo of Japan, the great shining star of the golden era in Japanese film
making. In his autobiography, the actor Ken Takakura, best known for his role
in Sydney Pollock’s The Yakuza, describes the vision of Setsuko Hara walking
through the indifferent hordes of commuters in Shinjuku Station: she moved
among them within an indefinable aura of mystery, a physical presence so
discreet, it could hardly be called present at all. The atmosphere of purity
and mystic innocence surrounding her was partly a reflection of her private
life, shrouded in the utmost discretion.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">She was
averse to publicity and rarely gave interviews. She never married, and she is
not known to have had any love affairs. There was a rumour that she might marry
Yasujiro Ozu, who directed her in most of her finest films, but it was only a
rumour. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">Ozu, too, never married, something even now considered abnormal
in a Japanese male: he lived with his mother all his life. Women today are more
independent of social conventions, and many now prefer a career to marriage.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> Hara was
known affectionately, regretfully, as “The Eternal virgin.”</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><span> </span>Setsuko Hara attended the </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">very
</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">refined
Yokohama Ladies’ Seminary from 1933. In August 1934, her fresh, modest yet
ebullient personality and her radiantly simple beauty led her to be recommended
as a possible addition to Nikkatsu Movie company’s list of ‘new faces’.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Her father,
Fujinosuke Aida, was a lowly salaryman, but his second daughter had become an
actress and the wife of Hisatora Kumagai, a young movie director. Setsuko’s
playful charm and </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">a certain</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> childlike spontaneity of feeling had
made her popular with children, so she had decided to become a schoolteacher.
But with the deterioration of her family’s financial situation, she could not
envisage a continuation of higher education.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In her first
casting photos, her skin appeared rather dark. Though she had a fine profile,
her frontal shots revealed here as too thin and underdeveloped. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">So
her first attempt to enter Nikkatsu failed.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> However her brother-in-law Hisatora
remained convinced that she had the makings of a good actress. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">So
he</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">
invited the movie company’s casting directors to his home in order to meet
Setsuko in a more relaxed atmosphere. The subtle aura she diffused on that
occasion was enough </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">to persuade the company to engage her</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">At the time,
Nikkatsu had few talented young actresses, so Setsuko seemed likely to fill a
need for a certain type of traditional Japanese girl. In April 1935, she </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">joined
the Nikkatsu Tamagawa Satsueijo, and in August </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">made her film debut in Tetsu Taguchi’s
Tamerau nakare Wakandoyo (Don’t hesitate young people!). She was only fifteen
years old. In this young people’s movie, she took the professional name of
Setsuko Hara. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">Later in 1935, she appeared in Fumito Kurata’s shinya no taiyo
(Midnight Sun). It was a ‘B class’ movie of the kind that in those days was run
in support of the first feature, ‘A class’ film. But she had the leading role.<span> </span></span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In that same year, the leading actress billed
to appear in Midori no Chiheisen (Green Horizon) committed suicide. Setsuko
took over her part in this first-class </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">‘A’</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> movie’. Her
performance revealed her as a potential star, with her happy smile, innocent,
open gaze, wide, sparkling eyes and classic profile.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">In
1936 she made Sadao Yamanaka’s Kochiyama Soshun. Yamanaka was a very promising
young director who had already made a couple of remarkable early talkies, and
was soon to leave Nikkatsu to work as Ozu’s assistant in Tokyo. He was killed
during the war in Manchuria.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">In
those pre-war days, Nazi Germany had a passion for sentimental adventure
movies, love stories set in the mountains. In his book Dr Caligari to Hitler,
Siegfried Kracauer writes about the Nazis “idolatry of glaciers and mountain
rock faces as symptomatic of the anti-rationalist romanticism of the German
psyche exploited by the German leaders.” The director Arnold Fanck was the
chief exponent of his nationalist cinematic cult, and his first opus had been
named, significantly, Der Heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain), 1926, starring the
ex-dancer Leni Riefenstahl, who was to appear in the five more of Fanck’s
movies, none of which achieved the mastery of Die Weisse Holle vom Piz Palu
(The White Hell of Piz Palu) co-directed by Pabst in 1929. All Fanck’s movies
were photographed by the celebrated operator Richard Angst.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">Arnold
Fanck arrived from Berlin to make a Japan/German/co-production mountain movie
with Setsuko Hara and Sesshu Hayakawa. Fanck’s co-director was Mansaku Itami
(father of the late Juzo Itami). But there was a lot of friction on the set
between them. In the end, to save face on both sides, two versions had to be
made: </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">Atarashi Tsuchi (New Earth) and Samurai no
musumi (Daughter of the Samurai).</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0"> In 1937 Setsuko Hara appeared
in both versions, which were shown in strict alternation in Japan. The Japanese
audiences preferred the German version, as more ‘exotic’. Setsuko, the first
Japanese girl to play in a German movie, was a great attraction, and it made
her a real star.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">She went to
Germany for the film’s opening there. After studying German for only one month,
she managed to speak the language passably. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">She travelled in a
company with the famous Japanese pair of movie buyers for Towa Shoji, Nagamasa
and Kashiko Kawakita. Hara’s brother-in-law was also one of the delegation. At
Tokyo Station, vast crowds had gathered to see them off on 10 March, 1937. They
journeyed through Manchuria and on the Trans-Siberian, to arrive on 26 March in
Berlin. Setsuko made her first public appearance at the Capitol Theatre,
wearing the elegant traditional women’s long-sleeved Kimono known as furisode. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Her grace,
her youth, her radiant smile and demure demeanour enchanted the Germans.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">She
met the great Swiss actress Dorothea Wieok, who had played the sensational
leading role in Leontine Sagan’s Madchen in Uniform, which had been a huge
success in Japan. Setsuko possessed some of the spiritual distinction of Wieck,
whom she admired as a model for her own acting style. The Germans preferred the
Japanese to the German version of the film.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Hara went on
to Paris, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">where she met Louis Jouvet, Annabella, Michel Simon and Julien
Duvivier. Then</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">
to New York and Hollywood, where she encountered Josef von Sternberg, Marlene
Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyk and </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">the Austrian actress</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> Luise
Rainer. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">It would have been interesting to see Hara in a film by Duvivier
or von Sternberg, but apparently</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> no attempt was made to put her under
contract in Paris or Los Angeles.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">When
she returned to Japan, Setsuko Hara joined the Toho Movie Company where in 1937
she made Tokai bijoden (Tokai Beauty Legend) directed by Takizo Ishida. She
also played in a version of Les Miserables, in which she was a very natural,
appealing Cosette. In 1938, Satsuo Yamamoto directed her in Kyojinden (Legend
of a Great Man) adapted from Andre Gide’s La Symphonie Pastorale. As the
tremulously sensitive blind heroine, Setsuko was superbly cast, an
interpretation deeply-thought out. It was Setsuko’s use of the marvellous
myopic gaze in her brilliantly expressive eyes that confirmed her as a great
actress, far superior to Michele Morgan in Delannoy’s1946 version. The Japanese
loved these films with Western backgrounds and characters. Fanck had seen in
her a typical Japanese beauty. To the Japanese she seemed to represent a more
European type.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">But
during the Pacific War, rigid anti-Western propaganda compelled her to play
typical Japanese young lady parts, and she made few movies during this period.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">It was </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">therefore</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> not until
the, end of the war that her career really began to take off, in Kuresawa’s
first post-war film, Waga seishu ni kuinashi (Mr Springtime, No Regrets) in
l946. She acted with real passion, and was an impressive leading lady. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">The
film was voted No. 2 on the list of the year’s best movies. In 1947, she left
Toho and joined the new Shin-Toho Movie Company. She became an independent
actress and played only in parts that she felt were suited to her, beginning
with Kimisaburo Yoshimura’s Anjoke no butokai (The Anjo Family’s Dance Party),
which was chosen as the best film of 1947. Setsuko’s</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> popularity
started to soar. She always appeared on screen as an intelligent, refined,
elegant, serious, young lady. She was untouched by social revolutions in
Japanese post-war life, and in that depressed period her enchanting smile
seemed to give people consolation and hope for a better future. In the
confusions of post-war society, her delicacy and tenderness were an
inspiration.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">As an
actress, she had begun with a rather stiff, mechanical technique, but
experience softened her style and in Yasujiro Ozu’s Banshun (Late spring),
1949, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">with the support of the great Chishu Ryu,</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> she touched
everyone’s heart as a motherless daughter living with her professor father,
taking care of him with true affection and self-effacement, thus missing her
chances of marriage, which she finally is persuaded to embark upon at the end. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">There
is a wonderfully touching scene between her and Ryu as she leaves him for the
marriage ceremony, wearing a superb traditional wedding kimono.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> This film,
the first of several she made with Ozu, was elected No.1 on the year-end
charts.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">In
the came year, Keisuke Kinoshita directed her in O-jo-san kampai! (Cheers, old
girl!) which was only No. 6 on the box-office list. But her performance the
same year in Aoi san miyaku (Blue Mountain) was No. 2 in the annual list. In
1949 again, she went on to win the Best Actress Award in the Mainichi
Newspaper’s Movie Concours.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">Setsuko
Hara’s</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">
most famous films belong to the 1950s. In 1951, she played in Kurosawa’s
Hakuchi, based on Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">co-starring with Toshiro
Mifune and Masayuki Mori. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">She was Natasha, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">and
the whole film was shot in northern Japan. Hers was a very dramatic character,</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> the
mistress of a wealthy man but longing to lead a purer life.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In the same
year, her next film with Ozu, Bakusha (Early Summer) became the year’s No.1
hit, followed by the No.2, Mikio Naruse’s Meshi (A Bowl of Rice) in which she
gave one of her best performances. Those three films are classics of the
Japanese cinema, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">constantly screened at film festivals and
retrospectives.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">
Her director, Ozu, said: “She can act from the very depths of her being, and
always has a quick understanding of her part. When I am giving her direction,
she always responds intelligently and instinctively, a wonderful natural
actress.” Ozu’s traditional Japanese interiors, shot from tatami floor level,
were perfect settings for her.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In 1953 the
greatest of the Ozu/Hara films, Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story) </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">was
made</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">.
The shooting began in June, directed by Hara’s brother-in-law as Ozu’s
assistant, and with her second brother as cameraman. The latter was taking a
shot of an approaching train in Gotemba station when the train failed to stop in
time: he was run over and died on June 6th. In these </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">very</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> sad
circumstances, which intensified the peculiar melancholy of the story, Setsuko
Hara began playing her greatest part, that of a young war widow</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">,
on 20 July. Here again she appears as</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> a devoted daughter-in-law who kindly
takes care of her ageing parents-in-law when they leave their remote country
home to spend a few days with their son and his</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0"> rather</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> abrasive
wife (the inimitable Haruko Sugiyama) in their cramped Tokyo home.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">It is a
deeply moving film, in which Setsuko’s fine performance is backed by the
excellent characterisations of Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama as her
parents-in-law. Tokyo story is universal in its appeal, and one of the greatest
masterpieces of Japanese cinema</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">tographic</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> art.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In 1954,
Hara made another film with Mikio Naruse, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">a sensitive version of
Yasunari Kawabata’s best novel,</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> Yama no oto (A Rumbling in the mountains).
Setsuko now 34</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">, and still unmarried</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">, was at her peak period as an
actress, and the very fact that she chose to remain unmarried seemed to add an
extra almost ethereal dimension of spiritual distinction to her art. Her lovely
eyes were still full of tenderness and sparkles of mischievous humour. But she
had developed cataract in her left eye: this was successfully operated on </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">at
Keio University Hospital</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">. It seemed an omen of coming decline.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">Her
favourite director, Ozu, had only another ten years to live. Her own father
died in 1955.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">
Hara next appeared on the screen in Hisatora Kumagai’s 1955 Non-chan kumo ni</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black"> noru (Non-chan in the Clouds), based on a well-loved
children’s classic</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0"> by Momoko Ishi. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Newspaper
headlines joyfully announced: “Beautiful Eyes Return to the Screen!” The film
marked another significant step in her career: it was the first time she had
played a mother. There followed a succession of almost elegiac autumnal Ozu
masterpieces: Tokyo boshoku (Tokyo Twilight) in 1957; Aki biyori (Autumn
skies), 1960; and Kohayagawake no aki (Autumn of the Kohayagawa Family), 1961. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">Though
Setsuko did not appear in it, Ozu made his last film, Samma no aji (usually
billed as The Taste of Sake) in 1962. In several of Ozu’s later movies, he had
used younger actresses: Keiko Kishi in Soshun (Early Spring), in 1956; Ineko
Arima in Higanbana (Equinox Flowers), 1958; Mariko Okada in Samma no aji, 1962.
None of these women could equal the qualities of Setsuko </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Hara, her
spell-binding quiet intensity and her grace. </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">She</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> began to
seem to belong to another age.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Hara and
Ozu: there is an underlying sense of some disturbing secret that emanates from
these two unmarried artists, the sadness of an emotional difference that their
condition arouses in the spectators, and indefinable strain of sexual
perversity. They seem to be telling us that human lives are not what they seem,
and that an acceptable social exterior is not everything.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In his </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">recent</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> enthralling
book on Ozu, </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">the critic and scholar</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> Shigehiko Hasumi argues, against
critics like Paul Schrader, Donald Richie and Audie Bock that all was not
simple sweetness and light in those films made with Setsuko Hara. She was
apparently in love with her much older director, a father-figure who had no
intention of marrying anybody, and so treated her rather distantly. Unlike
Hasumi, I see their relationship more like that between the dutiful daughter
and the father in Banshun: one of pure devotion, with a sublimated sexual need.</span></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">In 1962,
Setsuko appeared in her last movie, one of the countless versions of
Chushingura, a historical epic in which she is obviously ill at ease. She
retired from the screen when she was </span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0">only</span><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> forty-two,
feeling there were no more parts for her to play. The type of young girl and
woman she had portrayed to such perfection was already vanishing from modern
Japan. Like Garbo and Dietrich, she retired not only from the screen, but also
from public life. The Japarazzi managed to take only one shot of her at home.
She did not want her fans to witness her beauty in decline. The Eternal Virgin
remained one to the end of her days, her veil or mystery unbroken.</span></div>
<div><em><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Masae Aida (Setsuko
Hara), actress: born 17 June 1920; died Kanagawa, Japan 5 September 2015.</span></em><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""></span></div>
<div><em><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">James Kirkup died in
2009.</span></em></div>
<div style="layout-grid-mode:char"><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#0070c0"> </span></div><div dir="ltr">
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</div><div dir="ltr"><span>* = </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Bakushū</span></div><br clear="none"> <div><br><br></div><div><blockquote style="border-left:2px solid rgb(16,16,255);margin-left:5px;margin-top:5px;padding-left:5px"> <div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,Sans-Serif;font-size:16px"> <div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,Sans-Serif;font-size:16px"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">From:</span></b> Gerow Aaron <<a href="mailto:aaron.gerow@yale.edu" target="_blank">aaron.gerow@yale.edu</a>><br clear="none"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <<a href="mailto:kinejapan@lists.osu.edu" target="_blank">kinejapan@lists.osu.edu</a>> <br clear="none"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b> Wednesday, 25 November 2015, 14:29<br clear="none"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b> [KineJapan] Hara Setsuko<br clear="none"> </font> </div><div><div> <div><br clear="none">The news services report that Hara Setsuko, the star of so many great Japanese films, is dead at age 95. She actually died September 5, but her passing was not announced.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="http://www.asahi.com/articles/ASHCT7KPNHCTUCLV01B.html?iref=comtop_6_01" target="_blank">http://www.asahi.com/articles/ASHCT7KPNHCTUCLV01B.html?iref=comtop_6_01</a><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">KineJapan mailing list<br clear="none"><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="mailto:KineJapan@lists.osu.edu" target="_blank">KineJapan@lists.osu.edu</a><br clear="none"><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" href="https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan" target="_blank">https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan</a><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"></div> </div></div></div> </div> </blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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