Takamine Hideko

[Michael Kerpan]

Hideko in color -- a couple of Naruse possibilities -- albeit not easily available: Daughters, Wives, Mothers (or Daughter, Wife, Mother) (1960) and As a Wife, As a Woman (1961). I especially like the latter.

But the riches in black and white seem almost boundless.

--- On Sat, 1/1/11, Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

From: Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Takamine Hideko
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Date: Saturday, January 1, 2011, 1:22 AM



 
 

Yes, She was a mesmerising actress.  Above all for 
me, she was the centre of Ukigumo, which I believe gets many votes from 
Japanese critics as their favourite film.  She is number one in the 
lavishly illustrated 'Mikio Naruse with Actresses', 2005.  It would be 
wonderful to have her memoirs translated but for us more linguistically 
challenged, the Jinbōchō 
theater this summer was selling Joyū 
Takamine Hideko at 1200 yen, which was packed with stills from her 
films., as well as a filmography.
 
Carmen 
Comes Home would be a revelation as she exists for me entirely 
in black-and-white.
Roger
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: Takamine Hideko

>I showed my students 
24 Eyes a few weeks ago. We saw it as a follow-up to 
> Kon's Millennium 
Actress, in which the main character is a composite, mainly of 
> Takamine 
Hideko and Hara Setsuko.
> 
> The students were moved and surprised 
- they'd never seen a Japanese film like 
> this before, and one wrote her 
term paper about it.
> 
> I mentioned in class that the irony was 
that Kon was gone in his forties, while 
> the two actresses he referenced 
in Millennium Actress were still with us. But now 
> Takamine is gone as 
well.
> 
> She wrote a 2-volume book of memoirs, which should be 
translated. She and 
> Kurosawa had a sort of bittersweet romance back 
around 1940-41, when she 
> starred in Uma, and Kurosawa was the first 
assistant director. I believe he first 
> directed scenes on his own in 
this film, and worked directly with her quite a bit. 
> She was very much 
younger than he, in her teens, and was a big star, while he 
> was still 
just starting out in his career and past 30. So it couldn't and didn't 
> 
amount to much in the end. She discusses it in her memoirs, written decades 

> later.
> 
> Her earliest performance on US-playable DVD may 
be in Tokyo Chorus/Tokyo 
> no Korasu, 1931, in the box set Silent Ozu. 
Two decades later she starred in 
> Carmen Goes Back Home, post-WWII, 
which was I believe the first color film 
> made in Japan, and is very 
entertaining. She was a truly great actress, and a 
> notable writer in 
her later years as well.
> 
> Michael McCaskey
> Georgetown 
Univ.
>
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