Haruko Sugimura

Haruko Sugimura
was a Japanese stage and film actress, best known for her appearances in the films of Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
Biography
Sugimura was born in Nishi-ku, Hiroshima. After the death of her parents, she was adopted at an early age by affluent lumber dealers, only learning much later that they were not her biological parents. (Sugimura reputedly claimed that she was the illegitimate child of a geisha.) Her adoptive parents took her to performances of both classical Japanese stage arts like kabuki and bunraku, and western ballet and opera. They also encouraged her to enroll at the Tokyo Ongaku Gakko (now Tokyo University of the Arts), where she failed the exams. She then joined the Tsukiji Shōgekijō (Tsukiji Little Theatre), Tokyo, in 1927, and later the Bungakuza theatre company, which she remained affiliated with from 1937 until her retirement in 1996.
She gave her film debut in 1932 in Eizo Tanaka's Namiko (1932). Between 1937 and the end of the war, she acted in about 20 films, including works by directors Yasujirō Shimazu and Shirō Toyoda. Notable post-war film appearances were in Keisuke Kinoshita's Morning for the Osone Family (1946) and in Ozu's Late Spring (1949). Her most important film roles included that of Shige, the elderly couple's hairdresser daughter in Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), Naruse's Late Chrysanthemums (1954), and Tadashi Imai's An Inlet of Muddy Water (1953). For her film performances, she received the Blue Ribbon Award, the Kinema Junpo Award and the Mainichi Film Award.
On stage, she was successful as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Gertrude in Hamlet and Asako Kageyama in Yukio Mishima's Rokumeikan. Her most popular and often repeated stage role was Kei Nunobiki in Kaoru Morimoto's A Woman's Life, for which she received numerous awards, including the Japan Art Academy Prize and the Asahi Prize. In 1992, she was awarded the honorary citizenship of the city of Tokyo. In 1995, she refused the Order of Culture award. The same year saw the release of her last film, Kaneto Shindō's A Last Note.
Filmography
Film
Namiko (1932)
Asakusa no hi (1937)
Uguisu (1938)
Wedding Day (1940)
Okumura Ioko (1940)
Spring on Leper's Island (1940) – Yokogawa's wife
Ōhinata-mura (1940)
Waga ai no ki (1941)
Shirasagi (1941)
Jirō monogatari (1941)
Nankai no hanataba (1942) – Nobuko Hotta
Haha no chizu (1942) – Isano Kishi
Gekiryu (1944)
Army (1944) – Setsu
Kanjōkai no bara (1945)
Umi no yobu koe (1945)
Ōsone-ke no ashita (1946) – Fusako Ōsone
Urashima Tarō no kōei (1946)
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) – Madame Noge, Ryukichi's mother
Yottsu no koi no monogatari (1947) – Yukiko's mother (episode 1)
Joen (1947)
Haru no mezame (1947)
Sanbon yubi no otoko (1947) – Itoko
Yuwaku (1948) – Tokie
Te o tsunagu kora (1948)
Idainaru X (1948) – Taka
Toki no teizo: zengohen (1948)
Kurogumo kaido (1948)
Koku'un kaido (1948)
Beni imada kiezu (1949)
Yotsuya kaidan (1949) – Omaki
Shinshaku Yotsuya kaidan: kōhen (1949) – Omaki
Late Spring (1949) – Masa Taguchi
Onna no shiki (1950)
Until We Meet Again (1950) – Ono Suga
Listen to the Voices of the Sea (1950) – Kohagi Nakamura
Eriko to tomoni Part I + II (1951) – Harue Matsumura
Jiyū gakkō (1951)
Early Summer (1951) – Tami Yabe
Fireworks Over the Sea (1951) – Kono Kujirai
Repast (1951) – Matsu Murata, Michiyo's mother
Inochi uruwashi (1951) – Mine Imura
Seishun kaigi (1952) – Tamiyo
Genroku suikoden (1952) – Onui
Kaze futatabi (1952)
Kin no tamago: Golden girl (1952) – Tsuruko Fujimura
Wakai hito (1952)
Senba zuru (1953) – Chikako Kurimoto
Montenrupa: Bokyo no uta (1953)
Kimi ni sasageshi inochi nariseba (1953)
Tokyo Story (1953) – Shige Kaneko
Life of a Woman (1953) – Tamae, Shintaro's mother
An Inlet of Muddy Water (1953) – O-Hatsu (story 3)
Geisha Konatsu (1954) – Raku Kamioka
Late Chrysanthemums (1954) – Kin
Shunkin monogatari (1954) – Oei
Kunsho (1954)
Meiji ichidai onna (1955) – Ohide
Keisatsu Nikki (1955) – Moyo Sugita, a go-between
Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (1955) – Princess Yen-chun
Geisha Konatsu: Hitori neru yo no Konatsu (1955) – Raku Kamioka
She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955) – Masao's mother
Aogashima no kodomotachi – Onna kyōshi no kiroku (1956) – Chie Yamada
Early Spring (1956) – Tamako Tamura
Yonjū-hassai no teikō (1956) – Satoko, Kotaro's wife
Nagareru (1956) – Someka
Onna no ashi ato (1956)
The Crowded Streetcar (1957) – Otome, the mother
Tokyo Twilight (1957) – Shigeko Takeuchi
Kanashimi wa onna dakeni (1958) – Chiyoko
Hana no bojō (1958) – Rie Ikegami
Summer Clouds (1958) – Toyo
Nemuri Kyōshirō burai hikae: Maken jigoku (1958) – Sonoe
Good Morning (1959) – Kikue Haraguchi
Bibō ni tsumi ari (1959) – Fusa Yoshino
Anyakōro (1959) – Osai
Kashimanada no onna (1959)
The Three Treasures (1959) – Narrator
Floating Weeds (1959) – Oyoshi
Tenpō rokkasen – Jigoku no hanamichi (1960) – Okuma
Musume tsuma haha (1960) – Kayo Tani
Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960) – Kayo Tani
Ashi ni sawatta onna (1960) – Pickpocket Haruko
Furyu fukagawata (1960)
Banana (1960)
Kutsukake Tokijirō (1961) – Oroku
The End of Summer (1961) – Katou Shige
Buddha (1961) – Vaidehi
Hangyakuji (1961)
Katei no jijō (1962) – Mrs. Yoshii
Onna no za (1962) – Aki, Ishikawa-ke no gosai
Ashita aru kagiri (1962)
Musume to watashi (1962) – Kiyo Kitagawa
The Outcast (1962) – School master's wife
An Autumn Afternoon (1962) – Tomoko
Kaigun (1963)
Mother (1963) – Yoshie
The Scent of Incense (1964) – Taromaru
Akujo (1964) – Hatsu Mimura
Kwaidan (1964) – Madame (story 4)
Samurai Assassin (1965) – Tsuru
With Beauty and Sorrow (1965) – Otoko's mother
Red Beard (1965) – Kin, the madam
Daikon to ninjin (1965)
Dark the Mountain Snow (1966) – Ine's mother
Jinchoge (1966) – Aki Ueno, Daphne
Hanaoka Seishū no tsuma (1967) – Narrator
Hitorikko (1969)
Kaseki no mori (1973)
Akumyo: shima arashi (1974) – Ito
Kaseki (1974) – Mother-in-law
Bokuto kidan (1992) – Kafu's mother
A Last Note (1995) – Yoko Morimoto
Television (selected)
Sekigahara (1981) - Kita no mandokoro
Awards (selected)
1948: Japan Art Academy Prize for A Woman's Life
1951: Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Supporting Actress for Repast and Early Summer
1954: Mainichi Film Concours Best Supporting Actress for An Inlet of Muddy Water and Tokyo Story
1968: Asahi Prize for A Woman's Life
1974: Person of Cultural Merit
1996: Mainichi Film Concours Best Actress for A Last Note
1996: Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Actress for A Last Note
1998: Mainichi Film Concours Special Award
1998: Japanese Academy Prize Special Award
Notes
References
External links
1909 births
1997 deaths
Actors from Hiroshima
20th-century Japanese actresses
Persons of Cultural Merit