Actress Wakao Ayako was one of the biggest stars of Japanese cinema of the 20th century. Her career spans hundreds of films from the 1950s onwards.
Born in 1933, Wakao Ayako made her big screen debut in 1952. She has appeared in over 250 films, often playing the lead role. She was awarded 5 times for Best Actress between 1961 and 1969 and won her Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
In 1953, she had a breakthrough role as a maiko, or trainee geisha, in Mizoguchi Kenji’s Gion bayashi (A Geisha). She collaborated with the great director again in Akasen chitai (Street of Shame) (1956) as one of the workers in a licensed brothel in Yoshiwara around the time the Japanese Diet brought in new legislation outlawing prostitution. This was one of Mizoguchi’s rare works with a contemporary setting, as well as becoming his last film, and Wakao took on the challenge of an unsympathetic role, as her character lent money at interest to the other women.
She appeared in Ozu Yasujirō’s Ukikusa (Floating Weeds) in 1959, playing an actress in an itinerant theater troupe, and starred in three late films by Kawashima Yūzō in the early 1960s.
These included Akai tenshi (Red Angel), a brutal 1966 war film in which she played a nurse on the front lines in China during World War II. Two more notable movies were based on works by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō: the 1964 Manji and 1966 Irezumi (Tattoo). In the latter revenge flick, Wakao’s character is kidnapped into prostitution and has a monstrous spider tattooed on her back.
Other big names she worked with include the director Ichikawa Kon, the actress Kyō Machiko, and even the author 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗺𝗮 𝗬𝘂𝗸𝗶𝗼, who appeared alongside her in one of his occasional acting roles.
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