Isuzu Yamada
| Isuzu Yamada | |
|---|---|
Isuzu Yamada in 1937
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| Native name | 山田 五十鈴 |
| Born |
Mitsu Yamada 5 February 1917 Osaka, Japan |
| Died | 9 July 2012 (aged 95) Tokyo |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1930–2002 |
Isuzu Yamada (山田 五十鈴 Yamada Isuzu?, 5 February 1917 – 9 July 2012) was a Japanese actress whose career on stage and screen spanned eight decades.
Yamada was born in Osaka as Mitsu Yamada. Her father, Kusuo Yamada, was a shinpa stage actor specializing in onnagata roles and her mother, Ritsu, was a geisha. Her family was poor, but under her mother's influence, she began learning nagauta and Japanese traditional dance from the age of six.
Yamada debuted as a film actress in 1930 at age twelve, appearing in a Nikkatsu film, Ken o Koete, opposite Denjirō Ōkōchi. She soon became one of Nikkatsu's top actresses, but it was her strong portrayals of two rebellious modern girls in Kenji Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion in 1936 at the new Daiichi Eiga studio that earned her popularity and critical acclaim. Moving to Shinkō Kinema and then to Toho, she starred in a series of films with Kazuo Hasegawa, such as Mikio Naruse's Tsuruhachi Tsurujirō (1938) and Masahiro Makino's Kinō Kieta Otoko (1941), that made her a major star.
Yamada appeared in the films of many of the Japanese directors, including Yasujirō Ozu for Tokyo Twilight (1957) and Akira Kurosawa for The Lower Depths (1957), Throne of Blood (1957) and Yojimbo (1961).
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