Michiko Maeda
| Michiko Maeda | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 27, 1934 Osaka, Japan |
Michiko Maeda (前田通子 Maeda Michiko?) is a Japanese film and television actress. After becoming known as the first Japanese actress to appear in a nude scene in a mainstream film, Maeda was banned from the Japanese cinema after an incident in which she refused to obey a director, and did not return to the Japanese screen until 42 years later.
Michiko Maeda was born in Osaka on February 27, 1934. She was working in a department store in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo when she began working as an actress at the Shintoho studio in 1955. Her film debut was in director Hiromasa Nomura's Santōshain to Onna Hisho (三等社員と女秘書), released in August 1955. Maeda's minor role as a striptease dancer in director Seiichiro Uchikawa's Eikō to Bakusō Ō (栄光と驀走王, 1956) brought her to public attention through her voluptuous figure. In their The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, Anderson and Richie described Maeda as "a star who consisted almost entirely of mammary glands."
Shintoho took advantage of Maeda's popularity to cast her in more roles in which she could display her famous figure. Other film studios reportedly engaged in a nationwide search to discover their own buxom models to compete with Maeda. Later in 1956, she was given the starring role in Revenge of the Pearl Queen (女真珠王の復讐 Onna Shinjū Ō no Fukushū?), a melodramatic thriller set on an isolated island about a woman seeking revenge for her dead lover. Maeda became notorious for playing the first nude scene in a Japanese film.
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