Yoko Tani
| Yoko Tani (谷洋子) | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Itani Yōko (猪谷洋子) 2 August 1928 Paris |
| Died | 19 April 1999 (aged 70) Paris |
| Occupation | Actress, Entertainer |
Yoko Tani (谷洋子 Tani Yōko?, 2 August 1928, Paris – 19 April 1999, Paris) was a French-born Japanese actress and nightclub entertainer.
Tani's birth name was Itani Yōko (猪谷洋子). She has occasionally been described as 'Eurasian', 'half-French', 'half-Japanese', and even, in one source, 'Italian-Japanese', all of which are incorrect.
Contemporary French records (1958) show that her father and mother—both Japanese—were attached to the Japanese embassy in Paris, with Tani herself conceived en route during a shipboard passage from Japan to Europe in 1927, and subsequently born in Paris the following year, hence given the name Yōko (洋子), one reading of which can mean "ocean-child."
According to Japanese sources, the family returned to Japan in 1930, when Yoko would still have been a toddler, and she did not return to France until 1950 when her schooling was completed. Given that there were severe restrictions on Japanese travelling outside Japan directly after World War II, this would have been an unusual event; however, it is known that Itani had attended an elite Catholic girls' school in Tokyo (unnamed, but probably Seishin Joshi, which the Japanese Empress Michiko also attended at around the same time), and through it secured a Catholic scholarship to study aesthetics at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) under Étienne Souriau.
There was no question that she was bright, but, once back in Paris, Tani found little interest in attending university (although by her own account she persevered for two years despite understanding hardly anything that was being said). Instead, she developed a more compelling attraction to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the variety music-hall, where, setting herself up as an exotic oriental beauty, she quickly established a reputation for her provocatively sexy "geisha" dances, which generally ended with her slipping out of her kimono. It was here she was spotted by Marcel Carné, who took her into his circle of director and actor-friends, including Roland Lesaffre, whom she was later to marry. As a result, she began to get bit parts in films—starting as (somewhat predictably) a Japanese dancer, in Gréville's (1953–1954, released 1955)—and on the stage, with a role as Lotus Bleu in la Petite Maison de Thé (French adaptation of The Teahouse of the August Moon) at the Théâtre Montparnasse, 1954–1955 season.
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