Kumeko Urabe
Acting
Biography
Kumeko Urabe (Japanese: 浦辺粂子), born Kimura Kume ((木村 くめ)), (October 5, 1902 – October 26, 1989) was a Japanese movie actress, one of the first in the country. She worked on stage and in film and television. Urabe was born in a rural part of the Shizuoka Prefecture. She lived in several homes while growing up, as she relocated with her father, a Buddhist priest, among the temples to which he was assigned. Urabe completed her education in Numazu, and left school in 1919 to join a theatre company, touring under various stage names as an actor and dancer. In 1923, Urabe auditioned at the film studio Nikkatsu, and adopted the name Kumeko Urabe, by which she was known for the rest of her life. She appeared in her first film the following year, and continued to act until 1987. She worked with such directors as Kenji Mizoguchi and Mikio Naruse, and performed in over 320 films, including Ikiru, Older Brother, Younger Sister, Portrait of Madame Yuki, She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum, and Street of Shame. She also starred in television dramas, including thirteen episodes of Toshiba Sunday Theatre between 1958 and 1980. In the following decade, she carved a niche as a Grandma idol, until her death in 1989.
Known For
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Ikiru
The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.
Hachiko
A bride arrives at the Shimizu household, where the seven members of the family live as they please. However, the groom, the youngest son of the family, is going to study alone in the USA, and the bride is left alone in the eccentric house.
Kininaru Yomesan
Sugiyama was undergoing training in Moses Lake, USA, for the Boeing 747 model transition training. After passing the exam and returning to Japan, he found that his wife Ayako had disappeared...
White Runway
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
Tokyo Twilight
A theater troupe master's visit with his old flame unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.
Floating Weeds
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
Street of Shame
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
Two in the Shadow
A lifetime story of a woman who stubbornly lives in a poor mountain village in post-war Japan.
The Song of the Cart
War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.
Yearning
Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?
Lonely Heart
A young salaryman and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he embarks on an extramarital affair.
Early Spring
A young woman takes up her new job as the servant of a noblewoman and soon discovers that underneath her facade of luxury lies great unhappiness.
Portrait of Madame Yuki
The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.
Brother and Sister
From 1928 to 1946, the lives of 12 young people and their school teacher in a poor Japanese village are profoundly affected by historical events and personal circumstances.
Twenty-Four Eyes
Ichikawa's 1956 adaptation of Nihonbashi was the first to take the work of Kyoka Izumi— until then regarded as a writer of common tragic melodramas—and re-evaluate it as a tanbi-ha work of decadence, aestheticism, and intrigue. Ichikawa's film presents the tragic plot of the young geisha who is unable to enact her love for a man publicly in any way other than a histrionic story of torment, a heart-rending tale of lovers being crushed by fate. Instead, Ichikawa shows the contest of wills that transpires as two geisha, Oko and Kiyoha fight for the top spot in Nihonbashi, the pinnacle of the Tokyo geisha world. Nihonbashi is an elegant, if steely, exposition of manners. The young doctor, Shinzo Katsuragi, is the object of affection for both women, but appears to be more the choice reward for the plotting and thieving of these two early modern superwomen, than a lover they swoon over.
Bridge of Japan
In early post-war Osaka, three women—war widow Fusako, her Korean expat sister Natsuko, and Kumiko, Fusako's sister-in-law—descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons.
Women of the Night
On the way back to his childhood home, a septuagenarian man recalls his childhood and adolescence, in particular his love for a young woman.
You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum
When Tora-san's infatuation with his nephew's school teacher causes family turmoil, he leaves on his travels again. When he returns, he falls in love with the teacher's mother.
Tora-san's Pure Love
Ayako, a young woman from a rural fishing village, is sold by her family into a brothel when her father takes ill. There, she is quickly stripped of her innocence and illusions.