Background

KYO, Machiko was born on 25 March 1924 in Osaka, Japan.

Career

In 1953, two movies built on Rashomon s success— Ugetsu (53, Kenji Mizoguchi) and Gate of Hell (53, Teinosuke Kinugasa)—and both featured Kyo. In Ugetsu, especially, as the ghost princess, she had a sensual languor that was both magical and sinister.

So Western introductions to Japanese film were automatically linked to our view of Kyo—always in period costume, always seductive, mysterious, and gently easing away that Western prejudice: that Asian women could not be erotic or attractive. Ironically, Kyo was probably more publicized than valued in Japan during this period—she had begun as a dancer and in 1949 was given the full starlet treatment, the first Japanese actress to go the route of cheesecake and sex appeal.

This all led to her appearance with Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of the August Moon (56. Daniel Mann)—il only it could have been in Sayonaral. But her career was revitalized in Japan because of Western respect—it had begun to fade. Now there was no stopping her, and in all she has made over ninety films—as Yang Kwei Fei (55, Mizoguchi); out of period clothes as a defiant young prostitute in Mizoguchi’s last film, Street of Shame (56); erotic, ambiguous, and deadly in Ichikawa’s Odd Obsession (59), based on Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel The Key. and one ol four films for Ichikawa; effective as the leading lady ol the theatre company in Floating Weeds (59)—the onlv film she made for Ozu. She worked once for Naruse, in Older Brother. Younger Sister (53); and more frequently for other leading directors— Kozaburo Yoshimura, Daisuke Ito, and, notably, Shiro Toyoda, in Sweet Sweat (64).

Achievements

• Knowledgeable moviegoers in the West were always aware of serious “foreign" film. They knew the Odessa steps, the frenzy of Metropolis, the baker’s wife, and the bicycle thief. But although a very few movies were imported from Japan during the thirties, the great twenty-five-year tradition of Japanese film was unknown until it sprang, fully grown, from the head of Akira Kurosawa with his 1950 Rashomon, which won the Grand Prize at Venice in 1951. It also introduced a new actress to the West—Maehiko Kyo, who played the wife.

Works

More photos

• Other Work

  • Rashomon
  • Ugetsu
  • Rashomon
  • Gate of Hell

Personality

Though her range extended, she never lost her compelling sexual glamour—the seductive walk, the heavily lidded eyes, the inviting lips. But always in mind’s eye there is the secret, provocative expression of that sensual face, framed in the cascade of black hair, which riveted us in Rashomon.