Setsuko Hara, Japanese Star of Films by Ozu and Kurosawa, Is Dead at 95
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Setsuko Hara, one of Japan’s most beloved actresses, best known for her subtle portrayals of women torn between the demands of family and their own desires in “Late Spring,” “Tokyo Story” and other films directed by Yasujiro Ozu, died on Sept. 5 in Kamakura, near Tokyo. She was 95.

The Kyodo News Agency announced her death on Wednesday, stating that family members had waited until then to make the news of her death public.

Ms. Hara began acting at 15 and appeared in her first major role in 1937 in “New Earth,” a German-Japanese production in which she played a young woman who, rejected by her fiancé, tries to throw herself into a volcano.

After making wartime propaganda films, she appeared in Akira Kurosawa’s first postwar film, “No Regrets for Our Youth,” playing the idealistic daughter of a college professor, who, in the Japan of the 1930s, throws in her lot with a leftist student opposed to the country’s militarism.

Her 12-year collaboration with Ozu began in 1949 with “Late Spring,” widely regarded, like “Tokyo Story,” as one of the director’s supreme achievements. Ms. Hara played a young woman, Noriko, who ignores her family’s pleas that she marry, choosing instead to care for her widowed father, partly out of devotion, partly out of fear of the world outside her home.

In “Tokyo Story” (1953), a perennial on critics’ short lists of the greatest films ever made, Ms. Hara played the widowed daughter-in-law of an elderly couple who come to visit their children in Tokyo, but find tenderness and devotion only in the woman who married their son, a casualty of the war.

“Like Garbo, Hara came to represent an ideal of womanliness, nobility and generosity,” David Thomson wrote in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. And like Garbo, she held her public at a distance.

Not long after working with Ozu on his penultimate film, “The End of Summer” (1961), she left the cinema abruptly, implying, in her final news conference, that she had acted in films only to help support her large extended family. She lived the rest of her life in seclusion in Kamakura.

Takashi Kondo, the deputy culture editor of Yomiuri Shimbun, recalled on the newspaper’s English-language website that he had visited her home several times, only to be turned away by a relative who told him, “She’s here and in good health” and “She doesn’t give any interviews.” One of his reporters, he said, did coax a few words out of Ms. Hara in a 1992 telephone conversation. “I was not the only star shining,” she told him. “Back then, everyone was shining.”

Ms. Hara was born Masae Aida on June 17, 1920, in Yokohama. She was given a stage name when she began working at the age of 15 for Nikkatsu Studios, having dropped out of high school with the encouragement of her brother-in-law, the director Hisatora Kumagai. She made her debut in “Do Not Hesitate, Young Folks!”

Her flair for portraying tragic heroines with an inflexible sense of duty made her an ideal star in wartime films like “The Suicide Troops of the Watchtower” (1942), directed by Tadashi Imai, with whom she would later make “The Green Mountains” (1949), and “Toward the Decisive Battle in the Sky,” directed by Kunio Watanabe.

Her wartime films were featured in March in a series at the Japan Society, “The Most Beautiful: The War Films of Shirley Yamaguchi and Setsuko Hara.” Ms. Yamaguchi died last year.

Two of her films captured the rigors of the immediate postwar years and the possibility of renewal amid the ruins. In “A Ball at the Anjo House” (1947), directed by Kimisaburo Yoshimura, Ms. Hara played the daughter in a cultured family, ruined by the war, that must give up its mansion and find a new way to live. A more satirical role came in Keisuke Kinoshita’s “Here’s to the Girls” (1949), in which she was the daughter of a down-at-the-heels aristocratic family romantically paired with an uncouth factory owner.

“Every Japanese actor can play the role of a soldier, and every Japanese actress can play the role of a prostitute to some extent,” Ozu said of her. “However, it is rare to find an actress who can play the role of a daughter from a good family.” Ms. Hara, who never married and leaves no survivors, made more than 100 films. She worked with the director Mikio Naruse on several movies and with Ozu on “Early Summer” (1951), “Tokyo Twilight” (1957) and “Late Autumn” (1960).

She teamed up with Mr. Kurosawa for a second time in 1951 in “The Idiot,” based on the Dostoyevsky novel. She was cast as the love interest of the title character and of a roguish aristocrat played by Toshiro Mifune. The film was not well received. Her last film before her retirement was Hiroshi Inagaki’s “Chushingura,” a retelling of the classic tale of the 47 ronin, a band of 18th-century samurai bent on avenging their slain leader. When she went into seclusion, Japanese filmgoers mourned. To them, Ms. Hara was more than an actress; she was, in some way, the soul of Japan itself. The novelist Shusaku Endo once wrote, of seeing a Hara film, “We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?”

「永遠的千年女優」--原節子

2009年日本「文藝春秋」曾選出日本影史10大女演員，榜首是活躍影壇近半世紀的吉永小百合，第二位卻是退出影壇近半世紀的原節子。隔了6年，日本女星原節子過世的消息在11月25日傳出，即使她在9月5日已因肺炎病逝，親族也辦了喪禮，但她銀幕上溫婉自抑的形象又浮現影迷面前。

95歲辭世的原節子，在不同世代觀眾眼裡，永遠年輕，因為演藝圈裡「急流勇退」的例子不少，但像原節子這樣，42歲退出後就幾近消失，作品又屢屢被提及，只能說是絕無僅有。

1920、30年代在好萊塢叱吒一時的葛麗泰嘉寶，和原節子一樣終身未嫁，退出影壇後過著神秘的退休生活，但葛麗泰嘉寶偶爾出席公開活動、與友人出遊，都逃不過鎂光燈的追逐。哪怕戲裡戲外她的經典台詞都是「我想獨自一人（I want to be alone.）」，還是有狗仔與朋友外洩她不欲人知的私生活。可是原節子在1963年演出稻垣浩電影「忠臣藏」後，來到鎌倉，全面隱退，深居簡出。

原節子15歲時透過二姊夫、導演熊谷久虎介紹，進入影壇，二戰後演出黑澤明「我於青春無悔」、「白癡」、成瀨巳喜男「飯」與今井正「青色山脈」等知名作品，但在小津安二郎迷心中，原節子則和笠智眾同屬「小津御用演員」。演過上百部電影的原節子，與小津安二郎只合作過6部，而且片中的她均非青春少女，從老大不小的待嫁女兒、年輕寡婦演到憂心女兒婚事的母親。

小津安二郎談到1951年的「麥秋」時曾說，「我要拍的不是故事，而是輪迴、無常等深奧的主題。」戰後小津電影裡笠智眾的父親角色常叫做「周平」、「周吉」，原節子則多喚為「紀子」、「秋子」，片中演員以相同的名字出現在不同的故事，反覆經歷家的崩解、親人的離去，在大銀幕輪迴悲歡離合的命運。

一雙杏眼、輪廓鮮明的原節子在小津電影裡，無論飾演「紀子」或「秋子」、無論是女兒或母親，都有讓人難以抗拒的笑容，但她的笑也是最複雜的笑，總在最微小的表情動作裡揉進喜怒哀樂的變化。

「晚春」裡，原節子出嫁前和父親笠智眾的京都之旅最後一晚，父女整理行李，有說有笑。接著笠智眾對著鏡頭談起婚姻的意義，本想守在父親身邊的原節子認錯說「我太任性」，畫面裡側著身子的她、頭愈來愈低... 不捨的情感也愈藏愈深。

據說小津曾在一次教訓表演太過火的演員時說，「高興就又跑又跳、悲傷就又哭又喊，那是上野動物園猴子幹的事。... 說出心裡相反的語言，做出心裡相反的臉色，這才叫人哪！」在「東京物語」裡，孀居多年的原節子與初歷世事的小姑聊起兒女總會離開父母追求自己的生活，小姑為兄姊們忽視父母的行為忿忿不平，質問「人生豈不是太令人失望？」原節子溫柔地回說，「人生是令人失望的。」臉上還帶著微笑。

原節子剛強與柔順並存的性格況味、搭配節制的演技，正如庖丁解牛之刀，在小津電影的情節中游刃有餘，最終更和時代結合，成為導演篠田正浩所說「她（原節子）以自身的存在感實踐小津電影的高雅格調，站在戰後廢墟上的日本，在影片中演繹日本人的道德倫理。」也無怪乎，就算淡出數十年，原節子仍是今敏動畫「千年女優」中穿梭古今的不死原型。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/arts/television/setsuko-hara-japanese-star-of-films-by-ozu-and-kurosawa-is-dead-at-95.html

2015-11-29．聯合新聞網．星級評論 項貽斐