Setsuko Hara

Comparatively little-known in the U.S., actress Sestuko Hara was a major film presence in her native Japan. The sister-in-law of director Histora Kumagi, she made her inaugural film appearance in the Japanese-German The Samurai's Daughter (1937). In the postwar years, she was most closely associated with the films of director Yasujiro Ozu, and in fact left show business not long after Ozu's death in 1963. Film scholars will remember Sestuko Hara for her recurring role as Noriko in Ozu's Banshun (Late Spring, 1949), Baksushu (Early Summer, 1951), and Tokyo mongatari (Tokyo Story, 1954); she was also seen in Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (1951).

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide