Mariko Okada

Biography

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Mariko Okada (岡田 茉莉子, Okada Mariko, born 11 January 1933) is a Japanese stage and film actress who starred in films of directors Mikio Naruse, Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita and others. She was married to film director Yoshishige Yoshida.

Okada was born the daughter of silent film actor Tokihiko Okada (real name Eiichi Takahashi), who died the year following her birth, and raised by her mother's sister in her early childhood. She gave her film debut in Mikio Naruse's 1951 Dancing Girl, for whom she worked again in Husband and Wife, Floating Clouds and Nagareru. Unsatisfied with the roles she was assigned to, she left Toho studios after her contract expired, and signed with Shochiku. In the following years, she starred in Yasujirō Ozu's Late Autumn and An Autumn Afternoon, Keisuke Kinoshita's Spring Dreams and The Scent of Incense, and Heinosuke Gosho's Hunting Rifle.

Between 1965 and 1971, she starred in all of Yoshida's films, independently produced melodramas narrated in an avant-garde fashion. In later years, she appeared in films like Juzo Itami's Tampopo and Shinji Aoyama's My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? (2005), her last film role to date. She also regularly performed on stage and on television.

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