Kazuko Yoshiyuki

Kazuko Yoshiyuki (吉行和子, Yoshiyuki Kazuko; 9 August 1935 – 2 September 2025) was a Japanese actress, voice actress, and essayist. She made her debut on the screen in 1955, and has appeared in more than 60 films, and as well as appeared in more than a few hundreds of different Japanese television dramas. In a career spanning seven decades, she won a Mainichi Film Award for Best Supporting Actress Award in 1959, and then a Japan Academy Film & TV Prize for Best Actress in 1978 for her role in the film Empire of Passion.

Kazuko Yoshiyuki was born on 9 August 1935 in Tokyo, to the second child and first daughter of Eisuke Yoshiyuki (1906-1940), a Japanese writer, and Aguri Yoshiyuki (1907-2015), a Japanese hairdresser and literary family. She has three siblings: Her oldest brother, Junnosuke Yoshiyuki (1924-1994), a Japanese writer, and her youngest sister, Rie Yoshiyuki (1939-2006), a Japanese poet and writer. Her family was from Okayama. Unfortunately, her maternal grandfather and aunt both died from Spanish flu pandemic (1918-1920), just before she was born. In July 1940, when she was 4 or 5, her father Eisuke died suddenly due to the complications of angina pectoris at the age of 34. Like her mother, Yoshiyuki suffered from asthma since she was two, and she was frequently taken as a child to Okayama, where her grandparents lived, for a change of air. When she was 10 years old, Yoshiyuki and her family survived the advancing firebombs during the Asia-Pacific War in World War II. Despite this, her family continued to live in Tokyo throughout the war.

In March 1948, at age 13, Yoshiyuki graduated from Bancho Elementary School in Chiyoda Ward. In 1954, at age 19, she graduated from Joshigakuen Girls High school in Tokyo. Before graduating, she took the entrance exam for Mizushina Institute attached to Mingei Theatre Company. She had no intention of becoming an actress, but she was good at drawing and sewing, and she applied hoping to become a costume designer.

In 1955, at age 20, Yoshiyuki started her film and television career as an actress with the theatre troupe Gekidan Mingei. In the same year, she made her screen debut in Yukiko, starring Keiko Tsushima (1926-2012). In 1957, Yoshiyuki joined Mingei and made her debut as a leading role of Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, but after that she was only cast in modest "peasant girl" roles.

In 1959, while still affiliated with Mingei, Yoshiyuki signed with Nikkatsu. In the same year, she won a Mainichi Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, such as her performances in Nianchan and Sainou Kishitsu. She appeared as the role of Sophie in Junji Kinoshita's A Japanese Called Otto in 1966. In 1969, at age 33 or 24, Yoshiyuki left from the company and became a freelancer.

In 1973, Yoshiyuki won a Kinokuniya Theater Award Individual Prize for her appearance in The Taste of Honey at Shiki Theatre Company in Tokyo.

In 1978, Yoshiyuki surprised the world with her starring role as Seki in Nagisa Oshima's film Empire of Passion, a bold sexual drama (despite opposition from those around her for being over 40 years old), where she won a Japan Academy Film & TV Prize for Best Actress.

Yoshiyuki never married and does not have children. She expressed openness to marriage and being a mother in the past. After her father's death, her mother Aguri influenced her views, making her value independence and to not feel pressured to marry. She said: "My mother, Aguri was extremely dexterous (from an early age). She would be make kimonos for dolls and knit. She was very good at making things."

She remained happily focused on her career and experiences like travel, and spoke often about enjoying the single life.

In 2022, Yoshiyuki was diagnosed with dementia. However, she remained active in films, continuing to work well into her later years.

Yoshiyuki died of pneumonia at the hospital Tokyo, on 2 September 2025, at the age of 90. Her death was announced by her agency on 9 September of the same year.^[1] Her funeral was held only in the presence of close relatives.

• Kaze to Kumo to Niji to (1976) – as Kera
• Tokugawa Ieyasu (1983) – as Nene
• Aguri (1997) – as Masako Hirayama
• The Sniffer (2016)

• Kinuyo Tanaka Award (2002)^[14]

• Kazuko Yoshiyuki at IMDb
• Kazuko Yoshiyuki discography at Discogs