Yaeko Mizutani
Yaeko Mizutani I was "grande dame of the Japanese stage" and in film from the 1920s through the 1970s. Mizutani's daughter is also an actress called Yaeko Mizutani, so the elder Mizutani is sometimes referred to with an "I" after her name.
Early life
Mizutani was born in Kagurazaka, Tokyo, daughter of Toyozo and Tome Matsuno. Her father was a watchmaker who died when Yaeko was a small child. She was raised in the household of her older sister and her brother-in-law, writer, whose family name she also used. She attended Futaba Girls' High School.Career
Theatre
Mizutani began acting in plays as a child. She formed an outdoor theatre company with as a young woman, and she was active in several experimental and artistic theatre companies in the mid-1920s. There is an audio recording of her performing in 1929, in Shishi ni Kuwareru Onna. She formed a theatre company with Masao Inoue in the 1930s, and played Hamlet in 1937. After World War II, she was one of the pillars of shinpa theatre in Tokyo. She is credited as participating in the first on-stage kiss in Japanese theatre, in 1946.Film and television
Mizutani also acted in Japanese films, beginning in Shochiku studio films in the 1920s. Her first film was the silent Kantsubaki with Masao Inoue. Her second film was Otosan, directed by Yasujirô Shimazu. She was dubbed "the Japanese Mary Pickford" on a visit to Hawaii in 1926. She appeared in Shimazu's first sound film, Joriku dai-ippo. She played the tragic title role in two adaptations of Taii no musume, in 1929 and 1936.In 1941 she starred in Hiroshi Shimizu's Utajo Oboegaki, playing an actress who becomes a tutor in a tea merchant's household. She often played mother characters in the 1950s, for example in Kojiro Sasaki's Haha and Hahamachigusa, Kyoshi Saeki's Arashi no naka no haha, and Seiji Maruyama's Haha to musume. In her last screen performances, Mizutani was a regular cast member on the television program Hyôketsu''.