Haruko Sugimura
Birthday: Born in 1909-01-07 in Hiroshima, Japan
Deathday: 1997-04-04
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Haruko Sugimura (杉村 春子 Sugimura Haruko, January 6, 1909 – April 4, 1997) was a Japanese stage and film actress, best known for her appearances in the movies of Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. In the West, her most famous role was that of Shige, the elderly couple's hairdresser daughter in Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953). Description above from the Wikipedia article Haruko Sugimura, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
今朝の秋
Character:
A former couple, separated for over 20 years, were reunited after being told their son had only 3 months to live. What should they do as parents? As they worried, they soon began to feel the weight of their family ties......
二代目
Character:
The film explores the joys and sorrows of intergenerational life and the love between a mother and daughter at a lumber wholesale store in Kiba, Tokyo....
Movie Credits
The Scent of Incense
Character: Taromaru
After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble....
Kin no tamago: Golden Girl
Character:
Once an average and seemingly ordinary Tokyo girl, she suddenly finds herself as a TV star owing to her discovery by a casting company, which noticed photographs that her cousin had sent. When another actress falls ill she is given the role instead. Her first film is a success propelling the young actress to popularity, her own fans, money and a house. While everything looks dandy from the outside not all is well within the family however....
The Day England Falls
Character:
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Red Beard
Character: Kin, the madam
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel....
Jidanya
Character:
Every day a car accident happens in the city. The involved parties are prey to the settlement agents (jidanya), mediators between the parts and the insurance companies to avoid time-consuming legal actions that could come when no settlement is reached (while cheating both parties out of some piece of the settlement pay). Genkichi is a well versed old-timer, that sees how his freshly out of collage son struggles to fit into the business, while at the same time facing one of his lowest rivals in...
Late Spring
Character: Masa Taguchi
Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right....
Early Spring
Character: Tamako Tamura
A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair....
Kwaidan
Character: Madame (segment "In a Cup of Tea")
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup....
G-Men of Japan
Character:
The investigative unit of the Metropolitan Police Department organized a special investigative team to uncover a series of frequent gang robberies and car gangs... This is the first film in the Nippon G-Men series, of which four more films were later released....
Youth After School
Character: Ayako
"Youth After School" takes Tokyo and Kyoto as the stage, and tells the story of a family that develops around the daughter's marriage. The play was broadcast on NHK TV in 1963, but the program recording technology was not mature at that time, and relevant people called it "phantom TV drama (幻のドラマ)". However, this TV series that was originally thought to be lost has been rediscovered after 50 years....
The End of Summer
Character: Katou Shige
The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth....
Good Morning
Character: Kikue Haraguchi
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives g...
Till Tomorow Comes
Character:
1962 Japanese movie...
Late Chrysanthemums
Character: Kin
With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant portrait of a quartet of aging geishas contemplating their troubles with men and money....
No Regrets for Our Youth
Character: Madame Noge
Over more than a decade, the daughter of a Kyoto Imperial University professor comes of age as she witnesses her father fired for opposing the rise of fascism in Japan and becomes involved with two of his students....
Four Seasons of Women
Character: Osone
Woman melodrama by Shiro Toyoda...
Musume to watashi
Character:
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Repast
Character: Matsu Murata
Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband....
Flowing
Character: Someka
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers....
Their Legacy
Character:
Heitaro, who had served his firm loyally for 30 years, reaches the retirement age. He has four unmarried daughters and decides to split his retirement allowance he has received from his firm into 500,000 yen for each daughter as a wedding dowry. He considers them all old enough to handle the money, and gives them a free hand to use it as they wish....
Floating Weeds
Character: Oyoshi
When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences. A remake of Ozu's own silent film The Story of Floating Weeds (1934)....
The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka
Character:
The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments...
Rokujō yukiyama tsumugi
Character: Ine's Mother
Young widow Ine is suffering under the harsh treatment of her mother in law. As a former Geisha, Ine had struggled to be accepted into the well-established Rokujo family from the beginning. With the support of Jiro, a young man Ine's late husband had saved from homelessness as a young boy, Ine tries to keep the family's heritage of silk processing alive. Their close relationship soon causes gossip among the villagers and threaten Ine's position in the family even further ......
Tokyo Story
Character: Shige Kaneko
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company....
Early Summer
Character: Tami Yabe
A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry....
Tokyo Twilight
Character: Shigeko Takeuchi
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child....
Princess Yang Kwei Fei
Character: Princess Yen-chun
In eighth century China, the Emperor is grieving over the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their influence over the court. General An Lushan finds a distant relative working in their kitchen whom they groom to present to the Emperor. The Emperor falls in love with her and she becomes the Princess Yang Kwei-fei. The Yangs are then appointed important ministers, though An Lushan is not given the court position he covets. Th...
Jun'ai monogatari kusa no mi
Character:
1962 Japanese movie...
Night Scandal
Character: Hatsu Mimura
...
Samurai Assassin
Character: Tsuru
Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune....
A Last Note
Character: Yoko Morimoto
A retired actress whose husband has recently died visits her summer home. There she has encounters with old friends and acquaintances who bring various stories and news of death and the past...
The Broken Commandment
Character: School master's wife
Ushimatsu's father told him never to reveal his lower-caste heritage; years later, he now contemplates confiding in an activist fighting against such discrimination....
She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum
Character: Masao's mother
On the way back to his childhood home, a septuagenarian man recalls his childhood and adolescence, in particular his love for a young woman....
Morning for the Osone Family
Character: Fusako Osone
A Japanese family weathers much hardship after their military uncle comes to live with them during WWII....
Summer Clouds
Character: Mother
A war widow with a young boy manages a farm with her bossy mother-in-law. When a reporter comes to interview her, the two begin an affair. He turns out to be married and won't leave his wife. Her older brother tries to marry off his children and hang on to/ extend his farm through an advantageous marriage in the face of threatened land confiscation and the desire of his children to get comfortable urban jobs instead of the backbreaking work in the paddy fields under parental control....
Only Child
Character:
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The Petrified Forest
Character:
Follows a young med student's relationships with two women: a dangerous affair with a childhood friend and his mother's struggle to rebuild their estranged relationship....
Yotsuya Ghost Story Part 1
Character: Oshin
Iemon Tamiya is an impoverished masterless samurai who craves a better life, which he cannot have because of his marriage to Oiwa, who is completely devoted to her husband....
Yotsuya Ghost Story Part 2
Character: Oshin
Part 2 starts where the first film ended, with Iemon disposing of the bodies of his wife and Kohei, marrying upward, and being blackmailed by the evil Naosuke....
White Heron
Character:
OSHINO, the beautiful daughter of restaurant owners, is in love with SHIRASAGI the painter. But there is another young man, the son of a moneylender family, who is desperately in love with Oshino......
A Diary of Our Love
Character:
Drama about a young nurse who falls in love with a disabled soldier, and based a true story....
Spring Awakens
Character:
Slice of life film centered on a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl....
The Story of Shunkin
Character:
Based on the novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. Story of the beautiful blind daughter of a wealthy businessman who falls in love with a servant....
The Romance of Yushima
Character:
Hayase, a schoolteacher, assists Sakai in editing a German-Japanese dictionary. Hayase owes much to Sakai, as Sakai raised him for 13 years after Hayase lost his parents in a war. Hayase has been secretly married to Otsuta, a former geisha, and has been unable to tell Sakai of the marriage, aware as he is that Sakai wants him to marry his daughter, Taeko. Otsuta wants Hayase to tell Sakai about her, but understands the difficulty of his position. At a festival, Otsuta is mistaken for a pickpocke...
The Conspirator
Character:
Young lord Saburo Nobuyasu struggles to find comfort in life. His arranged marriage to Tokuhime, daughter of one-time family enemy Oda Nobunaga, provides little happiness. His manipulative mother adds further complications through her constant interference and attempts at defeating the Nobunaga family....
The Lights of Asakusa
Character: Marieda Matsushima
Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together....
Dorei kōjō
Character:
After the death of a colleague, the workers at a factory form a labor union....
Army
Character: Setsu
Though plagued by ill health all his life, a young Japanese man is obligated to fulfill his family's longstanding military tradition....
The Gambler's Code
Character: Oroku
One of Japan's most popular stories is the tale of Kutsukake Tokijiro, a traveling gambler who finds that he must take care of the wife and child of a yakuza he had been forced by the code of the gamblers to fight man to man. In a brilliant performance from super-star Ichikawa Raizo, with strong support from two of the greats from Toho, Shimura Takashi (7 Samurai) and Aratama Michiyo (Sword of Doom) the heartfelt story reaches new heights. Tokijiro, having learned the true nature of the boss to...
Freedom School
Character:
Minamimura, who had always wanted to be free, suddenly quits his job. His hardworking wife is surprised and angry, and throws him out of the house. Confused by his sudden freedom, Iosuke ends up living as a vagrant under a bridge. His wife, Komako, also finds herself freed and is unable to ignore her confusion....
Hadaka no Machi
Character:
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A Descendant of Urashima Taro
Character:
Reputedly based on Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, A Descendant of Tarô Urashima is about a repatriated soldier who becomes populist politician in the Japanese Happiness Party....
Temptation
Character: Tokie
A young lawyer falls in love with the daughter of his former professor, whom he's hired to tutor his children....
Samurai of the Great Earth
Character:
A film adaptation of Rikuo Honjo's novel "Ishikari River"....
The Written Face
Character: Self
In Japanese theater, women's roles are traditionally played by men. The man playing the woman's role, the Onnagata, does not imitate the woman, as in the West, but tries to capture her significance. He need not stick close to his model, but draws far more from his own identity - a shift of value takes place, which is nonetheless not a step beyond. THE WRITTEN FACE is an attempt to offer an insight into the Japanese Kabuki star Tamasaburo Bando, one of the last defenders of this ancient and disap...
The Crowded Train
Character: Otome, the mother
Tamio Moroi, a young university graduate, works at a large brewery where he is taught to do nothing but look busy. When his father goes insane, he is told to send money for medical research into the condition. This prompts him to pay his father a visit, leading to a series of mishaps that leaves him at the bottom of the heap in what he once expected to be a promising lifetime career....
Daughters, Wives and a Mother
Character: Kayo Tani
Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family....
Buddha
Character: Vaidehi
An Indian prince leaves his world of comfort and riches behind to wander and meditate for six years in search of spiritual enlightenment. Siddartha (Cojoin Hong) turns his back on the old religion when people are starving needlessly and holy rituals include human sacrifices. During his meditations, he is tempted by erotic dancing women, demons, and the evil machinations of his criminal cousin. Devastate to attain the spiritual perfection and become the Buddha. He travels to convert followers by ...
Akumyo: Notorious Dragon
Character:
About small-time gangster Asakichi's chaotic life in the 1930s. His gambling addiction means that he must not continue working in the family business. Instead he supports himself by arranging cockfights. He becomes ex-geisha Okinu's patron and lover, and falls directly into disfavor with the yakuza....
Fireworks Over the Sea
Character: Kono Kujirai
A fishing union depends on two brothers to make up the losses caused by the dishonest captains they replaced....
Policeman's Diary
Character: Moyo Sugita
Lending money, job hunting for civilians and babysitting. All these things are usually not listed on a policeman's job description. But for the officers of this local police station, it‘s part of their daily routine. One day, patrolman Yoshii (Hisaya Morishige) finds an abandoned baby and a six year old girl standing in front of the station. When he's declined by the welfare office, orphanage and local health clinic to take them in, he decides to take care of them himself....
Listen to the Voices of the Sea
Character:
This film is strongly anti-war film. The film is based on the collection of writings by Japanese student soldiers who died during World War II. The film is located to Burma. It shows the everyday problems of soldiers in contrast of their ideas and the cynicism of their commanders. Soldiers are also victims of military bullying by their commanders....
Till We Meet Again
Character: Suga Ono
Saburo and Keiko fall in love with each other but the tide of war separates them....
The Rainbow-Colored Flower
Character: Koyabu
Ebihara is a budding novelist entangled in a complicated web of relationships with three women from three different generations: Kazue, a coquettish teenage war orphan who tries to offer herself for money but is instead taken in by Ebihara, Koyabu, a middle-aged woman who has spent much of her life as the kept woman of a wealthy man, and Teruko, the modest daughter of Ebihara's former teacher who comes to rely on him after the death of her father....
The Strange Tale of Oyuki
Character: Kafu's Mother
A story of Japanese writer Kafu Nagai (1879-1959), a man about sixty with a huge reputation of seducer who falls madly in love for a young geisha named Oyuki. Meticulous and smartly dressed, Nagai patiently wrote in his diary his thoughts during many years. A melancholy reflection on the passage of time and a brilliant interpretive exercise....
Deep River Melody
Character:
A poignant story about a young couple, Setsu and Chozo, who are torn apart to save Setsu's father's restaurant....
The Wiser Age
Character: Aki
Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner....
The Woman Who Touched Legs
Character: Pickpocket Haruko
Detective Katahachi meets a young and beautiful pickpocket and doesn’t arrest her because she was not in the act. Instead, he listens to the story about her parents who killed himself and died for overwork to feel sorry about her....
Spring on Leper's Island
Character:
A female doctor's story of her life in an isolated leper colony....
Great X
Character: Taka
A 1948 Japanese film....
Goodbye to Glory
Character: Fukunaga's mother Yuki
A story of an ardent young man who laid down his life for his country....
I Lived, But...
Character: Self
An extremely lovely tribute to Ozu, on the 20th anniversary of his death. It uses a combination of footage from vintage films and new material (both interviews and Ozu-related locations) shot by Ozu's long-time camera-man (who came out of retirement to work on this). Surprisingly (or perhaps not), it focuses less on Ozu's accomplishments as a film-maker than on his impact on the lives of the people he worked with.....
Mother
Character: Yoshie
A divorced woman enters a marriage arranged by her mother in exchange for money to save the life of her seriously ill son....
Runway to Hell
Character: Okuma
When Kaneko Ichinosuke aims to avenge his father who was wrongly accused of embezzlement, the samurai Kochiyama Soshun agrees to assist....
Reminiscence
Character: Chikako
Kazuo Miyagawa’s prizewinning black-and-white cinematography draws out the moral shadings of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata’s 1952 novel Thousand Cranes, a quietly devastating story of a young man, orphaned during the war, who stumbles into a passionate yet tragic relationship with his late father’s mistress and her daughter....
Children Hand in Hand
Character:
A small-town boy with a learning disability attempts to fit in with his classmates....
The Three Treasures
Character: Narrator
The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. But Ouso prevails in the mission and returns to his father's castle under a new name, Prince Yamato Takeru. Otomo plots to have the Prince sent into even greater danger, but Otomo is unaware that the gods have favored the Prince and the...
The Fossil
Character: Itsuki's stepmother
An industrialist is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He is on a trip to Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to fantasize about her as the personification of his impending death. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he actually meets the living woman who is the template for his fantasy, and together they tour rural churches. Gradually he comes to some kind of peace about the diagnosis. When he returns to Japan, he is met with a series ...
Beauty the Enemy
Character: Fusa Yoshino
In a rural district of Tokyo, the owner of a farm is abandoned by his two daughters who are attracted to the life of the big city....
The Daphne
Character: Aki Ueno (the four sisters' mother)
Four sisters are all named after flowers. While the two youngest are married, the eldest two remain single, much to the annoyance of their long-suffering mother. The mother and her brother try various schemes to find husbands for them....
An Autumn Afternoon
Character: Tomoko Sakuma
Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her....
The Navy
Character:
A tale of two best friends in the WWII era Japan. Takao is a young man enthusiastic about joining the navy to fight for his country. He convinces his best friend Shinji to join him. As it turns out, however, Takao's poor health prevents him from entering the navy while his friend is chosen instead. As time goes by, Takao becomes a painter and changes his mind about the meaningfulness of war and fighting, while his friend goes the opposite path. Meanwhile Takao's sister falls in love with Shinji....
Sakura-tai Chiru
Character:
A documentary about the lives of actors in the Sakura-tai theatrical troupe, which had arrived in the island of Hiroshima to begin preparations for the staging of a play just before the atomic bombing....
Forbidden Path
Character:
...
Sunflower Girl
Character:
Young Setsuko Fujino begins a new job at Tokyo Chemical Company. She likes her boss, Ippei Hitachi, and enjoys serving him tea, despite the fact that her fellow workers think the women employees should not have to act in such a servile manner. When the women go on strike over the issue, Setsuko finds herself caught in the middle. When the heir to the company, Ryosuke Tanabe, proposes marriage to Setsuko, she is honored, but realizes that her real affection is for Hitachi....
Namiko
Character:
An early Japanese sound film, notable for being the only Japanese film ever to use the Western Electric Sound System. Contrary to most Western sources that give sole directing credit to Eizo Tanaka, it was actually co-directed by six different directors, Tanaka, Kazue Kimura, Kazuo Takimura, Ryoji Mikami and Hidekuni Ouchi....
Three-Fingered Detective
Character:
Being acquainted with the bride's uncle, a famed private detective is invited to a wedding ceremony. The groom's family is moneyed and owns large tracts of land. The bride is a former teacher and was rumoured to have had an affair, which explains why the groom's family opposed the union. On the night of the ceremony the bride and groom are killed in a sealed room. There is evidence left, however, as there is a hand print on the wall albeit with only the trace of three fingers....
With Beauty and Sorrow
Character: Otoko's Mother
When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family....
Onna no hanamichi
Character:
A film commemorating the 25th anniversary of Hibari Misora's performing career. Written by Matsutaro Kawaguchi for Hibari Misora to celebrate her 25th anniversary. The film tells the story of a fisherman's daughter from Izumo who rises from poverty to Kyoto, throws herself into the harsh world of dance, abandons her promised future and love, and finds the path to womanhood by living a life devoted to her art, which is rooted in the masses. Hibari Misora plays the role of a 16-year-old girl to a ...
An Inlet of Muddy Water
Character:
A Japanese woman writes down three stories she has witnessed or heard of in her diary, each about the difficult situation a young woman finds herself in....
Nightingale
Character: Midwife Yae
An episodic film about life in and around a rural police station and the people it serves....
The Glorious Days
Character:
The Glorious Days...
The Wind Blows Twice
Character:
Kanae, who broke up with her husband and moved to her uncle's house, met two men when her father, a university professor, collapsed. Michihara, a wealthy man and Miyashita, a youth scholar. Kanae is attracted to Miyashita, but ......
Beauty of Life
Character:
Inochi uruwashi...
Tale of Jiro
Character:
...