Hitomi Nozoe

Hitomi Nozoe (野添ひとみ, Nozoe Hitomi, 11 February 1937 – 4 May 1995) was a Japanese actress popular in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Hitomi Nozoe
Hitome Nozoe in the 1950s
Born11 February 1937
Ushigome, Japan
Died4 May 1995(1995-05-04) (aged 58)
Tokyo, Japan
OccupationActress
Spouse(s)
Hiroshi Kawaguchi
(m. 1960; died 1987)

Career

Nozoe first gained attention[1] in ingénue roles for Shochiku in films such as Kobayashi's Sincerity (1953), eventually joining Daiei following her appearance in 1955's national "New Faces" studio recruitment drive.[2] In 1960 she married frequent co-star Hiroshi Kawaguchi, son of writer and Daiei executive Matsutarō Kawaguchi, and both semi-retired from acting within a few years as Kawaguchi became a businessman and reality-TV adventurer.[3]

Known primarily for demure and innocent roles, Nozoe became a "sensation"[4] following her star-turn in Masumura's Giants and Toys (1958) as a vivacious tomboy transformed into an overnight celebrity as a confectionery spokesmodel. She is also well known in the West for her brief role as a barber's daughter in Ozu's widely acclaimed Floating Weeds (1959), which Roger Ebert named as one of the ten greatest films of all time.[5]

In 1988, the year after Kawaguchi's death at age 51 following a long illness with gastric and esophageal cancer, Nozoe published the memoir Hiroshi-san, I Did My Best (浩さん、がんばったね). She continued to write and lecture on the disease, succumbing to thyroid cancer in 1995 at age 58.[6]

References
  1. "New film reveals suffering of first Japanese Christmas". newspapers.com. The Brownsville Herald. 10 April 1956. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  2. Coates, Jennifer (2014). "National Crisis and the Female Image: Expressions of Trauma in Japanese Film 1945-1964". SemanticScholar.org. University of London. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  3. "Kyojin to gangu, Movie, 1958". IMCDb.org. Internet Movie Cars Database. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  4. "The Cruel Beauty Of Masumura Yasuzo" (PDF). jpf.org.uk. The Japan Foundation, London. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  5. Ebert, Roger (1 April 1991). "Ten Greatest Films of All Time". Roger Ebert. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
  6. "Hitomi Nozoe". Kotobank (in Japanese). Asahi Shimbun Co., Ltd. Retrieved 16 April 2020.


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