On May 12, Kyo Machiko, a famous actress of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, died of a heart attack at the age of 95.
The four actresses recognized in Japanese film history are Tanaka Atsuyo, Hara Setsuko, Hideko Takayama and Isuzu Yamada, but outside the four majors, the historical status of many actresses is not publicly discussed.
If considered comprehensively in terms of representative works, qualifications, acting skills and influence, Kyomachiko should be the fifth best person in history.
Unfortunately, because Kyomachiko's own appearance is not as outstanding as Hara Setsuko and Takayama Shuko, and her acting skills are not as memorable as Tanaka Seiyo and Yamada Isuzu, coupled with the fact that the golden period of her acting career is too long ago and has long faded out of the film industry, her recent death has not attracted the attention of domestic film fans. If it were not for an obituary, many people might have almost forgotten the existence of such a person.
Kyomachi debuted on the big screen in 1949 and starred in her famous film Rashomon (1950) the following year, playing the woman who repeatedly lied after being violated.
Rashomon
Most people in the world know Kyo Machiko because of Rashomon, and it is also because of Rashomon that they first learned about the unique charm of Japanese movies.
After Rashomon, Kyomachi starred in Sadasuke Igakasa's Hell's Gate (1953) and Kenji Mizoguchi's The Tale of the Rain Moon (1953).
Hell's Gate
"Hell's Gate" won the Palme d'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and "The Tale of the Rainy Moon" won the Silver Lion Award at that year's Venice Film Festival.
The Tale of the Rainy Moon
These two films, together with Rashomon, can be said to be the earliest recognition of Japanese cinema in the whole world. These works have won awards at three major film festivals, and later "Miyamoto Musashi" won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, so that Japanese films have entered the vision of global audiences and media, and their influence has increased dramatically. The entire Japanese film industry thus began a golden age of a full decade.
At that time, if Toshiro Mifune undoubtedly represented the male figure in Japanese movies, then the spokesperson for the female image would first be Kyo Machiko, and then Tanaka Seiyo.
Because she repeatedly played the kind of charming woman with a very classical Japanese atmosphere in "Rashomon Gate", "Hell's Gate" and "Rain Moon Story", she also laid the foundation for her "charming charm" route that has remained unchanged since then.
Kyomachiko is plump and does not shy away from showing her body on the screen. In "Rashomon Gate", "Hell's Gate" and "Rain Moon Story", the characters she plays are all red-faced and bad, and men always cause unexpected disasters because of their infatuation and competition for her.
After becoming famous, Kyomachiko also boldly used her own advantages and characteristics in this regard to interpret a series of charming female figures. These include the prostitute in Kenji Mizoguchi's posthumous work The Red Line (1956), the troupe lady in Ozu's Floating Grass (1959), and the wife in The Face of Others (1966).
"Red Line Zone" is Mizoguchi's vivid portrayal of the professional group that had become an illegal industry at that time, and depicted five prostitutes with very different origins and personalities, especially the characters of Kyo Machiko and Fumiko Wakao. Kyo Machiko is rebellious and spicy in the film, preferring to fall into the wind and dust rather than be at the mercy of her father, and her every move is full of arrogance and domineering.
Red Line Zone
In "Floating Grass", the troupe boss lady she played was scheming. On the one hand, he knows how to seduce Nakamura Yanjiro with his body in a timely manner, and on the other hand, he secretly uses clever tricks to encourage the young and beautiful Wakao Fumiko to seduce Yanjiro's illegitimate son, so as to cause Yanjiro's family chaos, make him homeless, and eventually return to his own arms.
Floating Grass
In Hiroshi Kawahara's "The Face of Others", kyo machiko's role once again becomes the "bane" of the whole story, and it is precisely because the wife of the turbulent personality is reluctant to have sex with the protagonist that the protagonist begins to doubt his own existence and goes to the plastic surgeon to change a face, which triggers the discussion of faces and identities throughout the movie. Kyo Machiko's seduction and teasing are no longer necessary in this film, but can be done only by looking at them and expressions.
"The Face of Others"
At the peak of her career, almost every character who impressed people had an air of desire.
Even in the seemingly only exception, Kun Ichikawa's The Key (1959), the ascetic woman is actually a symbol of desire. Her husband, whose body is gradually decaying, always tries to arouse the hidden desires in his wife's heart, thus awakening his youthful vitality. Kyo Machiko's suppression of desire in this film is precisely for the sake of the later explosion.
The Key
At a time when the concepts of the entire Japanese society were very conservative, Kyo machiko offered seductive and charming acting skills again and again, which was tantamount to sexual enlightenment for Japanese audiences at that time.
Her screen images are bold, ahead of the curve and modern, and as a woman, she always knows how to use and show her body to win herself some kind of dominant position in men.
It is worth mentioning that another famous actress, Fumiko Wakao, who has worked with her many times, can be regarded as completing the sexual enlightenment of this Japanese movie with her.
Fumiko Wakao
Like Kyo machiko, Fumiko Wakao has been popular as a youthful and energetic figure since she entered the film industry in the 1950s, and later in a series of films with Obvious Erotic Meanings ("Red Angel", "Swankika", "Tattoo", etc.) with Masamura Hozo in the 1960s, she was known for exposing her body in large areas.
Wakao Fumiko is about ten years younger than Kyo-machiko, and in the 50s when the two worked intensively, Wakao Fumiko's characters were mostly the kind of youthful and invincible hot, while Kyo-machiko was a mature and colorful charm. Two people, one old and one young, interpret a completely different sexy temperament.
In the 1960s, when Fumiko Wakao was the same age as Kyomachi from ten years ago, the sexy object she played was closer to Kyomachiko ten years ago, and was often a scheming red face.
It can be said that Kyo Machiko and Fumiko Wakao defined the word "sexy" on the Japanese screen during those 20 years.
Now that Kyomachiko has passed away, the surviving Fumiko Wakao seems to be the last Shaohua of the golden age of Japanese cinema.