Yoshiko Okada

Yoshiko Okada
180px Yoshiko Okada circa 1935
Born	(1902-04-21)April 21, 1902 Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan
Died
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	Film actress

Yoshiko Okada (岡田嘉子, Okada Yoshiko, 21 April 1902 – 10 February 1992) was a Japanese film and stage actress who was most famous for her defection to the Soviet Union.

Early career

File:Yoshiko Okada circa 1920's.jpg

Yoshiko Okada in the 1920s

Yoshiko Okada was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1902. She made her film debut in 1923 at Nikkatsu in Eizō Tanaka's Dokuro no mai.

Defection

On 3 January 1938, Okada defected to the Soviet Union with her lover Ryōkichi Sugimoto, seeking freedom from Japanese fascism and hoping to study theater with other Japanese in the USSR. Sugimoto, however, was arrested and executed as a spy and Okada spent the next ten years in a prison camp.

Late career

At the end of her confinement, Okada began to work for Radio Moscow and eventually got to study at the Lunacharsky State Institute for Theatre Arts. She helped stage a play and was selected to co-direct the film Ten Thousand Boys with ru, a work that has been called "the first Russian film about Japan not intended to be a depiction of the 'vicious Japanese enemy.'"

Selected filmography

• Tora-san's Sunrise and Sunset (男はつらいよ 寅次郎夕焼け小焼け Otoko wa Tsurai yo: Torajirō Yūyake Koyake) (1976)
• An Inn in Tokyo (東京の宿 Tōkyō no yado) (1935)
• Woman of Tokyo (東京の女 Tōkyō no Onna) (1933)

External links

• Yoshiko Okada at the Internet Movie Database