
Acting
Yōko Sugi
Born 1928-10-28 · Tokyo, Japan
Yōko Sugi (8 October 1928 – 15 May 2019) was a Japanese actress mainly active in the 1950s, who appeared in films of Mikio Naruse, Kinuyo Tanaka and Tadashi Imai. Sugi was born on 28 October 1928 in what is now Bunkyō Ward, Tokyo, Japan. In 1947, she auditioned at Toho studio's "New Face" competition and received a contract. She debuted in Tadashi Imai's 1949 Aoi Sanmyaku, and performed in several other coming of age films. She repeatedly appeared in films of Mikio Naruse, including Repast, Husband and Wife, and Sound of the Mountain, and in Kinuyo Tanaka's Forever a Woman and The Moon Has Risen. In 1962, Sugi married an American, retired from the entertainment industry, and moved to the United States, where she worked as a public relations manager at the New Otani Hotel in Los Angeles. Occasionally returning to Japan, she appeared in films like Shirō Toyoda's The Twilight Years. She served as a Japanese Cultural Envoy to the United States for the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2005. Sugi moved back to Japan in 2017. She died of cancer on May 15, 2019.
Acting credits
7.6In postwar Tokyo, a blunt, alcohol-soaked doctor diagnoses a swaggering young yakuza with tuberculosis, forging an uneasy bond that’s tested when the gangster’s ruthless former boss returns and drags him back toward the swampy underworld he can’t escape.
Drunken Angel
1948
No synopsis available yet.
Gendai shojo
1953
7.1Continuation of The Blue Mountains: Part I. Released a week later.
The Blue Mountains: Part II
1949
NRNo synopsis available yet.
The First Love of a Cha Cha Girl
1956
7.6Fumiko, mother of two and wife to an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In her final stages, Fumiko meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her experiences.
Forever a Woman
1955
4.0The woman prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her.
Women in Prison
1956
6.5Riyo, an orphaned 17-year old, sails from Yokohama to Hawaii in 1918 to marry Matsuji, a man she has never met. Hoping to escape a troubled past and start anew, Riyo is bitterly disappointed upon her arrival: her husband is twice her age. The miserable girl finds solace with her new friend Kana, a young mother who helps Riyo accept her new life.
Picture Bride
1995
NRAn Ishiro Honda film. The first part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the second film.
A Rainbow Plays in My Heart: Part 1
1957
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Wakai musumetachi
1951
8.0Following the Second World War, the lives of various people in a poverty-stricken area of Tokyo are entertwined. Pachinko parlor girls, shoeshine boys, a maker of costume jewelry, and a streetcorner artist all struggle to make their livings and to find happiness in difficult surroundings.
Tokyo Sweetheart
1952
NRA story of a passionate teacher and his great effort for the children in a poor village.
The Yamabiko School
1952
7.6In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.
Repast
1951
7.4An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.
Sound of the Mountain
1954
6.9A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.
Husband and Wife
1953
9.0Once 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.
Kin no tamago: Golden Girl
1952
No synopsis available yet.
Wakôdo no uta
1951
6.9Three humorous love stories set in rural Japan.
Conduct Report on Professor Ishinaka
1950
6.9Mokichi Asai is a widowed father living in Nara with three daughters—Chizuru, Ayako, and Setsuko. The youngest, Setsuko, plays matchmaker for her older sisters, leading to humorous and awkward romantic entanglements.
The Moon Has Risen
1955
10.0Michiko Asakura was married to the eldest son of the Sakuma family, an unsealed family in Shinshu, but died from her husband and returned to her parents' house in Tokyo with her five-year-old daughter Yoshiko.
About Love
1953
9.0No synopsis available yet.
Oka wa hanazakari
1952
NRA romantic movie based on Chiyoko Shimakura’s hit song of the same name, in which Shimakura herself starred
Tokyo dayo Okkasan
1957
6.4Portmanteau film about young lovers.
The First Kiss
1955
NRUrban love comedy in which Koji Tsuruta, who works for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Parks and Greenery Department, plays love shepherd to a number of women, including his true love, Inako Arima.
Wedding Season
1954
6.4Teacher Yukiko finds herself in opposition to conservative faculty and villagers after defending a student for being in a relationship with a young man from Tokyo.
The Blue Mountains: Part I
1949