Machiko Kyo obituary

Actor who played the wife of a samurai warrior in Rashomon, one of the great classics of Japanese cinema

When Rashomon won the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice film festival in 1951, and was shown widely in the west, the floodgates were opened for more Japanese films to be released worldwide.

This allowed cinephiles in the west to follow the masterful career of Rashomon’s director, Akira Kurosawa, and to discover the two forceful leads Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo. Although Kyo, who has died aged 95, had appeared in a number of films previously, it was Rashōmon that enabled her to work with other greats of Japanese cinema such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu.

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