The Diva of the Silver Screen and the Postwar Dream: Izumi Yukimura and the Intersection of the Entertainment Industry in the 1970s.

The Diva of the Silver Screen and the Postwar Dream: Izumi Yukimura and the Intersection of the Entertainment Industry in the 1970s.

In the 1950s, Izumi Yukimura was called the "Japanese Grace Kelly" and became one of the greatest postwar multi-talented actresses, performing in movies, songs, and television. Her entertainment presence was also an object of admiration among the younger generation in the 1970s. One of the most symbolic examples of this is when Yasuha Ebina, daughter of rakugo storyteller Sanpei Hayashiya, said, "I want to be a world-class singer," and "I want to be like Izumi Yukimura.

The entertainment industry in the 1970s was in its heyday of variety-centered television. In a climate where popularity and buzz took precedence over quality of art, singers like Yukimura, who combined ability with an international sensibility, were reevaluated as the embodiment of the origin of the entertainment industry.

The 1970s was also a time of accelerated cultural fusion between Japan and the United States. Young people were strongly influenced by Western music such as the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Carpenters, and there was a budding desire to become world-class singers as well. Izumi Yukimura was the first to sing English songs in the immediate postwar period and to sublimate jazz and pop music by replacing them with Japanese, and she was still highly regarded at the time as "a female artist who could speak English and knew American-style entertainment.

Her appearance and success also changed society's view of female entertainers. At a time when female idols who only sang were the mainstream, Yukimura was one of the first to create a self-produced entertainment image as a stage actress and movie star. This "self-produced image of women" also responded to the context of the women's lib and feminist movements of the 1970s and gained renewed attention.

Yasuha Ebina's statement, "I want to be like Izumi Yukimura," means that she was not merely evaluated for her singing ability, but that she was inscribed as an ideal image of a "world-class, Japanese yet international female entertainer. This may have symbolized a kind of artistic purity and pride in an age when the performing arts were being engulfed by television and commercialism.

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Representative Songs and Their Artistry

Till I Waltz Again with You
This American song was covered by Yukimura in 1953, and with its sweet and sad melody, it captured the hearts of young Japanese in the hope and anxiety of the postwar era. The smoothness of his English pronunciation and the emotional quality of his voice made this performance highly acclaimed as a translation of Japanese lyrics that did not lose the essence of Western music.

Blue Canary
This is a famous song that sings of a young girl's faint love and nostalgia with a melancholy melody. Yukimura's limpid voice is a perfect match for the sentimentalism of this song. The song is remembered as one that symbolized a small romance blooming in the midst of postwar poverty.

Mambo Italiano.
The method of boldly singing a Western number mixed with Japanese was a novelty in Japan at the time. Yukimura's singing had both a bright, bouncy rhythm and an exotic atmosphere, and was popular on TV and in movies.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Izumi Yukimura was not only a star in the early days of television, but also an ideal role model for younger generations aspiring to the performing arts as an art form. In the 1950s and 1960s, Izumi Yukimura was not only a star of the pioneering era of television, but also an ideal image for future generations aspiring to the art of performing.