The glamorous flower of the silver screen: the history of Yukiji Asaoka, 1935-2018

The glamorous flower of the silver screen: the history of Yukiji Asaoka, 1935-2018

Yukio Asaoka, real name Yukiai Kato, was born in 1935. She grew up in a family where her father was a Japanese painter, Ito Shinsui, and her mother was a former geisha in Shinbashi. Because of her background in the arts, she was thoroughly trained in Japanese and Western-style dancing and singing from an early age, and her appearance had an air of elegance and refinement. Her voice was full and lustrous, a major factor in the charm of her later performances on stage and in films.

She joined the Takarazuka Revue and built on the dance and singing skills she had acquired as a young girl, gaining experience on the stage before moving on to the movies. She worked as a film actress from the 1950s to the 1960s, when the golden age of postwar Japanese cinema was still alive, but she had few opportunities to make major films. As the film industry began to decline and the age of television arrived, she attracted attention with her starring role in the 1960 TV drama "Nichinichi no Shoshin," which was a huge hit among housewives. The wavering female figure she portrayed in this drama was known as a "tottering actress," and resonated strongly with Japanese society in the early years of its rapid economic growth, when people were sensitive to the anxieties and conflicts surrounding the family and marital relationships.

She subsequently played wives and madams in numerous TV dramas, and her glamour and presence were unmatched by any other actress. In 1981, she played Nene, the wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, in the NHK historical drama "Onna Taikoki" and once again came into the limelight for her portrayal of the noble and strong core of a woman. As women's lifestyles shifted from "living at home" to "participating in society," her portrayal of Nene, who supported her husband and had her own will, resonated with many viewers.

Her contemporaries included Inako Arima and Chikage Awashima, who both came from Takarazuka and became major movie stars, and Sayuri Yoshinaga, a Shochiku actress who was active as a purist. While Arima and Awashima captured the hearts of the public with their purity and elegance on the movie stage, Asaoka, on the stage and on television, presented a more glamorous and mature image of women. At a time when Sayuri Yoshinaga was considered the symbol of the national purist movement, Asaoka distinguished herself by accentuating her appeal as an adult woman, complementing the diverse images of women in the entertainment industry.

In her later years, she continued to work on stage and television, but in the 2010s, she publicly announced that she had dementia, attracting attention for her frankness. She continued to work in the entertainment industry from the Showa period to the Heisei period, embodying the image of a woman who, while carrying her background in traditional arts, played a new role in response to the transformation of the media.

Asaoka Setsuji's life was rooted in the prewar culture that valued the arts, experienced the postwar transition from film to television, and reflected the changing images of families and women during the period of rapid economic growth. The fact that she continued to stand in a different position from the purist actresses of her generation is the uniqueness of her existence, and she is still remembered today as one of the actresses the Showa era fell in love with.