Without Solitude, Acting Dies - The Silence of Mariko Okada, July 1967

Without Solitude, Acting Dies - The Silence of Mariko Okada, July 1967

In 1967, Japanese cinema was entering a period of decline, losing its audience to the rise of television. As the lights of movie theaters were fading, actress Mariko Okada said, "Without solitude, acting dies. Her words reveal her determination to protect the core of acting without being carried away by the changes of the times. Discovered by Keisuke Kinoshita and Yasujiro Ozu at Shochiku after the war, Okada embodied the transition from a "woman who endures" to an "independent woman" as an actress with intelligence and dignity. For her, loneliness is not loneliness, but silence for creation. She believed that in a film made with many people, the moment when an actor is completely alone in front of the camera, that moment of silence is where true acting is born. The passion that burns deep within the suppression she showed in "Hanaoka Seishu's Wife" and "Akitsu Onsen" was the crystallization of this very philosophy. Mariko Okada's words still convey the pride of an actress wh
o lived in the Showa era and the dignity of her art that resides in her solitude.