An Eternal Smile on the Silver Screen: Setsuko Hara—A Symbol of Japanese Cinema, 1935–1963

Born in 1920, Setsuko Hara entered the film industry in 1935 and became one of the leading actresses of Japanese cinema from the prewar to the postwar era. After the war, she appeared in a wide range of films, including Akira Kurosawa’s *I Have No Regrets for My Youth* and Mikio Naruse’s *Rice* and *The Sound of the Mountain*, but it was her work with Yasujirō Ozu in particular that established her unique presence. In *Late Spring*, *Early Summer*, and *Tokyo Story*, she portrayed women torn between their feelings for their families and societal views on marriage, using restrained expressions and a bright smile. The BFI highlights that Hara embodied both a modern, independent image of womanhood and traditional modesty. In the 1953 film *Tokyo Story*, she played Kiriko, a woman who had lost her husband in the war, quietly reflecting the loneliness of a changing family and postwar society. Her sudden departure from the film industry in 1963 at the age of 43—and the fact that she rarely appeared in public thereafter—also made Setsuko Hara an iconic figure in the history of Japanese cinema.