Setsuko Hara who starred in Yasujiro Ozu’s Noriko Trilogy, Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951) and Tokyo Story (1953), passed away at 95. Hara also appeared in Akira Kurosawa’s No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) but she was most remembered as Noriko in the Ozu films.
Born in 1920, Hara was never married and called “the Eternal Virgin” in Japan. Her works in the 50s with Ozu were considered part of the golden era of Japanese cinema. After Hara quit the film industry in 1963, coincidentally the same year that Ozu died, she was rarely seen in public. Despite speculation of her romantic involvement with Ozu as the reason she left the film industry, she confessed later that she never really enjoyed acting in the first place.
Hara died of pneumonia in a hospital in Kanazawa on September 5 but it wasn’t announced to the public until today.
