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Top 10 Amazing Facts about Machiko Kyo

Machiko Kyo was a Japanese actress who was active primarily in 1950 in the Japanese film industry.

She was an only child, born in Osaka in 1924 as Matoko Yano. She adopted Machiko Kyo as her stage name when she entered the Osaka Shochiku Kagekidan in 1936 at the age of twelve.

She was trained as a dancer and began her career as a dancer with an all-female musical theatre Troup.

She later became a showgirl in Tokyo, where she got scouted by Daniel film, a major Japanese studio, and it is here that her career as an actress bloomed.

Here are the top 10 Amazing Facts about Machiko Kyo.

 1. She was once a showgirl

Machiko_Ky艒_1959 photo by Daiei Motion Picture Company 鈥�

Kyo was twelve when she began her theatre career as a dancing girl in an all-female musical theatre troupe.

In her mid-twenties, she was a showgirl in Tokyo who was described as ” the girl with the perfect legs”. She was scouted for the Daiei film and it was there where she met the producer Massaichi Nagata who became her romantic as well as her professional partner.

2. She was turned popular through the movie Ugetsu

In the popular film of the 1950s Ugetsu, Kyo played lady Wasaka a ghostly noblewoman who seduces a poor potter.

She successfully portrayed the terrifying atmosphere common to the ghost genre, combining a horrifying effect with a mysterious eroticism.

In one of the scenes, Kyo showed her flexibility by singing and dancing giving a hint of her background in the dancing troupe she featured as a preteen.

In the movie Ugetsu, Kyo鈥檚 costume was modeled after the fashion before the Edo period and her face was considered to appear similar to a mask common in Noh theatre.

Her eyebrows were styled using a practice known as hikimayu. The movie Ugetsu won the silver lion award for best direction of a film.

3. She was featured in a Hollywood movie

Kyo鈥檚 character as an actress was very dynamic and flexible, her only single Hollywood production was Daniels Mann鈥檚 ” The tea house of the August moon (1950) 鈥渋n which she played the role of a young geisha.

She played the character lotus blossom, which she shined as a geisha and introduced her audience to the life of geishas.

4 She was among the first actresses to appear in western-colored movies

Machiko_Ky么 photo by Daiei鈥�

The movie Gate of hell (1955) by Teinosuke Kinugasa was the first Japanese film to use the western color process and Kyo was a major character in the film.

She played the character Kesa, a court lady who volunteered to act as the emperor鈥檚 sister during 1185 the seizing of Kyoto to open the shogunate period.

She is saved by a samurai who gets smitten with her beauty and requests for hand in marriage only to be shocked to discover she was married to an imperial guard.

Her role in this movie in which she plays the part of a modest lady was fully convincing and enticing to the viewers, she brought out the character she played close to life.

5. She was the main actress in the movie Roshomon

Kyos鈥� earliest parts majored in the film Roshomon which became a legendary movie showered with praise from many audiences.

In this film, the character Kyo is playing is Masako who is raped and her samurai husband dies as a result of a bandit, Tojomarus attack.

They all became ghost apparitions and a neutral woodcutter narrates the story he heard and all the other three give different accounts of what happened.

This movie portrayed Kyos鈥檚 acting talent even though she was new in the movie industry.

The actress wears different faces in different scenes providing the audience with different reactions, she and the cast introduced japan cinema to the rest of the world through this film.

6. She was mass-marketed after the release of the film Street of shame

In this movie, Kyo plays an unruly, cold-heard prostitute, mickey among her relatively modest, soft-spoken colleagues in Kenji Mizoguchi鈥檚 final film.

She played the role of Americanized women so flawlessly despite the unfamiliar and larger main cast surrounding her.

It was here that she was mass-marketed through many outlets of media from posters to magazines not only in Japan but in the western world too.

7. She has won several awards

_Machiko_Ky么 photo by Daiei鈥�

The movies Kyo acted in captured awards not only from Japan but as well as the west and earned her the nickname the ” Grand Prix actress ” in japan.

In 2017, Kyo was given a lifetime achievement award at the japan academy prize ceremony. The movie Roshomon (1950) in which Kyo was a central actress went to win the Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival. She was also awarded the medal with a purple ribbon.

8. She left the movie industry temporarily

Machiko Kyo photo by Sh艒chiku 鈥�

Kyo retired from the entertainment industry briefly, when Daiei studios went bankrupt in 1971.

The studio went bankrupt due to her lover, Nagata鈥檚 extravagant expenditure, though she continued acting in television series from time to time even into her 80s.

Her final role as an actress was Matsura Shino in the television series Haregi Koko Ichiban in the year 2000.

 9. She has never married

The actress never married but her romantic relationship with Daiei films president Massaichi Nagata was well known in Japan.

 10. The veteran actress passed away in her 90s

Machiko Kyo, died in Tokyo hospital on May 12, 2019, she was 95 years old when she experienced heart failure.

Kyo will be remembered for her charisma and elegant way of acting in the way she portrays japans society post-war.