Kyōko Kagawa

Kyōko Kagawa (香川 京子 Kagawa Kyōko, born 5 December 1931) is a Japanese actress. She has appeared in leading and supporting roles in such films as Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well and High and Low, Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, and Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff. She won the "New Face Nomination" sponsored by the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper out of about 6,000 applicants and joined Shintoho. She was also taking entrance exams for a regular company at the same time, and her final interview and the final exam for the New Faces camera test overlapped, but with her mother's advice, she decided to pursue acting. After appearing in Red Beard in 1965 , she gave birth to a child and accompanied her husband to New York where he was posted overseas, leaving the film industry for about three years. She returned to Japan in 1968. As film began to decline, she expanded her field of work to include television dramas and stage productions. She was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1998 and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette in 2004 .

Kyōko Kagawa atuou em papéis principais e secundários em filmes fundamentais do cinema japonês clássico, incluindo "Sansho the Bailiff" (1954) de Kenji Mizoguchi, "Tokyo Story" (1953) de Yasujirō Ozu, e "The Bad Sleep Well" (1960) e "High and Low" (1963) de Akira Kurosawa. Sua carreira iniciou-se na Shintoho após vencer um concurso com aproximadamente seis mil candidatos.

Ela recebeu o prêmio de Melhor Atriz Coadjuvante no Mainichi Film Concours por "The River Fuefuki" (1960). Em 2015, foi condecorada com a Ordem da Cultura, a mais alta honraria japonesa no campo das artes, por suas contribuições duradouras ao cinema.