Keiko Awaji

Look at the directors Keiko Awaji worked with and the scale of her career becomes obvious: Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, Keisuke Kinoshita's A Japanese Tragedy, Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. She was on those sets during the period when Japanese cinema was arguably the best in the world, and she also crossed over to Hollywood in Mark Robson's The Bridges at Toko-Ri. Born in Tokyo in 1933, she won the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1958, took the Kikuta Kazuo Drama Award for her stage work, and received the Kinuyo Tanaka Award in 2005 — an arc of recognition stretching across nearly half a century. That last point is the one I keep returning to. Plenty of actresses of her generation were celebrated when young and quietly forgotten afterwards; Awaji kept earning the acclaim as she aged, on stage as well as on screen. She died in Tokyo in 2014, aged 80. The films remain easy to find, which is the mercy of the medium.

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Name (English)

Keiko Awaji

Name (Japanese)

淡路恵子

Reading

あわじ けいこ

Born

July 17, 1933 – January 11, 2014

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Rooster

Blood type

AB

Active years

1949 - 2014

Awards & achievements

• 2005 Kinuyo Tanaka Award
• 1958 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Supporting Actress
• Kikuta Kazuo engeki shō

Works summary

Appearances

158 (1953–2013)

By year (titles with a known year)

1953: 4, 1954: 1, 1955: 4, 1956: 1, 1957: 5, 1958: 3, 1959: 4, 1960: 4, 1961: 9, 1962: 5, 1963: 11, 1964: 4, 1965: 6, 1966: 4, 1967: 1, 1977: 1, 1987: 1, 1988: 2, 1989: 2, 1990: 3, 1991: 1, 1993: 2, 1995: 2, 1997: 1, 1998: 2, 1999: 1, 2000: 1, 2001: 5, 2002: 2, 2003: 9, 2004: 7, 2005: 3, 2006: 6, 2007: 10, 2008: 3, 2009: 3, 2010: 2, 2011: 3, 2012: 5, 2013: 2, year unknown: 13

Debut work

Natsuko's Adventure

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiko%20Awaji
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B7%A1%E8%B7%AF%E6%81%B5%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2456624

Tags

• Tokyo
• actor

Last updated

September 29, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.