Kumi Mizuno

Kumi Mizuno is one of those actors whose face crossed oceans without her ever needing to chase it. Born in Niigata in 1937, she became a fixture of Toho's kaiju cinema in the 1960s and early 1970s, and that is precisely why generations of viewers outside Japan know her. I think her contribution gets undersold. Acting opposite a man in a rubber suit is harder than it looks: if the human performance does not hold, the whole illusion collapses into camp. She kept those films anchored. There is a real craft in playing sincerity at that scale, and she had it. Her 2018 Kinuyo Tanaka Award felt like an overdue acknowledgment that genre work is still work, and often the most demanding kind. What strikes me most is longevity of a different sort. Films she made half a century ago are still watched, argued over, and restored abroad. Not many careers leave that kind of afterlife.

Name (English)

Kumi Mizuno

Name (Japanese)

水野久美

Reading

みずの くみ

Born

January 1, 1937 (age 89)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Ox

Origin

Sanjō-shi, Niigata Prefecture, Japan

Height

158 cm

Occupation

actor / model / film actor

Awards & achievements

• 2018 Kinuyo Tanaka Award

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumi%20Mizuno
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E9%87%8E%E4%B9%85%E7%BE%8E
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3074322

Tags

• Niigata Prefecture
• actor
• model
• film actor

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.