Mayumi Ogawa

Mayumi Ogawa's career reads like a map of postwar Japanese cinema. Born in Adachi, Tokyo, in 1939 and educated at Wayo Women's University, she took the Elan d'or Newcomer Award in 1965 and never really left the frame after that. Her peak recognition came for two 1979 films—Vengeance Is Mine and The Three Undelivered Letters—which together brought her Best Supporting Actress at both the 3rd Japan Academy Prize and the 4th Hochi Film Award. Anyone who knows how crowded and how serious Japanese film was in that period understands what a double win like that means. The detail I keep returning to, though, is from 2008, when she was ordained as a Shingon Buddhist nun. In an interview she described her tonsure ceremony, at which only a single strand of hair was cut. I find that image hard to shake. Acting is a life spent inhabiting other people. Choosing, decades in, to step toward something quieter and entirely her own strikes me as its own kind of performance—the one nobody was watching.

Name (English)

Mayumi Ogawa

Name (Japanese)

小川眞由美

Reading

おがわ まゆみ

Born

October 7, 1939 (age 86)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Rabbit

Origin

Adachi, Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

actor

University

Wayo Women's University

Awards & achievements

• 1965 Elan d'or Award for Newcomer of the Year

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayumi%20Ogawa
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E5%B7%9D%E7%9C%9E%E7%94%B1%E7%BE%8E
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6798093

Tags

• Tokyo
• 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.