Michiyo Ōkusu

What strikes me about Michiyo Ōkusu is the sheer span of it. Born in Tianjin in 1946 and raised into Japanese cinema, she won the Elan d'or Newcomer award in 1966, when she was barely twenty. That alone would make a respectable footnote. Instead the awards keep arriving across four decades: the Japan Academy Prize for Best Supporting Actress in 1981 for Zigeunerweisen, a Blue Ribbon Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2004, the Kinuyo Tanaka Award in 2012, plus four Japan Academy nominations in total. Careers that stay that relevant that long are rare anywhere, and rarer still for actresses. What I find most telling is where the recognition clusters — supporting roles. She is not someone who anchors a film by standing in the centre of it; she is someone who walks into a scene and changes its temperature, and the industry noticed that again and again over fifty years.

Name (English)

Michiyo Ōkusu

Name (Japanese)

大楠道代

Reading

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Born

February 27, 1946 (age 80)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Dog

Origin

Tianjin, People's Republic of China

Occupation

actor

Awards & achievements

• 1966 Elan d'or Award for Newcomer of the Year
• 2012 Kinuyo Tanaka Award
• 2004 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Supporting Actress

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiyo%20%C5%8Ckusu
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E6%A5%A0%E9%81%93%E4%BB%A3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3545474

Tags

• 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.