Mitsuko Yoshikawa

Mitsuko Yoshikawa was born in 1901 in the Kyobashi district of Tokyo — that's Meiji 34, an era so distant it barely feels real — and she lived all the way to 1991, passing at 90 years old. Think about what that lifespan actually means: she crossed three imperial eras, survived two world wars, and watched Japan transform from a feudal-tinged empire into a modern nation, all while working as an actor. She appeared in more than 250 films, often for Yasujirō Ozu and Hiroshi Shimizu, and was already playing mothers at 25, so the biography and the body of work are one and the same. Ninety years, one craft, one city at the root. There's something quietly extraordinary about a person who just keeps showing up to the work across that kind of historical turbulence. Kyobashi had a real old-Tokyo merchant-town energy, and I like to think some of that grit was baked into her from the start.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Mitsuko Yoshikawa was a Japanese actress born on June 21, 1901, in Kyobashi Ward, Tokyo Prefecture. She lived through the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras, spanning Japan's most turbulent period of modernization and war. She passed away on August 8, 1991, at the age of 90, having devoted her entire career to acting.

Name (English)

Mitsuko Yoshikawa

Name (Japanese)

吉川満子

Reading

よしかわ みつこ

Born

June 21, 1901 – August 8, 1991

Origin

Kyobashi Ward, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Actress

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Ox

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%89%E5%B7%9D%E6%BA%80%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11413031

Tags

• Born in Tokyo Prefecture
• Actress

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.