Nobuko Otowa

Nobuko Otowa was born in Yonago, Tottori, in 1924 and died in December 1994, and between 1950 and that final year she appeared in more than a hundred films. The arithmetic alone is startling: she was working on screen for forty-four years, right up to the end of her life. The awards trace an unusual shape. Best Actress at the Blue Ribbon Awards in 1954, then Best Supporting Actress at the same awards in 1967. Actors who can carry a picture and then willingly stand at its edge are rarer than the industry admits, and the ones who do it well tend to age into their best work rather than out of it. She also took the Kikuta Kazuo Drama Award for stage work and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Actress, and in 1989 received the Medal with Purple Ribbon. What moves me is not the honors but the not stopping. A career that ends because the person's life ended, not because the offers did, is its own kind of statement.

Name (English)

Nobuko Otowa

Name (Japanese)

乙羽信子

Reading

おとわ のぶこ

Born

October 1, 1924 – December 22, 1994

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Rat

Origin

Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

actor / film actor

Awards & achievements

• 1989 Medal with Purple Ribbon
• 1954 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Actress
• 1967 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Supporting Actress
• Kikuta Kazuo engeki shō
• Mainichi Film Award for Best Actress

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuko%20Otowa
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B9%99%E7%BE%BD%E4%BF%A1%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2483977

Tags

• Tottori Prefecture
• actor
• 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.