Reiko Ohara

Some performers are recognizable by face. Reiko Ohara was recognizable by sound - a light, slightly breathy voice and an unhurried way of speaking that Japanese audiences could identify within a syllable. If you ask people of a certain age in Japan about her, many will not name a film at all. They will quote a whisky commercial: "Sukoshi aishite, nagaku aishite." Love me a little, love me for a long time. It is one of the most famous lines ever spoken in a Japanese advertisement, and she is the only reason it works. That reputation has always undersold her. She was born in Tokyo's Bunkyo ward in 1946 and won the Elan d'or Newcomer Award in 1966, before she turned twenty. She then spent decades at the center of the most demanding format Japanese television produces: the taiga drama, NHK's year-long historical serial, the closest thing the country has to a national stage. She carried Kasuga the Court Lady in 1989 and returned for Tokugawa Yoshinobu in 1998. On film there was Ohan in 1984. Charm gets a performer cast once. It does not get you a full year of period drama, in which everything - posture, the way you sit, the pace of a line - is under scrutiny. Her later years were difficult. Illness withdrew her from public life, and she died in 2009 at sixty-two, which is too early for an actress who had that much technique left to spend. Four years after her death, her own life was adapted into a television drama. That is a strange kind of tribute, and a real one: the industry decided her biography was worth the same treatment she had spent a career giving to other people's.

Name (English)

Reiko Ohara

Name (Japanese)

大原麗子

Born

November 13, 1946 – August 6, 2009

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Dog

Origin

Bunkyō-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

actor

Awards & achievements

• 1966 Elan d'or Award for Newcomer of the Year

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%9F%E9%BA%97%E5%AD%90

Tags

• Tokyo
• actor

Last updated

2026-07-26

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.