Yoko Yaguchi

Yōko Yaguchi was born in 1921 — which means she came of age when Japanese cinema was still finding its voice, learning to talk, learning to survive a world at war. An actress who trained at Showa Girls' High School and stepped into a film industry that was literally being bombed around it, then rebuilt from the ground up. I don't have a long list of titles or trophies to rattle off, and honestly that's not the point — women like her were the load-bearing pillars that the whole postwar screen culture stood on, often without getting the credit that later generations inherited freely. She passed in 1985, which means she lived long enough to see Japanese film reach global prestige, and I'd like to think she knew her part in that. I feel a quiet respect just knowing she existed and did the work.

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.

Yoko Yaguchi (1921–1985) was a Japanese actress active during the prewar and postwar Showa era. Born in Hong Kong, she joined the Shochiku Girls' Revue in 1937 under the stage name Terumi Wakazono, acted until 1945, and was married to film director Akira Kurosawa, with whom she had two children, Hisao and Kazuko. She passed away on February 1, 1985.

Name (English)

Yoko Yaguchi

Name (Japanese)

矢口陽子

Reading

やぐち ようこ

Born

August 27, 1921 – February 1, 1985

Origin

British Hong Kong, United Kingdom

Occupation

Actress

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Rooster

Active years

1937 - 1945

High school

Showa Girls' University Affiliated Showa High School

Spouse

Akira Kurosawa

Works summary

Appearances

14

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%A2%E5%8F%A3%E9%99%BD%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3032150

Tags

• 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. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.