<figure id="attachment_439436" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-439436" style="width: 4000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="3291c952"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/09/f00b65ef91886114d75d41061c2d9d64.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-439436" class="wp-caption-text">Kazuko Yoshiyuki passed away on September 2. She was not only an actor, but also a talented essayist. &#8230;&#8230;</figcaption></figure>
<h2><span class="strongInContent"> Director Nagisa Oshima&#8217;s depiction of &#8220;Love and Sex in Japan</span></h2>
<p> Actor and essayist Kazuko Yoshiyuki, who was active in numerous films, TV dramas, and stage plays, including Nagisa Oshima&#8217;s film &#8220;The Ghost of Love&#8221; and the drama &#8220;3 Years B Class Kinpachi Sensei&#8221; (TBS), passed away on September 2 at a Tokyo hospital due to pneumonia. 90 years old.</p>
<p> In 1954, while still a student at Jogakuin High School, Yoshiyuki became a research student at the Gekidan Mingei and made her stage debut in 1955 in &#8220;Monoinonai Onna-tachi (The Silent Women).</p>
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<p> In 1955, she made her film debut in &#8220;Yukiko&#8221; directed by Tadashi Imai, and in 1959, she won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 14th Mainichi Film Concours for her role in the film &#8220;Nianchan. She also appeared in numerous dramas, including the NHK historical drama &#8220;Momi no Ki wa Remaining&#8221; (1970) and the NHK television series &#8220;Gochisousan&#8221; (‛13).</p>
<p> Her father was Eisuke Yoshiyuki, a writer of the emerging art school active in the early Showa period, and her brother is Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, an Akutagawa Prize-winning author. Her younger sister, Rie Yoshiyuki, is also an Akutagawa Prize-winning writer and poet.</p>
<p> Kazuko Yoshiyuki was also active as an essayist, winning the 32nd Essayist Club Prize in 1983 for her essay collection &#8220;How Far to Perform. Her mother, Aguri Yoshiyuki, was a hairdresser, and NHK&#8217;s television series &#8220;Aguri&#8221; (1997), based on her, was broadcast, in which Ms. Yoshiyuki also appeared.</p>
<p> Particularly impressive was &#8220;The Ghost of Love&#8221; (1978), a topical film directed by Nagisa Oshima on the theme of &#8220;love and sex in Japan,&#8221; following &#8220;Ai no Corrida&#8221; (1976). Mr. Yoshiyuki drew attention for his daring sexual scene with Tatsuya Fuji (84), whom I had interviewed at the time.</p>
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<p> Based on the Sada Abe incident, &#8220;Ai no Corrida&#8221; was a Japan-France co-production by Nagisa Oshima Productions and Argos Films of France.</p>
<p> The film was developed and edited in France from undeveloped film shot in Japan, including hardcore scenes, and then imported back to Japan. In France and other countries, the film was shown uncut, and in Japan, after screening by customs and Eirin, it was shown with some modifications, such as the addition of blurring.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" She and her adulterous partner killed her husband. ......"></div>
<h2><span class="strongInContent">There are lots of love scenes.&#8221;</span></h2>
<p> The second of Oshima&#8217;s love and erotic films, &#8220;The Ghost of Love,&#8221; was also a Japan-France co-production between Oshima Productions and France&#8217;s Argos Film, and its content drew much attention because it was produced using the same method.</p>
<p> The film is based on Nakamura Itoko&#8217;s novel &#8220;Kurumaya Gisaburo Incident,&#8221; which is based on an actual incident that took place in a cold village in Ibaraki Prefecture in February 1896, the year after the Sino-Japanese War ended. The main character, Seki Tsukada (played by Yoshiyuki), a married woman, falls in love with Toyoji Tanaka (Tatsuya Fuji), a demobilized soldier 26 years younger than her, and as they continue their affair, she conspires with Toyoji to murder her rickshaw driver husband, Gisaburo Tsukada (Takahiro Tamura), and dump him in an old well in the village, but he appears as a ghost to haunt them both.</p>
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<p> The interview took place in February 1978. I interviewed Mr. Yoshiyuki in February 1978, when he was shooting Shochiku&#8217;s &#8220;Night Collapsed&#8221; (directed by Masahisa Sadanaga) at Shochiku&#8217;s Ofuna Film Studio.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He says, &#8220;I was just relieved to have gotten over the climax of the film, and then this job started.</span></p>
<p> He said, &#8220;I had just started this job when I was relieved to have passed the climax of the film. The climax was the filming of &#8220;The Ghost of Love,&#8221; which was entered in Competition at the Cannes International Film Festival in May 1978 and was released in Japan in October of the same year.</p>
<p> The Ghosts of Love was shot in an abandoned house deep in the mountains of Shiga Prefecture for about a month. The hardcore scene between Fuji and Leako Matsuda in &#8220;Ai no Corrida&#8221; caused a sensation, but when I asked him about it, he replied, &#8220;If you divide the film into hard and soft scenes, the soft scenes are the hard ones,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> When I asked him about the hardcore scenes in &#8220;Ai no Corrida,&#8221; which caused a sensation, he replied, &#8220;If you divide them into hard and soft, they are soft, but I don&#8217;t know if the movie is soft or not. &#8230;&#8230;</span></p>
<p> He said, &#8220;There are a lot of love scenes,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> There&#8217;s a lot of love scenes. There are a lot of love scenes,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s about a guy who kills his husband who gets in the way of his love, and he wants to forget about it so he gets even more passionate about it, but the technique is the same as in &#8216;Collida of Love. But this time, they filmed it in such a way that they didn&#8217;t have to cut it.</span></p>
<p> But this time, they filmed it in such a way that they didn&#8217;t have to cut it,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p> In one scene, Toyoji (Fuji) urges Seki (Yoshiyuki) to shave his underarms, and the camera angle was such that the shaving part was hidden behind Toyoji&#8217;s head.</p>
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<p> Compared to &#8220;Ai no Corrida,&#8221; in which extreme sexual scenes were shot hardcore, the film was softer in its depiction of sex, but it placed more emphasis on the elaborate depiction of the male-female affair between Seki and Toyoji and the story surrounding the ghost.</p>
<p> In any case, Yoshiyuki&#8217;s breasts were also exposed, and the scene of their affair with Wisteria became a scene overflowing with eroticism, vividly coloring the &#8220;forbidden story.</p>
<p> The film was entered in the Competition section at the 31st Cannes International Film Festival, where it was highly praised for its artistic quality and Oshima won the Best Director Award. Ms. Yoshiyuki won the Best Leading Actress Award at the 2nd Japan Academy Prize for her passionate performance in the film.</p>
<p> She spoke about her feelings at the age of 42 when she took on the challenge of directing Oshima&#8217;s film, a work of love and eroticism with a rich sexual performance,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I was opposed to it a lot, but the content was interesting, and I&#8217;m the type of person who always needs to try something new,&#8221; she said with a smile.</span></p>
<p> But the content was interesting, and I&#8217;m the kind of person who always needs to try something new,&#8221; he said with a smile.</p>
<p> It was a true testament to Yoshiyuki&#8217;s spirit as an actor that he was able to accomplish what he set his mind to without worrying about what others thought of him. &#8230;&#8230;</p>


 Ryo Sakamoto (Former head of the Culture and Society Department of Tokyo Sports Newspaper)

 Yoshio Tsunoda/Afro

 Actor Kazuko Yoshiyuki died of pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital on September 2 at the age of 90. She was also a talented essayist. The "young lady" who grew up in a "family of writers" showed her "other face" as an actor... ...

Kazuko Yoshiyuki, the late director of Nagisa Oshima’s “The Ghost of Love,” talks about the determination of an actor.

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