Through Rare Photos, Remembering Yuko Takeuchi’s Smile, 5 Years After Her Passing

She smiled equally for everyone.

At times her smile shone like the sun; at others, her fragile, fleeting expressions drew audiences in as if by gravity. Such was the actress she was.

It has been nearly five years since that day when Japan was shrouded in grief. On September 27, 2020, Yuko Takeuchi ended her own life at the age of 40. She was found unconscious in the closet of her home by her husband, actor Taiki Nakabayashi (40), whom she had married the previous year, in 2019.

She left behind her eldest son, then just 14, and her infant second son, only eight months old. The full circumstances of her death remain unclear. Columnist Akio Nakamori, who had covered Takeuchi since her debut, says, “No matter how many years pass, I hope people never forget Yuko Takeuchi, a truly once-in-a-generation actress.”

“I think it was in the spring of 1996 when I first met her. I saw this smiling girl in an advertisement for the Ministry of Finance’s Kanto Finance Bureau on a train and thought, ‘Who is she?’ I immediately requested an interview. For Takeuchi, who had just turned sixteen, it was her very first interview. It was the mid-1990s, during the height of the ‘kogal’ fashion boom, yet she carried herself with the air of a refined young lady.

At the same time, her pale, delicate face and earnest eyes were full of ambition. She told me innocently, ‘I want to become an actor who can be in dramas and movies, like Tomoko Yamaguchi or Etsushi Toyokawa.’”

Soon after, Takeuchi rose to fame, starring in the 1999 NHK morning drama Asuka, and rapidly climbed the ladder to stardom.

“The next time I saw her was in 2001. By then, she had become a hugely popular actress, radiating an aura that made me hesitate to approach her. But then she came up to me, smiling, and said, ‘You’re Mr. Nakamori, right? You were the first person to interview me — I’ll never forget that! I even bought several copies of the magazine and handed them out to my relatives,’ she said playfully. She truly smiled equally at everyone.”

Takeuchi went on to star in a string of hit dramas, including Lunch Queen (Fuji TV, 2002) and Pride (Fuji TV, 2004). In June 2005, she married actor Shido Nakamura, her co-star from the film Be with You, and gave birth to their son that November. However, following Nakamura’s affair scandal, they divorced in 2008. From then on, while continuing her acting career, Takeuchi also devoted herself to raising her son as a single mother.

Freelance writer Yoko Kikuchi, who interviewed Takeuchi that same year and was later repeatedly requested by the actress herself for interviews, recalls:

“At that time, Takeuchi was easing back into her career after slowing down a bit due to personal matters. While waiting during a shoot, an editor nearby happened to mention, ‘Kikuchi-san can read palms.’ Takeuchi’s face lit up even more than usual, and she said, ‘Please, read mine!’ Her hands were beautiful — pale and slender fingers.

I told her, ‘You feel emotions more deeply than most people, which makes you sensitive. So besides acting — where you express emotion — you might also be suited to writing novels.’ She then turned to her manager and cheerfully said, ‘Hey, she says I should write a novel!’ with that radiant smile of hers.”

At the end of that interview, however, her expression suddenly turned serious as she said quietly, “I want to become an adult who can forgive imperfection.”

“From all my interviews with her, I felt that Takeuchi was someone so kind that she often took on other people’s pain — and she wasn’t good at hiding her emotions. In an entertainment world where appearances and reality often diverge, her honesty and sensitivity must have made life very hard. Perhaps what she truly needed was to learn how to forgive, including herself,” Kikuchi reflects.

I want to enjoy time with my family.

After a dazzling career in her twenties, Yuko Takeuchi’s thirties were, in contrast, a period with fewer commercial hits — a quiet, sometimes trying chapter in her life.

“A few years before she passed, I once saw her after a TV recording — she had been chatting with a close producer in unusually high spirits, and then suddenly, she looked completely drained, standing alone, almost fragile. At the time, she told me, ‘Every morning, I practice smiling in front of the mirror before going to work.’ I think she was forcing herself to keep up appearances. And of course, during the last year and a half of her life, she had just remarried and given birth. Even then, she always treated the staff with warmth and kindness,” recalls a network staff member.

Just before her death, she spoke in a magazine interview about her hopes for the future:

“In my forties, I want to keep my career as my foundation, but also cherish time with my family.”

She was meant to savor happiness as a wife and mother, alongside her beloved family. Yet perhaps the weight of all the pain she had quietly carried became too much to bear. Always gentle with others but harsh on herself, she may have reached a moment when she could no longer forgive her own exhaustion — caught between the demands of motherhood and her devotion to acting.

“I don’t believe her death was something good,” says writer Kikuchi. “But I think she didn’t end her life — she lived it completely, as an actress. There’s no one else who could make everyone on set smile just by being there. Even though we can’t see her anymore, her work remains. I hope people continue to watch — that’s her proof of life.”

Yuko Takeuchi — we will never forget your radiant smile.

From the October 3 and 10, 2025, issue of “FRIDAY”