A graduate of Tokyo Film School, she entered Toho Studios and made her screen debut in Yasujirō Shimazu's 1944 drama Nichijō no tatakai. Her early collaboration with Akira Kurosawa began with the co-directed but later disowned Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946) and continued through One Wonderful Sunday (1947), Drunken Angel (1948) and The Quiet Duel (1949). During the 1948 Toho labor dispute she alig…
