González-López Irene, Smith Michael. Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity

Edinburgh University Press, 2022. — 232 р. — ISBN 978 1 4744 0969 8Tanaka Kinuyo lived a happy early childhood in Shimonoseki as the daughter of an af f l uent merchant family, but things took a turn for the worse with the sudden death of her father. Her elder brother, Keisuke, on whom the family relied, disappeared and the second, Kanae, left home for Tokyo without leaving a trace. Tanaka’s widowed mother Yasu took charge of the family business, but under the administration of a dishonest clerk the family was soon driven into poverty. Turned adrift, Yasu took her four remaining children, of whom Tanaka was the youngest, and decided to ask her elder brother in Osaka for support.
Around the same time, her elder daughter Shigeko divorced and returned home, and so mother and fi ve children left Shimonoseki. Kinuyo was in her fi rst year of primary school. Yasu’s brother in Osaka was Kobayashi Yasutarō, a man who had also failed in business and eked out a living by running a private school for children from the neighbourhood. Th is situation was what Kinuyo’s family tumbled into. Life was hard in the slums.
During the time Kinuyo lived in Shimonoseki, she took lessons in biwa. Putting to use that talent, at the age of ten she appeared on stage as part of the Biwa Girls’ Operetta Troupe (Biwa shōjo kagekidan) of the amusement park of Rakutenchi in Osaka. Kinuyo stood out and quickly became a child star. With her income she supported her entire family; throughout her life she would always continue to bear the weight of the family. While she was performing at Rakutenchi, Kinuyo watched a fi lm for the fi rst time. She became fascinated with being an actress, but at this point it was only a faraway dream.