was a pioneering Japanese film and stage

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

Career

In 1915, Hanayagi became a student at the Geijutsuza, the modern theater troupe led by Hōgetsu Shimamura and

Sumako Matsui was a Japanese actress and singer. Born as Masako Kobayashi in Matsushiro, Nagano, Nagano Prefecture as the fifth daughter and last of nine children of Tohta Kobayashi, she was adopted by the Hasegawa family in Ueda at the age of six and in 1900 g ...

, and made her stage debut. She moved to the Tōjisha troupe in 1917 and appeared with them in a series of films directed by

Norimasa Kaeriyama (1 March 1893 – 6 November 1964) was a pioneering Japanese film director and film theorist. Biography Beginning with articles he submitted to Yoshizawa Shōten's magazine ''Katsudō shashinkai'' while still a student, Kaeriyama developed ...

for Tenkatsu, starting with ''

The Glow of Life is a Japanese film directed by Norimasa Kaeriyama made in 1918 and released in 1919 by Tenkatsu. It is considered the first in a series of films aimed at reforming and modernizing Japanese cinema. Plot A country girl Teruko falls in love with ...

'' (released 1919). In an era where female roles on screen were played by male actors (

onnagata (also ) are male actors who play female roles in kabuki theatre. History The modern all-male kabuki was originally known as ("male kabuki") to distinguish it from earlier forms. In the early 17th century, shortly after the emergence of the g ...

), Hanayagi was considered "the first billed appearance of a female performer" in Japanese cinema, even though actresses such as Nakamura Kasen had appeared in earlier films or in rensageki, a combination of film and live stage performance. After appearing in more films, she focused her career on the stage after 1920, eventually appearing in the Tsukiji Little Theater as well as the proletarian theater of

Tomoyoshi Murayama was a Japanese artist, play writer, novelist and drama producer active during the Shōwa period in Japan. Early life Murayama was born in the Kanda Suehiro district of Tokyo. His father, who was a medic in the Imperial Japanese Navy, died when h ...

. She retired in 1928 after getting married.

Selected filmography

*''

'' (1919) *''

The Maid of the Deep Mountains ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' (1919)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hanayagi, Harumi 1896 births People from Ibaraki Prefecture 1962 deaths Japanese stage actresses Japanese silent film actresses 20th-century Japanese actresses