is a Japanese actress. She has played numerous roles in film and television, including lead roles in ''

Snakes and Earrings is a Japanese novel by Hitomi Kanehara. The story follows Lui, a young woman in Tokyo whose fascination with body modification and BDSM, sadomasochistic sexual activity drives her to make increasingly dangerous personal choices. First published i ...

'', ''

Yurigokoro is a Japanese drama film directed by Naoto Kumazawa, based on Mahokaru Numata's novel of the same name. It stars Yuriko Yoshitaka, Kenichi Matsuyama and Tori Matsuzaka. Plot Cast * Yuriko Yoshitaka as Misako * Kenichi Matsuyama as Yōsuke * T ...

'', and the

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

asadora , colloquially known as , is a serialized, 15 minutes per episode, Japanese television drama program series broadcast in the mornings by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. The first such series aired in 1961 with the black-and-white , starring Take ...

Hanako to Anne is a Japanese television drama series, the 90th Asadora series broadcast on NHK. It debuted on March 31, 2014, and is broadcast Monday through Saturday mornings, with a scheduled to end of September 27, 2014. It is based on the novel ''An no Yurik ...

''.

Career

At age 16, her first year of high school, Yoshitaka joined the entertainment industry when she was scouted by an agency while shopping at Harajuku. Yoshitaka made her acting debut in 2006. She was given the lead role in the live-action adaptation of

Hitomi Kanehara is a Japanese novelist. Her novel ''Hebi ni piasu'' (''Snakes and Earrings'') won the Shōsetsu Subaru Literary Prize and the Akutagawa Prize, and sold over a million copies in Japan. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages ...

's award-winning novel ''

'' in 2007. Portraying Lui, a teenager whose life goes into a downward spiral after meeting the forked-tongued and tattooed Ama, the role was Yoshitaka's

breakthrough role A breakthrough role, also known as a breakout role, is a term in the film industry to describe the performance of an actor or actress which contributed significantly to the development of their career and beginning of critical recognition. The si ...

. The Japanese public began to take notice of her, and in a poll conducted by

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

, Yoshitaka was the fifth promising young actress of 2009 and 2009's freshest female celebrity. In 2010, Oricon again conducted a poll on the most promising actress and she managed climb up to top the poll. Yoshitaka began to receive more work in 2008 as she appeared in Flow's

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

, was given her first lead role in the comedy drama and took up the lead role in the film before the theatrical release of her other lead film ''Snakes and Earrings''. In 2009, Yoshitaka was given the role of the suicidal Kairi Hayakawa in the romantic-comedy

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

''Love Shuffle''. Later in the year, she portrayed in the police drama ''

Tokyo Dogs , sometimes styled as ''Tôkyô Dogs'', is a Fuji TV Japanese television drama, which stars Shun Oguri, Hiro Mizushima and Yuriko Yoshitaka. Synopsis So Takakura (Oguri) witnessed his father's murder at a young age. Pledging to catch the killer, ...

'' with

Shun Oguri is a Japanese actor and voice actor, son of stage director Tetsuya Oguri, and the youngest of 3 siblings, including older brother Ryo, who is also an actor. He started in small roles as extra in the works in which his father and brother worked ...

and

Hiro Mizushima , known professionally as , is a Japanese actor, creative director, and writer. He appeared in a number of Japanese TV dramas, including ''Mei-chan no Shitsuji'', ''Hanazakari no Kimitachi e'' and ''Zettai Kareshi''. Additionally, he was well kn ...

as her co-stars. In 2010, she starred as all three sisters in a short drama series titled . It was announced on May 13, 2010 that Yoshitaka was given her first lead role in a network television drama series called , portraying a university student with an incurable illness. She played Tae Kojima in the two-part 2011 live-action adaptation of the

sci-fi Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universe ...

and

action Action may refer to: * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video game Film * Action film, a genre of film * ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford * ''Action'' (1980 fil ...

manga ''

Gantz ''Gantz'' (stylized as ''GANTZ'') is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku. It was serialized in Shueisha's ''seinen'' manga magazine ''Weekly Young Jump'' from June 2000 to June 2013, with its chapters collected i ...

''. She also took the lead role in Kōji Maeda's movie ''Konzen Tokkyū'', portraying a young woman dating multiple men in hopes of finding the right one to marry. It premiered in Spring 2011. From March 31, 2014 to September 27, 2014 she portrayed

Hanako Muraoka was a Japanese novelist and translator. She is best known for translating ''Anne of Green Gables'' by L.M. Montgomery into Japanese. Early life and education Muraoka was born on June 21, 1893, in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture. Her birth name w ...

(1893–1968) in , a

Japanese television drama , also called , are television programs that are a staple of Japanese television and are broadcast daily. All major TV networks in Japan produce a variety of drama series including romance, comedy, detective stories, horror, jidaigeki, thriller ...

series, the 90th

Asadora , colloquially known as , is a serialized, 15 minutes per episode, Japanese television drama program series broadcast in the mornings by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. The first such series aired in 1961 with the black-and-white , starring Take ...

series broadcast on

. She hosted the 65th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen on New Year's Eve 2014 alongside

Arashi is a Japanese boy band consisting of five members formed under the Johnny & Associates talent agency. The members are Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and Jun Matsumoto. Arashi officially formed on September 15, 1999 ...

Personal life

While she was preparing for her role in ''Snakes and Earrings'', Yoshitaka was involved in a traffic accident in September 2007, and suffered a fractured jaw. She was in the

intensive care unit 220px, Intensive care unit An intensive care unit (ICU), also known as an intensive therapy unit or intensive treatment unit (ITU) or critical care unit (CCU), is a special department of a hospital or health care facility that provides intensiv ...

(ICU) for five days as a result.

Filmography

TV drama

Film

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Yoshitaka, Yuriko Japanese film actresses Japanese television actresses Actresses from Tokyo 1988 births Living people Asadora lead actors 21st-century Japanese actresses Amuse Inc. talents Taiga drama lead actors