Mother

Among her multitudinous onscreen personas—from career woman and prostitute to radical feminist—Tanaka played mother figures intermittently from the early 1940s, perhaps never more memorably than in Mikio Naruse’s contribution to the haha-mono (“mother movie”) genre. As one of the few works from the director distributed theatrically in the West, Mother brought international attention to the actress, who stars as an afflicted yet fiercely independent matriarch in postwar Japan providing for her four children. Exquisitely heartbreaking in her depiction of the enduring pain of loss, Tanaka conveys a world of emotion in a glance.

35mm print courtesy of Japan Foundation: