Setsuko Hara: Japan's Eternal Virgin Who Walked Away From Fame

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
So in September of 2015, there's this 95-year-old woman who passes away from pneumonia.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
Right, just in this very quiet hospital room in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:10)
And the craziest part is that her family told absolutely no one about it.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
Oh yeah, for over two months.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:15)
Yeah, I mean, no news alerts, no front page obituaries.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:19)
No fans leaving flowers outside her home or anything like that, just total silence.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
Which is honestly baffling, because decades earlier, the woman who died in that room was literally the most famous face in all of Japan.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
Completely ubiquitous.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
Right. Her name was Setsuko Hara, and during Japan's cinematic golden age, like back in the 1950s, she was everywhere.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:39)
The public and the press actually called her the eternal virgin.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:42)
Yeah, which is a heavy title to carry. She was basically treated as this ultimate icon of purity, of tradition, and just the perfect self-sacrificing Japanese woman.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:51)
She really was the defining symbol of an entire era. I mean, when you watch her films, you are essentially watching a nation process its own identity in real time.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:00)
And that's exactly what we're going to get into today. Our mission is to look way past that massive silver screen mythology.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:09)
To get to the real person.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:10)
Exactly. Relying on historical data, biographical accounts, and her actual filmography, we want to uncover the real woman who was actually born Masae Aida.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:20)
Not Setsuko Hara.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:22)
Right. We want to examine this fascinating, just almost unbelievable tension between the idealized character she played and the radical agency she exercised by just, well, by simply walking away from it all.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:35)
Because to understand why her disappearance was so staggering to people, we really have to look at the mechanics of how she became an icon on the first place. Oh, definitely. Her presence meant everything to a nation that was completely transforming itself. But her entry into that spotlight was entirely accidental.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:49)
Yeah. Her beginning totally subverts that typical Hollywood, you know, stars born narrative.
We are looking at a girl born Masae Aida in 1920 in what is now Yokohama. And she was part of this massive family.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:02)
Right. Three brothers and five sisters. That is a lot of mouths to feed. Seriously.
And she didn't harbor any of those childhood dreams of stardom. She just wanted to go to school and study.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:11)
She was a normal kid.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:12)
But her older sister happened to be married to a film director, this guy Hisatora Kumagai.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:17)
And he's the one who heavily encouraged her to drop out of school and start working.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:21)
Which is wild. The Japanese studio system in the 1930s was this massive industrial powerhouse.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:28)
Oh, they were churning out content at just a massive scale.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:32)
So when she starts working at Nikkatsu Studios just outside Tokyo in 1935, she is only 15 years old.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:38)
Just 15

**SPEAKER_2** (2:39)
I know, right?
And the studio immediately takes control of her public identity. They strip away the name Masae Aida and just hand her this stage name, Setsuko Hara.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:51)
Right, for her debut film, which was this project called Do Not Hesitate Young Folks.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:55)
It makes me think of a teenager being drafted into a really demanding family business.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:00)
That's a great way to put it.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:02)
You know, you don't really get a say. You don't map out this grand artistic journey. You just put on the apron and start bussing tables. Exactly. She wasn't seeking the spotlight. She was literally just going to work to help financially support a massive household.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:15)
And in that family business, she walks in as a private citizen and walks out as a highly managed product.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:22)
By the time she was 17, she was an international export.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:25)
Wait, at 17?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:26)
Yeah, in 1937, she starred in this German-Japanese co-production called The Daughter of the Samurai, or it's sometimes known as The New Earth. Okay, wow. And her role was intensely dramatic. She plays a woman who actually attempts to throw herself into an active volcano.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:43)
A volcano. That sets a very specific tone for her early career.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:47)
It really does.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:48)
And when you look at the historical context of the late 1930s and going into World War II, the Japanese government effectively mobilized the film industry.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:57)
Right. Studios were actually mandated to produce state-sponsored content.