Actress. Called “Japan’s Shirley Temple”, she extended her film career over a long span of years. After making her silver screen bow in the 1929 silent “Mother”, she had a steady succession of film roles, the depth of her assignments increasing with maturity. Takamine became a freelance performer in 1950 when she took the risk of breaking away from Japan’s studio system; her gamble paid-off as she soon became her country’s most popular screen actress. Out of a large number of appearances she is perhaps best remembered as a small town school teacher in 1954’s “The Twenty-four Eyes”, as an aging bar maid in the 1960 “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs”, and as a farm girl forced into an arranged marriage in 1961’s “Immortal Love”. Honored often, she received four Mainichi Film Concours Best Actress Awards for “The Twenty-four Eyes” (1955), “Floating Clouds” (1956), “Times of Joy and Sorrow” (1958), and “Happiness of Us Alone” (1962). Following her 1979 screen retirement she became a respected essayist, and in 1996 she was presented a Japan Academy Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. Takamine died of lung cancer; a number of her movies have been preserved, though some were lost during World War II. (bio by: Bob Hufford)