Tsuru Aoki

Tsuru Aoki (青木 鶴子, Aoki Tsuruko, September 9, 1892 – October 18, 1961) was a Japanese stage and screen actress whose career was most prolific in the United States during the silent film era of the 1910s through the 1920s. Aoki may have been the first Asian actress to garner top billing in American motion pictures.

Tsuru Aoki
Portrait in a newspaper, c. 1916
Born	(1892-09-09)September 9, 1892 Tokyo, Empire of Japan
Died	October 18, 1961(1961-10-18) (aged 69) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1913–1924, 1960
Spouse	Sessue Hayakawa ​ (m. 1914)​

Life and career

Born in Tokyo, Aoki came to California in 1899 with her uncle, Otojirō Kawakami, his geisha wife, Kawakami Sadayakko, and Otojirō's troupe of actors. At their first stop in San Francisco, Tsuru performed with the troupe and assisted Sadayakko at a Palace Hotel tea ceremony where attendees raved over her "diminutive daintiness." But when the troupe ran into severe financial difficulties, Otojirō made arrangements to have Tsuru adopted by Toshio Aoki, a sketch artist for a local newspaper.^[1] Tsuru Aoki started taking lessons in ballet dance in New York, when she went along with her uncle Toshio, who was hired by David Belasco for The Darling of the Gods. After Toshio's death a reporter looked after Aoki.^[2] Aoki began her acting career after returning to Los Angeles and performing in stage productions in the city's Japanese Theatre where she was noticed by film producer Thomas Ince who placed the young actress under contract. She was also responsible for recruiting Japanese actors for Imperial Japanese Company, a subsidiary of New York Motion Picture Corporation.^[2]

Aoki made her film debut in the Majestic film studios release The Oath of Tsuru San in 1913 opposite actor William Garwood. Her follow-up film was the 1914 Ince produced O Mimi San, which starred the American child actress Mildred Harris and a handsome young newcomer named Sessue Hayakawa, whom Aoki had acted with onstage at the Japanese Theatre the previous year. The couple began a romantic relationship that would culminate in their marriage on May 1, 1914, just weeks before the release of their critically acclaimed and publicly successful film The Wrath of the Gods – a melodrama about an interracial romance between a man portrayed by Caucasian actor/ director Frank Borzage and an Asian woman portrayed by Aoki. The film also starred Sessue Hayakawa and featured actress Gladys Brockwell. Hayakawa and Aoki would eventually make more than twenty films together throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

 

Aoki, c. 1915

 

Aoki with actor and husband Sessue Hayakawa in the 1919 film The Dragon Painter

One of Aoki's most recalled films of the silent period is the 1919 William Worthington-directed The Dragon Painter, based on the novel of the same title by Sidney McCall, in which Aoki starred as a young woman who convinces an isolated, mentally deranged artist named Tatsu (portrayed by Hayakawa) to come down from the mountains so that she may civilize him and he may further his artistic abilities. Other notable films of the period were The Typhoon (1914), The Vigil (1914), The Geisha (1914), The Chinatown Mystery (1915), His Birthright (1918), and The Breath of the Gods (1920).

Throughout the 1910s, Aoki would appear in approximately forty films, often in leading-lady roles which was a first for an Asian actress. Some of her co-stars of the era included such notable names as Marin Sais, Frank Borzage, Gladys Brockwell, Mildred Harris, Jack Holt, Jane Wolfe, Dagmar Godowsky, Vola Vale, Florence Vidor, Earle Foxe, and Walter Long. After a series of moderately successful Ince-produced two-reel serials, Aoki's career in the United States began to falter (while her husband's career began to build momentum), and the couple travelled to France in 1923 and filmed the popular Édouard-Émile Violet-directed drama La Bataille. After returning to America, however, Aoki made only three more films before retiring from the screen to raise her and Hayakawa's three children. Her last silent screen performance was the 1924 release The Danger Line. Aoki would only return to the screen in 1960 (her first talkie) to once again appear with her husband in the drama Hell to Eternity. She died the following year in Japan of acute peritonitis at the age of 69.

Filmography

Title	Year	Role	Notes	Ref
The Oath of Tsuru San	1913	Tsuru San	Short
O Mimi San	1914	O Mimi San	Short
The Courtship of O San	1914	O San	Short
The Geisha	1914	Myo	Short
Love's Sacrifice	1914	Little Faun	Short
The Wrath of the Gods	1914	Toya San		^[3]
A Tragedy of the Orient	1914	Kissmoia	Short
A Relic of Old Japan	1914	Katuma	Short
Desert Thieves	1914	Owanono	Short
Star of the North	1914	Star of the North	Short
The Curse of Caste	1914	Kissmoia	Short
The Village 'Neath the Sea	1914	Little Fawn	Short
The Death Mask	1914	Princess Nona	Short
The Typhoon	1914
Nipped	1914	San Toy Nakado	Short
The Vigil	1914	Mira	Short
Mother of the Shadows	1914	Laughing Moon	Short
The Last of the Line	1914	Girl at Riverside	Short
The Famine	1915	Misao	Short
The Chinatown Mystery	1915	Woo	Short
The Beckoning Flame	1915	Janira	Short	^[4]
Alien Souls	1916	Yuri Chan		^[5]
The Honorable Friend	1916	Toki-Ye
The Soul of Kura San	1916	Kura-San
Each to His Kind	1917	Princess Nada
The Call of the East	1917	O'Mitsu – Arai's Sister
The Curse of Iku	1918	Omi San
The Bravest Way	1918	Sat-u
His Birthright	1918	Saki San
A Heart in Pawn	1919	Sada
The Courageous Coward	1919	Rei Oaki
The Gray Horizon	1919	O Haru San
The Dragon Painter	1919	Ume-Ko
Bonds of Honor	1919	Toku-ko
Locked Lips	1920	Lotus Blossom
A Tokyo Siren	1920	Asuti Hishuri
The Breath of the Gods	1920	Yuki Onda
Screen Snapshots	1920–1921	Herself
Black Roses	1921	Blossom
Five Days to Live	1922	Ko Ai
Night Life in Hollywood	1922	Herself
The Battle	1923	La Marquise Yorisaka
The Danger Line	1924	Marquise Yorisaka
The Great Prince Shan	1924	Nita
Sen Yan's Devotion	1924	Sen Yan's Wife
Hell to Eternity	1960	Mother Une	(final film role)

Bibliography

• The Americanization of Tsuru Aoki: Orientalism, Melodrama, Star Image, and the New Woman by Sarah Ross. Duke University Press, 2005. Camera Obscura 20 (3 60):129-157; doi:10.1215/02705346-20-3_60-129.
• Ross, Sara (2005). "The Americanization of Tsuru Aoki: Orientalism, Melodrama, Star Image, and the New Woman". In Catherine Russell (ed.). Camera Obscura 60: New Women of the Silent Screen: China, Japan, Hollywood. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. pp. 128–157. ISBN 978-0-8223-6624-9.

References

1. Joseph L. Anderson, Enter a Samurai: Kawakami Otojirō and Japanese Theatre in the West, 2 v. (Tucson: Wheatmark, 2011), 1: 65, 88. According to Anderson, Aoki was an old friend of an American missionary couple the Kawakamis had met aboard ship, Merriman Colbert Harris and Flora Best Harris (89).
2. Anderson, Joseph L. (2011). Enter a Samurai: Full text and illustrations. Wheatmark, Inc. pp. 88–89. ISBN 978-1-60494-367-2.
3. "Advertisement for The Wrath of The Gods". Delaware County Daily Times. Chester, Pennsylvania. July 11, 1914. p. 5. Retrieved December 10, 2014 – via Newspapers.com.  
4. "The Beckoning Flame". Arkansas City Daily Traveler. Arkansas City, Kansas. February 18, 1916. p. 6. Retrieved December 10, 2014 – via Newspapers.com.  
5. "Alien Souls". Iowa City Press-Citizen. Iowa. August 24, 1916. p. 3. Retrieved December 10, 2014 – via Newspapers.com.  

Further reading

• Miyao, Daisuke (2007). Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3969-4. OCLC 470908395.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tsuru Aoki.

• Tsuru Aoki at IMDb
• Tsuru Aoki at AllMovie
• Tsuru Aoki at Women Film Pioneers Project
• Silent Era People
• New York Times movies