Yoko Tani

Biography

Yoko Tani (谷洋子, Tani Yōko, 2 August 1928 – 19 April 1999) was a French-born Japanese actress and nightclub entertainer. Tani was born in Paris. Her birth name was Itani Yōko (猪谷洋子). She has occasionally been described as 'Eurasian', 'half French', 'half Japanese' and even, in one source, 'Italian Japanese', all of which are incorrect. French records (1958) show that her father and mother—both Japanese—were attached to the Japanese embassy in Paris, with Tani herself conceived en route during a shipboard passage from Japan to Europe in 1927 and subsequently born in Paris the following year, hence given the name Yōko (洋子), one reading of which can mean "ocean-child.". Tani would later play a diplomat's daughter in Piccadilly Third Stop. According to Japanese sources, the family returned to Japan in 1930, when Yoko would still have been a toddler, and she did not return to France until 1950 when her schooling was completed. Given that there were severe restrictions on Japanese travelling outside Japan directly after World War II, this would have been an unusual event; however, it is known that Itani had attended an elite girls' school in Tokyo (Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School, currently Ochanomizu University Senior High School), and then graduated from Tsuda University. She subsequently secured a Catholic scholarship to study aesthetics at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) under Étienne Souriau. Once back in Paris, Tani found little interest in attending university (although by her own account she persevered for two years despite understanding hardly anything that was being said). Instead, she developed a more compelling attraction to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the variety music-hall, where, setting herself up as an exotic oriental beauty, she quickly established a reputation for her provocative "geisha" dances, which generally ended with her slipping out of her kimono. It was here she was spotted by Marcel Carné, who took her into his circle of director and actor-friends, including Roland Lesaffre, whom she was later to marry. As a result, she began to get bit parts in films—starting as (perhaps predictably) a Japanese dancer, in Gréville's Le port du désir (1953–1954, released 1955)—and on the stage, with a role as Lotus Bleu in la Petite Maison de Thé (French adaptation of The Teahouse of the August Moon) at the Théâtre Montparnasse, 1954–1955 season. ... Source: Article "Yoko Tani" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Most Known For

Ben Casey

Cinépanorama

as Self

Softly from Paris

as Dame Lune

My Geisha

as Kazumi Ito

Man in a Suitcase

Koroshi

as Ako Nakamura / Miho

Drama 61-67

as Miss Hanago

Shirley's World

Les Dossiers de l'Agence O

as Kikou, la stip-teaseuse

Nights of Shame

as Eurasian (uncredited)

The Savage Innocents

as Asiak

The Quiet American

as Rendezvous Hostess

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?

as Isami Hiroti

The Silent Star

as Sumiko Ogimura, japanische Ärztin

Marco Polo

as Princess Amurroy

Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World

as Princess Lei-ling

The Ostrich Has Two Eggs

as Yoko

Ursus and the Tartar Princess

as Princess Ila

Love on Rainbow Island

as Mari Okano

Invasion

as Leader of the Lystrians