was a Japanese actress and singer.

Early life

Shiga was born in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

on June 17, 1910. Her father was a government bureaucrat, and in 1924 the family had to move to

Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

when he was transferred to the

Government-General of Taiwan The Government-General of Taiwan (Government of Taiwan, Taiwan Government, Government of Formosa, Japanese: , Kyūjitai: , Hepburn: ''Taiwan Sōtokufu''; ; Tâi-lô: Tâi-uân Tsóng-tok-hú; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ=Thòi-vân Chúng-tuk-fú) was the ...

. Shiga later attended a girl's high school in

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

. After graduation she moved to

Setagaya is a special ward in the Tokyo Metropolis in Japan. It is also the name of a neighborhood and administrative district within the ward. Its official bird is the azure-winged magpie, its flower is the fringed orchid, and its tree is the '' Ze ...

to live with her father and his new wife (her mother died while she was in Nagasaki). She wanted to study music, but her father opposed it so she left home and became a dancer at a

dance hall Dance hall in its general meaning is a hall for Dance, dancing, but usually refers to a specific type of twentieth-century venue, with dance clubs (nightclubs) becoming more popular towards the end of the century. The palais de danse was a term ap ...

Nihonbashi is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, which sprung up around the bridge of the same name that has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603. The curre ...

Career

Shiga joined the Shinkō Kinema in 1933 and debuted in the film ''Atarashiki Ten'' later that year. She had a relationship with the director,

Yutaka Abe was a Japanese film director and actor. He went to America along with a younger brother to visit an uncle living in Los Angeles. There he enrolled in an acting school, and upon hearing that Thomas H. Ince was looking for Japanese extras to work ...

, and became pregnant. She aborted the child in 1934 after finishing her next film, ''Muteki''. She starred in four more films, which were directed by Minoru Murata. However, in 1935 she and the midwife who performed her abortion were arrested for breaking the Criminal Abortion Law of 1907. Shiga was sentenced a three-year

suspended sentence A suspended sentence is a sentence on conviction for a criminal offence, the serving of which the court orders to be deferred in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation. If the defendant does not break the law during that ...

on November 25, 1936. Shiga's arrest and imprisonment started a nationwide conversation about abortion. The prosecutor in her case, Daikichi Imoto, had compared her to Masako, the protagonist of

Yūzō Yamamoto was a Japanese novelist and playwright. His real name was written as "山本勇造" but pronounced the same as his pen name. Biography Yamamoto was born to a family of kimono makers in Tochigi (city), Tochigi City, Tochigi Prefecture. After fi ...

's novel ''Onna no Isshō''. He said that Shiga chose to abort her child because she lacked maternal love, unlike Masako, who raised her child. Yamamoto himself pointed out in a response in the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun that Masako's situation was very different from Shiga's, because Masako was a doctor with a large inheritance, while Shiga was a working woman without family support. Many other writers were similarly sympathetic. A law was passed in 1937 to support single mothers like Shiga would have been. Shiga returned to the screen in 1937 in ''Utsukushiki taka''. She starred in three more films in 1938, but was not able to play the femme fatale roles she played before the war because of increased government censorship. Her scandal also meant that her attempts to play lighter heroines were overshadowed. She joined a theater troupe and became a stage actress instead. After the troupe was dissolved by the government in August 1940, she married and had a son. Her husband died in 1948. Shiga appeared in several other films, and her final role was in 1957.

Bibliography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shiga, Akiko Japanese actresses 1910 births 1990 deaths