- Born
- Died
- Height5′ 7¼″ (1.71 m)
- Kumamoto City-born Shimada Yoko is best known in the west as Mariko from the 1980 mini-series Shogun. The lady-in-waiting role created an interest in Japan and its culture overseas and introduced Japanese history to foreign audiences. She won the Golden Globe For Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama category and was nominated for a Prime-time Emmy Award for her work on the serial in 1981. Shimada, who spoke some English for the serial, had been acting for years prior to Shogun however. She began learning ballet since age three and wanted to become a ballerina until her high high school days. Her family had moved to Tokyo when she was eight. She obtained an agent and began acting while in junior high school. The TV serial Zoku Hyouten made her famous beginning 1970. She released a nude photo book, called Kir Royal, in 1992. She was 39 and the photo book became a bestseller shifting half a million copies. At 57 she starred in an 'AV' pornography video called Mikkai in 2011. This was a tribute to her body even at that age. Shimada has a reservation for a space burial.
- IMDb mini biography by: aghaemi
- SpouseHitoshi Yoneyama(1996 - July 2019) (divorced)
- She is best known to Western audiences for her portrayal of Mariko (Lady Toda) in the 1980 miniseries, Shogun with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. Together, she, Takeshi Ôbayashi (Urano), and Masumi Okada (Brother Michael) were the only members of Shogun's massive cast of Japanese actors shown speaking English; her film and TV career dates back to the early 1970s, and she continued to appear in Japanese and occasional Western productions. She lived in Shinjuku.
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