Later Years
Hara, who never married, is called "the Eternal Virgin" in Japan and is a symbol of the golden era of Japanese cinema of the 1950s. She quit acting in 1963 (the same year as Ozu's death), and has since led a secluded life in Kamakura, where many of her films with Ozu were made, refusing all interviews and photographs. For years, people would speculate about her reasons for leaving the public eye. Hara herself confessed during her final press conference that she never really enjoyed acting and was only using it as a means to earn money for her family; however, many people continued to speculate over her possible romantic involvement with director Ozu, or the possibility that she had failing eyesight.
After seeing a Setsuko Hara film, the novelist Shūsaku Endō wrote "We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?"
The film Millennium Actress by Satoshi Kon is based in part on Hara.
Read more about this topic: Setsuko Hara
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