Akiko Wakabayashi

Japanese actress

Akiko Wakabayashi
若林映子
Akiko Wakabayashi in Akiko (1961)
Born	(1939-12-13) 13 December 1939 (age 84) Ōta, Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1958–1971
Known for	You Only Live Twice as Bond girl Aki

Akiko Wakabayashi (若林映子, Wakabayashi Akiko, born 13 December 1939) is a retired Japanese actress.

Career

Wakabayashi is best known in English-speaking countries for her role as Bond girl Aki in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice. Before this, she had made many films in her native Japan, especially Toho Studio's monster films, such as Dogora, the Space Monster (1964) and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), both of which were also released under various other titles. In Ghidorah, she played a mystical princess, who could predict the future and was also a prophetess.

When production of You Only Live Twice began, Wakabayashi was slated to play the role of Kissy Suzuki while her co-star Mie Hama played Suki, one of Tiger Tanaka's top agents. When learning English proved to be a major hurdle to Hama, the women switched roles, with Hama playing the smaller part of Kissy and Wakabayashi playing the larger part of Suki. At her suggestion, the character of Suki was renamed Aki. They had acted together in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi (1965),^[1] from which footage was recut to make Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily?.

In 1971, she made an appearance in an episode of Shirley's World.^[2] Wakabayashi made only one more film (and a guest TV appearance) before disappearing from both the big and small screen. In an interview in G-FAN magazine (No. 76), Wakabayashi said she retired from acting owing to injuries sustained while making a film.

Selected filmography

Song for a Bride (1958)
Josei SOS (1958)
Yajû shisubeshi (1959)
Osorubeki hiasobi (1959)
Le orientali (1960) as Sadako
Shin santô jûyaku: Ataru mo hakke no maki (1960) as Haruko Momoyama
Akiko (1961) as Akiko
Girl from Hong Kong (1961) as Anna Suh
Yato kaze no naka o hashiru (1961) as Sawa
Ganba (1961)
Ai no uzu shio (1962)
Kurenai no sora (1962)
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) as Tamiye
Gekkyû dorobo (1962)
Ankokugai no kiba (1962)
Nippon jitsuwa jidai (1963)
Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: shirei dai hachigo (1963) as Mie Tsugawa
Walleyed Nippon (1963) as Nashiko
The Lost World of Sinbad (1963) as Yaya's maid
Kon'nichiwa akachan (1964) as Shizuko Nagata
Dogora, the Space Monster (1964) as Gangster Hamako^[3]
Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kayaku no taru (1964) as Girl Taken at Haneda
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) as Princess of Sergina
Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi (1965, footage used to make What's Up, Tiger Lily?) as Bai-Lan
The Stranger Within a Woman (1966) as Sayuri Sugimoto
Kiganjô no bôken (1966) as Spuria, Chamberlain's daughter
Arupusu no wakadaishô (1966)
You Only Live Twice (1967) as Aki
Diamonds of the Andes (1968) as Reiko

References

^ "Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama: Bond girls live twice". classicdriver.com. 22 November 2013. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
^ Shoji, Kaori (30 November 2012). "The gentleman in the tux and what he did for Japan". The Japan Times. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
^ Stuart Galbraith IV (16 May 2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. pp. 212–213. ISBN 978-1-4616-7374-3.