Kana Tsuruta |work| <Mobile>

Although primarily a Chikage Awashima vehicle, Tsuruta’s role as the tragic innkeeper’s daughter is where critics took notice. Set against the dying embers of the Showa era, Tsuruta played a woman whose unspoken love for a doomed soldier transcended the melodramatic tropes of the time. Her performance is a masterclass in mono no aware (the bittersweet awareness of transience). The scene where she irons a kimono while tears silently stream down her face was voted by Kinema Junpo as one of the top ten "silent cries" in cinema history.