Now 75, Kirin Kiki is everyone’s favorite Japanese grandmother, a role she has been playing for years now on big screens and small. But she has also never been anyone’s stereotype of quietly suffering, nobly self-sacrificing Japanese womanhood.
Starting on television in the mid-1960s she did not shy from goofball comedy, including roles that made her look older than her years. She also had no compunctions about auctioning off her then stage name, Yuki Chiho, in a variety show stunt in 1977. She later told interviewers she found her current name by thumbing through a dictionary.
Her convention-defying ways extended to her private life. After a brief marriage to actor Shin Kishida, she wed rocker Yuya Uchida in 1973, but the couple separated after only a year a half. Rather than divorce again, Kiki decided to stay married to Uchida but not live with him, an arrangement that has continued to the present. After Kiki was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, the couple reportedly became closer, even vacationing in Hawaii once a year.