From "Empire of the Sun" to "The Last Samurai," and from "Memoirs of a Geisha" to "Babel" — when Hollywood film directors have turned their cameras to the Land of the Rising Sun, there is one person they have insisted on having by their side: Yoko Narahashi, a casting agent, producer, sometimes director and, in recent years, all-round interpreter of Japan for U.S. movies.
The daughter of a diplomat — and granddaughter of a one-time steward to Emperor Hirohito — Narahashi's upbringing in the 1950s and early 1960s was an extraordinarily diverse montage of settings, from schools in Ottawa and Montreal to home in Tokyo and stays at the kind of posh mountain retreats where the remnants of Japan's aristocracy continued to frolic.
Bitten by the acting bug in her early 20s, Narahashi jetted off for New York in 1967 to study at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse — known then for its ensemble-based, improvisational, Meisner technique of acting and for its long list of famous alumni — the most recent of whom then included Steve McQueen and Diane Keaton.