--- name: "Nobuko Miyamoto" canonical: "https://film.one/person/nobuko-miyamoto" roles: ["Actor"] born: "27 March 1945" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T06:53:29.027960+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Nobuko Miyamoto Actor. Born 27 March 1945 in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 27 March 1945, Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan - **Also known as:** Миямото Нобуко, 미야모토 노부코, Miyamoto Nobuko - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q542510, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594421/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/70627 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*The Tale of The Princess Kaguya*](https://film.one/film/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya.md) (84) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Nobuko Miyamoto > Nobuko Miyamoto plays capable, ordinary women who get on with the job in front of them, most memorably in Jūzō Itami's comedies of the 1980s. Even as a voice in *The Tale of The Princess Kaguya*, she is the one person you would trust. In *The Tale of The Princess Kaguya* (2013) Nobuko Miyamoto is a voice rather than a face, and it hardly matters. Her Ōna has moved to the capital because her husband said so, and the first thing she does with a corner of the ornamental garden is dig a vegetable patch in it. She narrates as well, so the whole film is told by the one person in it who never wanted any of this. We called her the film's quiet conscience, and the scene with the spade got to us more than the grander set pieces did, because it is small, practical and entirely hers. That is the Miyamoto part in miniature. She began in the mid-1960s in supporting roles in film and television, and for the best part of twenty years that is what she was given. The turn came with *The Funeral* (1984), the first feature by Jūzō Itami, the director to whom she was married, and from then on she led every film he made through the 1990s: the title role in *Tampopo* (1985), the heroine of the tax-office satire *A Taxing Woman* (1987), eight films in all, three of them with Tsutomu Yamazaki opposite her. The roles Itami wrote for her are of a kind: determined, independent women working their way through an ordinary system, a funeral, a kitchen, a bureaucracy. She is not the joke. The system is the joke, and she is the sane person walking through it with a list. It is a harder thing to play than it sounds, because the temptation is to wink, and on the evidence of the Ghibli film she does not. Ōna is never arch about the palace. She simply keeps gardening. The fair criticism is that the career is Itami's career. Before *The Funeral* the parts were mostly supporting; after his last film the prominent leads are harder to find. Whether that says something about her or about what Japanese cinema offered a woman in her fifties, we cannot tell from here, and we would rather not guess. What we can say is where to start. Since the 1990s she has worked in television and in animation, and for a British viewer the Ghibli film is the easiest place to hear what she does: a plain, steady voice that makes the extraordinary story around it feel like something that happened to a neighbour. Start there, then find the comedies. ## Biography Nobuko Miyamoto is a Japanese actress. She was born on 27 March 1945 in Otaru, Hokkaido, and raised in Nagoya. She was married to director Jūzō Itami from 1969 until his death in 1997 and appeared in many of his films, including *The Funeral* (1984), *Tampopo* (1985), *A Taxing Woman* (1987) and *A Taxing Woman's Return* (1988). She received eight nominations for the Japan Academy Prize for Best Actress, winning in 1988 for her role in *A Taxing Woman*. Her other credits include *Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald* (1997), a voice role in *The Tale of The Princess Kaguya* (2013), *Stand by Me Doraemon 2* (2020) and the series *House of Ninjas* (2024). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, ja.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Tale of The Princess Kaguya* (2013), Fi1m 84, as Ōna / Narrator (voice) — [page](https://film.one/film/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya.md) ## Also known for - *Tampopo* (1985), Tampopo - *Stand by Me Doraemon 2* (2020), Nobita's Grandmother (voice) - *House of Ninjas* (2024), Taki Tawara - *A Taxing Woman's Return* (1988), Ryoko Itakura - *The Funeral* (1984), Chizuko Amamiya - *Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald* (1997), Rumiko Yamazaki - *A Taxing Woman* (1987), Ryoko Itakura - *Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet* (2011), Yamamoto's mother --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/nobuko-miyamoto