| Hiroko Yakushimaru
was a very popular actress in Japan in the
early to mid 1980's. Early on in her career,
she appeared in several films for Nippon mega
producer Haruki Kadokawa, including her first
appearance, when she was 14, opposite Ken
Takakura in the 1978 film Never Give Up,
which was directed by Junya Sato (The
Bullet Train, Proof of the Man) and as
the lead in Nobuhiko Obayashi's School
in the Crosshairs (1981). She is
best known in the West for her performance
as Princess Shizu in Kinji
Fukasaku's period piece Legend of
the Eight Samurai. In Japan, however,
her best known performance is as the schoolgirl
Izumi Hoshi in the cult classic Sailor
Suit and Machine Gun, featuring an infamous
sequence where she blows through a room full
of yakuza wearing a schoolgirl uniform (sailor
suit) and wielding a machine gun. Against
the grain, Yakushimaru continued to stay active
into her 30's and 40's, staring in movies
such as the very succesful Always:
Sunset on Third Street (2005).
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