She was my favorite actress by far. What a loss.

She had such a happy aura. Such smiling, kind eyes, I always got a great vibe from her. Her smile just made you feel warm inside. Not to mention her tremendous talent.

She blew me away in Innocent Days, though don't watch that anytime soon, as the parallels to what happened are very close. Her character is very suicidal in it, and the end, oh man. I don't think I can watch it again, despite it being an incredible performance. Or perhaps that's why it's such an incredible performance, maybe she felt close to Yukino Tanaka and her struggles? Yukino literally loses all hope in life. We'll never know.

As an actress, perhaps she felt she needed to act as though she was happy all the time, even though she wasn't.

Anyway, there must have been something awful to drive her to do this. Postpartum very likely, as I have family members who had it and it can be severe. Suicidal thoughts are a common symptom, even thoughts of hurting your baby. It can get worse around the 9th month as I recall.

I will certainly go back and watch all the stuff from her that I missed, which is quite a bit. A number of movies and a few dramas. Though there's a lot of stuff that just isn't available, at least not subtitled. Maybe that will change.

Thank you for your performance in Lunch Queen, Pride, Flower Shop Without A Rose, Miss Sherlock, Strawberry Night, Danda Rin, Fukigen na Gene, Egao no Hosoku and so many more.

Rest in peace Yuko, you will live on forever in pixels. Thank you for giving us Miss Sherlock, probably my favorite drama ever now. Your Sherlock will live forever in my heart.

I have no words.
_________________

I just learned about her death. I have no words.

I had read after her death that her husband said something to the effect of "I have no idea why she would do this" when the first responders came.

She had just done a video call with her father-in-law the day before and he said she seemed happy and was showing off the baby. She had even said she was looking forward to bringing the baby to see them when corona was over (her in-laws live in Nara).

Then just recently I read that her best friend (the comedian Ayako Imoto) has been telling people that she has no idea why she did it either.

The two people supposedly closest to her have no idea why she chose to end it, apparently there were no signs.

So strange and tragic.

Her baby just had his first birthday... without her.



In happier news, they are making a third and final Confidence Man JP movie. It will be in honor of Yuko and Haruma and they will include new scenes of them both from footage that was cut from the previous two movies. So there will be something new from her in the future after all, which is really nice.