Former dancer with the Tokyo Nippon Gekijo who joined the Daiei film company in the late 1940s and gained international recognition with Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950). Over the next two decades Kyo starred in numerous films by some of Japan's greatest directors, including Mizoguchi's "Ugetsu Monogatari" (1953), Kinugasa's "Gate of Hell" (1953), Ichikawa's "Odd Obsession" (1959) and Ozu's "Floating Weeds" (1959). Her sole US film was "The Teahouse of the August Moon" (1956), with Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford.