Who was Akira Kurosawa's wife from 1945 until her death in 1985?

Akira Kurosawa’s wife from 1945 until her death in 1985 was Yōko Yaguchi.

Yaguchi was a Japanese actress who worked with Kurosawa on The Most Beautiful, his 1944 wartime film. Their relationship reportedly developed through arguments about how he treated the actors, and the professional friction eventually became a personal partnership. They married on May 21, 1945, and remained together for nearly four decades.

Yaguchi stopped acting after the marriage, making The Most Beautiful her final credited film appearance. The couple had two children: son Hisao Kurosawa, who later worked as a film producer, and daughter Kazuko Kurosawa, who became a costume designer. Yaguchi died in 1985, the same year Kurosawa released Ran.

The answer is sometimes confused with Isuzu Yamada, Machiko Kyō, or Setsuko Hara, all prominent Japanese actresses associated with the era, but none was Kurosawa’s wife. Yaguchi’s importance to Kurosawa’s biography is therefore personal rather than primarily based on a long acting career: her screen work was brief, while her marriage and family life overlapped with the director’s entire mature career.