Yoshiko Okada

was a Japanese stage and film actress who defected to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Childhood and youth Yoshiko Okada was born in Hiroshima Prefecture on April 21, 1902. Her father was a newspaper reporter, her mother came from a farming family in Fukuoka prefecture; her maternal grandfather was one-quarter Dutch. Though the family moved several times, including to Busan in Korea, and she changed school eight times in her childhood, she received an excellent education. Her father's political leanings were very liberal (for instance, when her school visited the Imperial Palace he had her stay home) and this independent outlook remained with her throughout her life. In 1915 she entered the department of western painting at the Joshibi University of Art and Design. In 1917 her father became editor-in-chief of Hokumon Nippo, a Hokkaido newspaper, and upon graduation she joined him as a female reporter. Her beauty earned her some local attention and she was called on to act in amateur theatricals for charity. Her father was friends with Hogetsu Shimamura, founder of the revolutionary Geijutsu-za (Art Theater) and with the playwright Kichizo Nakamura, so in 1919, he took her to Tokyo to become Nakamura's apprentice. Shingeki actress