We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yoko Nomoto. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yoko below.

Yoko, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I played the role of Mother in a short film “Tadaima” (I’m home) directed by Gordon Buck. My role is a single mother living with the trauma of being raped.

The director said that he wanted to portray the worst situation that can happen when a person with mental illness is on her own and has no support.

Although not depicted in the film, the back story is that the perpetrator of the rape was the father of the daughter.
I was initially resistant to the idea because I had not envisioned that much tragedy. Because by creating the actor lived a similar life and we truly live that life.
I was not confident that I could carry such a burden. But then I read an article about a mother who actually gave birth to the criminal’s child, and I shed tears many times because of the mother’s love for her child, which was beyond anything I could have imagined.
A lot of mother said that they loved the child because the child had nothing to do with it.
It is true, though, that the data also showed that in many cases where infants were actually abused and died, they were the children of the perpetrator.

We also found that many rape victims experienced hurt when they confessed to those around them and were blamed for why they did not anticipate such a situation.

I was once molested on a crowded train by middle aged man who kept putting his crotch against my thigh when I was a teenager. I found blaming myself for why I did not speak up at the time.

In Japan, during commuting hours, it is often impossible to get on a train without being in close contact with others in a crowded train. So, women-only cars were even created to prevent molestation.

I have never told anyone this story in detail. And the victims around me don’t want to talk about it either.

One of the perpetrators I know is a teacher. He has a wife and a kid and is good looking. And he still lives a normal happy life. That is the reality.

We will never be able to conquer all the perpetrators. At the very least, I hope the world will become a place where we don’t blame the victims. I don’t want you to be the one to support the perpetrators. That is my wish for you.
The victims cannot speak up when they are in shock, and many victims obey what the criminal says in order to survive.

This film made me rethink many things. It also inspired me to write my own short film.

There was a screening of the film in May, and it was the first time I cried at a film I was in.
Perhaps it was because I was watching the adult Nina from her mother’s perspective.
There is no scene with Sakura Yoshino who played the adult Nina, but we could talk about each other’s roles before the shooting. It was very good for my scene.

XIAOWAN JIN who played my daughter Nina, made me feel like a mother naturally when I entered the film sets.
I hope many people will watch the film.

Yoko, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Yoko Nomoto. I’m an actor.

I ‘m also a beginning singer song writer and screen writer.
It has been a year and a half since I started my career as a Japanese classical dance performer.

I would like to talk about how I became interested in acting.

I have loved reading fantasy novels since I was a little girl.
I was reading “The chronicles of Narnia”, which my mother recommended to me but the foreign names of the characters were too long to remember and difficult to understand the story.
So, I started to read aloud. I enjoyed reading as the characters so much that I spent all day in my room reading aloud, sometimes forgetting to eat.

One day, during the reading class, everyone was reading in a monotonous voice, and they all looked bored, some were even sleeping.
I wasn’t sure if I would read with emotion as I usually did, because I was a shy and quiet child at the time.
But I chose to read as usual. When I read the scene where the monster appears, I read like a monster, and the boys in class laughed out loud. That was the first time I had ever performed in front of others. That made me happy and got me interested in acting.

I had few confidence in myself, so I liked plays where I could erase myself. Now I also realize that in a play, no matter how much I erase myself, I remain myself.

It is truly amazing that what started as a play to entertain myself when I was a child has now become something I show to others.

I would like to continue to express myself through acting, singing, dancing, and writing scripts.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

When someone who has never watched a play before is introduced to the world of the stage and says that it was interesting and that they want to see it again. When the audiences tell me that seeing the film or play I was in has eased their painful troubles. When the audience simply laughed out loud at my play. When a child came to say goodbye to a puppet repeatedly after a puppet show. When my friend told me she cried when she saw Japanese dance performance. When I sang my song in the park, and they asked me to teach them my song.

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is being able to create happiness for someone and ease someone’s sadness.

I also believe that nurturing people’s imagination in society will lead to peace.

Have you ever had to pivot?

After a period of difficulty in passing the paperwork screening, I took the director-sponsored auditions and appeared in a few movies, but my manager, who was opposed to working without an agency, stopped informing me about the auditions. I trusted my manager, and I was shocked and lost the will to find another agency. At the time, I wondered if the same thing would happen.

I am very grateful to my manager and understand his position, but I just couldn’t spend time listening to the results of the paperwork that kept falling through.
The roles of manager and agent are not separated in my country, and in many cases, a deeper personal relationship is involved with the manager than a business relationship.
If you do not get along with your manager, it often affects their business. Of course, there were managers who gave us a fair chance, but compared to the U.S, the difference was significant.

So, I changed my direction to go to the U.S. because I had always wanted to be an actor who could work abroad someday, and I wanted to learn various acting techniques.

I’d like to say this to avoid misunderstanding, I still watch a lot of Japanese dramas and movies and would love to be in Japanese productions as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm14053660/
• Instagram: @hasire_yoko
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOry-_YXets

Image Credits
Morgan Khoe