Michiko Tanaka

Michiko de Kowa Tanaka (Japanese田中 路子, Michiko Tanaka, born July 15, 1909 in Kanda (Tokyo), † May 18, 1988 ( Munich) was a Japanese actress and singer.

Michiko Tanaka was born as the daughter of the painter Raisho Tanaka. Her first vocal training she received at the Tōkyō Ongaku Gakko. During this time, she began an affair with cellist Hideo Saitō from Shin Kogyo Gakudan (today's NHK Symphony Orchestra ), who had recently returned from Germany in 1927. Because he was married, her parents ended that relationship by sending them to study abroad to Vienna. First they learned harp until she. , On the advice of Konoe Hidemaro, the new conductor of the Shin Kogyo Gakudan, and after she had Jeritza heard as Salome, is applied at the State Academy of Music One of her teachers there was Mary Ivogün. My guardian was in Vienna, the Japanese ambassador to Austria. Through him they got access to the High Society, where she met Julius Meinl II. Your uninhibited appearance in high society met with little favor at the Japanese embassy. Your requisition to Japan she came in 1931 by marrying the 40- year-older Julius Meinl before, which earned her Austrian citizenship. This marriage was divorced in 1941.

In 1930 she made ​​her debut in Memoirs of a Geisha at the Stadttheater in Graz. Later she was with Richard Tauber in Madame Butterfly on the stage and went on tour around the world. 1935 Julius Meinl was for them to Paul Abraham operetta Dschainah, the girl from the dance house commissioned and financed her first movie last love. In Paris, she was in 1937 for Yoshiwara and 1938 for Storm over Asia before the camera. After affairs with playwright Carl Zuckmayer and the actor Sessue Hayakawa they got there finally the actor Viktor de Kowa, whom she married in 1941. Julius Meinl was best man. During and after the Second World War was de Kowa's house in Berlin stop for many Japanese. She made Seiji Ozawa acquainted with Herbert von Karajan, who later became his teacher.

It was involved in a German -Japanese cultural agreement and was involved in the founding of the Japanese - German Society Tokyo. In 1952 she was honored with a plaque at the Mozart Memorial House was the first Japanese woman.

Since her retirement she lived in Munich, where she died in 1988. It rests in the cemetery military road in Berlin next to her husband died in 1973. The honor tomb is located in Box 16 -G - 29th

Autobiography

• Michiko Tanaka :私 の 歩ん だ 道 滞欧 二 十 年( Watakushi ayunda no michi Taio Niju -tions. ). Hōbunsha, 1954 ( reprint: Ōzorasha, 1999, ISBN 4-7568-0887-5 )

Swell

• 甲 斐 晶:ミチコ·タナカ(Japanese)