Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#38895
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Etsuko Ichihara represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 50 years in, and Etsuko is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Etsuko Ichihara appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Etsuko. Your Name. is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Makoto Shinkai, Isao Takahata, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Etsuko Ichihara helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Your Name. (2016) as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice) · The Face of Another (1966) as Yoko · Horus: Prince of the Sun (1968) as Hilda (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #38895 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
1966–2016
Career length
50 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Your Name.
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Your Name.
Most frequent director
Makoto Shinkai
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Makoto Shinkai
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
7.4
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
8.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Your Name. — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
8.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Horus: Prince of the Sun, The Face of Another.
Most productive era
1960s
2 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1960s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.82 films | 8.71 film |
| Romance | — | 8.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Yoko.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2016Your Name.
8.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
3 of 3 films
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
as Yoko
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
as Hilda (voice)
Directed by Isao Takahata
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Your Name. (2016)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Hitoha Miyamizu (voice) gives Etsuko Ichihara a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yoko
The Face of Another (1966)
Performance score7.1
The Face of Another asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yoko is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hilda (voice)
Horus: Prince of the Sun (1968)
Performance score6.9
Horus: Prince of the Sun asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hilda (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Start here. Your Name. is the clearest statement of what Etsuko Ichihara does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Etsuko at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Face of Another (1966)
Keeps the drama register of Your Name. but asks for a colder reading of it.
Horus: Prince of the Sun (1968)
Keeps the drama register of The Face of Another but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Makoto Shinkai
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Your Name.Hiroshi Teshigahara
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Face of AnotherIsao Takahata
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Horus: Prince of the SunSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Etsuko Ichihara has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
50 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Horus: Prince of the Sun
as Hilda (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Horus: Prince of the Sun
as Hilda (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Your Name.
as Hitoha Miyamizu (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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