Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#25213
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Yoshino Kimura works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yoshino Kimura appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yoshino. The Boy and the Heron is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for tv movie, drama, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hajime Takezono, Michihito Fujii, Eiichiro Hasumi and others, Yoshino Kimura 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.
The Boy and the Heron (2023) as Natsuko (voice) · Hit Me Anyone One More Time (2019) as Susan St. James Narikawa · Mori Hanae Butterfly Beyond (2026) as Fujii Nobu
Career snapshot
Ranked #25213 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
The Boy and the Heron
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Boy and the Heron
Most frequent director
Hajime Takezono
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hajime Takezono
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 23m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
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
6.2
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
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Diner, Hit Me Anyone One More Time, Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y - Can a Cat Be a Hero? — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Blindness, Sukiyaki Western Django.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.51 film | 7.11 film | 4.83 films |
| Action | 6.21 film | 6.52 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.32 films | 6.61 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.82 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | 6.11 film |
| Romance | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Horror | — | — | 5.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Shizuka.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.4 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.
Most recent film
2026You, Like a Star
The current state of the argument.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Natsuko (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Susan St. James Narikawa
Directed by Unknown
Directed by Michihito Fujii
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Natsuko (voice)
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Natsuko (voice) gives Yoshino Kimura a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Fujii Nobu
Mori Hanae Butterfly Beyond (2026)
Performance score7.4
Mori Hanae Butterfly Beyond asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fujii Nobu is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Susan St. James Narikawa
Hit Me Anyone One More Time (2019)
Performance score7.0
Hit Me Anyone One More Time asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Susan St. James Narikawa is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Skin's Mother
Diner (2019)
Performance score6.6
Diner asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Skin's Mother 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 Natsuko (voice)
Start here. The Boy and the Heron is the clearest statement of what Yoshino Kimura does — accessible, 124 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yoshino 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.
Hit Me Anyone One More Time (2019)
Keeps the drama register of The Boy and the Heron but asks for a colder reading of it.
Diner (2019)
Same director as Hit Me Anyone One More Time, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Mori Hanae Butterfly Beyond (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Diner — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
You, Like a Star (2026)
Keeps the drama register of Mori Hanae Butterfly Beyond but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Takashi Miike
Director
1 film together
Notably Sukiyaki Western Django
Fernando Meirelles
Director
1 film together
Notably Blindness
Shigeharu Takahashi
Director
1 film together
Notably Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y - Can a Cat Be a Hero?
Masayuki Suzuki
Director
1 film together
Notably Masquerade Night
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boy and the Heron
Eiichiro Hasumi
Director
1 film together
Notably Re/Member: The Last Night
Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together
Notably You, Like a Star
Hajime Takezono
Director
1 film together
Notably Mori Hanae Butterfly Beyond
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Boy and the HeronHajime Takezono
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mori Hanae Butterfly BeyondShigeharu Takahashi
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y - Can a Cat Be a Hero?Fernando Meirelles
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BlindnessTakashi Miike
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sukiyaki Western DjangoMasayuki Suzuki
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Masquerade NightEiichiro Hasumi
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Re/Member: The Last NightMichihito Fujii
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You, Like a StarSix 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
The Boy and the Heron
as Natsuko (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
The Boy and the Heron
as Natsuko (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
The Boy and the Heron
as Natsuko (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Diner
as Skin's Mother
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Boy and the Heron
as Natsuko (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. Yoshino Kimura 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.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 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
The Boy and the Heron
as Natsuko (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Diner
as Skin's Mother
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Boy and the Heron
as Natsuko (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Blindness
as First Blind Man's Wife
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y - Can a Cat Be a Hero?
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sukiyaki Western Django
as Shizuka
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Yo-kai Watch Jam: Yo-kai Academy Y - Can a Cat Be a Hero?
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sukiyaki Western Django
as Shizuka
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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