Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16887
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Yuriko Ishida represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Yuriko is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yuriko Ishida appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yuriko. Princess Mononoke is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, romance, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Aya Matsuki, Michihito Fujii, Hayao Miyazaki and others, Yuriko Ishida 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.
Princess Mononoke (1997) as San / Kaya (voice) · Silent Tokyo (2020) as Aiko Yamaguchi · Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie (2023) as Azusa Akatsuka
Career snapshot
Ranked #16887 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1994–2026
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
Princess Mononoke
Average Nutevio score
5.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Princess Mononoke
Most frequent director
Aya Matsuki
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Aya Matsuki
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 16m
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
6.3
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
1990s
7.7 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Princess Mononoke, Pom Poko — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Princess Mononoke, Pom Poko.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.11 film | 2.95 films |
| Action | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.64 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.11 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Pom Poko
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kiyo (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.4 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.
9 of 9 films
as San / Kaya (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
as Aiko Yamaguchi
Directed by Unknown
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
San / Kaya (voice)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. San / Kaya (voice) gives Yuriko Ishida a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Aiko Yamaguchi
Silent Tokyo (2020)
Performance score8.0
Silent Tokyo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aiko Yamaguchi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Satoko Kuroda
Hit Me Anyone One More Time (2019)
Performance score7.5
Hit Me Anyone One More Time asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Satoko Kuroda is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Azusa Akatsuka
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission (2023)
Performance score7.4
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Azusa Akatsuka 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 San / Kaya (voice)
Start here. Princess Mononoke is the clearest statement of what Yuriko Ishida does — accessible, 134 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yuriko 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)
A deliberate change of key after Princess Mononoke — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Silent Tokyo (2020)
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.
Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission (2023)
Keeps the thriller register of Silent Tokyo but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie (2023)
Same director as Tokyo MER: The Sumida River Mission, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Aya Matsuki
Director
4 films together
Notably Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
Isao Takahata
Director
1 film together
Notably Pom Poko
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Princess Mononoke
Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together
Notably You, Like a Star
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Aya Matsuki
Director
4 films together · 3.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The MovieHayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 8.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Princess MononokeIsao Takahata
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pom PokoMichihito 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
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (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
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (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
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - The Movie
as Azusa Akatsuka
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (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. Yuriko Ishida 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
32 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
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
6 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
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Silent Tokyo
as Aiko Yamaguchi
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room - Nankai Mission
as Azusa Akatsuka
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hit Me Anyone One More Time
as Satoko Kuroda
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Princess Mononoke
as San / Kaya (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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