Biography

Chieko Higashiyama (September 30, 1890 – May 8, 1980) was a Japanese actress. Graduating from the girls' school at Gakushuin, she married a businessman in 1909 and spent eight years in Moscow. In 1925, at the age of 35, she decided to become an actress. She trained at the Tsukiji Shōgekijō, a pioneering theater then-famous for modern Japanese plays and translated performances of Western playwrights. Higashiyama appeared in many stage productions, most famously as Madame Ranevskaya in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard.