TOKYO: The Japanese actress who starred in famed director Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” and a host of other classic films has died aged 95 — with the news only emerging nearly three months after her passing.

The death of Setsuko Hara dominated Japanese front pages on Thursday, with headlines lauding her as a “legendary” performer and the “Eternal Madonna”.

Hara had been in hospital since mid-August and her death on Sept 5 from pneumonia was not immediately made public “as she wished no fuss be made”, her 75-year-old nephew told Kyodo News agency.

A private funeral service was held, he added.

Film distribution company Shochiku on Thursday set up a stand for floral tributes to Hara at a Tokyo theatre, which was coincidentally showing the Ozu-directed “Late Spring” in which she starred as part of a retrospective of Japanese movies.

On display were her photo and the message: “We pray for the repose of Ms Setsuko Hara.” Hara, whose real name was Masae Aida, made her debut in the 1930s, but rose to prominence after World War II working with Ozu, most notably on his acclaimed “Tokyo Story”.

In that 1953 film, considered a masterpiece of global cinema, she played a woman widowed by the war who treats the ageing parents of her late husband kindly during their visit to Tokyo, in contrast to their own children, who are too busy.

A poll of noted regional filmmakers and international critics published last month at the Busan International Film Festival rated the drama as the best Asian film of all time.

In “Late Spring” as well as Ozu’s “Early Summer”, she played a modest and elegant woman, in movies that tackled the issue of fraying family bonds as Japan’s economy rapidly modernised.

She appeared in “No Regrets for Our Youth” and “The Idiot” by Akira Kurosawa — director of “Seven Samurai” — and in the work of Tadashi Imai and Mikio Naruse.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2015