Tsuru Aoki, the forgotten first lady of Asian American cinema

Tsuru Aoki quietly carved a path through the silent film era, becoming likely the first Asian actress to achieve leading-lady status in Hollywood.

Born in Tokyo on Sept. 9, 1892, Aoki immigrated to the U.S. with her aunt and uncle — who owned the Imperial Theatre of Japan — in 1903 and began her acting career on stage before transitioning to film in the early 1910s. She debuted onscreen in “The Oath of Tsuru San” (1913), but it was her role in “The Wrath of the Gods” (1914), opposite future husband Sessue Hayakawa, that cemented her place in film history.

Over the next decade, Aoki appeared in about 40 films, including “The Dragon Painter” (1919), in which she portrayed a woman whose beauty inspires a tormented artist. Her performances were often dignified and emotionally complex, offering a counter-narrative to the racialized caricatures typical of the time.

While Anna May Wong is often celebrated as the first Chinese American and international Asian movie star, it was Aoki who laid the groundwork a decade earlier. Though she did not achieve the same lasting fame, her work challenged early 20th-century Hollywood’s deeply entrenched stereotypes about Asian women — and she did it while occupying center stage.

Despite her groundbreaking achievements, Aoki’s legacy has been largely overlooked. Her career declined in the 1920s as Hollywood’s racial climate worsened, and she faded from the spotlight after her marriage to Hayakawa. Still, her impact reverberates through the history of Asian American cinema.

Aoki died on Oct. 18, 1961 from acute peritonitis. In recent years, modern film scholars and institutions like the Women Film Pioneers Project have begun to recover her story. Information and clips from her films are available online, and retrospectives now include her name among the earliest Asian faces in American film.

As AAPI Heritage Month invites us to revisit the narratives we remember, Aoki stands out not only as a pioneer, but as a reminder that some of the most influential figures are also the most forgotten.