Eiko Minami

Eiko Minami (南 栄子, Minami Eiko, born February 20, 1909) was a Japanese dancer. Eiko Minami was born Sakae Gosha (五社 栄, Gosha Sakae) in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. She joined the Shōchiku Gakugekibu theater revue in Asakusa shortly after its founding in 1922 as one of its first dancers. While at Shōchiku she studied dance under the famous Russian ballerina Xenia Makletzova. Throughout her career she was active mainly on stage, performing dance recitals in many venues around Japan, though she made 2 film appearances in her life. Her best known role was that of a dancer in a mental hospital in Teinosuke Kinugasa's 1926 avant-garde classic A Page of Madness. Her second and final film appearance was in the 1927 film Tabigeinin, directed by Yutaka Abe and Yasunaga Higashibōjō. Tabigeinin is now lost and it is unknown what role she played in the film.

After her film career, Minami taught and choreographed dancers for movies at the Nikkatsu film studios and also taught dance at Nihon Eiga Haiyū Gakkō, a pre-war acting school founded in 1923 by theater director Biyō Minaguchi (水口薇陽). In 1934, she opened the Minami Buyō Kenkyūsho, her own dance school where she taught students. In 1939, she changed her stage name to Reiko Gosha (五社玲子) while continuing to teach dance throughout wartime.