Yoko Tani (谷洋子, Tani Yōko, 2 August 1928, Paris – 19 April 1999, Paris) was a French-born Japanese actress and nightclub entertainer.

Biography

Tani's 1956 marriage to Lesaffre (who maintained an ongoing, probably homosexual, liaison with Carné) was childless, and ended in divorce in 1962. Lesaffre claimed in his autobiography Mataf (éditions Pygmalion, 1991), that theirs was the first Franco-Japanese marriage after WWII --- conceivably true, but almost impossible to verify. (True or not, it may have begun something of a trend, since Kishi Keiko and Yves Ciampi were married the following year.)

In later life Tani remarried, wedding Roger Laforet, a native of Binic, Côtes-d'Armor (Brittany). A wealthy industrialist, Laforet was an associate of Baron Marcel Bich, co-founder of the BIC consumer products empire. Tani's declining years were spent between Paris and their house in Paimpol overlooking the sea.

She died in Paris, after a long illness, but is buried in Binic together with Laforet. Their tomb carries the Breton inscription «Ganeoc'h Bepred» (roughly, "Always With You"). Notably, Tani's first husband Lesaffre is buried together with Marcel Carné in his grave in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre.

Tani was survived by her younger sister, Aiko.