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Later years

Hara, who never married, is nicknamed "the Eternal Virgin" in Japan and is a symbol of the golden era of Japanese cinema of the 1950s. She quit acting in 1963 (the year Ozu died), and subsequently led a secluded life in Kamakura, where many of her films with Ozu were made, refusing all interviews and photographs. For years, people would speculate about her reasons for leaving the public eye. Hara herself confessed during her final press conference that she never really enjoyed acting and was only using it as a means to support her family; however, many people continued to speculate over her possible romantic involvement with Ozu, or the possibility of failing eyesight. Hara was an avid smoker and drinker.

After seeing a Setsuko Hara film, the novelist Shūsaku Endō wrote: "We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?"

After more than half a century of seclusion, Hara died of pneumonia at a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture, on 5 September 2015, at the age of 95. Her death was not reported by the media until 25 November of that year due to her family only approaching them later (presumably for privacy). The anime film Millennium Actress (2001), directed by Satoshi Kon, is partly based on her life, although it was produced and released more than a decade prior to her death.