The women filmmakers currently in the spotlight following the reappraisal of Tanaka's directorial works

Looking back at the history of women filmmakers in Japan is meaningful for several reasons, not least of all from the contemporary perspective of women’s empowerment. Gender disparity remains a deeply embedded problem within the Japanese film industry, with female directors accounting for only 11% of the country’s filmmakers as of 2022.

The screening of TANAKA Kinuyo’s directorial works at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival as part of its Cannes Classics program was met with acclaim, as well as equal parts confusion as to why the films had remained so obscure for so long. The fact that a director of Tanaka’s caliber is only just now being “discovered” internationally speaks to a longstanding tendency in Japan of female filmmakers being unjustly overlooked.

A prominent actor who graced many of MIZOGUCHI Kenji and OZU Yasujiro’s most celebrated works, Tanaka was also a distinguished filmmaker, directing six films between 1953 and 1962. Interestingly, her move into directing occurred against the backdrop of a celebrated trend at the time for actors-turned-directors – as in the case of SABURI Shin, among others – within the golden age of postwar Japanese cinema. In fact, Tanaka was only the second female director of feature films the country had ever seen; so scarce were the opportunities for women to embark upon such an endeavor that one needs to go all the way back to 1936 to find the first example, when SAKANE Tazuko was promoted to director after years spent serving as assistant director to Mizoguchi.

As it so happens, Sakane’s debut feature New Clothing (Hatsu sugata, 1936) was poorly received at the time, putting an end to any further opportunities she may have had to continue down this route. Yet her work as editor on Mizoguchi’s Osaka Elegy (Naniwa ereji, 1936) of the same year, a film which portrays modern woman as valuing her own self-determination, revealed Sakane’s extraordinary eye for detail and high level of technical proficiency; it is therefore a shame that New Clothing has been lost to time, making any reappraisal of the film impossible.

The fact that by the early 1960s only two women had been given the opportunity to direct feature films goes a long way to revealing the roots of the gender disparity still at play in the industry today. Yet by shifting the focus of our attention to positions other than director, we can find any number of examples of women who have historically been active across various roles within the industry. The predominance of women script supervisors (or “script girls” as they were then known) – essentially an assistant director in all but name – reflected a practice adopted from Hollywood; yet women were also heavily involved in many other areas of film production, from screenwriting and producing to art direction, editing, costume design, and hair and makeup. Focusing on the accomplishments of said women provides us with a new lens through which to view afresh the various masterpieces of Japanese cinema history.

Female scriptwriters, for instance, were heavily involved in both jidaigeki (period dramas) and contemporary pieces as far back as the silent era, but it was the rise of the postwar bungei-eiga (“literary films” based on novels) that saw the emergence of leading talents like TANAKA Sumie and MIZUKI Yoko. Tanaka’s forte was in depicting the inward conflicts of women who felt like outsiders in their own homes, such as the protagonists of NARUSE Mikio works Repast (Meshi, 1951) and Lightning (Inazuma, 1952) as well as Tanaka Kinuyo’s masterpiece Forever a Woman (Chibusa yo eien nare, aka The Eternal Breasts, 1955). Mizuki was also a renowned screenwriter for Naruse, for whom she wrote Floating Clouds (Ukigumo, 1955) among others, while also addressing the theme of social minorities in the IMAI Tadashi film Kiku and Isamu (Kiku to Isamu, 1959). WADA Natto, another scenarist active at the same time, worked almost exclusively in collaboration with her husband, the director ICHIKAWA Kon, bringing her talent to bear on such illustrious literary adaptations as The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto, 1956) and Conflagration (Enjo, 1958).

As for producers, the achievements of MIZUNOE Takiko are particularly noteworthy. A popular female actor of male roles with Shochiku’s musical theater troupe in the prewar years, she retired from the spotlight after the war only subsequently to sign a contract with the newly revived Nikkatsu in 1954, thus becoming the first ever female producer at a major film company. Over a career spanning 76 films as producer, she became a bona fide hitmaker who drew on her instincts honed in showbusiness to give many a director and young star their first major break, as seen in her handpicking of NAKAHIRA Ko to direct Juvenile Jungle (Kurutta kajitsu, aka Crazed Fruit, 1956), a film that propelled its lead ISHIHARA Yujiro, another Mizunoe discovery, to stardom.

Meanwhile, away from the trends of the major studios, the field of documentary was already an established path for female filmmakers prior to the 1960s. A notable figure in this regard is TOKIEDA Toshie. A fellow Iwanami Productions employee alongside HANEDA Sumiko, Tokieda made over a hundred films across a wide range of subjects, though it was the theme of early childhood education that emphasized child autonomy that she would return to again and again throughout her career. She attached the same importance to on-location sound recording as to the visual aspect of her work, experimenting with a direct cinema approach while also exploring innovative ways of using narration in her films.

In the 1970s, against the backdrop of a flourishing independent production movement, women also set up their own companies and threw themselves into directing their own productions. Two good examples are MIYAGI Mariko and HIDARI Sachiko, both former actors, whose independent modus operandi distinguished them from Tanaka Kinuyo, who directed films received on commission from within the studio system. There are stylistic differences, too: whereas Tanaka portrayed the lifestyles of women from within a literary film framework, Miyagi and Hidari instead each addressed themes rooted in the world of social movements, favoring a distinctly documentarian approach. Miyagi made waves with a series of four films beginning with The Silk Tree Ballad (Nemu no ki no uta, 1974), a visually poetic documentary depicting the day-to-day life of students at a school for children with physical disabilities, an institution Miyagi herself had founded. Hidari, meanwhile, found critical favor with The Far Road (Tooi ippon no michi, 1977), a fictional film that incorporated docudrama techniques to tell the story of a railroad worker at the mercy of the streamlining influence of modernization. Another little-known figure particularly deserving of attention today is Gajumaru, a professional director of documentaries (known under her pseudonym) who also pursued her own independent productions. Her Waraji katappo (“Women Wandering Alone,” 1976) mixes past and present in an avant-garde fashion in a work that explores themes of female freedom and oppression.

The reappraisal of Tanaka Kinuyo’s directorial works has led to an uptick in new perspectives on the history of women in Japanese film. And not a moment too soon: the history of Japanese cinema remains full of women whose time in the spotlight is long overdue.