Tanaka joined Shochiku Shimogamo at the age of fourteen, where she quickly found fame in roles playing a sweet-natured, charming young girl. Following the transition to talkies, she continued to appear in the films of Gosho, Ozu, and others, forging new paths as an actor all the way into her later years. Feeling nevertheless constrained by the limited roles available to women as they grew older – and inspired by her observations during a post-war trip to the United States – she decided to venture into directing. In doing so, she became the second ever female director of feature films in Japan after SAKANE Tazuko prior to the war. Having made her directorial debut with Love Letter (Koibumi) in 1953, she later collaborated with female scriptwriters including TANAKA Sumie and WADA Natto on works such as Forever a Woman (Chibusa yo eien nare, aka The Eternal Breasts, 1955) and The Wandering Princess (Ruten no ohi, 1960). Girls of Dark (Onna bakari no yoru, 1961), set in a reformatory for prostitutes in the wake of the Prostitution Prevention Law, recalls in its themes the films of Mizoguchi, many of which Tanaka herself starred in, including Women of the Night (Yoru no onna tachi, 1948). But whereas Tanaka's film also acknowledges its protagonist's hardships, it does so with a captivating perspective all its own, one which depicts her determination to carve out for herself a better future. In 2021, all six of Tanaka's directorial works were screened at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, a sign of the surging global interest in her career as a director.

(Written by TAMADA Kenta / Translated by Adam Sutherland)