Born in Dalian, China. Active in the women's section of the Dalian Japanese Labor Union after the war, Haneda later served as assistant director to HANI Susumu upon returning to Japan. She made her directorial debut in 1957 with A Women's College in the Village (Mura no fujin gakkyu, aka Village Women's Classroom) from Iwanami Productions, a studio for whom she would also produce many educational, scientific, and public-relations documentary films. Meanwhile, she collaborated with her husband, the film producer KUDO Mitsuru, to complete her first independently produced film, The Cherry Tree with Gray Blossoms (Usuzumi no Sakura, 1977), which went on to become a hit. From 1981 onwards, she released a string of notable works through Jiyu Kobo, a documentary film production company founded by her husband, including the six-part series Kabuki Actor Kataoka Nizaemon (Kabuki yakusha Kataoka Nizaemon, 1992-94), a meditative and meticulous study of the actor's artistic mastery in his final years. For over half a century, she has tenaciously continued to document a vast range of subjects – everything from traditional performing arts to the women's movement and welfare sector – creating works that consistently offer new perspectives on Japanese society and culture. Her work has lately been the focus of renewed attention abroad, with recent events including an online symposium and screenings organized by the University of London in 2021 and her inclusion in the 2022 exhibition and screening program No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image.

(Written by TAMADA Kenta / Reference: National Film Archive of Japan screening program / Translated by Adam Sutherland)