2017 Essays

Tazuko Sakane

Zhao, Xinyi

Tazuko Sakane was the first female director in Japan. By 1936, Sakane had taken a variety of positions at virtually all stages of film production, ranging from director and editor to script supervisor and assistant director. She remained the only female director in Japan until 1953, when the actress-turned-director Tanaka Kinuyo made her first film. Not only is Sakane’s life illustrative of the constricting roles enforced by Japanese society almost vengefully upon women, but her involvement at Manchuria Film Association further poses questions pivotal in theorizing the mutual implications of feminism, imperialism, and colonialism. That being said, Sakane has long been marginalized, if not erased, from the history of Japanese cinema.