Tazuko Sakane

Tazuko Sakane was born on December 7, 1904 (Meiji 37), as the eldest daughter of six siblings between her father, Seiichi Sakane (坂根清一) and her mother, Shige (志げ), in the Kamigyo-ku section of Kyoto. Her mother had been born into the “Sakuma” family in Tango, but because there was no successor, Tazuko was registered as the patriarch of the Sakuma family at the age of two and became Tazuko Sakumada. However, Tazuko continued to use her paternal last name “Sakane” throughout her life.

Of the six children of the couple, only the eldest son Akira and the eldest daughter Tazuko lived long. The family was wealthy because her father made an invention, and Tazuko progressed from Imadegawa Kindergarten (今出川幼稚園) to Nakadachiuri Elementary School (中立売小学校) and Kyoto Prefectural First Girls' High School (京都府立京都第一高等女学校, currently Kyoto Prefectural Kamoen High School 京都府立鴨沂高等学校). The school, called “Fuichi”(府一), was a prestigious school in Kyoto. After graduation, she went to Doshisha Women's College English Department (同志社女子専門学校英文科, currently Doshisha Women's University 同志社女子大学) according to her desire of continuing studying.

In 1923, Tazuko dropped out of school for reason of “convenient to do housework”, and in March of the following year, her mother died suddenly at the age of 47. Soon after, her father remarried a woman named Daisetsu Tsuru. In line with the marriage recommended by her late mother, Tazuko met with an obstetrician and gynecologist named Takaoka and married in 1925 at the age of 21. However, this marriage did not go well. Tazuko left the house and returned to her parents’ home. All eyes looked coldly at Tazuko, so she determined to be self-reliant. Aspiring to the film industry, she was introduced by her father in 1929 as a director's assistant at Nikkatsu Dazai Photo Studio. Therefore, replacing her predecessor Mitsue Goda (合田光枝, sister of actress Hara Setsuko 原節子), Tazuko worked for the director Kenji Mizoguchi (溝口健二), and obtained the friendship of Mrs. Kenji and Chieko (Chieko's real name: Kane Tajima 田島かね) . Since then, Tazuko became involved in making movies as a member of Mizoguchi group, and had learned practical matters.

When Mizoguchi left Nikkatsu in 1932 and moved to the Shinko Kinema (新興キネマ), Tazuko was also invited to move to the company. (When Mizoguchi moved to the company, Tazuko followed him. This was common because the movie industry at that time had a strong apprenticeship.) Mizoguchi then made “Taki no Shiraito” (1933, 滝の白糸), “Gion Festival” (1933, 祇園祭), and “Kanfuren” (1934, 神風連), and Tazuko helped him as a director's assistant. In 1933, Irie Pro, who co-produced “Taki no Shiraito”, asked Tazuko to try to supervise, but in the end it did not happen. In 1934, Mizoguchi moved to Tokyo with Tazuko and joined Nikkatsu Tamagawa Photo Studio (日活多摩川撮影所). Around this time, Tazuko asked again for the promotion of the director, but the reaction of the staff was so cold that it was not realized. It said that Tazuko was planning to make a movie for Uncle Ashiaga (足長おじさん). Tazuko disappointedly returned to Kyoto on the invitation by Mizoguchi, and joined the first movie he was making. Tazuko started living near her father in Kyoto, and served as assistant director under Mizoguchi for “Otsukuru Osen” (折鶴お千), “Maria no Yuki” (マリヤのお雪), and “Koujaku Grass” (虞美人草, all in 1935).

32-year-old Tazuko asked for the promotion of the director again. This was finally realized, and she decided to make Kosugi Tenga's original “First appearance” (はつ姿) into a movie. “First appearance” was written by Haruo Takayanagi and Tazuko brought that out. Mizoguchi also put his name to this work as a director guidance. The casts were Ichiro Tsukita and Chiyoko Okura. The movie was completed and was released on March 5, 1936. In this way, Tazuko Sakane became the first Japanese female film director. Although “First appearance” was not successful industrially and did not get a good reputation from critics, Tazuko did not give up and continued to make movies with Mizoguchi.

In those days when the movie industry was prosperous and human resources were flowing, Mizoguchi left the first movie, whose management situation deteriorated, and moved to the Shinko Kinema, Kamo Matsu Takeshita studio. Tazuko followed him, and produced the “Rokugiku Monogatari” (1940, 残菊物語) and “Naniwa Onna” (1940, 浪花女). Mina Miguchi cast Kinuyo Tanaka for the first time in “Naniwa Onna”. Since then, they produced excellent works in combination. Kinuyo later became the second female film director in Japan. Around this time, Tazuko began to feel the distance to Mizoguchi, she wanted to do the directing again, and received Mizoguchi's recommendation and joined Riken Kagaku Film Co., Ltd (理研科学映画株式会社). She went to Hokkaido and filmed the documentary “North Brotherhood” (1941, 北の同胞) on the theme of Ainu life.

Around this time, Mizoguchi's wife Chieko, who had a close relationship with Tazuko, had a mental disorder and was admitted to Kyoto Prefectural Hospital. On the day of Chieko's hospitalization, Mizoguchi went to the studio and continued to work, and the staff who were right there were shocked. Mizoguchi proposed to Tazuko during the time of Chieko's hospitalization, but of course it was not acceptable. In 1942, Tazuko joined the Keimin Movie Club (啓民映画部) of Manchu Film Association (満洲映画協会) in Manchuria as an immediate action.

After arriving in Shinkyo and making a work called “Hardworking Women” (勤労の女性), Tazuko continued to make “Healthy Small National” (健康の小国民), “Bride of Pioneer” (開拓の花嫁), “Vegetable Storage” (野菜の貯蔵), “How to Burn the Heating Room” (暖房の焚き方), etc. While Japan was heavily defeated, Tazuko finished “Indoor Horticulture” (室内園芸), “Spring Gardening” (春の園芸), “First Aid” (救急ノ基本), “Basic Emergency Aid” (基本救急法) and so on. However, on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally, and on August 20, the Soviet army arrived in Shinkyo. The Manchu Film Association was confiscated by the Soviet army, with no plans to return to Japan. Part of the staff was hired by Tohoku Denki Co., Ltd. (東北電影公司) by the Eight Route Army who was stationed in exchange for the Soviet Army, and Tazuko also got a job there. She was allowed to return to Japan in August 1946, and on October 21 of the same year, she and 50 other Japanese stepped through Japan from Shinkyo to Jinzhou.

Returning to her parents’ home in Kyoto, Tazuko visited Mizoguchi at Shimokamo Photo Studio (加茂撮影所). Mizoguchi did not know who she was for a moment. Although surprised by her transformation, Mizoguchi brought Tazuko to Shochiku (松竹) again. However, Tazuko was unable to join as director assistant due to the struggle of power in Shochiku, and was hired as a recording staff in the editorial department. Even for Mizoguchi, who had a deep relationship with actress Kinuyo Tanaka, while Chieko's younger brother's wife was a de facto wife, Tazuko was already a past existence and more than just a clerk.

Mizoguchi, who had not been blessed with hits for a long time, revived with the hit of “Women of the Night” (夜の女たち, 1948). And in 1952, “Nishitsuru Ichijo”(西鶴一代女), filmed with Kinuyo, won the director's award at the Venice International Film Festival, and immediately pushed Mizoguchi into a master of the world. Kinuyo entered the supervisory business and directed “Koibumi” (恋文, 1953) for the first time. It had been 17 years since the “First Appearance” taken by Tazuko. Mizoguchi continued to receive high acclaim for “Ugetsu Monogatari” (雨月物語, 1953), “Sansho the Bailiff” (山椒大夫, 1954), “Yang Guifei” (楊貴妃, 1955), and “New Heike Monogatari” (新·平家物語, 1955). He died of myeloid leukemia on August 24, 1956.

After leaving Shochiku Kyoto Studio(松竹京都撮影所) in 1962 at the retirement age, Tazuko continued to be involved in movies in the form of part-time jobs until 1970, and died of gastric cancer on September 2, 1975, at the age of 71. She appeared as a collaborator in the documentary film “Record of the life of a movie director Kenji Mizoguchi”(ある映画監督の生涯 溝口健二の記録) released about four months before her death.

Before the 1980s, the hierarchical corporate structure of the major studios was a major barrier to women entering the industry in a creative capacity, with the scant handful of those who did direct hailing from an acting background, barring the freak exception of Japan's first woman director, Tazuko Sakane, who made one feature, 1936's "Hatsu Sugata". Unfortunately, no prints of the film exist.[4]

The first Japanese women to make films came from the circles around well-known male director Kenji Mizoguchi whose many films tended to centre on heroines.[5] Mizoguchi and his films about suffering women connect with current discussions about “women's directors” and women directors. When dealing with this most patriarchal of national cinemas and its “feminine” qualities, questions of sexual politics arise. Take Mizoguchi's unmentioned (in the text) relationship with Sakane. Under his patronage, Sakane became Japan's first and only female film director in the prewar period. Denied work after the war (on the ground that she had to have a college degree to be a director), she was forced, at age forty-two, to return to Mizoguchi as his script girl.[6]

Her surviving production memos, scripts, and correspondence were donated to the Museum of Kyoto in 2004 in commemoration of the centennial of her birth. In the Sakane collection's file for The Downfall of Osen, roughly half of her records and Mizoguchi's one-page scribble of the sequence order survive.[7]

Situated as a minority in the film industry, Sakane was nevertheless a privileged majority member of wartime society, as a Japanese national, and as a person who had some control over the mass media.[8]

A large part of Sakane's experience with filmmaking came from assisting and editing films under the tutelage of Kenji Mizoguchi. As a woman, she was very rarely taken seriously and often belittled by the men who dominated the industry. Her first attempt at becoming a director was overshadowed by rumors established by colleagues who had assumed the only way she could have made this promotion possible was through "having an affair with Mizoguchi" and so "Sakane's petition for promotion was eventually rejected." Similar to this experience, Sakane fell under scrutiny following her first film as a director, New Clothing(1936), in which her personal life, including intimate topics such as her virginity, was publicly criticized and shamed in an article merely in the studio's effort to gain attention.[9]

By adhering to colonial standards was Sakane's only choice in order to regain her position as a director in Japan. In doing so, she left Mizoguchi and began a project, Fellow Citizens in North(1941), under the Tokyo Riken Film Company. Despite being enlisted as a director in an effort to create a propagandic film that documented Japan and assertion that the country was "one nation, one people," Sakane's personal intentions interfered. Due to wanting to maintain her personal style in spite of the colonialist assignment, Sakane created a film that documented the loss of history and native culture within Japan. However, she was made to fix and reshoot in order to create a film that met colonialist standards. Sakane never allowed political affiliations or war to affect how she filmed or role within these topics as a filmmaker. She merely used these situations as a means of establishing herself as a filmmaker.[9]

It wasn't until Japan fell into war that Sakane found herself developing a sense of personal filming style that was not under the control of the studios she worked under. Due to the patriarchal restrictions of Japan that were tightening up due to the war, Sakane transferred over to the Manchuria Film Association in 1942. It was there that a majority of Sakane's films were focused on providing educational material for female audiences that didn't exist prior to her directorial debut. Despite having arrived in the association as an editor it was under the belief that only women can direct for women that she returned to that role. Sakane having stated in an interview that "given the necessity to make films for women in the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and that only women can make films for themselves, I was promoted again to director." It was here that her style became evident in reestablishing what exactly domestic relationships looked like and how women existed alongside men in Japanese and Chinese society.[9]

• Daniels, Gordon (2005). Hiroko Tomida (ed.). Japanese women : emerging from subservience, 1868–1945. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 1901903184.
• Nelmes, Jill, and Jule Selbo. Women Screenwriters: an International Guide. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ISBN 978-1-137-31237-2
• Gonzalez-Lopez, Irene. Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1474409698

• Kenji Mizoguchi Japanese film director
• Kinuyo Tanaka Japan's second woman director

• Tazuko Sakane on IMDb
• Tazuko Sakne on Letterboxd
• Girls on Film: Ten Women Who've Made Cinematic History
• Some Rather Widespread Confusion Regarding the Beloved Tanaka Kinuyo