wartime japanese government cinema studio

And that’s a quick summary of the complicated legacy of Japan’s first female director. However, that didn’t mean they weren’t without artistic merit.

Now, a lot of them were wartime propaganda as that wa s the only way for unfairly marginalized artists to continue making movies. In other words, working for men.Īlthough, as an editor and script supervisor, Sakane was given a lot of freedom to experiment with the craft of filmmaking, which is evident in the many non-fiction movies she went on to make. It also led to her being relegated back to the position of an assistant to a male director. Worse yet, the critical response to it was as lukewarm as it was sexist, meaning she lost her position within the studio. The aspiring artist did end up making a motion picture, thus earning her the title of Japan’s first female director, but it was a story that the studio wanted to tell, not her.

In the end her life had turned out almost the exact opposite of what she’d hoped. But somewhat appropriately for a poem titled “Intoxication,” Sakane’s declaration amounted to little more than wishful thinking.

Tazuko Sakane wrote these words in 1936 when she believed she was on the verge of forever changing the world of Japanese cinema.

Wartime japanese government cinema studio