Irene González-López is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests are Japanese Cinema and Visual Cultures, Gender Studies, and Women Filmmakers. She is the co-editor of Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity (2018), and of The Documentary Cinema of Haneda Sumiko: Japan in Transition through Gender, Arts, Nature and Society (2026). Michael Smith was awarded his PhD from University of Leeds in 2013. His research looked at the representation of women in early postwar Japanese cinema, particularly focusing on how the key political and social issues of the period affected their onscreen portrayal. Michael’s main research interests are Classical-era Japanese cinema, women directors and 1990s American independent cinema.

It would appear that English language scholarship on Kinuyo Tanaka is just beginning. In addition, this volume is helpful in better understanding some of the outside forces that also played a part in the history of Japanese cinema.

• Preface; Furukawa KaoruIntroduction: Onna Monogatari; Irene González-López and Michael Smith 1. Dancer, Doctor, Virgin, Wife: Tanaka Kinuyo’s Early Star Image; Lauri Kitsnik 2. Meetings and Partings: How Tanaka's Films End; Alexander Jacoby 3. Tanaka and Mizoguchi: Politics and Rebellion in the Early Postwar Era; Michael Smith 4. The First Female Gaze at Postwar Japanese Women: Tanaka Kinuyo Film Director; Irene González-López and Ashida Mayu 5. Kinuyo and Sumie: When Women Write and Direct; Ayako Saito6. Female Authorship, Subjectiviy and Colonial Memory in Tanaka Kinuyo’s The Wandering Princess (1960); Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández 7. Panpan Girls, Lesbians and Postwar Women’s Communitites: Girls of Dark (1961) as Women’s Cinema; Yuka Kanno