Kinuyo Tanaka, A Pioneer of Japanese Cinema

The second female Japanese director after Tazuko Sakane, Kinuyo Tanaka was selected to participate in Competition at Cannes in 1954 for her first film Koibumi (Love Letter). She is being honoured this year as part of Cannes Classics thanks to the restoration of her 1955 film Tsuki wa noborinu (The Moon Has Risen).

With a screenplay from Yasujirō Ozu (at the time still little known in France) and Ryōsuke Saitō, the film tells the story of a widowed father and his three daughters, Chizuru, Ayako and Setsuko, with whom he lives in Nara. One of the daughters has lost her husband, another is in no rush to find one and the other dreams of moving to the capital. Contrasting with the fickleness and fragility of feelings is the permanence of family and of nature.

Known for having appeared in no fewer than 250 films, and often linked with Kenji Mizoguchi, for whom she was his favourite actress, Kinuyo Tanaka also directed six films, a rare feat for a Japanese woman. In these she depicts the reality of war, maternity, the social reintegration of prostitutes, the condition of women in a changing and turbulent Japanese society, all stories that bear witness to her emancipated and assertive outlook on her times. Already at the beginning of the 1950s, she had affirmed her independence by leaving the studios she had been under contract with since her debut as an actress, granting herself the freedom to choose the films she wanted to appear in and, above all, the characters she wanted to portray.

With this restoration, the Nikkatsu Corporation is opening the door to the (re)discovery of this major figure of Japanese cinema.