Since the mid-2000s there has been a significant increase in Japanese women commercial film directors. Several of these women have achieved star status including Ogigami Naoko, Ninagawa Mika, and Nishikawa Miwa. The narrative stylings and particular cinematic visions of these women, as well as the very timing of their success, reveals the connections between industry production, reception, and auteur personas. In fact, women’s access to Japanese commercial markets was fueled by marketing tactics of distribution companies that sought to target female-identified consumers—a highly desired and profitable demographic. Based on her book manuscript in progress, Sea Change: Japan’s New Wave of Female Film Directors, Dr. Laird will give a brief history of women’s efforts behind the camera in Japanese cinema industries before turning to the contemporary boom of women directors with attention to the relationship between women filmmakers as creative talent and labor, distribution companies and marketing strategies as economic power structures, and the capital wielding demographic of female-identifying spectators as influential consumers.

Colleen A. Laird is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Film and Popular Culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She is currently working on a monograph on Japanese women film directors and will be giving a talk about Japanese cinema.