Female directors are still relatively rare in the domestic film industry, accounting for a paltry 12 percent of those who helmed Japanese movies that hit theaters in 2021, a survey shows.
Japan s film industry has huge gender gap, likely due to harassment, long working hours
July 11, 2021 (Mainichi Japan)
This photo shows the founders of the Japanese Film Project (clockwise from left): Erina Ito, Tatsuhito Utagawa, and Takashi Nishihara. TOKYO Over the past 20 years, only 25 women have directed a hit Japanese film. Japan ranked 120th in the latest Global Gender Gap Report, and a survey has revealed that the country s film industry, overwhelmingly male-dominated, is no exception. The survey was conducted by the Japanese Film Project (JFP), a nonprofit organization founded by filmmaker Tatsuhito Utagawa, director Takashi Nishihara, and journalist Erina Ito to study gender inequality and working conditions in Japanese film production and to make policy recommendations.