Kinuyo Tanaka
Kinuyo Tanaka was the first female director of Japan. Prior to directing, she starred in many of the films of such famous directors as Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. She was featured in one-hundred and thirty-one films, ranging from years 1924 to 1976. Her first film was a film entitled Kuibumi, releaesed in the year 1953. She went on to direct five more features in the next six years, including Tsuki wa Noburinu (1955), Chibusa yo eien nare (1955) Oginsama (1960) Ruten no Ouhi (1960) and Onna Bakari no Yoru (1961), which was her final film that she directed. She died in the year 1977.
I had a very easy time finding out about Kinuyo Tanaka. On the wikipedia page for women directors, under the subcategory of women of color, she was listed as a director from Japan. I was able to obtain a more complete list of the films that she has directed by going into imdb.com. While I had no problems in finding out who she was, there is very little information about her available beyond this basic overview. The information that is about her tends to focus more so on her role as an actress within the male directed films that she starred in than the films that she directed. Similarily, while it is is quite easy to find many of the films that she has starred in from a place such as netflix, none of the films that she has directed have any video distribution in the US, which makes them very difficult to obtain. Even from import sites such as HKDvd.com or Nippon-export.com, they do not have any of the films that she directed available. I have also been unable to find any reviews or even plot synopsis of any of the films that she has directed. This does not necessarily mean that she has been forgotten about as a director, as a great deal of information never really makes it from Japan to the western world. Still, it is unfortunate that none of the films she directed and that very little information about these films is available in this country, as I'm sure it was a difficult task, even for an established movie star, for a woman to succesfuly direct films in 1950s Japan.