坂根田鶴子 (7 December 1904, Kyoto - 2 September 1975)
- credited as the first female film director in Japan
- daughter of an inventor in the Kyoto textile industry
- her father took her often to the cinema as a child
- graduated from Nikkatsu Uzumaki girls school (1929)
- attended Doshisha Women's School
- at age 20, while still a student, she entered into an arranged marriage with a doctor, but it quickly ended in divorce
- was introduced to Kenji Mizoguchi by her father
- impressed by Sakane's sensible character, Mizoguchi hired her as a script girl
- joined Nikkatsu Studio in 1929
- worked under Mizoguchi variously as an assistant director, editor, continuity editor, screenplay editor, and art director
- ". . . under [Mizoguchi's] patronage, Sakane became Japan's firt and only female film director in the prewar period. Denied work after the war (on the ground that she had to have a college degree to be a director), she was forced, at age forty-two, to return to Mizoguchi as a script girl." (Anderson, 621)