Hiroko KUMAGAI

Born in Tokyo. Since 1975, she has worked as a director at a television production company, creating numerous documentaries focusing on social issues such as war and drug abuse. Her notable works include 幻の全原爆フィルム日本人の手へ (1982).
 In 1985, she became a freelance visual journalist. After co-directing よみがえれ　カレーズ (1989) with Noriaki Tsuchimoto in war-torn Afghanistan, she went on to direct A Town of Connection (1995), inspired by her own experience raising children.
In 2005, she released Miike: The Unending Story of the Coal Mine, which explored the legacy and meaning of Japan’s largest coal mine, Miike. The film earned her the Special Prize from the Japan Congress of Journalists (JCJ) and the Japan Film Revival Encouragement Award, among others.
In the NHK ETV special The Women Who Embrace Miike (2013), she portrayed the wives of coal miners who had endured Japan’s worst postwar mining disaster, continuing their fight for justice for over half a century. The program received the top award from the Broadcast Culture Fund and an Encouragement Award at the Jidai Local Film Festival.
Her 2018 film Sakubei-san and Digging into Japan depicted the enduring structures of labor and discrimination in Japan through the paintings, diaries, and testimonies of Sakubei Yamamoto, a coal miner from Chikuho whose work became Japan’s first UNESCO Memory of the World heritage registration. The film was listed in Kinema Junpo’s Top 10 Cultural Films.
Her published works include Goodbye to the "I Want to Quit" Syndrome (1996) and From Nuclear Power to Coal Mines: Then and Now (2012).

Filmography