Kawakita was born in
Osaka, and travelled widely as a child due to her father's business affairs. The family settled in
Yokohama when she was 12 and she entered the
Ferris Girls' School, to study the
English language. She joined the Towa Trading Company in 1929 as a secretary to the president, her future husband, Nagamasa Kawakita. Her first work at Towa was to translate the script of
Kenji Mizoguchi’s
The Passion of a Woman Teacher from Japanese to English. After their marriage in 1932, the Kawakitas used their honeymoon to make the first of many trips to Europe to acquire movies for the Japanese market. The 1931 film
Mädchen in Uniform by
Leontine Sagan caught her attention, and she convinced her reluctant husband to acquire the rights for the Japanese market. It became an enormous hit, after its success at the box office, the Kawakitas always travelled to Europe together to select films. They selected the works of numerous European filmmakers, including
Jean Renoir,
René Clair,
Jacques Feyder and
Julien Duvivier. They also brought Japanese films to European venues, including
Rashomon by
Akira Kurosawa, which they took to the
Venice Film Festival in 1951. In 1948 the Kawakitas met
Donald Richie and they formed a lifelong friendship. Kashiko Kawakita introduced him to
Yasujirō Ozu and was his sponsor when he applied for permanent residency in Japan. The Guild later began to produce Japanese artistie/experimental films, sponsoring directors, such as
Nagisa Oshima,
Masahiro Shinoda,
Yoshishige Yoshida,
Susumu Hani and
Shuji Terayama. In the 1970s, she was active in organizing overseas retrospectives of great Japanese film makers, including with works of
Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa and others. After her husband’s death in 1982, the Japan Film Library Council was transformed into the
Kawakita Memorial Film Institute. Kawakita died in 1993. ==References==