To launch its upcoming lecture series, the College Women's Association of Japan invited Kanako Hayashi to give an introductory talk. A persuasive speaker, she has a background of 16 years of inside association with the world of film. As it often happens, chance, good timing and luck played major parts in formulating her career.

Hayashi is a 1985 graduate in philosophy from Sophia University. She still looks barely out of her teens. A film lover, she learned her English from sitting in the dark, watching the screen and listening to the dialogue. Before her graduation, she wrote a letter to Kashiko Kawakita, to whom she refers as the godmother of film.

In their work from the 1920s, the husband-and-wife team Nagamasa and Kashiko Kawakita pioneered bringing foreign films to Japan, and taking Japanese films abroad. On receiving Hayashi's letter, Kashiko Kawakita invited her for an interview. Hayashi took her first step into the film world when she was given the chance to join the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, which had been set up in tribute to Nagamasa after his death.

Hayashi married a journalist, and for the next dozen years worked at the institute. She said: "I was the general coordinator, promoting exchanges with various international film festivals overseas, and arranging screenings of Japanese film. I assisted in setting up retrospective showings of Japanese directors. I took part in over 70 international film festivals all over the world. I was on the jury of such film festivals as Montreal World, Berlin International, Hawaii International and Torino."

At home she served on a project to promote new directors at the Tokyo International Foundation for Promotion of Screen Image Culture. Her concern, consistent with that of many other authorities, was that Japanese film standards had fallen. Giants once brought a "golden age" to Japanese cinema that had gone. Hayashi sought to recover it. She is still looking for and encouraging new directors who she hopes will measure up to the former masters and their productions.

She recounts the history of Japanese film, and how it evolved as one more form of Japan's theatrical traditions. Many Japanese arts play a part in showing Japan to the world, but film, she says, is the medium that is most influential and far-reaching. Equally, films coming to Japan from other countries illustrate the habits and customs of other people. Such exchanges should make for general tolerance and widened horizons. As an advocate of film, Hayashi believes that something so powerful in dramatic presentation and message must stay aware of its position, and aim for the highest quality.

Toward the end of the 1990s, Hayashi went with her husband when he was transferred to Hong Kong. She continued her work there by strengthening her relationship with the Hong Kong International Film Festival. She became a consultant to the Forum of the Berlin International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival for the selection of Asian films. Additionally, she was delighted to have her baby in Hong Kong, where he could take advantage of domestic help availability. "It was really tough in Japan," she said. "I couldn't do anything else but work. Now we're back here, and my little boy is 2, my mother is helping me."

For a year now, Hayashi has been a director of Tokyo FilmeX. This institution, she said, "is a young film festival, a competition program for emerging Asian film directors. FilmeX arranges special screenings, and shows some classics." Tokyo FilmeX is to make its second presentation in December.

"Japanese Film in Focus" is the name given to the Lecture Series 2002 organized by the College Women's Association of Japan. It is a series of six lectures that will examine the influence of Japanese film on directors from the West. The lectures aim, through this examination, to advance the understanding of Japanese social and cultural history. Attention will be paid to the status of the art today, and to the position within it of women. Donald Richie, the leading Western authority on Japanese cinema, will give the keynote address. This year marks the 36th annual holding of the Lecture Series, each one built around a different theme. Proceeds from the lectures will go to CWAJ's scholarship and educational programs.