Growing up in the rural region of Nara, Japan, Kawase's parents split early on in her childhood, leaving her to be raised by her great-aunt, with whom she held a combative, yet loving, relationship.

Employing her interest in autobiography, most of her first short films focus on her turbulent family history, including her abandonment and her father's death.

Tarachime revisits Kawase's relationship with her great-aunt, tackling very personal themes such as her aunt's growing dementia.

[8][9] Pop star Hikaru Utada asked Kawase to create the music video for her 2012 single "Sakura Nagashi" (桜流し, lit.

[14] Released in 2022, the two-part film places the 2020 Olympics within the wider context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the mixed reactions to the games from Japanese society.

Footage and captions alleged that protesters were paid money to attend anti-Olympics demonstrations as part of larger opposition against the games.

[16][17] On January 13, 2022, the NHK Osaka director Terunobu Maeda apologized during a press conference, admitting that the captions "should not have been included".

[19] In April 2022, Shūkan Bunshun reported that Kawase kicked a camera assistant in the stomach while filming True Mothers in May 2019, leading cinematographer Yūta Tsukinaga and his team to resign mid-production.

"[24] She employs this documentary-realism to focus on individuals of lesser cultural status, challenging prevailing representations of women within the male-dominated Japanese film industry.

[1] This theme is also connected to her own personal reflections on contemporary issues in the current climate of economic depression such as the declining birthrate, alienation, and the collapse of traditional family structures.

[26] However, Kawase herself does not classify as a feminist due to Japanese feminism's tendency to persist collective identity and view women's problems through a narrow ideological lens.

Women tend to be more intuitive and rely more on their senses, or it might be due to gender status differences in Japan ... Not being in the mainstream or the center, she can make new discoveries.