TOKYO -- Female directors are carving out careers in Japan's male-dominated banking sector.

One evening in February, seven of them, all of whom work at one of Japan's three mega banking groups -- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group -- gathered at an Italian restaurant near Tokyo Station.

"It’s just women, so we can talk about our problems freely," said Teiko Kudo, a managing executive officer of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., who organized the party.

At the time, they were the only female directors at Japan's megabanks.

Their scarcity is part of a broader issue for Japan. The government has urged the country’s highly educated women to stay in the workforce as they marry and start families. More and more women are working, but breaking into top-level positions is still difficult.

Kudo, now 55, was among the first women in Japan to get on the elite-track in banking. In her third year, she was transferred to the international department, where she struggled to read piles of English contracts. It was not easy, and the Yokohama-raised Kudo had to put up with severe dressings-down from her boss.

But she looks back on that time fondly. "I really enjoyed facing new challenges almost every day," she said.

Kudo later became fascinated by certain disciplines within banking such as project financing, which assesses the profitability and potential of big public works and industrial projects.

Japan's hulking lenders top the global project financing charts. Sumitomo Mitsui last year was the world's second-largest project financier, according to research company Refinitiv.

Also at the Italian restaurant that night was Michiko Morizono, an executive officer of Mizuho Bank. Morizono, 52, is in charge of three branches.

She now manages a model branch in western Tokyo's Kichijoji neighborhood that combines banking, trust management and securities brokering.

When Morizono joined the lender almost 30 years ago, major Japanese banks were hard-pressed to clear their books of nonperforming loans left over from the bubble economy. The sector went through trying times. Mizuho itself also had difficulty with its computer systems and suffered systems failures.

The bank's structural reforms are ongoing. Mizuho is now cutting back on hiring and thinning out its branch network. "You can’t escape the anxiety," Morizono said.

Female executive officers can also be found at some of Japan's less hefty banks.

In July, Tomomi Akutagawa, a 56-year-old managing executive officer of Aozora Bank, will become the first female chief financial officer at a big Japanese bank. When Akutagawa joined Aozora's predecessor, Nippon Credit Bank, in 1985, the lender was hiring female elite-track bankers but without plans to assign new recruits to sales departments. The bank's clients wanted to work with young men who were seen as being available on a 24-hour basis.

In her third year, Akutagawa directly told her boss that she wanted to participate in a project involving raising capital. Without this challenge, "I may not have been able to work at the bank for so long," she said. At that time, even women on track for a promotion typically quit their job after getting married, and Akutagawa wondered if her fate ma have been the same without the project.

Mikiko Ariake, a 54-year-old executive officer at Resona Bank, volunteered to move from Nikko Securities when she was 40, immediately after Resona was nationalized. After Ariake made the switch, she found that her bosses and colleagues were open to her ideas despite the hierarchies typical of banks.

At Resona, Ariake is one of two females among 33 executive officers, evidence that women still find it difficult to climb the career ladder in the male-dominated world of banking.

But the situation is changing. In the past, Japanese bankers were expected to lure depositors, then build personal relationships with them, keeping the lines of communication open day and night. But with the spread of digital banking and fintech, the model of the elite male banker who woos clients has become obsolete.