Nobuo Yamada was Marie Curie's first Japanese disciple. Yamada was dispatched to the Radium Institute in Paris, where Marie Curie was the director. Toshiko Yuasa was the first internationally active Japanese woman scientist. She went to France in 1940, during World War II, and studied under Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie's disciple, son-in-law, and professor at the Collège de France. This article introduces the two Japanese scientists who learned the Curie research style in France, while also demonstrating the role of gender in the Curie laboratory tradition, which had no parallel in Japan or in any other laboratories worldwide.