Shōichirō Sasaki

Shōichirō Sasaki (佐々木昭一郎) was a Japanese filmmaker.

Biography
Sasaki was born on January 25, 1936, in Tokyo, Japan. During World War II, Sasaki was frequently evacuated to the countryside. His father, Shūichirō, was a freelance journalist who had been fired in 1930 after criticizing the Japanese military. After working in Manchukuo under surveillance by the Special Higher Police, Shūichirō returned to Tokyo in July 1943. According to Shōichirō, his father began to bleed from the mouth and collapsed after eating a peach from a vendor while they were travelling to his father's native Miyagi Prefecture. His father was then hauled away by secret police agents disguised as sailors, and died in custody.

Sasaki graduated from Rikkyo University and was hired by NHK in 1960, and began directing radio dramas. He collaborated with Shūji Terayama on the 1966 radio drama Comet Ikeya, Terayama adding a fictional narrative to Sasaki's interviews with amateur astronomer Kaoru Ikeya. Sasaki directed several films for NHK, beginning with the 1969 film Mother. His films won multiple awards and enjoyed support primarily from young viewers, influencing future directors such as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Naomi Kawase and Shinya Tsukamoto. After retiring from NHK in 1995, Sasaki worked as a professor at Bunkyo University until 2005. His first and only feature film, Harmonics Minyoung, is an anti-war quasi-documentary musical in Japanese, Korean and English, with period scenes based on his own wartime experiences including the death of his father.

Sasaki died on June 14, 2024, at the age of 88.