Yuji Sakamoto

Yūji Sakamoto (坂元裕二) is a Japanese screenwriter, lyricist, and playwright.

Early life
Yūji Sakamoto was born on 12 May 1967 in Osaka.

Career
At the age of 19, Sakamoto won the 1st Fuji TV Young Scenario Award. At the age of 23, he wrote the screenplay for Tokyo Love Story. In 1996 he wrote the script for the Dreamcast audio drama game Real Sound: Kaze no Regret with Kenji Eno. This game was specially developed for blind and visually impaired players. He has written the scripts for many popular Japanese television dramas, including Our Textbook, Still, Life Goes On, Matrimonial Chaos, Mother, Woman, The Best Divorce, and Quartet. Many of his works have been remade in international productions. His recent works include Anone, My Dear Exes, and Love with a Case. His filmography includes We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021), starring Masaki Suda and Kasumi Arimura. Sakamoto wrote the screenplay for Hirokazu Kore-eda's film Monster (2023). It was the first time since his feature film debut Maborosi (1995) that Kore-eda was not responsible for the screenplay. The two had expressed a mutual respect for each other's work and had attended the same school when they were younger. Monster premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where Sakamoto won the Best Screenplay award.

In April 2016, he was appointed as a professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts's Graduate School of Film and New Media.

In April 2023, Sakamoto was awarded a Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon and in May 2023, he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay for Monster.

Sakomoto wrote and produced In Love and Deep Water for Netflix, and the film premiered in 2023. He and Netflix signed a five-year collaboration agreement in June 2023.

Personal life
In 1998, he married actress Yoko Moriguchi.