[KineJapan] Sato Tadao

[Gerow Aaron]

I was sad to see the announcement by Ishizaka Kenji this morning, that Sato Tadao had died on March 17, 2022. Here is the official announcement in English put out by the Japan Institute of the Moving Image, where he was Professor Emeritus.

https://www.eiga.ac.jp/news/sato-tadao-obituary.html <https://www.eiga.ac.jp/news/sato-tadao-obituary.html>

Sato was one of the greatest and most influential film critics and scholars in Japan. He was always a bit different from other critics and academics, in part because he never went to college. As he always said, to him cinema was his school. He was born in 1930, and his real name is Iiri Tadao. While working at various jobs, including at national rail and an electronics factory, he began writing film reviews and got involved at Shiso no kagaku, which helped define his life-long focus on the popular dimensions of modern entertainment. Working as an editor at Eiga hyoron and other publications, Sato became an extremely prolific writer, publishing over a hundred books on topics not just centered on film, but including manga, education, theater, democracy, war, literature, etc. He also wrote books for younger readers. With his wife, Sato Hisako, he founded the film historiographical journal Eigashi kenkyu in 1973, and as a historian, eventually published a monumental four volume history of Japanese film. As an educator, he began teaching at Imamura Shohei’s film school, which later became the Japan Institute of the Moving Image. Sato eventually became president of that institution. Sato actively engaged with foreign cinema and critics, attending film festivals and conferences abroad, and serving as director of the Focus on Asia film festival in Fukuoka, helping introduce other Asian cinemas to Japan. He received numerous awards, including the Person of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government in 2019. He is the Japanese film critic who has arguably been translated the most into English. 

Sato-sensei was one of my introductions to Japanese cinema, especially in Japanese. When I first spent a summer in Japan, I wrote to him (perhaps my first formal letter in Japanese!), asking him to recommend books for the Iowa library. I got to meet him that summer at a silent film screening at Kinokuniya with Sawato Midori. The first book I read in full in Japanese was his Nihon eiga to Nihon bunka (1987), which I read in fourth year Japanese when the instructor decided to work with us individually to help us read books of our choice. I later became a colleague of Sato-sensei’s, as we both ended up serving on the board and on various committees at the Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences. In recent years, his book Nihon eiga rironshi—the only historical introduction to Japanese film theory in Japanese—has been central to my research on Japanese film theory (even if I can be critical of its stance), and I made sure to include a translation of the book’s introduction in a special journal issue I did on Japanese film theory.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42800636 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/42800636>

Sato-sensei was always thrilled that I was using that book, since apparently it was one of his least read works, but one he thought to be important. I also recorded an interview with him about a decade ago on film theory, which, now that he has passed, I should return to. I remember it was quite excellent. 

There is much more to say, especially in terms of a critical appraisal of his work. He pursued a unique stance, avoiding many of the major trends in Japanese film criticism from the 60s to the 90s, while still maintaining a left-wing commitment to a cinema of the people. His influence on Japanese film studies is immense.


Aaron Gerow
Alfred W. Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Film and Media Studies
Chair, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
320 York Street, Room 108
PO Box 208201
New Haven, CT 06520-8201
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6729
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu <mailto:aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
website: www.aarongerow.com





















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