Tadao Sato laughed an embarrassed laugh as he recalled that three years ago, in London, he had been referred to as a "legend." Though adding to his discomfort, I had to admit that in my university days I had thought of him in the same way. And I still do.
For students of Japanese film, Sato's name is almost on a par with those of the great 20th-century directors Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, and also renowned actors such as Toshiro Mifune. And yet Sato has only ever been indirectly involved with the production of film.
The 80-year-old native of Niigata Prefecture in northwestern Japan is a film critic — and a particularly prolific one at that. In a career stretching back to the 1950s, he has published more than 100 books covering not only the three masters mentioned above, but many other aspects of both Japanese and American films, recent films in Asia and much, much more. It has been the numerous translations of Sato's work into English that have earned him "legendary" status abroad and set him apart from other Japanese critics.
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