Akira Sasaki, aged 48, TV director of Yamaguchi Broadcasting is nicknamed “Sasaki of tears.” People appearing in his programs—a single mother busy with childcare, old couple living alone deep in the mountains, or whoever—shed tears a lot and laugh a lot even if they are faced with extreme situations; the strength of their minds and the beauty of their ways of living are vividly portrayed in his works. Sasaki’s production style to closely reflect genuine humanity has won three Grand Prix of the Japan Broadcast Culture Awards, which is regarded as the highest honor for commercial TV program makers.
Hiroaki Mizushima—the author of this paper—worked for Nippon TV (NTV), the key station of the network that Yamaguchi Broadcasting belongs to. He detects the influence of Yasuko Isono (1934-2017) in Sasaki’s style. Isono also worked for Yamaguchi Broadcasting as a TV director and a senior colleague of Sasaki. She is known for her intense approach to interviews for extracting the truth at an only one-time, never-repeated opportunity by closing in on the interviewee. On another front, taking advantage of a local station that was in the vicinity of filming locations, Isono spent time on gathering information and meeting people to give depth to the program. Young Sasaki was under tutelage of Isono, a director who was 35 years older than him, which must have been imperceptibly absorbed in his productions half his life.
Sasaki’s debut work, Hei no naka no rikuesuto kado [request cards behind bars] (2001), depicts the sentiments of inmates at the Yamaguchi Prison through messages on requests cards for the prison radio. Futari no togenkyo (An Eden for Two) (2016) follows for a long time an elderly couple who live a self-sufficient life deep in the mountains. The recent Kioku no ori [residue of the memory] (2017) drags out war memories that have victims and victimizers intricately co-existing in self.
Mizushima traces back the footsteps of Akira Sasaki, a man called “the last disciple” of Yasuko Isono.