Yoshimitsu Sakano (Yoshimitsu Sakano) was born on May 30, 1931 in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, and died on May 7, 2017 at the age of 86.
After graduating in 1955, he entered the literary and art department of Dongbao Photography Institute. In 1956, he transferred to the performance assistant department and served as an assistant director for a long time. Holds a diving license and began to transfer to underwater photography class in 1961.
In 1970, Toho Pictures was preparing to promote him to the chief director, and the work "The Birth of the Japanese Islands" was performed at the 70th World Expo in Osaka, attracting a large number of audiences and setting a historical record.
In 1971, Godzilla series producer Tomoyuki Tanaka signed him to help revitalize the series. So he directed "Godzilla vs Hedora" and served as the screenwriter of the film (jointly with Ma Yuanxun).
In this work, he creatively came up with the idea of letting the monster Godzilla fly into the sky, but at the stage of obtaining permission from producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, Tanaka was admitted to the hospital due to unwellness during the filming.
At that time, Kazuo Baba, the managing director of Toho, was given full authority to decide which ideas to adopt based on the judgment of Baba. After the work was completed, Tanaka watched it and found that it was a avant-garde film full of passion, which shocked him, and said to Sakano with an embarrassed expression, "I can't change its character." Later, in the American version of "History of the Release of Godzilla", it was written that "that kid (Sakano) will never let him direct special films again!". Banno will not be able to direct feature films again in the future, but with his expertise in underwater photography, he continues to complete many TV documentaries focusing on marine ecology, and continues to be active in the TV circle.
In 2004, "Godzilla Final Battle", which was known as the series finale, traded twice the budget for the third-lowest viewership of the entire series, and indeed ended the Godzilla series. With the help of Banno, a new version of Godzilla was produced in 2014, which made the world bring the Godzilla craze all at once.
After many ups and downs, he still hasn't forgotten his Godzilla movie ideal. On the front page of the evening news of the Tokyo Shimbun on March 4, 2017, the 85-year-old Yoshimitsu Sakano showed reporters the script of "New Heidora". Two months later, Sakano died of illness, and the work he left to the world was his only work, and the first extraordinary film in the Godzilla series, "Godzilla vs. Hedora"!
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