Japanese film director Shinichiro Sawai (formerly known as Nobuharu Sawai) died on September 3, 2021 at the age of 83, after multiple organ failure in a Japanese hospital.
Born on August 16, 1938 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, Sawai Shinichiro graduated from Tokyo University of Foreign Chinese in 1961. In 1981, he directed his debut film Tomb of Nogi, starring Seiko Matsuda, creating an era of entertainment films featuring female idols.
In 1984, he won the Best Director Award at the 9th Japan Academy Awards for his works "The Tale of Early Spring" and "The Tragedy of W". In 2005, he directed the film "Text Message to Mother".
In 2006, he was awarded the Purple Ribbon Medal by the Japanese government (awarded to those who have made outstanding contributions in the fields of academia, art, and sports). In 2007, he directed the historical biographical film "The Wolf: To the End of the World".
The movie "Early Spring Story" starring Tomoyo Harada, Ryuzo Hayashi and Kunihiro Tanaka tells the story of a sixteen-year-old high school girl Hitomi Okino who, while filming the photography work "Spring", accidentally met a forty-two-year-old man, the lonely and mature Kiokawa, and the relationship between the two gradually developed, and then Okino Hitomi inadvertently turned over a black-and-white photo of Kinogawa standing with his mother on his mother's festival day, and gradually had a new understanding of this man in the story of Okino Hitomi's pursuit of his mother.
In the film, let's relive the Japanese love story of the 80s and remember the director Shinichiro Sawai.