The people who worked and studied with Sensei Shozo Sato from 1964 until his passing this past May, will always remember him fondly as their gentle and patient sensei (teacher) of Japanese culture and art. His personal stories, always told with a touch of self-effacing humor during workshops and thoughtful conversations with University of Illinois students, were hallmarks of his instruction and cultural exchanges through the arts. Shozo believed if we communicate with one another through the arts, we will always grow to better understand one another.
Much has been written about Sato’s tremendous accomplishments and arts diplomacy across the country. However, only his most intimate colleagues, friends, and family understood that his love of teaching and the traditional arts of Japan were formed from the crucible of war, family tragedy, and an embrace of all things beautiful in people.
Shozo Sato (1933-2025) was born in Kobe, Japan on May 18, 1933, and raised in Osaka. The son of Takami (father) and Midori (mother) Sato, he and his younger brother Tomoyaso were raised by his father’s sisters, Hatsuko and Shizuno Sato, after his father accepted a military position managing the administration of a hospital in China beginning in 1937. Shozo also had one cousin and one half-sister, Yoshiko and Shitsuko Sato.
Little is known about Shozo’s biological mother, Midori, other than that she had a great interest in the performing arts and was the first to introduce him to Kabuki theatre. Shozo’s father had little interest in the performing arts and hoped that his son would follow his own career in administration. When Shozo’s elementary school teachers asked him what he wanted to be as an adult, he told them he wanted to be an artist. This brought about much consternation from his grandmother, Tome Sato, according to Shozo.
Life in war-torn Japan between 1937 and 1945 was filled with food shortages, nationalist propaganda, devasting destruction, and death. However, the war and its aftermath did not darken Shozo’s wonder for all beautiful things. The visual and performing arts provided him a spiritual escape from the emotional conflicts he experienced as a child.
After Japan’s invasion of China in July 1937, the Japanese government instituted specific times for reverential silences to maintain popular support for Japan’s new war efforts. After Japan attacked the United States on December 7, 1941, all Japanese subjects were regularly monitored by their government. Life in Japan between 1943 and 1944 was filled with increasing economic hardship and governmental control.
American bombings of Japan’s industrial cities displaced millions. Food rationing, which began in 1940, became a national crisis by 1944. Little is recorded in Shozo’s papers about the Sato family’s life at this time, but his comments about the March 13-14, 1945, bombing of Osaka clearly indicate that he was living in Osaka and witnessed firsthand its fiery destruction. Shozo described his experience as a child many years later:
“I remember the searchlights sweeping across the sky….The first bombs were incendiaries, and they created a massive firestorm blaze across Osaka…We were all out on the street, helping people escape from the fire…Later, after the first atomic bomb hit Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, my uncle, Yoshiaki Sato, and I traveled by freight train to see if any family had survived…We went to the home of my uncle’s father, and we discovered the bomb’s incredible heat had peeled the skin off of the granite stone on the gate…We never found any of his family…I cannot get away from these images.”
Japan’s surrender and the conclusion of WWII initiated its slow economic recovery between 1945 and 1947, which placed additional burdens on the people of Japan during the early years of reconstruction. However, the most significant casualty of the war years for Shozo was the divorce of his parents.
As Japan’s economy improved between 1949 and 1950, new social freedoms and greater collegiality were welcomed by its inhabitants and the US military who occupied the country after the war. In 1950, at the age of 17, Shozo began pursuing a fine arts degree from the Bunka Gakuen College in Tokyo, which focused on western European genres.
However, after several years he refocused his studies on traditional Japanese arts practices. These included Japanese tea ceremonies under Kishimoto Kosen as well as ikebana (flower arrangement), sumi-e (black-ink painting), and shodo (calligraphy). In addition, Shozo enrolled at the Toho Academy of Performing Arts in Tokyo in 1955 to study with the master Kabuki artist, Nakamura Kanzaburo XVII.
During this time, Shozo experienced new friendships with like-minded artists in Japan which allowed him to blossom both artistically and spiritually. Some of his fondest memories were associated with his family’s dog, “Puppy,” who had become a center to new-found life. At this same time Shozo began teaching art to children of American GIs and Japanese women. Through this early work as an art teacher, the superintendents of the American Navy, Army, and Air Force schools hired Shozo to teach traditional Japanese arts to the families of the military commanders stationed in Japan.
While Japanese school curriculums pushed away from these cultural traditions, the American schools sought Shozo to teach Americans and their children about Japanese traditions as a form of diplomacy between the two countries. Through this work Shozo developed many new friendships with the military’s commanders who helped spread the word about his traditional arts workshops.
As Shozo continued studying art and kabuki in Tokyo he formed a small art school in Kamakura, Japan between 1958-1959. His small arts school taught traditional Japanese arts practices to all interested students, most of whom were American. During this time Japanese families typically shunned his arts instruction, but American visitors were deeply committed to it.
In 1962 Margaret Erlanger, a dance instructor from the University of Illinois whose sabbatical took her to Japan, heard about Shozo’s unique art school and spent two weeks studying traditional dance with him. At the conclusion of her sabbatical visit, she invited him to the United States and the University of Illinois to serve as a visiting artist in residence to teach Japanese theatre and dance.
Two years later he came to the University of Illinois as a visiting artist and by 1969 he became an artist in residence for the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, offering courses and workshops in traditional Japanese arts including shodo, sumi-e, ikebana, Kabuki, and the Japanese tea ceremony. He is best recognized for his adaptations of traditional western theatre, Macbeth, Medea, Othello, Faust, Achilles, Madame Butterfly and The Mikado, in the style of Kabuki productions, beginning in 1978.
His career on the university faculty brought about the creation of Japan House on campus, and he continued to blossom through his arts diplomacy until his retirement in 1992 when the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs honored him with the Certificate of Commendation for promoting Japanese culture globally. In 2004 he was awarded The Order of the Sacred Treasure with Rosette by the Emperor of Japan.
For further information about the Shozo Sato Papers contact Scott Schwartz at schwrtzs@illinois.edu or 217-333-4577. Many thanks to Marc-Anthony Macon, Jennifer Gunji-Ballsrud, and Sumie Burton for their help with this article.