SAKAMOTO Hiromi

Department of ArtsProfessor/Senior Staff

Last Updated :2024/07/20

■Researcher basic information

Degree

  • PhD in Education(The University of Auckland)

Profile

  • Hiromi Sakamoto is a recognized director/producer whose work has been beneficial to the U.S.-Japan relationship especially in the fields of media and performing arts. He served as a drama director of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation, the public broadcasting network of Japan) for several years, where he worked with many talented writers, composers and actors of Japan. After leaving NHK, he came back to New York where he had previously studied performing arts, and created Tempo I Corporation, an educational nonprofit organization which produced TV programs and performing arts projects to enhance cultural understandings between the people in the US and Japan.

    As Director of Tempo I, Sakamoto produced more than 30 television programs with American topics for NHK, TV Tokyo, Mainichi Broadcasting Systems, Fuji Television and TV Asahi, and produced/directed many theatrical productions by bringing about hundred talented performing artists to and from both the U.S. and Japan, and sometimes to Europe. The theatrical productions Sakamoto produced and/or directed includes an award-winning Gaijin with Ping Chong (Tokyo Theater Fair '95), Linda Twine's musical retrospective Harlem Symphony with Broadway cast and staff (Osaka '90), and a New York-Tokyo Sister City 30th Anniversary production of Ballet Capsule with the New York City Ballet dancers. He was also one of the core persons who created the Performing Arts Japan of the Japan Foundation (an international cultural agency & foundation of the Japanese Government), a fund created to enhance US-Japan professional artists' exchange projects.

    Since Sakamoto had a strong interest in education, he decided to attend a graduate school after working more than ten years, and received an MA in Dance & Dance Education from the Department of Arts and Humanities Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. During his years at Columbia, he studied under Maxine Greene, Professor Emeritus of educational philosophy, and her ideas influenced him much. Soon after he finished his MA program, Sakamoto was offered an Associated Professor position at Kyoto University of Art and Design to create Kodomo Geijyutsu Daigaku ("Family Learning Center") for children, parents and University students to learn together. There he produced variety of pilot arts education programs to nurture democracy. He was soon promoted to be a Deputy Director of Research Center for Arts and Arts Education, and created more than 20 documentary programs introducing progressive forms of arts education with professional artists and scholars.

    In the summer of 2006, he went back to the U.S. to line-produce a TV program on Michio Ito, a Japanese dancer/choreographer who was one of the pioneers of modern dance in the U.S. for NHK. After a year in the U.S., Sakamoto was accepted to a PhD program at Dance Studies, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, the University of Auckland, and moved to New Zealand. He started conducting a doctoral research under the topic of “Dance and Democracy: Dance Education as a Construct in Multicultural Democracy”, and have been specifically looking at Educational meanings of Kapa Haka (Māori performing arts) in a broader socio-educational contexts in today’s Aotearoa New Zealand. In the year 2012, Sakamoto transferred to the School of Critical Studies in Education, the Faculty of Education within the University of Auckland.

    He became a full tenured professor of performing arts at Kinki Daigaku (Kindai University)'s School of Literature, Arts and Cultural Studies in 2014, while finishing his Ph.D thesis. He completed his Ph.D at the University of Auckland and submitted his thesis entitled "A Japanese Theatrical Producer's Encounter with Kapa Haka: Māori Performing Arts, Education and a Democratic Community in the Making in Today's Aotearoa New Zealand". Since his appointment at Kindai University in Osaka, he has guest lectured at Ohio State University, has helped his students produce numerous dance and theater productions. In 2015, his senior dance class worked on a collaboration project with hearing impaired students from the Tsukuba University of Technology.

Research Keyword

  • Globalization and Post-Colonialism   Māori Performing Arts (Kapa Haka)   Indigenous cultures   Art in Public   Democracy and Education   Arts Education   Performing Arts   

Research Field

  • Humanities & social sciences / Sociology of education / performing arts/ media studies/ democracy and education

■Career

Career

  • 2014/04 - Today  Kindai UniversitySchool of Literature, Arts and Cultural StudiesProfessor
  • 1988/12 - 2002/01  Tempo One CorporationExecutive Director
  • 1985/04 - 1988/04  NHKDramaDirector

■Research activity information

Paper

  • A Japanese Theatrical Producer's Encounter with Kapa Haka: Māori Perofrming Arts, Education, and a Democratic Community in the Making in Today's Aotearoa New Zealand
    Hiromi Sakamoto
    The University of Auckland 2015/04 [Refereed]
     
    This thesis presents my autoethnographic exploration of educational meanings of Kapa Haka in today's Aotearoa New Zealand. Kapa Haka is the contemporary term used for Māori performing arts, which has become very popular especially among Māori. Through my experience of learning Kapa Haka under an expert teacher and through conversing with kaiwhakaako Kapa Haka (teachers of Kapa Haka), I examined diverse aspects and roles of Kapa Haka. I then related my findings to the ideas of ‘education for democracy’ (Nussbaum, 2010) and the making of ‘democratic communities’ in public spheres (Berry, 1989; Greene, 1995; Zuidervaart, 2011). The thesis argues that two primary purposes exist for practising Kapa Haka in Aotearoa New Zealand today, both of which function as acts of decolonisation and democratisation. Firstly, Kapa Haka retains and revives te reo Māori (the Māori language) and tikanga (cultural protocols), and it provides Māoridom with a “public sphere” (Habermas, 1991) where Māori people celebrate their cultural identity, their diversity and foster family-like communities. Secondly, drawing on Zuidervaart’s (2011) concept of “art in public”, Levine’s (2007) notion of the “alternativist”, and Greene’s (1995) concept of the “social imagination”, this thesis suggests that Māori performing arts could become an effective and non- threatening vehicle for all New Zealanders to learn about te Ao Māori, the Māori world. This is framed as a further act of decolonisation and an opportunity for Aotearoa New Zealand to develop its bi-culturalism in a meaningful way and strengthen its democracy.