Genjū Sasa

Biography

Genjū Sasa (佐々元十, Sasa Genjū) (14 January 1900 – 7 July 1959) was a left-wing Japanese film director and film critic. He was a founding member of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), providing inspiration to the movement through his writings and his films. While studying in the French department of linguistics in the University of Tokyo, Sasa Genjuu was part of the proletarian theater and one of the many member activities was visiting factories and other places in the workers' recess time and create agitprop through the means of short plays. They were known as "briefcase theater" due to the flexibility of being able to visiting any place by carrying all they needed inside a briefcase. It is said that they stimulated many theater activities in Japan by transcending the conventional structures of Shingeki (western inspired theater school) which was associated with the intellectual class. It was then that Sasa considered the potential of producing them through cinema. Thus, while acting alone with a small camera he decided to record some short films like the Tokyo May Day of 1927, Teidai News, Strike, and Gaitou, all in the 16mm format. The following year he produced several other shorts, among them The Noda Strike. These small films were recorded as documentaries or newsreels and were done independently by Sasa from recording to editing.