Shoichiro Sasaki, 80, never forgets Aug. 1, 1943 — the day he witnessed his father, a free-thinking journalist, die under extraordinary circumstances before his own eyes.
Sasaki, a former NHK TV drama director who has won numerous awards at home and abroad, is convinced that his father was assassinated by the tokko (tokubetsu koto keisatsu, or Special Higher Police), a police force that investigated political groups and ideologies deemed a threat to public order from 1911 to 1945.
More than seven decades later, Sasaki depicts his father's violent death in his first-ever feature film "Minyon Baion no Hosoku" ("Harmonics Minyoung"). In the 2014 film, whose DVD version was released this summer, Sasaki openly enunciated his anti-war stance.