Shirō Sano
Japanese actor, film director

Shirō Sano (佐野 史郎, Sano Shirō; born March 4, 1955) is a Japanese actor.
Career
Born in Yamanashi Prefecture, Sano lived in Tokyo and Matsue, Shimane as a child, before returning to Tokyo to enter art school. He joined several theatrical troupes, including Jurō Kara's Jōkyō Gekijō. He had his first starring role in a film in Kaizō Hayashi's To Sleep so as to Dream in 1986, but gained fame for playing the character Fuyuhiko in the television drama Zutto Anata ga Suki datta in 1992. He directed his first film, Karaoke, in 1999.
Filmography
Films
To Sleep so as to Dream (1986)
Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988)
Tomorrow (1988)
Violent Cop (1989)
It's a Summer Vacation Everyday (1994)
Sharaku (1995)
Karaoke (1999) (as director)
Godzilla 2000 (1999)
The Princess Blade (2001)
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
Infection (2004) – Dr. Kiyoshi Akai
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
The Sun (2005)
Waiting in the Dark (2006)
Persona (2008)
Railways (2010)
Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan: The Movie (2012) – Chief of Space Police Weeval (Actor)/Makuu Prison Warden Ashurada (Voice)
Reunion (2012)
The Millennial Rapture (2012)
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations: Dr. Pac-Man vs. Ex-Aid & Ghost with Legend Rider (2016) – Michihiko Zaizen (Actor)/Dr.
The public source identifies “Shirō Sano” as japanese actor, film director. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shirō, Sano and Japanese.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Shirō Sano”, the useful work is to connect “japanese actor, film director” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3959632. VIAF identifies the subject as 115178644. The Library of Congress control number is no2005074415. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1986, 1992 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shirō Sano” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.