CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Shirō Sano

Japanese actor, film director

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ3959632 ↗
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

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.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 1986, 1992, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1955-03-04. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Shirō, Sano and Japanese providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

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.

Evidence profile

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.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Shirō Sano”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Shirō Sano primary sources, Shirō Sano archive and Shirō research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shirō Sano”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

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.