-Bio-

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 brought many 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, a form of Maori 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 was given a PhD in Education (The University of Auckland) after submitting a thesis entitled “A Japanese Producer’s Encounter with Kapa Haka: Maori Performing Arts, Education, and a Democratic Community in the Making in Today’s Aotearoa New Zealand”.

Hiromi currently teaches at Kindai University as a Professor (Performing Arts).