Majid Majidi, one o Yoichi Sai, a second generation Korean resident in Japan, was born in Nagano Prefecture, in 1949. In his early years, Sai worked as an assistant director to such authoritative masters as Nagisa Oshima (to whose credit goes the much acclaimed The Realm of the Senses, 1975) and Toru Murakawa. He began his own career as a director in 1983, with Jukkai no Mosukito, which was screened at Yokohama Film Festival. Winner of the Best New Director Award at the Mainichi Film Contest (one of the most prestigious Japanese movie awards), Jukkai no Mosukito was also hosted by the Critics Week of the Venice Biennale.
After his second feature film, Seiteki hanzai (1983), set against the background of Nikkatsu Roman Porno (a series of soft core pornographic films produced by Nikkatsu), Sai was hired by Kadokawa Eiga (Kadokawa Movies) and directed Itsuka dareka ga korosareru (1984), Tomo yo shizukani nemure (1985), Kuroi doresu no onna (1987) and Hana no asuka gumi (1988). Although most of the movies he directed for Kadokawa Eiga had a commercial character and featured teenage idols, Sai, whose touch had always been rather caustic and devoid of sentimentalism, definitely distanced himself from cheap cinematography.
In 1989, Sai directed Via Okinawa, which was highly acclaimed by the critics and screened at the Montreal Film Festival. Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan occupied by U.S. troops until 1973, has a distinctive culture and its own language. This was the second movie he shot in Okinawa, the first one being Tomo yo shizukani nemure. Later, Sai directed a third movie in Okinawa, The Pig’s Retribution (1999), confirming Sai’s peculiar interest in this southern island and its inhabitants.

All under the Moon (1993), the story of a Japanese born and bred Korean taxi driver, stands out as the turning point in his career. The film, based on a novel by Sogil Yan, a Japan-resident Korean writer, is Sai’s first depiction of the issues of identity and adaptation as experienced by the Korean-Japanese people. No prominent actor is starring here and the movie was at first distributed on a small scale. Its distribution then gradually expanded on a larger scale and the movie became a major success. Yoichi Sai was thrust into the limelight almost overnight. All under the moon was highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike and won fifty-three movie awards, including the "Kinema Junpo", the most prestigious recognition in Japan. The film was also screened at various international film festivals, including the International Forum of Berlin Film Festival. Today, it is still regarded by most Japanese film critics as Yoichi Sai’s masterpiece.
Despite the commercial failure and quite unfavorable reviews met by his following movie, a comedy entitled Tokyo Deluxe (1995), the same year Sai directed one of his most celebrated works, Marks Mountain. The film, based on a best selling thriller, was produced by Shochiku, one of Japan’s major studios. Given the complexity of both the original novel and the script, one couldn’t deny that parts of the movie were obscure, even for a Japanese audience, and the box office return was less than Shochiku expected. However, the powerful and realistic imagery of Marks Mountain reaffirmed Sai as a truly talented filmmaker.

Sai then returned to low budget production. Dog Race (1988), a fine comedy centered around the unusual friendship between a police officer and a Korean-Japanese informer, offered a vivid depiction of Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s busiest districts. His next film, The Pig’s Retribution (1999), won the Don Quixote Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2002, Sai directed Doing Time, a well crafted depiction of daily life in a Japanese prison. An adaptation of a comic based on the cartoonist’s own experience, the film is a plain, irreverent comedy with no remarkable incidents, no tyrannical guards and no runaways, reminiscent of Ozu Yasujiro’s films. Doing Time won many awards in Japan and met with a remarkable and long-lasting success in art cinemas.
In 2004, Yoichi Sai directed Quill, the poignant narration of a guide dog’s life, based on a true story. The movie turned out to be a real blockbuster, exceeding a box office revenue of two billion yen. In directing this film, which had its origins in a truly heartfelt love for dogs (Sai is very fond of them), he wisely refrained from vain sentimentalism. Yoichi Sai thus distanced himself from the number of B-movies made about this subject.

Soon after the success of Quill, Sai started working on a new large budget film he had been planning for nearly six years. The saga of Blood and Bones (2004), again based on a novel by Sogil Yang, can easily be referred to as "The Godfather" of Japan-resident Koreans. Sai asked Takeshi Kitano to play the starring role (incidentally, Kitano had already performed in The Mosquito on the Tenth Floor). In many different ways, this film may be considered as an anthology of Sai’s works.
Yoichi Sai has often portrayed people who are alienated from Japanese society at large, such as gangsters, prostitutes, Japanese-born Koreans, Okinawans, etcetera. His view on their vicissitudes is always an objective one and his movies have a distinctively dry and sentimentalism-free touch which, to use a Japanese expression, we can term "hard-boiled".
Sai has also occasionally performed as an actor. Of note is his impressive acting in Nagisa Oshima’s Gohatto (1999). Sai is also a television commentator, famous for his sharp criticism of politics and social issues. Newly appointed chairman of the Japanese Directors’ Guild, Yoichi Sai can now be considered as the leading contemporary Japanese filmmaker in his own right.