Isao Sato

Isao Sato (佐藤 功, Satō Isao) was a Japanese theater and television actor born in Tokyo, Japan, on June 27, 1949. He attended Keio University, where he studied law, and before pursuing an international career, he was a member of the Shiki Theatre Company in Japan.

Sato made his Broadway debut in the original production of Pacific Overtures in 1976, joining an all-Asian cast in the role of Kayama. He was the sole non-American member of that cast, having traveled to the United States specifically to audition for the production after missing the Tokyo auditions. Following his casting, he emigrated to America. His performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1976, an award that ultimately went to Sammy Williams for A Chorus Line. His work on the production is preserved on the original cast recording.

During the West Coast tour of Pacific Overtures, Sato met dancer Janice Kanemitsu, whom he married on October 17, 1976. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979.

Sato continued to work in theater throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s. In 1979, he appeared in Fanshen, a play about the Chinese Communist Revolution, performing multiple roles at the ACT Theatre in Seattle. The following year, he played Wenqing in Cao Yu's Peking Man at the Horace Mann Theater in New York City. He also appeared at the Perry Street Theater in New York City in Dick Brukenfeld's historical drama Extenuating Circumstances, a play centered on an American man accused of killing a young Chinese girl in Canton, China, in 1821.

His television credits include an appearance on the drama series Spenser: For Hire in the episode "My Brother's Keeper," which reunited him with his Pacific Overtures castmate Mako Iwamatsu. In 1987, he played a scientist in Penn and Teller's television film Invisible Thread.

Later in his life, Sato pursued a second career as a flight instructor, working at Crest One Flight Academy in Florida. He died on March 9, 1990, at the age of 40, when the Cessna aircraft being piloted by his student collided with a banner plane over Miramar, Florida.