Biography
Hisao Shirai (白井 久男) was a Japanese cinematographer and director of photography specialising in animation. Born in Saitama Prefecture on 12 December 1946, he began in live-action photography before moving into anime as the film industry declined.
He worked on numerous television series and films from the 1970s onwards, serving as director of photography on My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), Ghost in the Shell (1995), Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), Perfect Blue (1997), Pokémon: The First Movie (1998), Millennium Actress (2001) and many episodes of the Pokémon and Cardcaptor Sakura series. He was formerly representative director of Studio Cosmos and died on 28 April 2019.
