Biography
Ichirō Saitō (斎藤一郎) was a Japanese film composer. Born in Chiba in 1909, he studied violin at the Tokyo Higher Music Academy (now Kunitachi College of Music) before working as a performer and later establishing himself as a composer.
He composed scores for more than 300 films between the late 1930s and 1970s. Saitō worked frequently with directors including Kenji Mizoguchi on The Life of Oharu (1952) and Ugetsu (1953), Mikio Naruse on Floating Clouds (1955) and Sound of the Mountain (1954), and Yasujirō Ozu on The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952). His later credits include several entries in the Zatoichi series.
In 1952 he received the Mainichi Film Award for Best Music for his work on multiple films that year.
