On October 6, 1941, Masahiko Satoh was born in Ryogoku, Tokyo, a short walk from the sumo hall, where his father ran an illuminated-sign business. He went through Keio's school system and graduated from its economics faculty, then spent 1966 to 1968 at Berklee in Boston studying composition and arranging. His first album as leader, Palladium (1969), with Masahiko Togashi on drums, won Swing Journal's Japan Jazz Award; a year later his big-band piece Four Jazz Compositions took an Arts Festival prize. The résumé then wanders cheerfully off the map: the psychedelic score for the 1973 anime Belladonna of Sadness, music for Panda! Go, Panda!, and in 1993 the music direction of a shōmyō concert at the Nippon Budokan sung by a thousand Buddhist monks. He was still releasing new records in his eighties.
Cover art for Masahiko Satoh's soundtrack to the 1973 animated film 『哀しみのベラドンナ』 (Belladonna of Sadness). Used as a stand-in because no free-licensed photograph of Satoh could be found on Wikimedia Commons. Album cover art, copyright the rights holder (Nippon Columbia), all rights reserved — this is not a Creative Commons or public-domain image.
Sources: 佐藤允彦 — Japanese Wikipedia (1941年10月6日, born Ryogoku, Tokyo; Keio economics graduate; Berklee 1966–68; Palladium 1969 won Swing Journal's Japan Jazz Award; 1970 Arts Festival prize for 四つのジャズコンポジション; 1993 千僧音曼荼羅 at the Nippon Budokan with 1,000 monks; Panda Kopanda) , Masahiko Satoh — English Wikipedia (born October 6, 1941, Tokyo; Berklee; Palladium 1969; Belladonna of Sadness score, 1973; music for a choir of 1,000 Buddhist monks) , プロフィール | 佐藤允彦 — Nippon Columbia artist profile (born Tokyo 1941; Keio graduate; Berklee; Palladium's Japan Jazz Award) , 【LTRインタビュー：佐藤允彦】その１ — Long Time Recorders, published on his 82nd birthday, October 6, 2023 , Masahiko Satoh — jazzprofiles.com profile
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