People

Is a Japanese TV director & producer who has strong points on Southeast Asian issues, based on his experience in the region more than a decade.

His interest on Asia began in early 2000s when he was sent to Indonesian senior high school and university as an exchange student. The devastating earthquake and Tsunami struck Aceh in 2004, made him to cover the incident on the ground more than a year. Given the chance to join the team producing NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) documentary on the civil war and tsunami impact in Aceh, he decided to pursue his carrier as a TV director since then.

In 2006, Soichiro joined the news production team at Fuji Television as an assistant director. Given another occasion in 2007, he started to work as director for the NHK’s international news program and produced various news features. In 2011, he also produced 50 minutes documentary program on Japanese hostage crisis in 1990 by revealing classified documents and interviewing former prime ministers and diplomats.

In 2012, he joined NHK’s English news service and was sent to Thailand as a producer in charge of NHK World’s Bangkok bureau. During 6 years on assignments in various parts of Asia, he produced hundreds of news packages from the region. He also led the live broadcasting operations of main news events including Thailand’s coup, historic election in Myanmar, typhoon disaster in the Philippines, and huge earthquake in Nepal.

Soichiro chose to be an independent director in 2018 and moved his base to Jakarta, as one of founders of dna asia production. For the last few years, most of his works have been broadcasted at various NHK channels, including series of Asian economic news packages, interview programs of Asian visionaries, as well as documentary coverages on social issues in the region.