ALUMNI
Obituaries
Sayonara YOSHITAKA SAJI (FF ’76–11) passed away at home on December 19, 2020 following a battle with cancer. He had turned 74 years a few days prior on December 15. Saji-san, as he was known on campus, worked at ASIJ for 35 years taking care of students’ and teacher’s AV needs in the library. He was also known for his passion for photography and his work was often featured in school publications. Born in 1946 in Tahara city in Aichi Prefecture, Saji-san graduated from the Kuwasawa Design School in 1968 with a major in photography. The first showing of his work took place the following year, when he participated in a group exhibition at the Ginza Nikon Salon.
Saji-san continued to pursue photography and design and later started his own design studio, GALAXY, with his former classmate from the Kuwasawa Design School and renowned photographer Shigeo Gocho. The pair worked together for five years until Gocho’s untimely death in 1983 as a result of his long battle with Pott’s disease and its side effects. At the time of their collaboration, Saji-san had already started work at ASIJ, where he had joined the audio-visual department in 1976. Former librarian Vick Downs (FF ’59–99) fondly remembers interviewing Saji-san for that job in the AV room: ”His intelligence, integrity and reliability seemed to shout out to me from this otherwise quiet man. He learned English in what felt like two weeks, and soon was the “go to” person
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