| China Sadao 知名定男 | |
| Birth Date: | 21 April 1945 |
| Birth Place: | Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan |
| Occupation: | Musician |
(born 21 April 1945) is a Japanese musician active in the Okinawan music and shima-uta scene, as a performer on the sanshin, min'yō folk singer, song-writer, and producer, having been responsible in 1990 for the formation of the Nēnēs.[1] [2] [3]
China Sadao was born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1945, the family moving to Amagasaki in Hyōgo Prefecture in 1951.[1] His father,, a musician from Okinawa Prefecture, had moved from Okinawa in search of work, making a living in a spinning mill and by gathering scrap metal from drainage ditches.[4] As a young child, Sadao disliked the nostalgic shima-uta performed by his father and tried to suppress his uchināguchi dialect; he would later recall his embarrassment when his father appeared at an athletics meet with a sanshin and taiko.[4] Nevertheless, he performed in folk songs and dances together with his parents, and in 1951 made his first recording, of the song, on the .[1] In 1957, father and son returned to Okinawa, where Sadao began his studies, at his father's recommendation, as an uchi-deshi with Okinawan musician Noborikawa Seijin.[1] [4] That same year he made his official debut recording, at the age of twelve, with a performance of the min'yō .[1] In 1963, after meeting composer Tsuneo Fukuhara, he began to study Western classical music and the classical guitar.[1] His career lasting over sixty years, in December 2020 he performed at a fund-raising concert for the rebuilding of Shuri Castle.[5]