Sachiko Hamada was born and raised in Japan.

She studied French Literature at Keio University in Tokyo. After graduation, she was a founding editor of Japan's first mass-market feminist magazine, Watashiwaonna, while she wrote poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

She came to the US to attend the graduate sculpture program at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she started to develop her performing art and film career. She was an associate editor at Primavera, a women's literary magazine in Chicago, in which her short story Chromatic Body Workshop and photographs appeared. She also wrote for Japanese magazines and newspapers about American culture, arts and crafts. Her sculptures were exhibited at Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago and the Julie Artisans Gallery in New York. Her performance pieces, Ritual Prelude, Transparent Time and Sky And Doll combined with her 16 mm films were featured at the University of Illinois, the Art Institute of Chicago and Ox-Bow in Michigan.

She has worked as an independent film and video maker, director, cameraperson and editor since 1983. She produced for WNET's "Metroline" a program called Welcome To Shantytown, a cultural feature for NHK called Manhattan In Transition, which was broadcast nationally in Japan; a music video collaboration with musician Jamaaladeen Tacuma called East Village Beat; and several experimental 16 mm film works, including Blurred Circle and Nomad. She also edited dance videos for choreographer Pooh Kaye's Eccentric Motions and Yoshiko Chuma's The School of Hard Knocks. Her award-winning documentary, Inside Life Outside was invited to the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial and the Berlin International Film Festival; it was aired on PBS, The Learning Channel hosted by Bill Moyers, and the television networks throughout Europe. It received funding from New York State Council on the Arts, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, The Paul Robeson Fund and The Checkerboard Foundation. She served as a juror at the U.S.A. Film Festival, was a panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was a board member of Women Make Movies.

Forest In F Minor, her first novel, is a companion to the screenplay for her feature film, The Nail That Sticks Up, funded by The National Endowment and the New York Council on the Arts. She has been a visiting artist at New School University, New York University, and Keen College. She also taught Japanese at the Verde International High School in Sedona. She was invited to various artist colonies such as the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Helene Wurlizer Foundation, Hedgebrook, Edward Albee Foundation, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

She lived in New York City for twenty years, and is presently a resident artist at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos.