Before he discovered social media, Mr Hata hosted Mutsugoro and His Wonderful Friends on Fuji TV.
By filming real animals as he did in The Adventures of Milo and Otis, Mr Hata "lends this children's film a poignancy that cuts much deeper than might a similar story featuring animated characters", according to a glowing 1989 review in The New York Times.
The paper also praised the "almost hallucinatory beauty" of nature in the film, where Otis the pug runs after Milo the cat through vast fields and raging rivers.
Hata was born in Fukuoka City in south-west Japan. He earned a degree in animal physiology at the University of Tokyo, then joined the film division of educational firm Gakken, where he made over 20 documentaries, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.
He won the Japan Essayist's Club Award in 1968 for a book with the English translation, We animals are all brothers. In 1977, he won Japan's Kikuchi Kan Prize for literature.