He composed unforgettable film scores, tirelessly created digital sounds and passionately campaigned for the environment: prolific artist Ryuichi Sakamoto, revered in his native Japan, died of cancer on March 28 at the age of 71.
“He lived with music until the end,” his team said in a statement posted on its official website, adding that the artist preferred a low-key funeral reserved for his family circle.
Sakamoto, who had been undergoing treatment for throat cancer since 2014, revealed that he was diagnosed with colon cancer in early 2021.
Beginning with Nagisa Oshima’s (1983) “Furio,” about a prison camp in Asia during World War II, Ryuichi Sakamoto also shines as a co-star. David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano.
Oscar
In 1988 he won the Oscar for best film score for his co-writing of “Lost Emperor” by Bernardo Bertolucci, with whom he collaborated several times, most notably on his next film, “An the o Sahara” (1990).
Ryuichi Sakamoto has also worked for Brian de Palma and Pedro Almodovar, and recently scored the soundtrack for “The Revenant” by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2015).
teacher”
Born in Tokyo on January 17, 1952, he grew up immersed in culture and the arts, his father a publisher of Japanese novelists, including the great Kenzaburo Oh and Yukio Mishima.
He discovered the piano very young. As a teenager, the rock of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones fascinated him, as did Bach and Haydn, before falling madly in love with Debussy.
While studying ethnomusicology and composition, which earned him the respectful nickname “Professor” in Japan, he began performing on stage in the bubbling Tokyo of the 1970s.
“I worked on computers and played jazz in college, bought psychedelic West Coast music and early Kraftwerk music in the afternoons, and played country music at night. Very busy!” He told British newspaper The Guardian in 2018.
In 1978 he co-founded the group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, whose supercharged electro-pop would later influence techno, hip-hop and J-pop, and inspire more composed melodies. The first video games.
YMO’s success would be immense in Japan, and some of its hits would be noticed in the West, such as the electro funk “Computer Game/Fireworks” sampled by American hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa or “Behind”. Mask”, which would lead to covers by Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.
Radical anti-nuclear
After YMO disbanded at the end of 1983, Ryuichi Sakamoto gave free rein to his solo projects, exploring many musical styles throughout his career (progressive and ambient rock, rap, house, contemporary music, bossa nova…).
He multiplies collaborations with avant-garde artists and stars such as punk Iggy Pop, Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, Brazilian Caetano Veloso or Senegalese Youssou N’Dore.
“I want to be a citizen of the world. It might sound hippy, but I like it,” said Ryuichi Sakamoto, who has lived in New York since the 1990s.
Without being an artist in his ivory tower, Ryuichi Sakamoto was very sensitive to important social issues. A longtime environmentalist, he became a leading figure in the anti-nuclear movement in Japan after the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.
In 2012, he specifically organized a mega-concert against nuclear power near Tokyo, ironically inviting his friends from Kraftwerk (which means power plant in German), and one of the main topics was “radioactivity”.
In 2007, he also founded More Trees, an NGO for sustainable forest management in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Twice married and divorced, Ryuichi Sakamoto is the father of J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto, who was born in 1980 with Japanese singer and pianist Akiko Yano.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
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