Award-winning Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto dies at 71

World-renowned Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, also a keyboardist for the legendary electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra, known as YMO, has died, his office said Sunday. He was 71 years old.

Sakamoto revealed in June 2022 that he had been battling stage IV cancer. The Tokyo native also starred in the 1983 war film “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” and won an Oscar and a Grammy for the soundtrack to the 1987 film “The Last Emperor.”

A funeral has already been held for Sakamoto, who died last Tuesday, with only close relatives in attendance, the office said. The exact cause of death was not immediately known.

With his interest in peace and environmental issues, Sakamoto had been actively involved in the anti-nuclear power movement in recent years in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster triggered by a killer earthquake and tsunami.

The son of Kazuki Sakamoto, a renowned editor at Kawade Shobo Shinsha publishing house, Sakamoto began studying music writing at the age of 10 and was fascinated by the Beatles and Debussy.

As a high school student in the late 1960s, he participated in student demonstrations. Later, in an interview, he revealed that this experience “was the core of who I am.”

In 1978, Sakamoto formed YMO with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. Their futuristic techno-pop music, making full use of synthesizers, was in tune with the times of the late 1970s, when the movie “Encounters of the Third Kind” and the arcade game “Space Invaders” became successes.

In January, Takahashi, the drummer for YMO, died of aspiration pneumonia.

Dressed in clothing resembling Mao’s costumes, the trio’s performances were well received in the United States and Europe, and their music, such as “Technopolis” and “Rydeen,” from an album released in 1979, became popular in Japan after his success abroad. YMO’s hit songs also include “Kimi ni Mune Kyun” (My Heart Beats For You), a single released in 1983.

Having earned a master’s degree from the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School, Sakamoto was known for his theoretical views and vast knowledge of classical and folk music, earning him the nickname “Professor”.

He composed the music for more than 30 films, including Nagisa Oshima’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” in which he also played the role of a Japanese prison camp commandant, “The Last Emperor,” and “The Sheltering Sky.” , both directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1987 and 1990, respectively.

The musician also led More Trees, a Tokyo-based forest conservation group established in 2007.

Sakamoto, who began spending most of his time in New York in the early 1990s, went public with his diagnosis of throat cancer in 2014 and his diagnosis of rectal cancer in 2021. The cancer later spread to his lungs, forcing him to undergo surgeries in October and December. 2021.

Sakamoto discussed his cancer diagnosis and how he had been coping in detail in an article titled “Living with Cancer,” published by the literary magazine “Shincho” in June 2022.

The article was the first installment in a series of articles titled “How Many More Times Will I See the Full Moon?” which the musician wrote in the monthly magazine, which is mainly about his musical activities and his views on life and death.

In a statement he issued on the launch of the series, he said: “Since I’ve come so far in life, I hope to be able to make music until my very last moment, like Bach and Debussy, whom I adore.”

Sakamoto was one of the few Japanese celebrities in the entertainment industry willing to make political statements, even saying after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 that the situation surrounding the attacks was “created by the hegemonic nation of the United States.” Joined”.

After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated northeast Japan in 2011, he became music director of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra, made up of children affected by disasters.

In March 2022, while battling stage IV cancer, Sakamoto participated in the orchestra’s concert in Tokyo, which featured a new symphony he composed, titled “Ima Jikan ga Katamui te” (Now Time Leans). ).

The symphony ends with the sound of bells, and he explained to the audience from the stage that earthquakes and wars share the same prayer for the repose of dead souls.

The concert was held in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, noting that the symphony bears some similarities to the Ukrainian national anthem, adding: “It is up to each of you to decide whether the sound of the bells (at the end of the symphony ) sounds like a requiem or a hope”.

Singer-songwriter Akiko Yano is his ex-wife, and musician Miu Sakamoto is his daughter.