Ryuichi Sakamoto has died, the great Japanese musician and composer who won the Academy Award in 1988 for the soundtrack of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film “The Last Emperor,” which he created with David Byrne and Cong Su. He was 71 years old. Japanese news agencies were the first to report the news of his passing. Last summer, Ryuichi Sakamoto—who had previously overcome throat cancer and rectal cancer in 2014—announced that he was suffering from stage four lung cancer, with slim chances of recovery. Among his most famous pieces is “Forbidden Colours,” part of the soundtrack for Nagisa Ōshima’s film “Furyo (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence).”
Born in Nakano in 1952, he was considered one of the first experimenters blending Eastern ethnic music with Western electronic sounds.
“I am a shy person, not an exhibitionist, and I am not used to, nor do I love, showing my daily life,” said the great Japanese composer of himself.
His life was spent experimenting with music, mixing ethnic influences and Western electronic sounds into a unique and eclectic sound that has often served as the signature of films, capable of evoking their atmospheres years later with just a few notes.
He was a member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, a group that blended Japanese electronic music and J-pop, but as a solo artist, he became linked to cinema.
“Cinema has always been a great source of inspiration for me. I conceive all my music as if it were a soundtrack without a film,” he had said. Acting, on the other hand, “is something I have not sought. I agreed to do it only because it was requested by directors whom I greatly admire, such as Nagisa Oshima or Bernardo Bertolucci, in The Last Emperor. If another filmmaker I love very much were to ask me, I might accept another role.”
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