RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

(17 January 1952 - 28 March 2023)

The Japanese composer, record producer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto, who has died from cancer aged 71, was not only a solo performer but also an original and prolific composer of music for the cinema. His first film score was for Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), a prisoner-of-war film with David Bowie and Tom Conti. Oshima co-wrote the film with Paul Mayersberg, based on the books by the explorer and philosopher Laurens van der Post. Sakamoto also appeared in the film which won a Bafta for the best film music of 1983. Later he won an Academy Award for his score to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) as well as a Golden Globe and a Grammy. He also appeared in the film as a Japanese officer.

Ryuichi Sakamoto was born in Tokyo to his literary editor father and his clothes designer mother. By the age of six he was learning to play the piano, and from 1970 studied music at the Tokyo University of the Arts. He specialised in electronic and ethnic music with plans to become a researcher into world music traditions. His training included working with electronic instruments and synthesizers. Having also studied classical music, he was influenced by the French composer Claude Debussy, who himself had been influenced by Asian music.

From 1975 Sakamoto began working as a session musician and released an album with the percussionist Tsuchitori Toshiyuki, with whom he formed Yellow Magic Orchestra. They were pioneers in the art of electronica, covering electropop, technopop, synthpop and cyberpunk, and had many hit albums. Elsewhere Sakamoto played keyboards and sang on many recordings, eventually influencing the likes of Eric Clapton and Michael Jackson. His first album was Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto, an experimental release covering different music styles and he continued to work in the same vein, influencing many other musicians. Other artists, including David Byrne, King Crimson and Iggy Pop, also came on board, along with David Bowie.

After the score for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, which he wrote with David Sylvian, Sakamoto went on to write music with David Byrne and Cong Su for Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. In 1987 he also composed the anime Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise. Further films included Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels, Bertolucci’s The Little Buddha, Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms, John Maybury’s Love Is the Devil, Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes, Nagisa Oshima’s Gohatto and Andrew Levitas’s Minimata. Sakamoto’s music has also been used by other directors, including Sue Brooks for Japanese Story, and Alejandro González Iñárritu for both Babel and The Revenant.

Sakamoto was married three times. His first marriage produced a daughter, but then he married the musician Akiko Yano and they have a daughter, the pop singer Miu Sakamoto. Finally, he married his manager Norika Sora and they have two children. He had suffered from cancer since 2014 but survived. However, in 2017 the cancer returned, after which he recovered again until his death in 2023.

MICHAEL DARVELL