Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi, January 17, 1952 - March 28, 2023) was a prolific Japanese composer, singer, songwriter, record producer, film composer, and anti-nuclear activist.He also had some film acting roles and wrote for several anime and video games. He was a highly influential musician, both in Japan and internationally, and has won Grammy, Oscar and BAFTA awards for his music.
He graduated from Tokyo National University's Fine Arts & Music program with a M.A. in music composition with special emphasis onelectronic andethnic music, which would define a good chunk of his musical career. He has pursued a diverse range of styles both solo and, famously, as a member ofYellow Magic Orchestra (along with bandmatesHaruomi Hosono andYukihiro Takahashi). He also collaborated with formerJapan frontmanDavid Sylvian extensively in his early solo career. Alongside YMO, Sakamoto was cited as a major influence on Western electro,Techno andHip-Hop artists around the world. His solo track"Riot in Lagos"
(1980) is considered theTrope Maker for electro and/orUr-Example of techno.
As a film composer, he is best known for composing the soundtracks forMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983),The Last Emperor (1987),Wuthering Heights (1992),The Revenant andBlack Mirror: Smithereens. He also composed music for the anime filmRoyal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), the 1992 SummerOlympic Games in Barcelona, and the startup music forSega'sDreamcast game console.
Acting-wise, his best known roles are without much doubt theWorld War II-era Captain Yonoi inMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, who ends up extremely troubled byDavid Bowie as a prisoner of war, and Masahiko Amakasu inThe Last Emperor.
In 2014, Sakamoto was diagnosed with throat cancer, leading him to go on hiatus for a year to seek treatment. While he announced his recovery in 2015, he also pointed out that the length of its effectiveness was highly variable and that he was at risk of remission. In 2017, he releasedasync as a meditation on his experiences with cancer and his newfound awareness of his own mortality. Four years later, he announced that he was recovering from surgery to remove a rectal tumor. On Sakamoto's 71st birthday, six days after Yellow Magic Orchestra bandmateYukihiro Takahashi's death from pneumonia in 2023 (a complication of his own battle with brain cancer), he put out12 as an elaboration onasync's themes of mortality. Two months later, Sakamoto himself passed away.
Do not confuse him for the similarly namedRyuji Sakamoto.
Studio album discography:
- Disappointment - Hateruma (1976)
- Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto (1978)
- Summer Nerves (1979)note Billed as featuring The Kakutougi Session, but they were simply a band he put together for the release.
- B-2 Unit (1980)
- Left-Handed Dream (1981)
- Ongaku Zukan (1984)note Released internationally asIllustrated Musical Encyclopedia in 1986.
- Esperanto (1985)
- Futurista (1986)
- Neo Geo (1987)
- Beauty (1989)
- Heartbeat (1991)
- Sweet Revenge (1994)
- Smoochy (1995)
- 1996 (1996)
- Discord (1997)
- BTTB (1999)
- Comica (2002)
- Elephantism (2002)
- Chasm (2004)
- Out of Noise (2009)
- Playing the Piano (2009)
- Three (2013)
- async (2017)
- 12 (2023)
Films scored by Sakamoto:
Tropes featured in Sakamoto's work:
- All There in the Manual: Even though the Japanese title appears on the cover, the Japanese release ofLeft-Handed Dream features the English title on the inner gatefold.
- Animated Music Video: The 2013 re-recording of "Psychedelic Afternoon" received one as part of the associated charity project, featuringDavid Byrne as a mystical hippie grandpa helping his grandson cope with the trauma left by the 2011 earthquake in Japan.
- Bookends:
- The Japanese version ofIllustrated Musical Encyclopedia opens with "Tibetan Dance" and closes with a remix of the same.
- On later pressings, the international version ofBeauty opens with "You Do Me" and ends with the song's single mix, which is aHidden Track.
- On a meta level, Sakamoto's first and last scoring projects were for Japanese queer drama films. The first was 1983'sMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, which focuses on the homoerotic tension between a Japanese prison camp commander and a rebellious South African prisoner. The last wasMonster 40 years later, which details the tension between a mother and her closeted son.
- Boxed Set: Sakamoto releasedThe Complete Güt Box in 2012, compiling the four studio albums he released in Japan under Güt Records, the soundtrack toLittle Buddha (originally released in Japan by Güt's parent label, For Life), and various remixes, live performances, and associated rarities.
- Canon Discontinuity: On Sakamoto's Spotify page,Thousand Knives is listed as an EP rather than an album despite having been billed as the latter when it first released. As such,B-2 Unit is treated as his first "proper" solo album on the platform.
- City Pop: Sakamoto produced a number of city pop albums, such as YMO'sNaughty Boys (1983) andMari Iijima'sRosé (1983).
- Concept Album:Futurista is themed around the Italian Futurist movement, to the extent where "Milan 1919" is an extended lecture on the history of Futurism.
- Cover Version: Both the Japanese and international versions ofBeauty feature a cover of "We Love You" byThe Rolling Stones.
- Electronic Music: His work with YMO, along with his solo track "Riot in Lagos" (1980), was a major influence on the electro and techno genres. "Riot in Lagos" in particular is considered theTrope Maker for electro.
- Genre Mashup: "Paradise Lost" combines Japanese traditional music and reggae, made on a Fairlight synth computer, and even featuring steel drums.
- Genre Roulette: He frequently did albums in different genres, but in terms of an album where that is the case, he really went for it onHeartbeat, as its theme is that it features musical genres from around the world in multiple languages. Consequently, whileHouse Music and acid jazz glue the album together, the individual songs vary between stuff likeTrip Hop, chaoui music, French rap,New Romantic music, electric swing with Ukrainian monologuing, andClassical Music.
- Green Aesop: "World Citizen — I Won't Be Disappointed" is aProtest Song about the continuing issue of pollution and the grave consequences it holds if it continues progressing at its current rate.
- Hip-Hop: Sakamoto's"Riot in Lagos" and"E-3A" fromB-2 Unit (1980) essentially laid down the blueprint for how hip hop productions would sound for the next several decades. Early pioneers of hip hop cited Sakamoto as a major influence, such as Afrika Bambaataa and Kurtis Mantronik.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every track on12 is titled after its recording date, written in the Japanese Year/Month/Day format and represented as a continuous series of numbers without any spaces or dashes (e.g. "20210310" for March 10, 2021).
- Inconsistent Spelling: A number of early '80s releases Romanized his given name as "Riuichi" instead of "Ryuichi," despite the latter having been used since his debut album. The "Ryuichi" spelling would eventually become standard with the release ofMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence in 1983, which credited him as "Ryuichi Sakamoto" for audiences around the world to see.
- In the Style of: TheTitle Track ofThousand Knives was envisioned as a homage to the reggae-jazz style ofHerbie Hancock.
- Lighter and Softer: His soundtrack toThe Adventures Of Chatran is incredibly relaxing, as suits the mood of the movie it was made for.
- Limited Lyrics Song: The lyrics to theDavid Sylvian collaboration "Bamboo Houses" consists of a single verse, recited in Japanese and sung in English.
- Live Album: Several, withMedia Bahn Live being his first.
- List Song: "G.T." and its remixed version, "G.T. II°", features a text-to-speech chorus listing the planets in the solar system (as recognized in 1986), conspicuously skipping over Earth and tying into the verses' use of space travel as a metaphor for love.
- Longest Song Goes Last:Beauty is an interesting case. Japanese LP and cassette releases and initial international releases end with "Chinsagu no Hana", which clocks in at nearly seven and a half minutes. Japanese CD releases end with "Adagio", which is even longer at 7:47. Later pressings of the international edition avert this entirely, tacking on the 7" mix of "You Do Me", which is only four minutes, at the end as aHidden Track.
- Machine Monotone: Sakamoto used an early text to speech voice on the Futurista track "Milan 1909", which certainly has this effect. It is paired with disconcertingly uncomfortable music, which goes on for over a minute before the voice comes in. This was over a decade beforeRadiohead were noted for doing the same thing on"Fitter Happier".
- Market-Based Title:
- The movieMerry Christmas Mr. Lawrence was renamedFuryo in Europe; the soundtrack album was consequently renamed there to match.
- The European release of ''Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia" renames "Ma Mère L'oie" to "Zen-Gun".
- Match Cut: Used extensively throughout the music video for "Forbidden Colours", in which shots ofDavid Sylvian posing fade into shots of characters fromMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence in identical positions (and vice-versa).
- Multilingual Song: "Bamboo Houses" consists of a single verse recited in Japanese by Sakamoto and sung in English byDavid Sylvian.
- New Jack Swing: He producedMari Iijima's"Love Sick" (1983), an earlyUr-Example of new jack swing, several years before the genre emerged in the late '80s.
- Pop-Star Composer: Sakamoto is one of the most successful cases of a pop star entering the world of soundtrack composing, having been an in-demand scorer since his first project in the field, 1983'sMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (which he also co-starred in). He kept it up all the way until his death, with his last scoring project being the queer dramaMonster, which premiered two months after he passed away. Outside of Japan, he ended up being more successful as a composer than as a pop musician, despite many attempts to crack the western pop market in the '80s and '90s.
- Protest Song:Chasm is an entire protestalbum, venting out Sakamoto's frustrations with the state of the world in the 2000s, covering themes ranging from the jingoism ofThe War on Terror to the longtime issue of pollution.
- Rearrange the Song:
- Sakamoto's solo compositions "Thousand Knives", "The End of Asia", and "Happy End" were reworked withYellow Magic Orchestra in the early '80s. In the same vein, YMO's"Behind the Mask" was based on a jingle Sakamoto wrote for a watch commercial, and Sakamoto would in turn rearrange the song as a solo single in 1987, based on aCover Version byMichael Jackson that went unreleased until 2010.
- TheThomas Dolby collaboration "Field Work" features a bombastic, funk-leaning "London Mix" handled by Dolby, a minimalist, electro-tinged "Tokyo Mix" handled by Sakamoto, and extended versions of both.
- Futurista features "G.T. II°", a remixed version of the non-album single "G.T." with heavier percussion and samples from "Legs" byArt of Noise.
- Chasm features remixed versions of "World Citizen — I Won't Be Disappointed" and "World Citizen", respectively suffixed "Looped Piano" and "Re-Cycled". The former song's remix is mostly faithful to the original, albeit with the instrumental based around a piano loop, but the latter remix is far more drastic, altering the lyricalAlternative Rock song into a mostly instrumentalambient piece.
- In 2013, Sakamoto andDavid Byrne re-recorded their 1994 collaboration "Psychedelic Afternoon", with redone lyrics and Byrne taking up vocal duties this time, as part of a project to raise awareness and funds for children impacted by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
- Re-Cut:
- The UK release ofB-2 Unit replaces "Participation Mystique" with the Japanese non-album single "War Head".
- The international release ofLeft Handed Dream axes "Relâché", "Tell 'em to Me", "Living in the Dark", "Venezia" and "Saru no Ie" and adds in the four songs from the concurrent EPThe Arrangement — "The Left Bank", "The Arrangement" "Just About Enough", and "Once in a Lifetime". The song order is also reshuffled to account for this. The Dutch CD release, meanwhile, mostly follows the Japanese tracklist, but appends the songs fromThe Arrangement to the end as bonus tracks.
- The international release ofIllustrated Music Encyclopedia adds the London Mix of "Field Work" and "Steppin' into Asia" and removes "Self Portrait", "Tabinokyokuhoku", "Morinohito", "A Tribute to N.J.P.", "Replica", and "Tibetan Dance (Version)". The running order is also considerably altered to account for this. Consequently, the album is shortened from just under an hour to roughly 41 minutes.
- The international release ofBeauty adds "You Do Me", remixes theCover Version of"We Love You", and drops theCover Version of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings". Later copies of the international edition edit the album further by adding the 7" version of "You Do Me" at the end as aHidden Track, consequentlybookending the record with the same song.
- The international release ofHeartbeat replaces the Japanese-language versions of "High Tide" and "Sayonara" with English-language ones and "Tainai Kaiki II" with theDavid Sylvian collaborations "Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki II) — Returning to the Womb" and "Cloud #9".
- The international release ofSweet Revenge replaces the Japanese-language versions of "Sentimental" and "Water's Edge" with English-language re-recordings, remixes "Moving On", "Regret", "Pounding at My Heart", "Same Dream, Same Destination", and "Interruptions", and drops "Anna" and "Psychedelic Afternoon".
- The American and Brazilian releases of1996 drop the last four tracks, while the UK release drops only the very last one.
- The international release ofChasm drops "the land song — music for Artelligent City" and adds "Song" and "World" just before the closing track. The vinyl release, meanwhile, drops theTitle Track, "only love can conquer hate", "break with", and "laménto" in order to fit the album on one LP.
- The Remnant: The music video for theThomas Dolby collaboration "Field Work" sees Sakamoto play Tenshi Tanaka, a fictional Japanese holdout who was discovered on Iwo Jima sometime after the end ofWorld War II.
- Sensory Abuse: "Coro", composed for the 2004 film adaptation ofAppleseed and later included onChasm that same year, consists of loud, discordantchiptune blasts and buzzes meant to invoke an atmosphere of chaos and disorder.
- Shout-Out:
- TheTitle Track ofThousand Knives opens with Sakamoto reciting theMao Zedong poem "Jinggang Mountain", in the original Mandarin, through a vocoder.
- "Tribute to N.J.P." is, as the name implies, an extended nod to the work of Korean video artist and jazz pianist Nam June Paik, who'd previously collaborated with Sakamoto.
- Special Guest: Several of Sakamoto's solo albums feature collaborations with well-known western musicians, usually to try and make his work easier to market outside of Japan; many of them were even released as singles. On the flipside, Sakamoto has frequently done session work for other notable western musicians over the years, from mutual collaboratorDavid Sylvian to avant-gardePost-Punk collectivePublic Image Ltd..
- Techno: His tracks "Riot in Lagos" (1980) and"Bamboo Houses" (1982) are earlyUr-Examples of techno, along with his band YMO's"Pure Jam" from their albumTechnodelic (1981). Sakamoto, along with YMO, were cited as a major influence by Detroit techno pioneers such as The Belleville Three.
- Trap Music: He anticipated the sound of trap music with early Ur-Examples such as "Riot in Lagos" and "E-3A" fromB-2 Unit (1980) as well as the single "Bamboo Houses" (1982), decades before trap music emerged as a genre in the 2000s. Sakamoto influenced early trap pioneers such as Kurtis Mantronik.
- Updated Re-release: The 1990 CD of "The Arrangement" added the A and B-sides of two singles released shortly before the EP (and consequently making it as long as a proper studio album), these being "War Head"/"Lexington Queen" and "Front Line"/"Happy End". A later reissue three years later further added on all four mixes of "Field Work" and both mixes of "Steppin' Into Asia". The bonus tracks are removed on the 2015 CD.
- Video Full of Film Clips: The music video for "Forbidden Colours" intersperses clips fromMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence with footage ofDavid Sylvian miming under a spotlight.
- White Void Room: The music video for "Bamboo Houses" is set in one, interspersed with a number of video effects.
