Oscar-Successful Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was 71

Sakamoto died on March 28 of most cancers, recording firm Avex mentioned in an announcement posted to Twitter Sunday that thanks his medical groups in Japan and the U.S. and asks for followers to respect the privacy of his household at the moment.

“Whereas present process therapy for most cancers found in June 2020, Sakamoto continued to create works in his house studio at any time when his well being would permit him to. He lived with music till the very finish,” the assertion says, noting a non-public funeral amongst shut household has already taken place.

Throughout a profession that noticed him scoring greater than 40 movies, together with The Final Emperor (1987), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) and The Revenant (2015), Sakamoto additionally acquired two Golden Globes, a Grammy Award and a BAFTA.

Oscar-Successful Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto Was 71

Born in Tokyo in 1952 to a garments designer mom and literary editor father, Sakamoto was surrounded by music, artwork and tradition from a younger age. He started taking part in the piano at age 3 and attended the identical famously liberal and artistic preschool as Yoko Ono.

Whereas finding out at Tokyo College of the Arts, he first got here throughout digital music. Already working as a session musician earlier than receiving his grasp’s diploma, Sakamoto turned a founding member of the seminal Yellow Magic Orchestra trio in 1978.

Persevering with to work on solo initiatives, he launched his B-2 Unit album in 1980; the spaced-out synthesized beats and melodies of the monitor Riot in Lagos have been cited by Kurtis Mantronik and Afrika Bambaataa as influences on their early electro and hip-hop productions. He would go on to launch greater than 20 solo albums.

Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence marked Sakamoto’s debut onscreen and as a movie composer. He starred within the British-Japanese manufacturing as a wartime jail camp commandant reverse David Bowie and gained a BAFTA award for his rating.

David Sylvan of British digital pop pioneers Japan offered vocals for the Forbidden Colours theme tune and Sakamoto would go on to work with him once more, one of many quite a few collaborations that marked his eclectic profession.

Sakamoto performed a Japanese Imperial Military officer once more in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Final Emperor, which, as with Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, was produced by Jeremy Thomas.

The movie gained 9 Oscars, together with finest image and director, in addition to finest authentic rating for Sakamoto alongside David Byrne and Cong Su. It additionally prevailed in the identical three classes on the Golden Globes.

Teaming once more with Bertolucci and Thomas on The Sheltering Sky in 1990, Sakamoto gained one other Globe for that rating. In Stephen Nomura Schible’s 2017 documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, the composer recalled how Bertolucci had insisted he rewrite a bit of the rating on the spot whereas a 40-piece orchestra waited. The pair would reunite on the jury for the 2013 Venice Worldwide Movie Pageant.

In 1992, Sakamoto composed the music for the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympics. He would spend the remainder of the last decade prolifically writing music, working with musicians from across the globe in quite a few various genres in addition to writing scores for Oliver Stone’s ABC miniseries Wild Palms (1993) and Brian de Palma’s Snake Eyes (1998).

In 1999, he improbably topped the Japanese singles charts with a tune from his BTTB album that had been utilized in a preferred vitality drink TV industrial. The tune, Vitality Move, was the primary instrumental to succeed in No. 1 in Japan.

A longtime political activist, he campaigned towards nuclear energy and weapons, main a motion towards a uranium and plutonium processing plant in Japan. After the Fukushima meltdowns of 2011, he was a outstanding voice within the ensuing anti-nuclear protests.

Sakamoto had a short-lived marriage in his pupil days, from which a daughter was born, after which married Akiko Yano in 1982. The wedding to Yano, herself an achieved musician, lasted till they separated in 1992, although they didn’t official divorce till 2006. Their daughter, Miu Sakamoto, turned a profitable pop singer in Japan.

He started a relationship together with his supervisor Norika Sora in 1990, they usually married and had two youngsters.

Identified with Stage 3 throat most cancers in June 2014, he was compelled to take the primary important break in his profession. Slightly greater than a yr later, he introduced that he had recovered and would work on veteran director Yoji Yamada’s Residing With My Mom, which might be Japan’s international language entry for the Oscars. That yr, he additionally scored Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s The Revenant, receiving Golden Globe, Grammy and BAFTA nominations.

Sakamoto served on the jury on the Berlin Movie Pageant in 2018 and was awarded Asian Filmmaker of the Yr by Busan movie pageant in October.

In summer season 2018, it emerged that Sakamoto had discovered the music so unhealthy at his favorite Japanese restaurant in Manhattan (he had lengthy divided his time between Tokyo and New York) that he contacted the chef and supplied to create a playlist. He went on to do the identical for a brand new bar and restaurant the chef opened, with out cost or fanfare.