Ryuichi Sakamoto is a greatly loved figure by music lovers across all genres, having been a significant player in many disciplines. Whether you know his electronic sounds from Yellow Magic Orchestra or his hypnotic melodies in film scores like Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, there's no doubt he has had a profound impact on many corners of the world of music.
Who is Ryuichi Sakamoto?
An icon of Japanese contemporary music, Ryuichi Sakamoto was responsible for some of the most familiar sounds of the 1980s. His star was ignited by the Yellow Magic Orchestra – the chart-topping electro-disco-pop trio with a penchant for English lyrics – gaining a worldwide following.
Born in Tokyo, Ryuichi Sakamoto took to the piano as a child and went on to develop a passion for electronic music. That, coupled with a talent for melody, was a winning combination, especially when it came to film scoring.
What was Sakamoto most famous for?
His breakout work for the cinema was the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, for which he won a BAFTA.
Electronic music lovers will know him best for his work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra, the chart-topping Japanese electro-disco-pop trio who found international fame.
We name the best Ryuichi Sakamoto recordings here.
Ryuichi Sakamoto's film scores
Sakamoto's breakout work for the cinema was for the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, in which he also acted alongside David Bowie. This won him the BAFTA for Best Original Music that year.
He won the Oscar for Best Original Score (and a Golden Globe in the same category) in 1988 for Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic The Last Emperor, which he wrote in collaboration with David Byrne and Cong Su. It was at this point that Sakamoto found himself in demand by some of cinema’s finest auteur directors – including Brian de Palma, Oliver Stone and Pedro Almodóvar.
He went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Original Score in 1991 for The Sheltering Sky. In more recent years on the big screen, he joined the production team of The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Thomas Hardy, which won him nomintaions at the BAFTAs and Golden Globe in 2015. He ultimately lost out to Ennio Morricone's The Hateful Eight.
Ryuichi Sakamoto's collaborators
Sakamoto was a great collaborator, collaborating with artists including Laurie Anderson and Iggy Pop.
His first album, Disappointment-Hateruma, was a collaboration with percussionist Toshiyuki Tsuchitori as the pair experimented with percussion and the possibilities of free jazz and improvisation.
Yellow Magic Orchestra was his most notable collaboration, working with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. They pushed boundaries and brought kitsch Japanese sounds to electronic music textures, pioneering in the J-pop and synthpop scenes.
Before he died in 2023, Sakamoto released the album 12, a series of piano works composed across 12 difficult days during lockdown in early 2022. 'It’s strangely comforting, like a Rothko or Yves Klein painting,' wrote BBC Music Magazine critic Claire Jackson. 'The minimalism inspired by the purity of Feldman or Cage, rather than the pop style that infuses later tracks.'
What genre was his music?
It's difficult to pin down what genre Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote in, because of the array of different styles he experimented with. As well as his cinematic film scores, he released avant-garde ambient solo works and played around with electronic pop with the Yellow Magic Orchestra.
When did he die?
Sakamoto died in April 2023, having announced two years earlier that he had been diagnosed with rectal cancer and was going through treatment. This came after a spell of oropharyngeal cancer several years earlier.
'While undergoing treatment for cancer discovered in June 2020, Sakamoto continued to create works in his home studio whenever his health would allow,' a letter on his website stated with the news of his death. 'He lived with music until the very end.'
Top image credit: Getty Images
