Sakamoto has been undergoing treatment for cancer in recent years. He was one of the founders and keyboardist of the pioneering electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra. He has also been nominated for a Grammy award several times.
In addition to The Last Emperor, he composed music for more than 30 other films. The first was the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, then, among others, Little Buddha, Femme Fatale and Revenant Resurrection. He also starred in the films Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and The Last Emperor.
Sakamoto was a campaigner against nuclear power and an environmental activist. In 2014, he was treated for throat cancer. He recovered from it, but in January 2021 he announced on his website that he had been diagnosed with rectal cancer, Reuters reported.
He changed the music from all sides
“We are speechless. It is impossible to overstate the importance that Ryūichi Sakamoto had on the world of music and film, he influenced the way we hear the world today. Thanks for everything,” American label Light In The Attic said goodbye to the Japanese musician on Twitter.
During his lifetime, Sakamoto was able to fundamentally influence several branches of music — pop, ambient, film music, but also techno. All mainly with the help of the piano. Sakamoto was a renowned pianist whose impact on contemporary music can be captured with the help of a video that is now circulating on social networks. David Bowie admires Ryūichi Sakamoto’s performance on it.
“Ryuichi quickly understood that the future of music is not necessarily one specific genre, but rather an unexpected combination of different styles,” said his long-time collaborator Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto, with whom Sakamoto recorded several collaborative records, including the soundtrack for the film Revenant Resurrection. with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Sakamoto also collaborated for a long time with the British singer David Sylvian and the Austrian guitarist and producer Christian Fenness.
While at the beginning of his career, the trained pianist managed to push the music of synthesizers and samplers into the Japanese mainstream, following the example of Germany’s Kraftwerk, later he moved to a freer, ambient style.
“I wanted to hear the reverberation,” Sakamoto explained to The Creative Indenepdent, why he loosened up his compositions late in his career, “I want less notes and more pauses. Silence, not silence. The dash still resonates. I want to enjoy the reverberation, to hear it grow.”
Sakamoto was born into a family of fashion designer and literary editor who collaborated with leading Japanese writers such as Yukijo Mishima or Kenzaburó Óe.
