Ryuichi Sakamoto, a Japanese musician who scored for Hollywood films corresponding to The Final Emperor and The Revenant, has died. He was 71.
Japan’s recording firm Avex mentioned in a statement Sunday that Sakamoto died on March 28 whereas present process remedy for most cancers.
He was first identified with throat most cancers in 2014. In 2022, he revealed that he had terminal most cancers, a yr after he disclosed affected by rectal most cancers.
Sakamoto was a pioneer of the electronics music of the late Seventies and based the Yellow Magic Orchestra, also referred to as YMO, with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi.
Takahashi died in January.
Regardless of his battle with most cancers, Sakamoto launched a full-length album 12 on his 71st birthday in January, stating that composing had a “small therapeutic impact on my broken physique and soul,” in keeping with the official assertion launched with the most recent album.
He was a world-class musician, successful an Oscar and Grammy for the 1987 film The Final Emperor.
Sakamoto was additionally an actor, starring within the BAFTA-winning 1983 movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.
He was largely based mostly in New York in recent times, although he commonly visited Japan.
Born in Tokyo in 1952, Sakamoto began finding out music on the age of 10 and was influenced by Debussy and the Beatles.
The assertion from Avex mentioned that regardless of his illness, when he was feeling comparatively nicely, he saved engaged on his music in his residence studio. “To his closing days, he lived with music,” it mentioned.
The assertion expressed gratitude to the medical doctors who had handled him within the U.S. and Japan, in addition to to all his followers world wide. It referenced the phrases Sakamoto beloved: “Ars longa, vita brevis,” which refers back to the longevity of artwork, regardless of how quick human life could be.
Sakamoto additionally left his mark as a pacifist and environmental activist. He spoke out in opposition to nuclear energy following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns attributable to an earthquake and tsunami.
He took half in rallies and made speeches in Tokyo, and was amongst a bunch of revered Japanese artists, just like the Nobel-winning novelist Kenzaburo Oe, who weren’t afraid to take an unpopular stand on political points.
In a July 2012 rally, he obtained up on stage and browse from notes on an iPhone, warning Japan to not threat folks’s lives for electrical energy.
“Life is extra necessary than cash,” he mentioned in Japanese, then added in English, “Holding silent after Fukushima is barbaric.”
He additionally appeared in promoting for Nissan electrical automobiles, though he acknowledged he obtained a bashing for being so industrial. At his residence in New York, he will get electrical energy from an organization that depends on renewables, he mentioned.
“How we make electrical energy goes to diversify, with fossil gas and nuclear energy declining,” Sakamoto instructed The Related Press in an interview in 2012. “Individuals ought to be capable of select the sort of electrical energy they need to use.”
Funeral providers have been held with household and shut associates, the Avex assertion mentioned.
Sakamoto is survived by his daughter Miu Sakamoto, a musician. She posted on her Instagram the years her father had lived — from Jan. 17, 1952, to March 28, 2023 — and a photograph of a worn out, half-broken piano. He was separated from his former spouse, singer and composer Akiko Yano.
