Japanese Composer & Pop Star Ryuichi Sakamoto Has Died Aged 71

Ryuichi Sakamoto, the famed Japanese musician and composer, has died on the age of 71.

He had been battling failing well being for a number of years, having been identified in 2014 with throat most cancers, then bowel most cancers in 2021. By all his remedies and surgical procedures, nevertheless, he continued to put in writing music and carry out, even giving a web based efficiency as just lately as December 2022.

Sakamoto is maybe finest identified for his work composing the rating to a number of movies, particularly The Final Emperor (for which he received an Academy Award), The Final Buddha, The Revenant (which noticed him nominated for a Golden Globe) and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, through which he additionally appeared on-screen alongside David Bowie.

But he was additionally well-known for his earlier pop profession, each as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, an digital group that was large in Japan within the early 80s. YMO had an influence on Western musicians and markets as effectively; their track “Pc Recreation” charted within the UK, and they appeared reside on Soul Prepare in 1980.

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Over his decades-long profession writing music Sakamoto even labored on a couple of video video games, from 1989 RPG Tengai Makyou: Ziria, the primary recreation within the long-running Far East of Eden sequence, to 2006’s Daybreak of Mana, for which he composed the opening theme (for extra on this surprisingly glorious but in addition complicated credit score, see right here)

His most up-to-date contribution to a online game was 2014’s fantastic Hohokum, through which (amongst different glorious choices) the observe Reticent Memory, a collaboration between Sakamoto and digital musician Christopher Willits, seems.

Sakamoto died on March 28, with the announcement of his passing coming after his funeral on April 2. He’s survived by his 4 kids, certainly one of whom is Japanese pop star Miu Sakamoto.