I’m working on things that will only be understood by the grandchildren of the 20th century – Claude Debussy, quoted by Ryuichi Sakamoto in Tokyo Melody: A Film about Ryuichi Sakamoto (dir. Elizabeth Lennard, 1985).

The loss of Ryuichi Sakamoto in March this year is comparable to that of his Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983, dir Nagisa Oshima) co-star David Bowie. Two titans of solace, a “home” for many of us – without them, the world just seems a little less of a good place.

It took me months to process Ryuichi Sakamoto’s death. On the one hand, because the artist’s music is part of my identity – before Japanese cinema caught my interest, it was Japanese music, and only later, through Japanese cinema, did I come to just cinema. On the other hand, I’m simply unable to find the right words when it comes to painting a picture of him. How do you describe a musician of Sakamoto’s caliber? Genius? True, in the deepest sense of the word, but not enough. Classical composer? Film score composer? Electronic music star? Environmentalist? Oscar winner? Composer for Oshima, Almodóvar, De Palma, Ann Hui? Collaborator and friend of David Sylvain? Kyōju (the professor), like his nickname used to be? All valid labels and none all-encompassing. How do you summarize his work, let alone the man? With Sakamoto, there was something untranslatable, a serene grace that coexisted with theory, experimentation and an obsession with new sound, much like Erik Satie, for example, one of the artist’s great influences. But, more than that, Sakamoto was one of the few who managed to combine the classical with the popular, intellectualism with subversive cheekiness, genius with profound modesty and humility.

Apart from Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japan has given film music (and music in general) two other masters in the same Debussy-ian and electronic vein, namely Toru Takemitsu and Isao Tomita. Tomita is perhaps better known to the West as a synthesizer pioneer, while Takemitsu is sadly less revered in the mainstream, even though his name appears on dozens of credits from Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1985) to Woman in the Dunes (dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964). All three avant-garde artists, Takemitsu and Sakamoto were more alike, in that they shared a strong interest in musical theory and the constant question whether their music is connected to Western tradition or resonates with the heritage of their homeland. But few composers have understood the relationship between music, cinema and the image as did Ryuichi Sakamoto. To think that an iconic, powerful theme like Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, which he composed for Oshima’s film, was his first film score.

Yellow Magic Orchestra is an early testament to Sakamoto’s visual conscience, as is it for his bandmates – Yukihiro Takahashi, who also passed away earlier this year, was perhaps even more cinematic than Sakamoto, or at least more daring. I cite Takahashi’s collaborations with Nobuhiko Obayashi, April Fish (1986) and Labyrinth of Cinema (2019), two experimental and meta-cinematic works that rather contrast with the more classical seriousness of Sakamoto’s roles in Oshima’s aforementioned film or Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987). But, to return to YMO, what are the band’s videos if not experimental short films – sorry, video crimes –, which play with digital textures to the point that they seem so in tune with today’s discourse about media? YMO translated the (electronic) experiment in music into experimenting with the image.

A young Sakamoto from his YMO era is captured on screen in Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto (dir. Elizabeth Lennard, 1985), a portrait documentary that seems to capture something of the composer’s untranslatable nature. Although made in an early stage of Sakamoto’s life and music, one can glimpse here an essence of his pursuits and mannerisms, as well as his major influences, which he names, from John Cage to Debussy to other great artists, both Japanese and Western. Moving between studio footage, monologue moments, and staged scenes, the film’s loose structure manages to impart the same playful character as the composer’s and, in itself, adapts to his invoked interest in nonlinear time. Here, Sakamoto emerges as a playful accomplice of the camera, delivering aphorisms and always sporting a roguish smile, and then as an innovative artist, enamored with new technological possibilities and extremely dedicated to his work and music.

Lennard’s film captures things that will remain constant for Sakamoto, like his interest in music and especially the sounds of public spaces, his interest in the sonic details that many don’t notice. “I chose to make pop music so I could have contact with a mass audience,” says Sakamoto, as if anticipating the large impact he will have and, at the same time, exercising a certain generous love for humanity that would transcend, above all, through his concerts and appearances in recent years. In Tokyo Melody, Sakamoto is also a bit of a political observer, talking about a Japan where “the time of politics is over”, a facet of the composer we often overlook, even though, especially after 2011 and Fukushima, his role as an activist became very important. I would remember more readily that Sakamoto had a political conscience.

Opus – one last note

But above all, Ryuichi Sakamoto was the ring of a bell. That’s how I would describe him.

At the end of last year, Sakamoto recorded one last filmed concert, which he showed once, via streaming, as his illness wouldn’t allow him to perform in front of an audience anymore. For that matter, Sakamoto has always been a keen practitioner of the concert film, from the likes of YMO: Propaganda (1984) to more recent recorded moments and videos that feature him playing the piano. The extended footage of this last concert became Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, which was directed by his son, Neo Sora, and shown at the Venice Film Festival this year. Watching Opus, I had a religious experience, not only in the sense that I felt someone put their hand on my heart and finally let me mourn, but also because sitting in a movie theater to watch just one man playing one piano for almost two hours seems like an anti-cinematic gesture, that reduces cinema to zero, to a pure, raw state. Knowing of Sakamoto’s death, the film came with that sacred magic of premonition, with the perspective that before our eyes, we see a testament put into images and orchestrated in music.

Black-and-white and minimalist, without any decorum, Opus manages to say everything almost without a single word, apart from a few pauses here and there where, right before the image cut, Sakamoto admits he’s pushed himself too hard. Sora captures the small gestures of the fingers on the piano keys, that roguish smile, the head movements to the rhythm of the music, the thoughtful pauses, eyes looking at the sheet music, all these details that contain life and what is human. The minimalist aesthetics are an exercise in humility in an era of screen oversaturation, and the simplicity resonates with that modesty, with that increasing gentleness in Sakamoto as he left pop music behind. The black-and-white calls back to Sakamoto as we’ve come to see him in the past years, through clips such as the monochrome and observational vignettes he released during the pandemic to illustrate some of his songs. Opus overflows with intimacy and vulnerability, but equally with a form of serenity that takes us in celebration through Sakamoto’s most famous works, from Bibo no Aozora (also featured on the soundtrack of Babel by Iñárritu) to the theme from Wuthering Heights (1992, dir. Peter Kosminsky) or Aqua (present in Koreeda’s latest film and Sakamoto’s last project, Monster).

I sat and waited with a lump in my throat for the last song in Sora’s film. What will be this piece that Sakamoto himself chose to finish with, this piece that he’s chosen to leave us with for eternity? The film approaches its end, and the first notes of the theme from Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence are heard. Could things be so simple and natural? Did Sakamoto choose his most famous song, this instantly recognizable piece, synonymous with himself? There’s a hint of a smile while Sakamoto is playing it, as if he knows he’s giving us what we wanted and expected. Rather subversively and playfully, and yet as the title suggests, the last song Ryuichi Sakamoto performs for the public is not Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, but Opus. These are, however, not the sounds that end the film.

From Sakamoto, I learned that every sound, no matter how small, no matter how distant, matters – in a concert filmed during the pandemic and posted online, he urged us all to treat the sounds of the distant highway as part of the concert. As seen in Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (dir. Stephen Nomura Schible, 2017), listening to the sounds of ice or leaves, Sakamoto is always looking for the Sound, be it organic or inorganic, for what exists outside of music and could potentially become it. As Lennard’s portrait also shows, Sakamoto paid great attention to his surroundings, to its imperceptible matter, and invisible worlds, in a candid way that combined music theory with an (activist) love for nature in its broadest form. That being said, Opus‘ final notes are followed by another sound. When the screen has faded to black and the credits are already running, there’s the sound of a bell.

The last note Sakamoto leaves behind, or that Sora chooses to convey, is this bell, a sound to encompass all of his person. It’s a playful, cheeky bell, coming where and when you least expect it, a bell full of light and, above all, a sound that, even if not discreet, is modest. In these same terms, I shall remember Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.