The Life Affirming Power Of Ryuichi Sakamoto
Travelling Japan and Learning to Love the Music of Ryuichi Sakamoto
The sake was far from over. Glasses were filled until they spilled onto the counter top. There were the smooth opalescent sakes, the crystalline sakes that punched you in the throat, and then came the thick sours that tasted like milk. My eyes wandered drunkenly as we conversed in Japanese, English, and Google Translate. Beside me, my partner knits away and smiles at our wonderful host, who has pulled a face with regard to some of the clientele she has dealt with tonight. I say I hope we aren’t keeping her up. It’s late. Very late. And my head tilts ever so slightly to the right.
We talk about photos she has placed around her bar. Pictures of old concert tickets from bands she loves. She tells us about these famous Japanese groups I’ve never heard of such as The Blue Hearts and RC Succession. She shows us a single cover by RC Succession that appears to show the image of their lead singer cheek to cheek with a dolled up Ryuichi Sakamoto. I point and ask, in a slightly slurred manner, ‘Sakamoto?’ She nods, smiling. I say that we will try and find some music by them. She asks me what my first muscial love was. I say The Clash. Smiling, she nods her head and says: ‘Joe Strummer’. I tell her that he is like a god to me. She smiles approvingly.
I point to the wall. There’s a poster of David Bowie in a thick grey coat with a long grey scarf standing in the streets of Kyoto - where we currently are. She nod at the poster of him holding a bicycle with his mop of golden hair falling across his face. I suspect I think of Bowie’s hair more than I think about a lot of things; the way it sits, how it falls across his face like a curtain, that perfect middle part like two wings, its golden sheen glowing like a crown… the sake has really gone to my head. Our host mentions the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. She asks if I have seen it. I say a long time ago. She mentions Sakamoto again, this time lifting her hand to her chest as she closes her eyes. It’s as though she is recalling that feeling of first love. So far away and still so powerful.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was never far from my mind when travelling Japan. I thought about him often; listening to his music and reading about his life. His albums were plastered across most of the stores I entered, including a shrine dedicated to him in Tower Records (a place I could happily live for the remainder of my life). His face often appeared on posters or in clothing stores, equal parts style icon and beloved innovator.
At the time of his death last year, Sakamoto was widely considered one of the most famous and successful Japanese composers of all time. He was the first Japanese winner of an Academy Award (for his score to The Last Emperor). He had been in one of the most innovative Japanese bands of all time (Yellow Magic Orchestra). He’d acted across from David Bowie in a film he had also scored (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence). His influence is so far reaching that countless artists as diverse as Aphex Twin, Arca, and Thundercat have named him as a major inspiration for their own career. And, if that wasn’t enough, he always looked unbelievably cool while doing it. His astonishingly beauty - a mix of traditional handsomeness and youthful solemness - would cause anyones jaw to drop (yes, I do think I’m a little in love).
I first heard his music in 2017 when he released his album async. Listening to the record now, it is astonishing how quickly you are drawn to the presence of Sakamoto himself. You can hear the movement of a piano pedals, the lifting of a hand to touch a certain chord, and sometimes a soft sigh of emotional cleansing that echoes through the microphone into infinity. Then, suddenly, a song will veer in a completely new direction. Sometimes it feels like you’ve entered a funeral (andata), and at other times it sounds as if you’re strolling through a distant landscape that is part natural and part post-apocalyptic (walker). The music is engrossing, if you can go so far as to call it music. They are sounds that envelope the listener, creating an environment that closes in on you. However, this isn’t always enjoyable. There’s something that lies between Sakamoto and the audience that I don’t think I understood back when I first listened to him.
I found myself at a loss: How could something so clearly intimate and interesting also make me feel so uncomfortable? It’s hard to think of his later albums as anything other than stark reflections of his psyche at any given point in his life. This is clearest on his final album, 12, a record where you can physically hear the cancer taking over Sakamoto’s body as his heavy breathing penetrates the twelve deserted tracks. Tracks are titled after the days they were written, placed side by side in sequential order as Sakamoto gets closer to his death. Much like Bowie’s Blackstar or Cohen’s If You Want It Darker, you can’t separate the music from death itself, which doesn’t make for a particularly pleasurable experience when you’re forced to listen to, well, death itself. In fact, it’s very hard to listen to. I found it challenging to be in the right head space to appreciate his music, so for some time, I stopped listening.
Outside of the window, the world spins by me. The bullet train dives through the landscape so quickly, you only have a moment to take it in before you disappear into another tunnel. We had only just left Kyoto, but I feel like we have already travelled to another country. I see Mt Fuji for the first time in the distance, ringed by clouds. I look out at the landscape of rugged hills surrounding its long peak. In my headphones I listen to Sakamoto’s early albums, Thousand Knives and B-2 Unit.
The sounds on these albums are stacked so heavily on top of each other that they magically coalesce into a great mass of ordered chaos. Wild guitar solos turn into classical Japanese epics before spinning towards ambient constructions that sound like you are hearing a distant galaxy collapse in on itself. I watch as the fluorescent landscape become quickly replaced by towering buildings as the train enter’s the city. The music transitions to something far more metallic and digital. ‘Riot In Lagos’ clicks and flicks. ‘Differencia’ pounds like herds of stamping feet. Skyscrapers rise. The city swallows the view. And within moments of me even registering that we are slowing down, we are in Tokyo, and in my ears, Sakamoto’s music falls into the rhythm of people flowing through the city en masse.
It wasn’t until I discovered Sakamoto’s Playing The Piano series did I start to understand what makes his music special. By simplifying the orchestration to just piano, the beauty that is deep within all his songs has the opportunity to shine. In the solo piano versions of ‘The Sheltering Sky’ or ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’, you hear the tragedy of these great works distilled into emotional microcosms. The heightened emotions and the ineffability of time that are central to both those films are brought under control in the stunning beauty of Sakamoto’s playing. With every melody, you can’t help but feel as though you are wrapped in it, whether it suggests feelings of sadness, joy, fear, love, hope, etc. The compositions impress upon the listener a certain nostalgia for the past, bringing up feelings that are so distinct and yet so ethereal. You’re worried you might lose sight of it as soon as the music stops. It’s breathtaking.
I walk with my partner through the back roads of Tokyo. In these streets, you hear the sound of the city speaking. The sounds aren’t obtrusive. If anything, you wouldn’t even realise you are in one of the biggest cities in the world. I may as well be in Canberra for how calm it is. A train rings here, the bell of a bike lightly tinkles over there, children come home from school holding hands while they laugh and smile politely, clothes shake in the wind as they dry in the sun. They become melodic in how they occur one after the other, never overlapping and never drowning you in noise. If you listen carefully, the city becomes a soft orchestra where everything has its own song, and then, Tokyo starts to sing.
In his film Coda, Sakamoto confronts life. Reeling from his first cancer diagnosis, the film tries to grasp what it is like to live and experience the world around you. He says something that rings true to a lot of his music, and to where he comes from. He talks about how the filmmaker Tarkovsky uses the sound of running water, wind, and footsteps to heighten his films. ‘He had a profound love and reverence for the sound of things,’ he says. Similarly, Sakamoto has an obsession with how sound can be a conduit for his own reverence of life.
I’ve thought a lot about Sakamoto’s death. Not least because it plays such a large role in his music. I listened to his album 12 while walking through busy night streets in Tokyo. I listened to it while strolling along the banks of the Kamo River as carp swim frozen against the stream. Quickly, it started to soundtrack my entire time in Japan. It was on these meanderings that the intricate melodies laced into that final heartbreaking album started to become clear. I would sit on the embankment, watching the sun set over Kyoto, and I would listen to these droning notes speaking beyond the grave. Written in Tokyo after receiving a second cancer diagnosis, the music on 12 - both so large and so minimal - could only have been created by Sakamoto in a place that works in such dichotomies: hopeful yet mournful, vibrant yet constrained, energetic yet calm, life balanced with death. I then saw his music no longer as challenging, but as life affirming.
A man sits on the side of a small bridge that runs over a shallow channel under the drooping arms of cherry blossoms. He fashions small boats out of bamboo, placing a flower on top of each and dropping them down into the softly running water below. Someone asks him why he’s doing this, and how much for them to buy one of his boats. He says, ‘Don’t pay. This just makes me happy.' He lets go of a boat as it floats towards the crystalline water.
We have finally reached The Philosophers Walk (Tetsugaku-no-michi). It took us all morning to get here, and the day is hot. As we walk along the canal, we chase the bamboo boats. Some get stuck behind a rock. Others drift into the reeds. Some have travelled so far that it feels as if they may just keep on floating forever. The sun pierces the tops of the trees, glistening against the small rocks scattered along the riverbed.
The path continues in a long and winding arch. We spot a turtle sitting on a rock. In the entrance of a drain, the twin heads of two baby turtles peak out and watch their mother sunbathing. We cross a small bridge, spotting a family run store that sells handmade spoons and bowls. My legs are knackered. The day is so sticky and unceasing that I’ve drunk more Boss coffees than I care to remember. I can’t tell whether I’m queasy from all the milk or simply over caffeinated. I find some shade underneath a willow tree between the shop and the canal. Despite being so close to the city, all I can hear are the birds, the little trickle of water, and the rustling of leaves. I lie down, staring up through the golden and green underside of the tree. Branches sway and sing. Within moments I feel revitalised and calm, ready for the next ten kilometres. The moment floats on by blissfully, as if it was captured and then quickly placed back in the stream to sail far away.
Now when I listen to Sakamoto’s music, I am teleported to these types of moments. At first they seem insignificant and slight, and sometimes they are sad and lonely. However, they cause something to rise in you, that otherworldly feeling of where you and the world are at peace with each other and the past feels so close that you can touch it. It is rare for music to capture life so simply and completely. Sakamoto’s music relishes in what we have right here and how we should appreciate life for all of its dichotomies.
