Beijing, 29 Apr (ZXS) -- Topic: Ryuichi Sakamoto: Left-handed oriental tuning, right-handed western chords
China Newsweek reporter Qiu Guangyu
Ryuichi Sakamoto, 70, sits at the piano and plays "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," which he has played thousands of times. He still wears his signature round-framed glasses, a well-fitting black suit, and white hair that shines in black and white. Aside from being older, he was as fashionable as he was when he was younger.
Data map: Ryuichi Sakamoto.
It was an open farewell. On December 11, 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto, worried that he would never be able to perform again, broadcast a "last" concert to the world. The picture and music that people see are the result of his segmented recording and then editing. He developed throat cancer in 2014, which has since stabilized, but was diagnosed with rectal cancer in June 2020.
Play in a band, act in a movie, win a big prize... Protected by good luck and talent, Ryuichi Sakamoto lived the first fifty years of his life into a history of genius growth. Until middle age, he maintained a laissez-faire mentality and a seemingly limitless creativity. But since then, he has suffered from cancer twice in a row and the changes in the social environment have prompted him to come out of his own world and began to use music to pay attention to society and others, and the goodwill he continues to release has also been rewarded. According to Yahoo News and other foreign media news, Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto died on March 28 this year at the age of 71.
The iconic "Voice of the East"
In 1988, 36-year-old Ryuichi Sakamoto won the Oscar for Best Score with his score in "The Last Emperor". This should have been the highlight of his life, but until his later years, he recalled this incident and felt unreal, and even only worried about whether he would be ugly on stage.
Screenshot from Zhongxin video
How did he get to this podium? Initially, he just wanted to form a band and play the most avant-garde electronic music of the time, and when the record was first released, it did not make a splash in Japan, but first became popular in Europe and the United States. At this time, Ryuichi Sakamoto's characteristic eastern face attracted the attention of Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. In 1983, he invited Ryuichi Sakamoto to play a role in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.
It was because of participating in this film that in 1983, Ryuichi Sakamoto met Italian director Bertolucci at the Cannes Film Festival. Bertolucci was also obsessed with his interest in the East, when he was frequently traveling to China to collect ideas and prepare the film "The Last Emperor" about Puyi's life.
In 1986, Sakamoto Ryu first came to China as an actor with the crew of "The Last Emperor". As a teenager, Chinese elements had a strong appeal to him, and he borrowed the melody of "Let's Swing Two Oars" in the song "East Wind". He followed the crew to Beijing, Changchun and Dalian, and entered the Forbidden City for the first time in history to shoot. In his eyes, the streets of China at that time were still gray and dark, but they faintly revealed vitality, and the sound of people rushing to buy things in department stores made him feel the atmosphere of the city. In his mind, the impressions of these sounds and colors remained vivid until his later years.
Data map: Ryuichi Sakamoto.
But the work of being an actor is not so interesting, and he has always had a somewhat awkward life. Until Bertolucci suddenly asked him to help write a piece of music to use as the background music for Puyi "ascending" as the puppet "emperor" of Manchukuo, it was played by the orchestra, but he was only given a few days. He showed even greater enthusiasm and finally handed over the music that satisfied Bertolucci within a few days. After filming, he received a request from Bertolucci to create more soundtracks, so he had to frantically compose, find a band to rehearse, and hand over more than 40 pieces in just two weeks.
Time has passed, but this experience has had the most dazzling results. He always remembered the words of legendary director Clint Eastwood from the podium: "This year belongs to The Last Emperor." "Ryuichi Sakamoto, a Japanese composer who was still very young at the time, has since become one of the world's film score masters, and in the future, filmmakers around the world will give him their works because of this trust.
Long adolescence
Because of winning the Oscar, Ryuichi Sakamoto continues to become popular around the world. Subsequently, the nickname "Professor" also spread all over the world. The nickname comes from when he first formed the band, and his partner Yukihiro Takahashi was shocked by Ryuichi Sakamoto's high education and knowledge reserve, and blurted out the word "professor". It has to be said that this elegant name is quite suitable for Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was indeed born into a family of intellectuals, his father was Kenzaburo Oe's literary editor, and his mother was a designer.
Hearing and seeing made him form the habit of doing research whenever he does music. When he wrote the music for Bertolucci for "The Last Emperor", he actually did not understand Chinese music, and bought more than 20 Chinese folk music CDs in one go, integrating Chinese pipa, guzheng and other instruments into Western orchestral music. When writing the theme music for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, he wrote the famous melody in a fusion way: the left hand used the eastern pentatonic pattern, the right hand used the chords of Western music, and the soundtrack should have had Christmas church bells, but he changed them to the Southeast Asian instrument "Camelan", echoing the location of the story, Java. In the end, this song, which combines Eastern and Western cultures, touched the world.
Screenshot from Zhongxin video
In addition to the intellectual atmosphere, the more obvious colors on his body are freedom and rebellion, which is the imprint brought to him by the times. In the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, rock music and hippie movements were introduced to Japan from the United States, and left-wing ideas and oriental Zen ideas that pursued equality, peace, justice and anti-war became popular among young people.
Whether it is a small environment or a large environment, Ryuichi Sakamoto has not been forced to live a rigid life. During the days of "picking up the work", he met many folk songs and rock singers, was trusted by them, and also met his band partners Yukihiro Takahashi and Harutomi Hosono, who pulled him on the road of electronic music. That era when young people around the world were rebellious preserved the great creativity of artists, and many people broke the barriers of academia and created anytime, anywhere.
Reborn in the shadow of death
The golden age will always end. More than a decade after moving to New York, one day in September 2001, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was preparing to eat breakfast, saw a scene that he will never forget: the World Trade Center outside the window had been pierced by a plane, smoke billowed and a shrill siren sounded in his ears for a long time. He witnessed 9/11. He suddenly found himself in fear of war. To ease his anxiety, he and his friends compiled a collection of speeches called No War, stressing that war cannot be waged for any reason. This was the first time that he as an artist had clearly expressed political views beyond art.
He gradually felt that the times were turning, the extreme rhetoric around him was increasing, and the days of peace began to be overshadowed. From then on, he began to think about ways to make a sound with music. Gradually, his way of making music became more and more deviant. In 2002, he traveled to Kenya, the "birthplace" of mankind, to see what kind of voice there was in the "birthplace" of mankind. A few years later, he went to Greenland, threw the recording device into an ice cave, and recorded the sound of melting glaciers, jokingly calling himself "fishing."
In 2012, he played for victims of the Fukushima nuclear accident, hoping they would sleep peacefully to the music. He is intervening in reality with music, which is the influence that artist John Cage brought to him by "adding everyday to music".
On the afternoon of March 9, 2014, three groups, including the Tokyo National Area Anti-Nuclear Power Alliance, held a large-scale rally in Tokyo. The picture shows musician Ryuichi Sakamoto calling for zero nuclear power at the Hibiya Field Music Hall rally.
As he ran around the world, blows followed. In 2014, 62-year-old Ryuichi Sakamoto was suddenly diagnosed with throat cancer. During the fight against cancer, he pushed off most of his work, but still insisted on writing soundtracks for films such as "The Revenant".
In July 2022, he wrote for the Japanese magazine Shinchao, detailing how he was diagnosed with rectal cancer again in June 2020. Over the past two years, he has been to several hospitals, undergone six surgeries, and tumors in the large intestine, both lungs and lymphatic system have been cut off. Even so, he still hopes to continue to create, like his beloved Bach and Debussy, until the last moment of his life.
On the barrage of Chinese video websites, there are still countless people blessings and prayers for Ryuichi Sakamoto, and in the corresponding video, Ryuichi Sakamoto reads word by word in Chinese a gentle and gentle tone: Everyone - long time no see, I am Ryuichi Sakamoto. (End)