"Music is Freedom" is the only autobiography of international music master Ryuichi Sakamoto

Excerpt from the original article:

About half a year after the film was completed, I was in a group appointment because of my work relationship. When I was about to get into the car after leaving my room at the hotel, the counter staff called me back and said that I had my phone. I answered the phone and it turned out to be producer Jeremy calling to find me. "Ryuichi, help the production of the soundtrack of "The Last Emperor" Jeremy Split head came like this, and the deadline for me was "one week". I replied to him at the time: "I'm on a contract now, wait a minute and I'm going back to Tokyo... Then, I only heard the other end of the phone say, "You're going to do it right away anyway." So, I made two demands. First, it would take at least two weeks, a week for me to do my homework in Tokyo, and then I would go to London, meet them who were cutting the movie, and then finish the rest. Second, I'm going to hire an assistant to help. At that time, Sony C Records had a very good female employee, her surname was Shinosaki, and we all privately called her "Iron Woman". I hope to be able to hire her for a week. Jeremy immediately acceded to both requests. I asked director Bertolucci what type of music he wanted, and got this answer: "Although the stage of the film is in China, it is a European film." Although the story begins before World War II and continues until the war, it is still a modern film. I want you to make a soundtrack that presents that feeling. I thought to myself, this answer is the same as not saying it, but I don't have time to be overwhelmed, so I sketched a rough outline in my head: using Western orchestral music as the basic, and then putting in a lot of Chinese elements, and then adding elements such as German Expressionism, creating the feeling of the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. First, I started my homework in Tokyo. That being said, I had never studied Chinese music in the past, so I went to a record store, bought about twenty Chinese music anthologies, and spent the whole day listening to them all. Then, I thought about the times and occasions in the film, decided what instruments I should use, and started looking for Chinese instrument players near Tokyo. As I wrote the music, I recorded it, and I also asked the players of Chinese instruments to play it and record it. Three other orchestral arrangers and I do this work repeatedly for a whole week, and I stay up almost every day. There was no Internet at the time, so I borrowed a satellite connection between the BBC and N to transmit data to and from the Staff in London. It takes about an hour to transmit a piece of music over a satellite line, which is not very useful, but I don't have time to wait for the mail to be delivered, so I have to do it. I asked the staff in London to listen to the archives I had transmitted from the past, then discuss them on the phone, and then re-record them. In this way, I finally completed forty-four pieces of music, and then flew to London with Ueno Koji, who had been helping me, take these pieces with me. As soon as I arrived in London, I realized that the cut film was not what it had been. In this way, of course, the composed song is completely unworthy. It's just that in half a year, the film has been continuously edited by director Bertolucci and completely changed its appearance. He's the guy who does that. The whole film is cut more and more differently, not only the original picture is removed, but the order is also moved, which is really a mess. The next day we had to record, but the places that didn't fit were still everywhere, so that night, Ueno and I continued to stay up late and shut up in the hotel room to rewrite. There was no piano or any musical instrument in the hotel room, and there was no computer at the time, so we had to press the calculator, desperately calculating to reduce a few bars and beats, and the number of seconds to match the edited picture, and then rewrite, busy chickens and dogs jumping. As a result, we didn't close our eyes for a week after we arrived in London, recording during the day and rewrote the music at night, repeating the process every day. However, this process is not all chore. There is a scene where Puyi's imperial concubine shouts "I can't stand it anymore" and then runs away. I was very impressed with this scene, and I liked it and the actress who played the royal princess. The first time I asked the staff to listen to the soundtrack of this part, everyone hugged each other and shouted, "bellissime" (so beautiful), "bellissimo" (so beautiful), and danced with joy. I was shocked, but at that moment, the feeling of everyone being one, I can never forget. I guess that's the joy of working with Italians.

Soundtrack requirements for The Last Emperor