Ryuichi Sakamoto, a entire world-renowned Japanese musician and actor who composed for Hollywood hits this kind of as “The Very last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” has died. He was 71.
Japan’s recording corporation Avex said in a assertion Sunday that Sakamoto died on March 28 while going through therapy for cancer.
He was initially identified with throat cancer in 2014. In 2022, he revealed that he experienced terminal cancer, a 12 months right after he disclosed struggling from rectal cancer.
Sakamoto was a pioneer of the electronics new music of the late 1970s and founded the Yellow Magic Orchestra, also known as YMO, with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi.
Takahashi died in January.
Irrespective of his battle with cancer, Sakamoto introduced a comprehensive-duration album “12” on his 71st birthday in January, stating that composing experienced a “small healing impact on my harmed human body and soul,” in accordance to the formal assertion released with the most up-to-date album.
He was a earth-course musician, winning an Oscar and Grammy for the 1987 movie “The Past Emperor.”
Sakamoto was also an actor, starring in the BAFTA-successful 1983 film “Merry Xmas, Mr. Lawrence.”
He was typically dependent in New York in latest years, even though he regularly visited Japan.
Born in Tokyo in 1952, Sakamoto began researching music at the age of 10 and was motivated by Debussy and the Beatles.
The assertion from Avex explained that irrespective of his sickness, when he was experience rather nicely, he saved functioning on his new music in his house studio. “To his closing days, he lived with new music,” it explained.
The assertion expressed gratitude to the medical practitioners who experienced treated him in the U.S. and Japan, as properly as to all his admirers about the entire world. It referenced the words Sakamoto cherished: “Ars longa, vita brevis,” which refers to the longevity of artwork, no matter how brief human daily life may well be.
Sakamoto also remaining his mark as a pacifist and environmental activist. He spoke out versus nuclear ability next the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns brought on by an earthquake and tsunami.
He took section in rallies and designed speeches in Tokyo, and was among a group of highly regarded Japanese artists, like the Nobel-profitable novelist Kenzaburo Oe, who were not worried to consider an unpopular stand on political troubles.
In a July 2012 rally, he received up on stage and read from notes on an Iphone, warning Japan not to danger people’s lives for electric power.
“Life is extra essential than money,” he mentioned in Japanese, then extra in English, “Keeping silent following Fukushima is barbaric.”
He also appeared in promotion for Nissan electrical vehicles, despite the fact that he acknowledged he bought a bashing for getting so business. At his home in New York, he receives electrical energy from a business that relies on renewables, he mentioned.
“How we make energy is heading to diversify, with fossil gasoline and nuclear electric power declining,” Sakamoto instructed The Connected Press in an interview in 2012. “People should really be able to pick the variety of energy they want to use.”
Funeral products and services have been held with spouse and children and near pals, the Avex assertion said.
Sakamoto is survived by his daughter Miu Sakamoto, a musician. She posted on her Instagram the years her father had lived — from Jan. 17, 1952, to March 28, 2023 — and a photo of a worn out, 50 %-damaged piano. He was separated from his former wife, singer and composer Akiko Yano.
___
Involved Push writer Juwon Park in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
