One month ago today, the world of Avant Garde and electronic music was shocked to its very core by the sudden death of a distinguished contemporary pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who had from suffered terminal cancer and passed away at the age of 71 on March 28th, 2023, 8 years after his initial cancer diagnosis. In a long and fruitful career, the Japanese composer challenged the conventions of art and established himself as an individual against the crowd with a unique and experimental approach to music, through his work as a solo artist and as a member of the band Yellow Magic Orchestra. A month onwards from his death, we take a look back at the music that lives on forever.

Sakamoto was born in January of 1952 in Tokyo and began his musical career in 1975 when he was working as a session musician for fellow musicians Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, with whom he formed the band Yellow Magic Orchestra. By this point, he graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he trained himself to become a professional musician with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music composition and a Master of Arts degree in ethnic and electronic music, a field he would be destined to innovate and dramatically alter the contemporary landscape of. It was at this institution that he first started experimenting with electronic music equipment that would shape his musical ideas in his future career.

In 1978, Sakamoto released his debut studio album “Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto”, a fusion record of electronics and traditional Japanese music which showcased his Avant Garde tendencies towards use of synthesisers. A month later, YMO released their self-titled debut, which earned them a record deal in Europe, to international critical acclaim which threw Sakamoto into the spotlight. The band had a significant impact on the state of Japanese popular music in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, being estimated as the most popular band in Japan at that period and single-handedly inspiring the sensation of “technopop” in Japan. They continued the stream of success in 1979 with the release of their second studio album “Solid State Survivor”, which won them the award for Best Album at the Japan Record Awards in 1980 and included the hit “Behind the Mask” a cover of which was done by Michael Jackson and initially was intended to be on Thriller.

Alongside his ambitions with YMO, Sakamoto produced an outstanding portfolio of music in his solo career, including the album B-2 Unit which featured the highly acclaimed and prominent track “Riot in Lagos”, which foreshadowed and influenced most hip hop and electronic dance music that followed. His talent and international recognition consequentially led to collaborations with other important and critically acclaimed artists, such as when he worked on the album Left Handed Dream with members of Talking Heads and King Crimson. Furthermore, he acted alongside David Bowie in 1983 for the film “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”, for which Sakamoto composed an original score which won him a BAFTA award for best film music. This was not his only critically acclaimed score, nominated for the same award again in 1987 for the soundtrack to The Last Emperor (which also won him an Academy Award for Best Original Score), and again in 2015 for The Revenant.

As well as a stunning music career, Sakamoto used his worldwide recognition as a stage for his passionate activism. As a committed environmentalist, he was a member of the organisation Stop Rokkasho, a group which protested the practices of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power plant and demanded its closure. He used music as a voice to express his concern, and in 2012 he organised the No Nukes concert, which featured YMO as well as the original pioneers of electronic music of electronic music, the experimental German band Kraftwerk.

Sakamoto received his cancer diagnosis in 2014, but remaining unbothered, returned to work in August the following year. The projects that followed include the soundtrack of the 2015 film “Haha to Kuraseba”, his 2017 album async, and a 2022 collaboration with Ukrainian violinist Illia Bordarenko for a fundraiser for relief for victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He received a second, this time fatal, cancer diagnosis in 2021, and he passed away peacefully in his hometown Tokyo in on March 28th of 2023.