We lost Ryuichi Sakamoto on March 28, 2023. The legendary Japanese composer, performer, and cultural icon was seventy-one. He left behind an astonishing legacy – forty-eight years of musical innovation that crossed cultures and genres from techno-pop to Oscar-winning film scores. His influence runs through me like a pulse. With a catalog as vast and diverse as his, I tremble at the thought of telling his story. I can share how I became aware of him, and dive deep into my favorite Sakamoto pop album, Smoochy (1995), but a broad look across his career is too monumental a challenge. That changed a few weeks ago, when a package arrived from Japan containing the 1985 documentary Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto – an artifact I’d never seen. It moved me so deeply that I understood immediately this was the story I needed to tell first.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Sakamoto is best known for his first score, written for Nagisa Ōshima’s 1983 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence – a movie he acted in alongside David Bowie. The instrumental theme, a synthesized take on Japanese music for Western audiences, is a reference point throughout this story. For forty years Sakamoto performed it more than anything else he ever composed.
Collecting Sakamoto
I inadvertently started collecting Sakamoto’s work in 1993 when I purchased the new album from one of my favorite bands, Aztec Camera. Dreamland, released May 17, 1993, was Aztec Camera’s fifth studio album, produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto. I had zero awareness of him prior to this point, but I recognized something special in the production.
In a 1999 interview with The Scotsman, Aztec Camera mastermind Roddy Frame recounted that he wanted an album that sounded like Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence while Sakamoto wanted one that sounded like the band’s own 1983 debut, High Land, Hard Rain. “He took a lot of persuading to plug the keyboards in and I took a lot of persuading to bang on the acoustic guitar again.”
In addition to producing the album, Sakamoto contributed synths, sampling, percussion, and piano. Frame told The Observer in 1993 that Sakamoto’s “beautiful piano playing” influenced the mood of the record, and that “Ryuichi tends not to fully state each chord, so that the songs became more airy, less grounded.” The perfect example is the opening track “Birds.” It instantly swept me off my feet and was my favorite song for at least two decades (I stopped picking favorites some time ago). I adore its atmospheric layers, sophisticated synth lead melody, and the yearning in Frame’s swooning vocal.
In 1993 I didn’t have the internet to look him up, but the sound of Dreamland made the name Ryuichi Sakamoto stick. It was only a few years later when out CD shopping at Barnes & Noble in College Station, Texas, that I came across an album with arresting artwork featuring a triptych portrait of a very stylish Japanese man on a white background, and “RYUICHISAKAMOTOSMOOCHY” written in bold, all caps, black sans serif type. I bought it on cover art and name alone, and raced to my car, unwrapped the jewel case, and delicately snapped the CD into my Sony Discman D-2 – car stereo enabled by Sony’s CPA-7 Car Connecting Pack.
The sounds filling my car on the drive home to my college apartment were from another world – I was immersed in the futuristically rhythmic, synth and electric piano soundscape of the opening track “Bibo No Aozora” – and feeling the full, warm embrace of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s hypnotic and soothing vocal delivery for the very first time.
Over the years I’ve curated a decent collection that is still growing. In 2006, Sakamoto started his own imprint commmons under Avex, Japan’s largest independent record label. The catalog itself is administered by Kab Inc. and Kab America Inc., Sakamoto’s management and publishing office. His studio albums, live recordings, collaborations, and soundtracks continue to be remastered and repressed. As a collector, having this journey continue after his death is an incredible gift. It has given me the opportunity to discover new aspects of his career and to own recordings that were previously unobtainable.
A couple of times a year I receive a shipment from Japan containing a record or two, sometimes a book or a film. My most recent delivery included two Sakamoto soundtrack LPs, and a newly 4K-remastered lost artifact, the 1985 documentary Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto. Resurrected out of obscurity, the film is available on disc for the first time in decades – I had no idea what to expect. Scenes of a vital thirty-two-year-old Sakamoto moved me so deeply that I knew I had to share it. Tokyo Melody tells the Ryuichi Sakamoto story I couldn’t fathom writing.
A brief history of a technology pioneer
“Technology is progressing on its own. The gears are moving more and more efficiently. We’re beginning to discover possibilities that exceed our imagination and horizons. This is clear in the field of biotechnology, or in the fifth-generation computer. I’m not rejecting or approving this form of progress. I don’t say: ‘Return to nature.’ Or: ‘Return to pre-modern times.’ I don’t want to go against the flow. I’m interested in the cracks in technology. In other words, errors or noise. They are the things that really interest me, and I wonder if new cultural trends could emerge from this deficiency. This concern is behind all my work.”
– Ryuichi Sakamoto, speaking in Tokyo Melody, May 1984
Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, where he had access to Buchla, Moog, and ARP synthesizers – cutting-edge instruments in the ’70s. He left with a Bachelor of Arts in music composition in 1974 and a Master of Arts in electronic and ethnic music in 1976.
His career as a recording artist under his own name began in 1978 with the release of his first album Thousand Knives in October, followed by the debut album a month later from his new band, Yellow Magic Orchestra, formed in Tokyo by Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, vocals), and Sakamoto (keyboards, vocals). YMO achieved national and international success – they were the best-selling act in Japan through 1982 – and they continued releasing pioneering electronic music until they stopped group activity in 1984.
Accompanied by Hideki Matsutake, YMO’s programmer and de facto fourth member, the band worked with the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, the first standalone computer sequencer. They were also among the first bands to record with the now-iconic Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer drum machine. They played a key role in the rise of synth pop and techno, pioneering the use of digital music technology in the city where the machines were being invented.
Eventually the instruments themselves weren’t enough. In 1999, Sakamoto staged his first opera, LIFE a ryuichi sakamoto opera 1999 – seven sold-out shows at Osaka-jō Hall and the Nippon Budokan – for which he would sit at the piano and lead the orchestra. This presented a unique challenge: the lid of conventional grand pianos creates a boundary between the player and the ensemble. To solve for this, he commissioned the Opera Piano, designed by the Yamaha Design Laboratory. Stripped of all decorative elements to reveal the piano’s function and outfitted with a transparent lid, the Opera Piano enabled Sakamoto to play and conduct at the same time.
Ten years later, Sakamoto conceived of a way to duet with himself. On his Playing the Piano 2009 tour, two Yamaha grand pianos were onstage, Sakamoto played one, and the other was equipped with Disklavier technology reproducing a pre-recorded performance of his own. This created the effect of two hands playing the work of four – all the notes performed by Sakamoto himself.
The end before we begin
Although Sakamoto was diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and 2021, he lived his life out loud and continued making inspiring and deeply touching music. Stephen Nomura Schible’s 2017 documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda follows Sakamoto for five years, first exploring a Yamaha concert grand recovered from the gymnasium of Miyagi Agricultural High School after the 2011 tsunami. “I felt as if I was playing the corpse of a piano that had drowned,” he says in the film. It then follows him through a year off after his 2014 diagnosis and his decision to break his recovery hiatus to score Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant. He later told IndieWire, “I couldn’t say no to [Iñárritu] because I admire him too much.” It concludes with Sakamoto at home in New York, composing music for his nineteenth solo studio album async (released March 29, 2017) amid real-life adjustments due to his cancer treatment. The film is an insider’s view into his wildly experimental creative process and makes it undeniable that a once-vibrant star had begun to dim. For me the film struck a perfectly delicate balance between beauty, peace, and denial.
In 2022, Sakamoto prepared a solo piano retrospective of his entire career – each song hand-selected and arranged to be performed one last time. Neo Sora, Sakamoto’s son, directed Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, filmed over twelve days that September in Studio 509 at the NHK Broadcasting Center in Tokyo – a few pieces a day with no audience, because Sakamoto no longer had the stamina for a full concert. His final performances spanned YMO through his last studio album 12, months before its release on January 17, 2023. The film was shot in black and white, each song set up with unique lighting and camera angles. He died six months later.
Parts of the film were released before his passing in the form of Ryuichi Sakamoto: Playing the Piano 2022, a “concert” streamed one time on December 11, 2022. Opus was officially announced in August 2023 and released theatrically for a limited run at the end of March 2024 – I approached it as a memorial for a lost love. I bought a ticket to see Opus at the iconic Plaza Theatre – Atlanta’s longest-running independent cinema and an Art Deco treasure. It did not occur to me until arriving at the theater that I was watching it on the first anniversary of Ryuichi’s death, March 28, 2024. I settled into my seat in a tiny upstairs theater, only two or three other people there to pay tribute. Twenty songs, each a subdued and calming performance, a hundred minutes of tranquil remembrance. The end credits appeared unobtrusively during the final song “Opus - ending” – a haunting piece featuring a spacious, floating melody reminiscent of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. The words on screen were just enough of a distraction. It took me a moment to notice that when the camera changed angles, Sakamoto was gone. What read as a magic trick in 2009 was now a conscious acknowledgment of his own mortality. The keys on the piano continued to play, as if by Sakamoto’s ghost – just as he intended. The uncontrollable feeling of loss and sadness in the gut, the shiver of electricity up the spine, lungs heavy with sobs, face contracting to hold back the well of tears. It’s getting to me as I write about it now.
After his death, the Opera Piano was exhibited at Ginza Sony Park in December 2024 for the launch of sakamotocommon – an initiative to share his estate, instruments, library, intellectual property, and field recordings as a common resource for “the benefit of future creators.” The piano used automated playback data from Sakamoto’s own performances of “Aqua,” “energy flow,” “put your hands up,” “Poppoya,” and “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.” That same month, seeing sound, hearing time opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, December 2024 to March 2025 – twelve large-scale installations built from concepts Sakamoto left the museum before he died, one of them an automated piano playing his own performance with a life-size video projection creating the illusion of him sitting behind the keyboard. The same technology he used in 2009, and that delivered the emotional impact of Opus, was on public display. Only the man was missing. He had arranged for it.
Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1983. In the audience was American photographer and director Elizabeth Lennard, who told Ultra Dogme in 2023 that she was “bowled over by his music, and by seeing him.” After the screening she ran into two producers she knew from the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), who had also just discovered Sakamoto and said to her, “If you have some way of getting in touch with him, we might have some budget for you to do a film about him.”
Living between New York and Paris at the time, Lennard was dining out at Odeon in Tribeca and ended up at a table next to A&M Records executive Jeff Ayeroff for whom she had previously made hand-painted album covers. The label distributed YMO in the United States, and as fate would have it, also at Ayeroff’s table was Kiki Miyake, YMO’s U.S. tour manager in the 1970s. Miyake made the introduction to Sakamoto.
Lennard shot Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto over seven days in May 1984 with a small INA crew. Shooting coincided with Sakamoto beginning to record his landmark 1984 solo album Ongaku Zukan, released internationally as Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia. The documentary is an intimate behind-the-scenes glimpse into his thinking and creativity, as well as a snapshot of the sounds and bustle of street culture in 1980s Tokyo. Few films document a creative process this closely. Lennard, in an interview conducted for the 2026 4K restoration, explained, “I was aware, even at the time, that it was a very fortunate moment to be filming. Ongaku Zukan was his first fully realized solo album, and more broadly, it felt like the beginning of his solo career – or perhaps a return to being a composer. Yellow Magic Orchestra had disbanded, and he was beginning to carve out his own path. A number of favorable circumstances came together, and that’s how this film was made.”
After its completion in 1985, Tokyo Melody was screened at international film festivals and was released in Japan at the inaugural Tokyo International Film Festival. It aired on French television a year later and was then released on VHS and LaserDisc in Japan before disappearing from the market. Its modern resurrection began on YouTube, where the film developed a cult status, quietly racking up more than 400,000 views. This caught the attention of Alexander Fee, a programmer at the Japan Society in New York, who contacted Lennard in 2023 about screening it on 16mm for Japan Cuts – the largest festival of contemporary Japanese film in North America. Lennard had a 16mm print stored in her basement, and Light Cone in Paris inspected the print to ensure it was suitable to screen. The full 4K digital restoration was subsequently commissioned and produced by Kab Inc., Kab America Inc., and the INA using the original 16mm negative image and 16mm stereo magnetic tape. It was screened internationally in early 2026 and is now commercially available through commmons on Blu-ray and DVD, and streaming on The Criterion Channel. Watch the trailer.
The film opens with Sakamoto in a park playing with a toy space gun, voicing over a quote from Claude Debussy, “I am working on things that will only be understood by the grandchildren of the twentieth century.” In choosing this quote from his lifelong hero, Sakamoto appears to signal his continuation of Debussy’s mission – foreshadowing his own decades-long success in experimental music. Next, Lennard cuts to an extreme closeup of Sakamoto’s face in stage makeup before placing us in the studio – a reel of 2″ analog tape spinning on a 24-track recorder, Sakamoto notating music on a score sheet in the control room. The abstract and the concrete – key themes of the film immediately established.
A stylish Sakamoto strikes a contemplative and very staged pose in front of the enormous video screen at Shinjuku Alta in Tokyo. On the screen we see live concert footage of Yellow Magic Orchestra performing the song “Behind the Mask.” As someone who has loved Sakamoto’s music as long as I have, and who is still grappling to comprehend his expansive solo career, I honestly have not spent much time listening to YMO. My familiarity was strictly limited to songs like “Tong Poo” and “Perspective,” which he has played as solo piano pieces over the decades. I was blown away hearing this song in the film – it immediately resonated with me and opened the door to their music.
Throughout the film, a wide range of sounds from subway stations, pachinko parlors, busy city streets, and religious festivals are heard in contrast to Sakamoto’s music. There is a scene of him in the studio overdubbing piano on the song “M.A.Y. in the Backyard” from Ongaku Zukan. The cacophonous music becomes the fitting soundtrack to scenes of Tokyo commuters, utility and construction workers operating machinery, and pedestrians crossing busy intersections – you quickly recognize this is where Sakamoto drew inspiration for the sounds he was creating.
Next we see Sakamoto performing a solo piano version of “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” which he arranged for his 1983 album Coda – a stripped-down reinterpretation of his film score. He plays the song with vigorous authority.
There is a highly entertaining scene of Sakamoto demonstrating how to use the Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) – a groundbreaking digital synthesizer, sampler, and workstation first introduced in 1979. This was cutting-edge and incredibly expensive technology – costing around $32,000 in 1984, the same as a new Porsche 911 Carrera. Here we see Sakamoto treating it like a new toy and fumbling to show off some of its capabilities.
The most touching footage comes late in the film and features Sakamoto playing a piano duet with his wife Akiko Yano – a renowned pop and jazz musician and singer in her own right, achieving overnight success with her 1976 debut album Japanese Girl. The couple wed in 1982, and Yano frequently collaborated as a touring keyboardist and vocalist with Yellow Magic Orchestra. Lennard told Ultra Dogme in 2023, “I had asked Ryuichi Sakamoto if we could film him playing the piano at home and he said, ‘Okay, but I have to ask my wife, because in Japan, the wife is in charge of the home.’ She agreed that we could come there with our little crew to film and we brought our lunch and all had a picnic in the backyard… We asked her if she would be willing to do a duet. It was apparently a truly rare moment, totally unplanned.” The couple appear together behind the keyboard, four hands on the grand piano playing the YMO hit “Tong Poo.” This scene is juxtaposed with perfectly blended cuts of the song from the 1984 concert film YMO Propaganda. Their chemistry is palpable, both swaying to the rhythm, trusting each other fully. They end the song with smiles on their faces. Afterward, Sakamoto voices over, “There aren’t many Japanese people with whom I can work with on the same level. My wife, Akiko Yano, is an exception.” Lennard believes this is the only footage of the two playing together in their home.
At the end of the film, Sakamoto is in the studio recording piano on “Self Portrait” – a standout track from Ongaku Zukan. If this truly is a self-reflection, Sakamoto presents himself as confident, regal, and timeless – all qualities matched in the emotion of the song. Once again I am watching him play piano as the end credits roll. It’s the counterpoint to Opus. There, the technology replacing the man delivered the emotional blow. Here, the thirty-two-year-old is completely alive with so much yet to accomplish.
“Dearest Ryuichi, Would you like to play piano four hands together again? I miss you very much.”
– Akiko Yano, April 4, 2023
Press play: Ryuichi Sakamoto – Tokyo Melody
Last year, before I’d heard of Tokyo Melody, I discovered the Ongaku Zukan album version of “Self Portrait.” I had only known this song as a solo piano piece from Playing the Piano 2009 Japan Self Selected. The fully produced original version reopened Sakamoto’s earlier albums for me to explore – just as Tokyo Melody opened the door to Yellow Magic Orchestra. This playlist features a selection of YMO songs, the pivotal “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” and highlights from Sakamoto’s Ongaku Zukan. Together, they are a soundtrack to Tokyo Melody as I hear it – the sounds of Sakamoto’s Tokyo
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Liner Notes
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “Perspective”
My favorite YMO track is from their seventh studio album Service, released on December 14, 1983. The sounds encapsulate everything I enjoy from this Sakamoto era. I love his lead vocal and the lyrics – mundane daily rituals that sound like tasks from the future.
Every day I open the window
Every day I brush my teeth
Every day I read the paper
Every day I see your face
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “君に、胸キュン。(浮気なヴァカンス)”
“Kimi ni, mune kyun. (A holiday affair)”
A breezy tune with a catchy melody, composed by all three members with lyrics by Takashi Matsumoto. YMO had finished their sixth album, Naughty Boys, when they were asked to write the jingle for Kanebo Cosmetics’ summer campaign. Released as a single in March 1983, two months ahead of the album, it reached number two on the Oricon chart – YMO’s highest-charting single.
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “Behind the Mask”
Sakamoto originally composed it for a Seiko watch commercial in 1978. The song was rerecorded by YMO with lyrics by Chris Mosdell for their second album Solid State Survivor, released on September 25, 1979. Michael Jackson recorded a version for Thriller, but it was cut from the album because no royalty arrangement could be agreed upon. It was also covered by Eric Clapton on his 1986 album August and released as a single in January 1987, reaching number fifteen on the UK charts.
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “音楽”
“Ongaku”
Yukihiro Takahashi’s shuffling drum rhythm drives this Naughty Boys album track. Sakamoto wrote it for Miu Sakamoto, his three-year-old daughter with Akiko Yano. The translated lyrics read like a childlike reflection on the joys of singing and dancing together.
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “ファイアークラッカー”
“Firecracker”
This cover of the 1959 Martin Denny exotica instrumental was featured on YMO’s eponymous debut album, released on November 25, 1978. Issued on the “Computer Game / Firecracker” single in the United States, it launched the band globally – YMO performed it live on Soul Train, and Afrika Bambaataa spun it in his DJ set captured live and released as Death Mix in 1983. I respect how the band’s subversive mechanization of this song twisted Western exotica stereotypes into their own success.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”
The soundtrack to Nagisa Ōshima’s film was released on May 1, 1983. Sakamoto won the BAFTA for best Score For A Film the following year. The beauty of this melody is accentuated by its simple repetition. This instrumental theme set everything in the Tokyo Melody story in motion.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Aopenki no Naka no Boku no Namida”
In Tokyo Melody, Sakamoto says of the Ongaku Zukan sessions, “I recorded about 30 pieces. I’ll choose about 10 of them to put on my new solo album. I might throw some of the others out, or use them for commercials, or perhaps keep them for another album.” This is one of the songs that didn’t make the album. It later surfaced on the deluxe, remastered Ongaku Zukan - 2015 Edition. The title translates to “My Tears Inside Blue Paint” – the tender melody sounds like a lullaby.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Paradise Lost”
The highlight of this album track from Ongaku Zukan, released in late 1984, is its rhythmic reggae swing and samples of shortwave radio. Together they create a dreamlike atmosphere. Listening for the first time, I was blown away by how much it reminded me of “Dennogiwa” and “Poesia” – two of my favorite songs from his 1995 pop masterpiece Smoochy. Sakamoto’s sonic blueprint drawn up over a decade in advance.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Mori no Hito”
This Ongaku Zukan album track, translated loosely as “Forest People,” is a ballad carried by a soft drumbeat and sampled bell sounds. Sakamoto delivers a bare and beautiful vocal over the atmospheric backing track.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “M23 Ballad”
Another outtake from the Ongaku Zukan sessions appearing on the 2015 reissue, this song strikes me as a quintessential ’80s synth tune. It would have been perfect on a Jerry Bruckheimer movie soundtrack.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Self Portrait”
There’s a touch of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major in this song. I imagine it playing while students walk across the stage accepting their college diplomas – the world filled with promise, their hearts ready for adventure. It sounds like the template for David Foster and John Parr’s songs on the St. Elmo’s Fire soundtrack, a year before it came out. “Self Portrait” has become one of my favorite songs from Sakamoto’s entire career.