Japan prepares English-language edition of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s memoirs
An English-language edition of Music Sets You Free, the memoirs of Japanese composer, musician and activist Ryuichi Sakamoto, is set to be released in Japan on September 22. The 496-page book was translated by Sam Bett; it combines essays from Sakamoto’s 2009 memoir of the same title with the posthumously published 2023 memoir How Many More Times Will I Watch the Full Moon Rise?, The Japan Times reports.
From childhood to Yellow Magic Orchestra
The book is structured chronologically and covers Sakamoto’s life from childhood through his university years. He recalls discovering the power of music in kindergarten when he created a composition about a rabbit. In secondary school, the future composer was convinced that he was the reincarnation of French composer Claude Debussy.
The memoirs also discuss the recording of solo albums, the founding of Yellow Magic Orchestra with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, and the beginning of his work on film music. Sakamoto describes Tokyo during different periods of his life, underground theatres and independent venues frequented by well-known and lesser-known artists. He connects this cultural scene with social and political movements of past years.
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Film, illness and reflections on time
Two chapters of the memoirs are devoted to his work on the music for Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film The Last Emperor. Sakamoto says that he wrote the score in just two weeks. The soundtrack later earned him an Academy Award.
The second part of the book begins with the question: “How many more times will I watch the full moon rise?” The phrase comes from Bertolucci’s 1990 film The Sheltering Sky, for which Sakamoto also wrote the music. Against the backdrop of cancer diagnoses received in 2014 and 2020, he reflects on the transience and fleeting nature of time. The composer wrote that when he was in good health, he took time for granted and believed it would last forever.
Environmental activism, to which Sakamoto devoted considerable attention in the final years of his life, became a separate theme of the book. He linked nostalgia with the ability to comprehend environmental problems on a planetary scale. In the afterword, Masafumi Suzuki, who conducted the interviews that formed the basis of the memoirs, recalls that a few days before his death, Sakamoto watched a performance by the Tohoku Youth Orchestra on his phone and conducted while lying in bed. Sakamoto died in 2023.
