On March 28, the world bid farewell to Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most celebrated musicians, who passed away at the age of 71.
For many, his name is inseparable from the haunting score of The Last Emperor and the pioneering sounds of Yellow Magic Orchestra, which he founded with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. To others, it is the tender melody of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence—a piece that seems to live forever in the silence between heartbeats.
Sakamoto lived with illness for nearly a decade. After being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, he revealed in 2021 that he was battling rectal cancer as well. “From now on,” he wrote, “I will live together with cancer.” Even as his body weakened, his music never faltered. On his seventy-first birthday, he released 12, a deeply intimate album, like a diary etched in sound.
In late 2022, already too frail for live concerts, he chose instead to record a series of online performances at NHK’s 509 Studio in Tokyo—what he himself called “Japan’s best studio.” Each note carried both fragility and strength, as though he knew this might be his last farewell. Indeed, it was. Among the pieces he performed were YMO’s Tong Poo, the shimmering Aqua, and the sorrowful 20220302 – sarabande from his final album.
For half a century, Sakamoto shaped the soundscape of the world. He was more than a composer: he was a bridge between East and West, tradition and modernity, art and technology. His works carried both the precision of intellect and the tenderness of spirit. To Chinese fans, he was fondly “Professor”; to global audiences, he was simply unforgettable.
From the late 1970s, through YMO’s bold experiments in electronic music, to his Oscar-winning score for The Last Emperor in 1988, Sakamoto expanded the language of music itself. He collaborated across genres, cultures, and continents, never ceasing to question, to challenge, to create. Even during his final years, weakened by illness, he composed for films like The Revenant and continued to give the world new music.
In the pandemic years, when isolation weighed heavily on the world, Sakamoto sat at the piano, fragile in body yet infinite in sound. His music became a form of companionship—quiet, unyielding, luminous.
As we remember him, we return to his own words, spoken long ago in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence:
“Beyond that heap of rubble, someone is waiting to light a fire.”
And so he did, again and again—until his final breath.
