Ryuichi Sakamoto Biography

The Japanese composer, producer, and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto was born in 1952. Sakamoto studied music composition at Tokyo’s National University of Fine Arts, graduating in the mid 1970’s and launching a career that has spanned well into the new millennium.

Alongside fellow musicians Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono, Sakamoto formed the Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978, and the trio went on to pioneer many electronic genres of the period, including electronica, cyberpunk, and synthpop. The influence of Yellow Magic Orchestra can be seen today in many modern genres, including acid house and techno. While still performing with Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto simultaneously launched his own solo career, with the debut album Thousand Knives in 1978. Additional solo albums followed, especially after Yellow Magic Orchestra disbanded in 1983, and around the same time Sakamoto made the journey into film scoring and composition.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has given audiences music for a number of notable films, including: Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), The Little Buddha (1993), Wild Palms (1993), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Gohatto (1999), Japanese Story (2003), Babel (2006), and of course The Last Emperor (1987), which earned him an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Grammy Award and became the score with which he most associated. In addition, Sakamoto composed the score for the Summer Olympics of 1992, held in Barcelona, Spain.

Most recently, Ruichi Sakamoto organized and performed at 2012’s No Nukes concert, designed to call awareness to the precarious state of nuclear power throughout the world and to call for a closing of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Sakamoto also recently served as a member of the jury for Venice’s International Film Festival in 2013.