Notice; this review was originally contributed to the December issue of 2022. Reappeared here in English translation with the condolences to R. S. who passed away on March 28 of 2023.
For Tomobe Masato’s Dare mo Boku no Ewo Kakenaidarou (No One Could Daw My Portrait) in 1975, Ryuichi Sakamoto made his first step into the recording session. Since then, in his career of nearly a half-century, his accomplishments have amounted to a variety of activities in the field of contemporary, improvised, electronic, pop, and film score music as a musician in its general sense (or what else could I say?) and a producer for numerous projects, a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO,) and a solo artist. Moreover, his activities and appearances in multiple media as an actor, a cultural icon supported passionately by youth in the 80s, and a social activist involved with environmental problems after 2000, whether linked or not to music, have not hovered around the role of a musician. Once again, by taking another perspective on them, especially his intensive commitments to various activities after YMO, surprise us with the developments beyond our imagination and the outcomes just one artist has achieved as well. Besides, they are unfolded not in a single linear line but in multiple and discretely. I know this has been a painful task for the author to compile Sakamoto’s activities chronologically in one critical biography.
As this critical biography specifies its intention in its title as “...in Music”, the book describes the activities of Ryuichi Sakamoto as a musician, with reference to extensive resources including interviews with him and statements by witnesses. Obviously, it stands both for “history of a musician” and “history of Ryuichi Sakamoto.” But it does not end up in music activities and makes interrelations in many ways with them like activities outside of music give feedback to them. The book unveils a wide map of his interests and activities and gives a certain perspective to them by digging into each aspect of both without any bias. As is always with a biography of this kind, there come up in its first half many trivial episodes about his background and activities in his early days. Pretty much a different lifestyle day and night tells his busy life and suggests his attitude accepting these differences as total.
From the current point of reading it, bridging an encounter or event to another seems that all contingencies in his past seem to result in inevitabilities in the present time. Nevertheless, we will know the large capacity of Ryuichi Sakamoto as a person who is expected to open new pages ever after.
