Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images
the music company Avex issued a statement informing that Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japanese musician and composer, passed away on March 28 at the age of 71due to rectal cancer. Funeral services have already taken place.
Considered a pioneer of electronic music, Sakamoto was born in Tokyo in 1952 and studied music as a child. In 1977 he founded the band Yellow Magic Orchestra, which with elaborate arrangements combined genres such as jazz, disco, classical music and rock. The group broke up in 1993, but from 2002 they got together to record some albums; Throughout all that time Ryuichi released records as a soloist and even tried his luck as an actor, starring in the 1983 film Nagisa Oshima “Furyo” With David Bowie, who became one of his great friends. The main theme of that film, “Forbidden colours” (also know as “Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence”), became the musician’s most popular song.
In 1988 Ryuichi Sakamoto won the Oscar in the category of Best Original Score, for his work on the film “The last emperor”. of bernardo bertolucci. By then he was already an acclaimed character in the world of music; his last soundtrack it was the one from the movie Alejandro González Iñárritu “The revenant”. After overcoming the throat cancer he suffered in 2014, he revealed that he also suffered from a rectal cancer, in a terminal phase since 2022. The musician is survived by his daughter Miu Sakamotowho used his account instagram to remember his father.
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