You’ve said you imagine that Bach, when composing, asked, “Why is there suffering?” Do you ask a question when you write?
Bach wrote uplifting music, but his most important works, like St. Matthew Passion, sound full of agony to me. I’m sure he was looking at the tragedy and sadness of the people around him. I don’t think he was trying to save the world with his music, but I’m sure it was about prayer. The shock I had after the tsunami and the nuclear plant accident in Japan is still here [he touches his heart]. What was that and what should I do? I still don’t have the answer, but I have been trying to help children in those affected areas, bringing them back to music. Most importantly, I’m thinking about those events, and they affect my writing.
Why do you write music at all, considering you seem so fascinated, even consumed, by sounds that exist in nature?
It’s wasting time to listen to music when you go outside because there are so many interesting noises. For example, every time it rains, I open the window and put the recorder outside. I should always be ready to be surprised, like by the siren of a patrol car in Barcelona and other cities. I hit things, on the street or anywhere, to check the sound—until I find the perfect idea of sound. I haven’t found it yet and am always searching.
If I were satisfied listening to nature though, I wouldn’t need to write music. I still desire it, so it’s contradictory.
Is there too much music today?
At university, where I studied ethnomusicology, a professor told me about a concept that I like so much: There used to be many villages in Europe and Asia where there was only one song. That melody, with different lyrics, tells everything from the happiness of a wedding to the funeral ceremony. It is not made by a person but by time, history and anonymous people. I respect the quality of that music more than music written from money-driven desire in our capitalist world. Of course, there are sincere creators and artists, but I still believe there is too much music.
The right music for the right space seems imperative to you, in your films and also at the restaurant Kajitsu—which you designed a playlist for last year. What inspired your choices for that project?
The sound should be appropriate to the quality of the food, and also the aesthetic of the space. Maybe the people, too. Kajitsu’s food is based on traditional Japanese kaiseki—it’s very slow and quiet as the dishes are served one by one. It doesn’t need bar music and can be nice without music, but maybe some little changes might make the customers feel better. It should be atmospheric—just a mood. Sometimes I go there just to check the sound levels… and many times I complain that it is too loud!
Such meticulous curation of a soundscape seems connected to your work making ringtones for the phone company Nokia, too.
Since the early 1970s, I’ve been interested in not only music but the soundscape of the city—the noises and signals of our city life. Aside from being asked, that’s probably why I made a lot of commercial music for Japanese television in the ’70s and ’80s. I thought it would be nice to change the Japanese people’s sound environment. It’s the same reason I worked on the Nokia ringtone: I was so tired of hearing huge sounds from the cellphones in airport lobbies or on the street. That famous ringtone—a huge, loud sound—was ringing everywhere!
Do you have a seminal sound memory?
Probably my first memory of film music: When I was four or five years old, I was on my mother’s lap in a very dark space—probably a cinema—and I don’t remember anything about the film except the theme music and that it was black and white. Each time the radio played that theme, I would jump and say, “That music! That music!” Decades later, I found it was Nino Rota’s theme for Fellini’s La Strada.
Did you think about sounds differently during your years in the Yellow Magic Orchestra than you do today?
Listening back to that music, it’s so powerful and energetic to me. It was considered very cold—“computer music”—but in fact, 80 percent was manual.
If I were asked to play it today, I couldn’t. It was youth. Definitely it’s my past—a memory from my life that feels foreign and finished. It’s a chapter, and I always want to go forward.
Silence seems more critical for you now.
Silence’s importance is increasing as I’m getting older. In our busy postmodern cities, we need it for balance, to get our brains empty. People are always getting input, and that means less time for expressing, which is bad. In 2016, when I was making the album async, I forbade myself from looking at Facebook and Twitter. Just eating information makes you unable to move.
Extreme silence occurs after tragedies, you’ve observed—like in New York after September 11. Why would a city react that way?
People in New York needed almost one week for the shock to decrease. For about three days, people were searching for their relatives and loved ones, not knowing what to do or what was next. It was very tense. They didn’t have the capacity to listen or think about music. Music comes after desperation. That happened to me then, too, and after my cancer diagnosis. [Sakamoto was diagnosed with stage three throat cancer in 2014. He is now in remission.] I was in shock and too tense, maybe. In moments of life and death, there’s no possibility to listen to music. It cannot save, unfortunately!
Yet the Irish sing at wakes.
Pina Bausch repeatedly said, “Dance! Dance! Otherwise, we are lost.” Not only culturally but as people, we need dancing and music, otherwise we are lost.