Ryuichi Sakamoto

“I like to write film music that stands on its own.”

“My audiences are generally mixed. Some people like techno, others are into the pop music, and others enjoy my film music.”

“I had never really liked the music by Gabriel Faure, but just by chance, listening to some pieces by him, I got very interested. So I listened to almost everything. All the pieces written by...”

“I loved the freedom of improvised music.”

“In Japanese culture, there is a belief that God is everywhere - in mountains, trees, rocks, even in our sympathy for robots or Hello Kitty toys.”

“I'm not the ambassador of Japan or Japanese culture.”

“Japanese people can feel some attachment in what they are making, whether it is a car or a TV or a computer.”

“I am worried that young Japanese people are not very curious about the outside world - which is so different to the way we were in the Sixties and Seventies. All they want to listen to is Ja...”

“Hollywood is a double feeling. Love and hate. With a talented film director, I cannot resist. They are such charming and intelligent people. But each time, it is very difficult to deal with...”

“Just recently, I thought about how maybe I should have kept using the synthesisers more after 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'; then, I would have been a more unique soundtrack composer than I...”

“Music is like nuclear plants. In a way, it's true! Music is totally artificial. Still using some material from nature, a piano is assembled with wood and iron. Nuclear power uses material fr...”

“When I do one thing for a long period of time, my attention is usually then drawn in the opposite direction.”

“All the kids at the kindergarten had to play, or at least touch, the piano. It was a good start. Then, after kindergarten, all my friends took piano lessons, so I joined them.”

“I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in the afternoon, and playing folk at night. I was qu...”

“I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being r...”

“My interests are moving toward both 'sound and music,' not just 'music.' I have been doing lots of field recordings and also collecting lots of strange sounds.”

“I'm a terrible drummer; I almost cannot play the guitar nor sax nor trumpet.”

“I've worked with the same Prophet 5 Synthesizer by Sequential Circuit synthesiser for 40 years.”

“It's all very well to say this or that on Twitter and Facebook, but ultimately, if you are a musician, it is going to carry more weight if you make your statements through your craft.”

“I always think about music horizontally and vertically at the same time.”