I have a cultural map in my head, where I find similarities between different cultures. For example, domestic Japanese pop music sounds like Arabic music to me - the vocal intonations and vibrato - and, in my mind, Bali is next to New York. Maybe everyone has these geographies in their head. This is the way I've been working.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Categorized in : Me Way Mind Music

I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

skin feel simple tree

Hopefully, we will become a stronger democratic society and avoid falling into xenophobia. Hopefully, we build good relationships with our neighboring countries and, rather than acting for profit for the current generation, acting in a way that will ensure we leave natural resources for future generations.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

good future society way

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 from nature, but it's been manipulated by humans, and it produces something unnatural.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

plants music nature power

The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

hear just music world

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 other people. I have to satisfy other people. The director or the producer. Not me. I have to satisfy myself. But then I have to deliver my music.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

myself me music love

Art is often defined as a famous masterpiece in a gallery, and we are meant to visit the work and view it to appreciate it. But that is not all there is.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

view appreciate work art

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.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

mountains god sympathy culture

I want to be lazier. This is the luxurious dream I have: Doing nothing all day, just watching the clouds and DVDs.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

nothing day dream clouds

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 quite busy!

Ryuichi Sakamoto

university jazz busy night

A young musician needs a powerful laptop and a good analogue synthesiser.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

laptop good powerful young

Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'

Ryuichi Sakamoto

i-am me music mistake

I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, 'Nature tuned it.'

Ryuichi Sakamoto

thought nature beautiful water

My main interest in synthesizers when I was an older teenager was to escape from the spell of the 12-tone system or, in a more broad sense, the spell of the European modern-music system. That led me to explore towards electronic music and ethnic music.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

escape more me music

Piano symbolizes interiority.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

piano

You're changing every day, right? Your curiosities and ambitions change, your ear changes, the music you like changes - and the music you want to make, too.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

day you music change

An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often diminishes the painting's aura. When an aura is lost, it is impossible to get back.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

painting details artist impossible

Since the early 1990s, I had been very worried about the state of the environment, and by the end of that decade, I realized I needed to do something about it.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

decade end something environment

It was a very rare moment in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. Ordinary people went out to the streets to speak anti-nuclear sentiments.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

moment plant speak people

I'm very shy about seeing my own face on the screen.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

face own my-own shy

I easily fall asleep during a movie.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

asleep easily movie fall