Ryuichi Sakamoto’s name appeared a few weeks ago, as an obscure blurb in a newsletter I subscribe to. The headline was something to the effect that a Japanese composer with stage IV cancer had written a public statement to the Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, calling for her to halt a recently approved real estate development—a project that plans to demolish a historic stadium and a lane of very old trees.
“We should not sacrifice the precious trees of Jingu that our ancestors spent 100 years protecting and nurturing just for quick economic gain,” wrote Sakamoto.
As many things do, the news brief caught my interest. I vaguely thought I might write about it here, created a mental filing card, and forgot about it.
I’m not sure why—maybe the simplicity or the poetry of it—Sakamoto’s statement about the age of the trees and the speed of real estate value-capture resurfaced. I found myself thinking about it a couple weeks later. I searched for his name, wanting to read the letter. The search returned dozens of recent news articles, including his obituary. Ryuichi Sakamoto had died just days before. I was shocked—and then pulled, magnetically—into reading and listening to everything I could.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was an omnivorous creator; sampling a few albums from his prolific discography gives a stochastic feel to his career. He was a founding member, in 1978, of the pre-electropop serotonin machine Yellow Magic Orchestra. During the late 70s and early 80s, YMO’s eclectic (they drew on bizarre references from funk to arcade games to ancient Japanese harmonies) and avant-garde (one of the first hit groups to use synthesizers, and toured with a programmer) sound was an international success.
Sakamoto is perhaps most celebrated for his film scores, which have won Grammies and Oscars. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, a film about prisoners of war in WWII Japan, was Sakamoto’s breakout score. He also co-starred, as an actor, alongside David Bowie.
His later work as a composer was moody, sparse, and wildly experimental (John Cage and Brian Eno are natural points of reference). Summvs is my favorite in this vein. It’s the fifth album in a collaborative series with Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) called “Virus.” Spare chords and concrete manipulation of a piano (unconventionally tuned to 16th-tones) drape carefully over glitchy electronic beats. It’s very beautiful.
I could go on, but this isn’t a music review. The point is that Sakamoto has always been a little iconoclastic, always a moment ahead of his time, but never gratuitously so. When you listen to his music and observe his career you hear influences, but nothing derivative. The sound is authentic. You hear him absorbing and synthesizing (hah!) in a way that, very apparently, felt right to him. For Sakamoto, irreverence and novelty aren’t performative; they’re honest.
In his personal life, Sakamoto was an advocate, standing publicly for causes—like ceasing nuclear power—that he felt mattered to Japan. Here, again, his stance doesn’t feel performative, like a typical “celebrity cause.” It’s personal. Simple. He didn’t believe that nuclear power was safe or right, so he opposed it.
What emerges is a coherent portrait of a creator who cared. And this, finally, is what really draws me to the story of Sakamoto’s letter. Those trees meant a lot to him, so, weeks away from his death, he wrote a letter to the Governor of Tokyo.
Urban planning is desperate for people to care. Actually, democracy itself is the patient, optimistic belief that people care.
Sakamoto cared, in a very authentic way, and his simple, beautiful letter got other people to care. The public response has been huge—more than the typical urban planner’s engagement campaign.
I’ll end this note with a phrase from the letter—from a dying-Japanese-former electropop star-actor-composer-activist-musician-performer—that captures urban planning as well as any I’ve seen:
“Each person has a vision of where they want to live, and this vision is shared to shape the city.”