Quotes from Ryuichi Sakamoto

For making music for myself, I just need to be happy. I'm the producer, the director, and the listener.

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

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.

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.

I'm fascinated by the notion of a perpetual sound: a sound that won't dissipate over time. Essentially, the opposite of a piano, because the notes never fade. I suppose, in literary terms, it would be like a metaphor for eternity.

For me, change doesn't happen on a linear basis; it zig-zags back and forth.

I was aware of that theme of mortality in my music since around 2009. The decaying and the disappearance of the piano sound is very much symbolic of life and mortality. It's not sad. I just meditate about it.

To record the perfect album. That is my dearest wish.

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.

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 was born and grew up in Tokyo, so I didn't know about nature.

Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.

I used to work, like, for 16 hours a day, or sometimes 24 hours.

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 Japanese pop. They haven't even heard of Radiohead!

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.

Water is not free anymore. Our resources were free at one time, but now they are not. Everything is getting controlled by big corporations. I'm most worried about this.

Ever since I was 18 or 19, I've wanted to question the sound, tones, and scale associated with the piano as an instrument symbolic of modern European music.

Each time I work on a film, I say to myself, 'This is it. This is the end.' Because it is so stressful, it's like torture.

I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.

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.'

Asian music influenced Debussy, who influenced me - it's all a huge circle.

As soon as I choose the timbre of an instrument, that dominates how I compose.

To show my everyday life to the world was not my intention.

I'm always looking out for interesting people.