Speakers: Akira Asada (Critic/Director, ICA Kyoto/Professor, Kyoto University of the Arts)
Shiro Takatani (Artist)

Guest commentators (in order of appearance): Lucille Reyboz (Co-founder/Co-director, KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival)
Yusuke Nakanishi (Co-founder/Co-director, KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival)
Akeo Okada (Musicologist/Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University)
Kazuko Okada (Composer/Professor, Kyoto City University of Arts)
Kohei Nawa (Sculptor/Professor, Kyoto University of the Arts)
Marihiko Hara (Musician)
Ko Kado (Karakami Craftsperson/Owner, Kamisoe Shop)
Oussouby Sacko (Spatial Anthropologist/Director, Center for Africa-Asia Contemporary Studies, Kyoto Seika University)

Moderator: Tetsuya Ozaki (Editor-in-chief, REALKYOTO FORUM, ICA Kyoto/Professor, Kyoto University of the Arts)

Editing and Composition: REALKYOTO FORUM
——————————–

– ST/LL and PLANKTON

Moderator: In Part 1, we covered roughly up to 2012. Next, in 2015, Takatani-san created a work titled ST/LL under the name Shiro Takatani, not Dumb Type. The world premiere of this work took place in Le Havre, France, and was followed by its Japanese premiere in 2016, at Biwako Hall.
Asada: In addition to his performances with Dumb Type, Takatani-san has created performances under his own name, such as La chambre claire, CHROMA/, ST/LL [editorial note: and Tangent in 2024). In fact, when La chambre claire was performed at Biwako Hall, I went to see it with Sakamoto-san. One unforgettable memory from that time is that there was an elegant Erard (a French piano maker) piano with an Art Deco design in the lobby, and Sakamoto-san casually sat down and played “Bolerish” on it. Written for Brian De Palma’s film Femme Fatale, the brief being “music similar to Ravel’s Bolero,” it closely resembled Bolero, but instead of heating up like Bolero, continued with an ironic coolness. Yet also gracefully. It was the kind music only Sakamoto-san could create. Listening to the composer playing it on an Erard piano from the same era as Ravel was a treat and a privilege. Anyway, as Sakamoto-san watched Takatani-san’s performance, the idea of creating performance works with him began to take shape.

Takatani: I asked Sakamoto-san to compose the music for ST/LL after he had completed his first cancer treatment and just before he worked on the music for the movie Nagasaki: Memories of My Son. We were in Europe on a residency, and he sent us many audio files. These had comments attached like “I made interesting sounds using ARP” or “This is a simple repetition, so if I come up with something more complex, I’ll try again.” Marihiko Hara and Takuya Minami were corresponding with him at that time. Some parts use only the materials sent by Sakamoto-san, some combine their material. The piece was created by mixing Sakamoto-san’s material with music they made.

The stage had water covering the entire floor, and a large hanging rear-projection screen. A camera was suspended from three wires above a movable table on the stage, and moved through the air. In the opening scene, the camera moves and captures what is on the table, projecting it onto the rear screen at an angle of view hidden from the audience, creating a state in which front and back are reversed.

When I spoke to Sakamoto-san about the music for my piece, I mentioned a scene in 2001. The one where the protagonist has a meal after traveling to the future…

Asada: It’s in the final part of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the scene after the astronaut escapes the wormhole.

Takatani: I told him, “I want something like that: my performance is set in the future, maybe thousands of years from now, and starts from a submerged table.” In response he sent several recordings of the reverberant piano that you heard earlier. He also sent many other sounds, like the complex rhythms of European bells, where you can’t tell if they repeat or not, and sounds that could be turned into visuals.
Moderator: As mentioned earlier, Marihiko Hara was also involved in ST/LL. We’ll hear his comments later, but this photo was taken during a meeting at a restaurant in Kyoto.

Asada: The second person from the left is Takuya Minami, a graphic designer and musician.
Moderator: Now, this is PLANKTON: A Drifting World at the Origin of Life, presented at KYOTOGRAPHIE in 2016. It features beautiful photos and videos taken underwater by Christian Sardet, a plankton specialist. Takatani-san arranged these visuals, and Sakamoto-san provided the music for the installation.

Takatani: KYOTOGRAPHIE approached me, saying that for an exhibition on the theme of the food chain (“Circle of Life”) they wanted a work focusing on plankton, the most fundamental element of the food chain. They wanted me to create an installation using Sardet’s footage. KYOTOGRAPHIE also expressed a desire to have Sakamoto-san provide the music. Considering the theme was the food chain, that is, the way nature recycles, I thought Sakamoto-san would be perfect, so asked him to join us, and we decided to create the work together.

We placed 12 large LED monitors on the floor, and I designed things so that when transitioning from one image of plankton to the next, instead of using a fade-in/fade-out effect, the image would stretch out as if being scanned from one side, and images disappearing in a line be replaced by the next image. For me, this symbolized the connecting of a stream of plankton images, creating an image of video recycling or circulating. Images were stretched at various intervals, and there were moments when all 12 screens synchronized, creating different patterns.

Moderator: Unlike LIFE – fluid… which was positioned above as if we were looking up at the sky, this installation was placed on the floor, evoking the feeling of peering into the depths of the sea.

– Baschet Sound Sculptures

Moderator: In 2016, Sakamoto-san became interested in Baschet sound sculptures and visited Kyoto City University of Arts. These sculptures are objects that produce sound, and were first created by brothers Bernard and François Baschet in the 1950s. At the 1970 Osaka Expo, Toru Takemitsu commissioned François Baschet to create 17 of them, which were played at the Steel Pavilion. After that however they were largely forgotten and left dismantled in storage. Since 2010, Kyoto City University of Arts and Tokyo University of the Arts have restored six of them, which are now preserved. Today we have invited Professor Kazuko Okada from Kyoto City University of Arts, who was involved in the restoration, to tell us about it.

Asada: What’s interesting is that the Steel Pavilion (currently EXPO’70 Pavilion) was primarily focused on electronic music, but had analog instruments like these on the side, remnants of what had been prepared by Toru Takemitsu for concerts. Okada-san and others restored them, and Sakamoto-san played them while recording.
Moderator: Now, we ask Professors Kazuko Okada and Akeo Okada, who kindly spoke to us earlier, and who witnessed Sakamoto-san’s performance and recording, to join us on stage again.
Okada (Kazuko): I am Kazuko Okada, a professor of composition at Kyoto City University of Arts. Sakamoto-san first visited KCUA on August 5, 2016. In December 2015, we had already restored two of the Baschet sound sculptures that had been dismantled – the Katsuraphone and the Watanabephone. What impressed me about Ryuichi Sakamoto was that within a year of their restoration, he heard there might be interesting sounds and expressed an interest in playing and recording these sounds. He was keen and sharp-eyed, or should I say, sharp-eared—I was amazed at how quickly he had latched onto this possibility.

[Watch a video of Ryuichi Sakamoto playing the Baschet sound sculptures]

Okada (Kazuko): This video is from 2020 when Sakamoto-san visited the Gallery @ KCUA at Kyoto City University of Arts. When he had first visited four years prior, it was in August when the cicadas were chirping loudly outside. The cicada noise was so intense that we waited for sunset before recording. The photo used for today’s symposium announcement captures the moment when Sakamoto-san stood gracefully in front of the silver Katsuraphone, his silvery hair fluttering slightly. At that moment, I had a premonition that this person truly possessed innate talent; that something special was about to happen. When the cicada noise became too loud, we chatted until it settled. Sakamoto-san casually said to me, “Notating (kifu) this would be challenging, right?” I suspect he was mindful of my being a junior of his from his university’s composition department, and was pretending to seek advice on how composers might notate these sounds…

Akeo Okada: Just to clarify, “kifu” here refers to the notation you write on a music score.

Kazuko Okada: Sorry about that. We’ll talk about the other “kifu” meaning donation later (laughs). As the day then transitioned into night and the cicadas fell silent, we entered the climax of the recording. In the darkness, Sakamoto-san put on headphones and immersed himself childlike in the Katsuraphone and Watanabephone. After playing the sound sculptures using wires and sticks with attached superballs, he went on to play various objects in the university hall, such as pillars, metal doors, and glass, creating interesting sounds, like the distant roar of a dinosaur. Sakamoto-san finds interest and beauty in any sound he creates, demonstrating that fascinating sounds are everywhere. This is my memory of that half-day.

The following year, in 2017, when we were restoring another sound sculpture and funds were insufficient, Tokyo University of the Arts initiated a crowdfunding campaign. When we were just slightly short of the goal, Sakamoto-san generously made a significant donation of several hundred thousand yen. This time, it wasn’t about notation, but a donation (laughs). Thanks to that final contribution, the crowdfunding campaign was successful, and the sixth sound sculpture, the Katsuharaphone, was successfully restored.

In 2020, Kyoto City University of Arts received a grant from the Expo 1970 Commemorative Fund and held a special exhibition titled “Baschet Sound Sculpture” at the Gallery @ KCUA. On this occasion five sculptures, including two from the EXPO ’70 Pavilion, two from Kyoto City University of Arts, and one from Tokyo University of the Arts, were exhibited together, the largest number ever. Again, Sakamoto-san came and asked to try them out. The sounds recorded in 2016 are included in the CD introduced earlier, async. However, you’d have to be a bit of a sound buff to figure out where the sound sculptures are used on the CD. My impression was that Sakamoto-san had collected many other interesting sounds, of which the Baschet sound sculptures were just one set.

Okada (Akeo): When Sakamoto-san arrived incognito in 2016, I was merely the baggage handler, carrying the equipment for recording engineer Seigen Ono. The equipment was unbelievably large, and Ono’s recording was quite the spectacle, like Sakamoto-san’s playing. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to call Ono a little odd; for example he would declare with a grin, “I’m the only one in the world who can record the sounds of the Amazon rainforest.” It struck me that Sakamoto-san’s talent for finding such individuals was just as amazing.

One thing I remember vividly, as mentioned earlier by my wife, is the childlike state of not wanting to leave, like a child at an amusement park. Another was the musicality in the way Sakamoto-san touched the sound sculptures when playing them. When a regular percussionist plays, they hit the instrument like a drum, but Sakamoto-san would inquire of the object, “What sound can you make?” It was like he was asking the object. Along with witnessing Ono Seigen’s technical instructions, this is what has stayed with me.

Takatani: On the topic of sound sculptures, there’s an event where Sakamoto-san and Carsten [Nicolai] performed at the Glass House…

Asada: Preceding Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1945-51), Philip Johnson, whom one could perhaps describe as the American Kenzo Tange, inspired by Mies, built his own residence, the Glass House, in 1949. After Johnson’s death it became the property of the US National Trust and is considered a quintessential example of modernist architecture. In 2014, Fujiko Nakaya enveloped this iconic house in mist.

Takatani: So, there was an event where the two [Sakamoto and Nicolai] performed live. Sakamoto-san played the Glass House’s glass with a mallet. Having enjoyed the sound produced by rubbing the glass, Sakamoto-san asked me to create something that produced sound by rubbing glass. So I made a glass object with a frame. Sakamoto-san was interested in various sound sculptures other than the Baschets, like those of Bertoia. He did say though that with a Bertoia sculpture, anyone could produce good sound, but “with a Baschet, each person creates different sounds by striking it individually, which is what makes it interesting.”

Akeo Okada: When non-musical people strike a Baschet, it’s quite obvious. Sakamoto-san was astute here. it’s exactly as he says. We were surprised: it was indeed musical.

Asada: In 2014, Sakamoto-san was working on preparations for the first Sapporo International Art Festival as artistic director when he underwent cancer treatment, preventing him from coming to Sapporo just before the event. After completing treatment, he visited people in Sapporo to thank them. During the second edition of the festival in 2017, he visited Sapporo again. This time he played the piano alongside Camille Norment, who played glass instruments in Yuko Mohri’s large-scale installation, Breath or Echo. It was a memorable performance [editorial note: a small part of this installation is reproduced in a tribute exhibition at ICC that opened on December 16, 2023, and features Sakamoto’s modified performance in Sapporo on his own piano, used in Tokyo until his death. There is apparently MIDI data from his final recording, including a Bach chorale played in response to Godard’s passing.]

– Passing the baton to the next generation

Moderator: In 2016, when Sakamoto-san first encountered the Baschet sound sculptures, a performance piece titled VESSEL was created, on which Sakamoto-san collaborated. We have with us Kohei Nawa and Marihiko Hara, who were also involved.
Moderator: Kohei Nawa is a sculptor based in Kyoto, and also teaches at our university. As mentioned earlier, for the “Mallarmé Project” he provided a sculptural work from his PixCell series, using a stuffed crow. VESSEL is a collaborative performance piece featuring Brussels-based choreographer/dancer Damien Jalet, and Kohei Nawa. It premiered at the Rohm Theatre Kyoto and continues to tour worldwide. Sakamoto-san and Hara-san provided the music for this remarkable piece.
Nawa: After graduating from Kyoto City University of Arts in 2003, I created my own website, and received an email from Akira Asada, who introduced me to various people, including Ryuichi Sakamoto. The initial contact with Sakamoto-san was through a phone call. On the other hand, I first met Damien in 2013. In that year I exhibited an installation titled Foam, using foam, at the Aichi Triennale. Damien contacted me after seeing this work and my exhibition in Tokyo. He simultaneously began building a relationship with Sakamoto-san. The performance piece BABEL (words) in which Damien participated was staged at the Sapporo International Art Festival, where Sakamoto-san served as artistic director. Sakamoto-san also contributed music to Damien’s film The Ferryman, as part of an active and ongoing collaboration.

Looking back, our interactions seemed to quickly take on greater depth during this period. Between 2013 and 2014, there was an installation exhibition titled “ART–ENVIRONMENT–LIFE,” a collaboration between Sakamoto-san and Shiro Takatani, held at YCAM. I went to see it with Asada-san and Kojin Karatani. Damien had initially asked Sakamoto-san to provide the music even for VESSEL. However, he had a bad throat at the time, so this did not come to pass. Sakamoto-san then introduced me to Hara-san, who was working in Kyoto, and that’s how this collaboration came to fruition.

Hara: In 2015, the year preceding the premiere of VESSEL, Damien asked me to create a short soundscape for a showcase at the former Namura Shipbuilding site in Osaka. Before that, I received a casual email from Sakamoto-san saying, “Marihiko, help a friend out a bit” (laughs). The following year, I received several sound files of extended techniques, and the opening scene of VESSEL uses the sound of Sakamoto-san’s clang, an extended technique on the strings.

To share a bit about how I first came across Sakamoto-san, when I was in my first year of junior high school I went to see his concert at Osaka Festival Hall just after release of the album 1996. My mother’s close friend was a big fan, but the person they were planning to go with couldn’t make it, leaving an extra ticket. I was so deeply moved by the performance, I decided I wanted to be like that. In 1999, during my first year of high school, I went to see LIFE. I remember I was supposed to be seated around the 20th row, but due to some issue on the day of the performance, I ended up moving up to about the fifth.

Asada: So, during the live performance at Honen-in temple that we saw earlier, you and your brother Rurihiko…

Hara: Yes, I have a brother Rurihiko, five years younger. The two of us submitted demos to “RADIO SAKAMOTO.” He was in junior high (grade 9), and I was already 19. Interestingly, I was never selected, but my brother was chosen three times (laughs). When we went to greet Sakamoto-san at Honen-in, my brother introduced himself as “Rurihiko,” and then Sakamoto-san said, “Oh, so the one next to you is Marihiko?” That was the very beginning. I should also mention that there was a contest in Sound & Recording magazine that used sounds recorded at the North Pole by Sakamoto-san. Again, my brother got selected, but I didn’t (laughs). Fast forward to 2014, and Sakamoto-san invited me for an improv session on NHK FM’s New Year’s program. This was the first time we made sounds together. Takatani-san mentioned that Sakamoto-san started music from imperceptible sounds at Yotoku-in. That’s what I was imagining, but on entering the studio he produced a powerful sound from the very first strike. I remember that for the first seven minutes or so, I couldn’t make any sound at all myself.
Hara: After that we collaborated on projects with Takatani-san, and /VESSEL. In fact, we both participated in a piece called Omphalos created by Damien Jalet in Mexico. The photo you see here is from the rehearsal for Sakamoto-san’s concert after ST/LL in Singapore in 2019. While I was observing the rehearsal, after finishing the sound check Sakamoto-san said, “Marihiko, play something for a bit.” I thought it would be quite a challenge, but I played. However, no sound came out at all. It struck me that when Sakamoto-san played he added weight to the keys. I got carried away and played a bit of Bibo no Aozora (“Beautiful Blue Sky”). Then he returned to the stage, and immediately played Bibo no Aozora right next to me, giving me the best moment of my life.

Moderator: Sakamoto-san also handled the music for Nawa-san’s video work Dot Synthesis, right?

Nawa: Yes, Dot Synthesis was based on a drawing I presented at my solo exhibition “Synthesis” held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2011. It was shot and turned into a video. I created it for the project kizunaworld.org, an initiative led by Sakamoto-san to support areas most impacted by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. The project involved collecting artworks from various artists to donate to those areas. Sakamoto-san also invited me to participate in various projects, including the anti-nuclear project STOP ROKKASHO protesting against the Rokkasho Village nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Aomori.

Moderator: What kind of conversations did you have with Sakamoto-san during VESSEL?

Nawa: For VESSEL, although we didn’t have direct discussions, I did go to New York to talk about the project. Right after presenting the “Mallarmé Project” Sakamoto-san had complimented the crow, saying it was cool. So, when I brought the PixCell crow, he kindly placed it on the studio piano.

Moderator: That’s a really nice story. It’s good to get a glimpse of your fan-boy side there, Hara-san.

Takatani: Everyone was a fan of Ryuichi Sakamoto, fundamentally (laughs).

Hara: Indeed, but when I finally got the chance to talk to him, I got all nervous and blurted out something stupid like, “It’s my birthday today” (laughs).

Asada: It’s unfortunate that Sakamoto-san, in his final years, did Yoji Yamada’s Nagasaki: Memories of My Son and Sang-il Lee’s Rage, neither of which are quite suitable for his music. (While Nagasaki: Memories of My Son has its moments as a ghost movie, the part where the mother and son ascend to heaven at the end is quite, well…) However, Sang-il Lee’s The Wandering Moon is a film where, in a way, Hara-san received the baton indirectly, and the music is a little subdued compared to Sakamoto-san’s, but delicate. It too might not be considered a great film, but the passing on of the musical baton like this is something wonderful.

– async and “Installation Music Exhibition”

Moderator: In 2017, the album async, mentioned here already several times, was released. At the same time a two-person exhibition titled “Ryuichi Sakamoto | Installation Music Exhibition” with Takatani-san was held at the Watari-um / Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, followed by the “Ryuichi Sakamoto with Shiro Takatani | Installation Music 2: IS YOUR TIME” exhibition at the NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], also in Tokyo. Here is the excerpt from the film “first light” by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul that was screened at the first of these exhibitions.

Takatani: With the release of async we wanted to make and exhibit installations that would allow people to experience the album in the best possible sound environment. For Sakamoto-san, it was important not only to let people listen to his music, but also to create a spatial configuration ideal for that listening.

Asada: He was adamant that it would not be enough for people to just listen with headphones. (It should be noted that the async -drawing- installation at the Watari-um, later evolving into async – immersion 2023 as part of Ambient Kyoto 2023, was set up in the former printing workshop space beneath the Kyoto Shimbun building, and with a 26.4m x 2.7m LED display and over 30 speakers, was of impressive scale and precision in its finished form.)
Takatani: (Looking at the screen) What you’re currently watching is a video created after Sakamoto-san made a personal request to Apichatpong, after going to meet him during his exhibition at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

Asada: In the video, David Sylvian reads the English translation of poems by Arseny Tarkovsky, the father of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The lines go, “And all will be repeated… I was, I am, and I will be.” This passage, featured in “LIFE, LIFE” from async, serves as a response to the pessimistic query posed by Paul Bowles in “fullmoon”: “How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?” (the query spoken by Bowles himself at the end of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film adaptation of Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky). The reading includes translations in various languages, with the Italian read by Bertolucci. Tarkovsky’s vision of eternal recurrence is presented as a contrasting response.

Takatani: It’s a single-channel video piece that lasts about 10 minutes. The sound is created by combining two of Sakamoto-san’s songs into a single video work. In addition to this, at the Watari-um exhibition there was a room where you could listen to the entire async album with moving images, and another with small monitors showing videos of Sakamoto-san’s life in New York. It’s a piece that helps you understand the environment in which the sound is created, and how it is being listened to.

Asada: That was the work of the unit Zakkubalan consisting of Albert Tholen and Neo Sora. Showing the video only using iPhones and iPads was a stylish touch.

Moderator: Here is an installation view of the “Installation Music 2: IS YOUR TIME” exhibition at ICC.

Moderator: Afterward, Sakamoto-san returned to Kyoto. It is probably not widely known that he visited the Raku Museum on that occasion. The reason for his visit will become clear when you see the images.
Takatani: On NHK’s Family History program there was an episode about Sakamoto-san’s uncle breaking the family’s bowls and playing with them in his childhood. That story stayed with Sakamoto-san, and he expressed interest in recording the sound of breaking bowls. So, we visited the Raku family together. I had collaborated with Kichizaemon Raku XV, for the joint exhibition “Kichizaemon X – Sound in Darkness Light in Silence: Raku Kichizaemon (tea bowls) + Takatani Shiro (sound, video),” held at the Sagawa Art Museum in 2012, and Sakamoto-san had previously participated in a talk event with him.

When we actually broke the bowls, the cleaner the recording, the less interesting it sounded—it was more like a “snap.” In the end the interesting parts were the sounds of the fragments rattling or rubbing against the earthen floor. Afterward, Sakamoto-san asked if he could have the broken bowl pieces, and Raku-san said he could, as they would just throw them away anyway. I sent those fragments to New York, and that’s what you see here.
Takatani: What’s interesting is that afterward, Sakamoto-san received pottery made by a ceramic artist, and painted on it. He then broke that pottery and put the fragments in an art box. I have to say it’s quite impressive; he truly knew how to create something unique (laughs) (“Art Box Project 2020,” a limited release by commmons, consisting of a 7-disc analog record set, ceramic objet d’art, and booklet). I wasn’t involved in that art box myself.
Moderator: Then, later that year, a solo exhibition titled “Ryuichi Sakamoto Exhibition: LIFE, LIFE” was held in Seoul. At that stage Sakamoto-san was still in good health, and you, Takatani-san, also exhibited works, and helped set up.
Takatani: Of course, Sakamoto-san was also involved in the setup. In the credit for this work, LIFE – fluid, invisible, inaudible…, it says “2013/2018” because, unlike the original version with nine tanks, we exhibited only three tanks due to the limitations of the venue.
Moderator: The same for water state 1, isn’t it? Of course, depending on the venue, the exhibition is tailored to fit the space. And this…
Takatani: When we were looking for stones to display in water state 1, Sakamoto-san consulted with artist Lee Ufan, and Lee-san introduced us to a place to find stones. This photo was taken when we went to search for them. There were so many, and I was at a loss, but Sakamoto-san decided very quickly, pointing at stones and saying, “This one, and this one,” speedily selecting them. When we brought them back to the museum and arranged them in the space, they fit perfectly.

Moderator: Whether it’s Kichizaemon Raku or Lee Ufan, it’s clear Sakamoto-san presented some challenging requests to these masters (laughs).
Takatani: This is part of the archive. The archive was also a substantial part of the exhibition.

Moderator: The people photographed with Sakamoto-san are amazing.

Takatani: Nam June Paik, Sakamoto-san, John Cage…

Moderator: Next is a collaboration with a band called Kukangendai, which has a live venue called SOTO on Shirakawa-dori in Kyoto. They specialize in polyrhythmic and highly experimental music, and collaborated with Sakamoto-san on an album.

Takatani: It’s techno-like, but they play everything analog.
Moderator: This is from the following year, 2019. A photographer named Albert Watson had taken portraits of Sakamoto-san in his younger days, and these became the key visuals for the KYOTOGRAPHIE Kyoto International Photography Festival.

Asada: It’s the cover photo for the album Beauty. Posters featuring these photos were displayed at bus stops throughout Kyoto for KYOTOGRAPHIE.

– Playing with water and playing with washi

Moderator: In the same year, the Singapore International Festival of Arts took place, in which you took part, Takatani-san, with ST/LL, and in which Sakamoto-san gave a solo concert the next day. This is the press conference for these events. ST/LL is performed on a stage covered with real water, and Sakamoto-san expressed a desire to use the same stage setting.

Takatani: Yes, at that time Sakamoto-san had not yet seen ST/LL live, and decided to come to Singapore to watch it. When the festival organizers learned that he was coming, they wanted him to perform, and that’s how the concert came about. We used the same stage as ST/LL, placing a piano and various instruments in the water for what turned out to be a wonderful treat of a concert.
Takatani: The set included a piano, synthesizers, a guitar, and a glass acoustic sculpture used in concerts at ICC and the New York Armory. These were arranged on the stage like islands for the performance. This is where Marihiko played Bibo no Aozora.

Asada: It must have been a nightmare for the piano tuner (laughs), but Sakamoto-san really liked it and declared, ” From now on, I won’t play unless it’s on water.”

Takatani: That’s right. After this there were some offers for concerts in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but Sakamoto-san’s physical condition and the COVID-19 pandemic meant that these did not come to pass.

Moderator: In 2020, Sakamoto-san created Ryuichi Sakamoto 2019, an art box with the previous year number in the title.

Takatani: At one point, Sakamoto-san and Sora-san expressed a desire to make thank-you letters for those involved in an exhibition. So Takuya Minami and I were tasked with designing these. At that time Sakamoto-san had many handwritten musical scores in a separate “Year Book,” and we thought it would be beautiful to print them on Japanese washi paper. Minami and I went to Kamisoe to ask for help and they said they could do it.

Moderator: We have the honor of welcoming today Ko Kado-san, a paper artisan who runs the shop Kamisoe. Kado-san has been involved in a number of cross-disciplinary collaborations. For example, in 2021, when Hiroshi Sugimoto dedicated fusuma paintings to the Ryōsoku-in sub-temple of the Kennin-ji temple, Kado-san created fusuma doors with Sugimoto’s photo on the front, and his own pattern on the back.
Kado: I merely a craftsman, not a writer or scholar, so have nothing significant to offer here, but my first work for Sakamoto-san was in 2017 at the “Installation Music” exhibition, where I worked on creating thank-you cards. After that, I was approached again by Minami-san, and had the opportunity to contribute to the artwork for Deutsche Grammophon’s 120th-anniversary CD. Later, I was asked to create the artwork for an art box, which compiled the soundtracks from 2019 into seven albums. Essentially Sakamoto-san left things to me. His only specific requests were to use a portrait painted by an interesting artist in Korea, and include incense from the renowned Kyoto incense shop, Shoeido.
Kado: This is a print on washi paper from a woodblock created using Sakamoto-san’s handwritten musical score. My work primarily involves woodblock printing and paper dyeing, so these were the techniques I used. The cover of the art box features a pattern of edge-grained cedar wood. Since music is a temporal art, I considered elements that could express time. Wood grain represents time. The fluctuations and interruptions that occur when printing, the breaks and irregularities, are also musical in a sense.

I incorporated the look of flowing charcoal, flowing water, and the dripping of paint. Knowing that Sakamoto-san had recorded natural and environmental sounds in his later years, I aimed for something close to those experiences.

Takatani: Sakamoto-san really loved washi paper, probably because of its pleasant texture. When you touch paper it makes a sound, especially with washi paper. He always held Kado-san in high regard.

Kado: I was truly grateful for that.
– Can Division Be Stopped?

Moderator: Our final guest commentator is Professor Oussouby Sacko. Sacko-san is a spatial anthropologist and currently serves as the Director of the Center for Africa-Asia Contemporary Studies at Kyoto Seika University. Having lived in Japan for an extended period, he published a book titled Afurika Shusshin Sako Gakucho Nihon o Kataru (President Sacko from Africa talks about Japan) in July 2020, during his tenure as President of Kyoto Seika University. After Sakamoto-san read this book, two online dialogues took place between them—the first, commissioned by the magazine Fujin Gaho, and the second, organized by Kyoto Seika University at Prof. Sacko’s initiative. The theme was “Can Division Be Stopped? – Contemplating Expression and Freedom Today,” and the discussion delved into what could be described as a discourse on civilization, starting with Sacko-san’s speciality of urban theory.
Sacko: Thank you. I became a fan of Ryuichi Sakamoto in a one-sided manner. As Lucille Reyboz mentioned earlier, Salif Keita is from Mali like me. After coming to Japan, I learned that Sakamoto-san had collaborated with African musicians such as Salif Keita and Youssou N’Dour. I also like Okinawan music, and when I found out that Sakamoto-san often listened to Okinawan music, my admiration for him grew. One day, out of the blue I received a call from Fujin Gaho. They had asked Sakamoto-san whom he would like to talk to, and he said me! I had no idea why, and wondered if such a thing was even possible. However, I ended up having an online conversation with Sakamoto-san while he was in New York.

Without any moderator, the two of us talked for an hour and a half or two hours. Although the trigger was him reading my book, the content mainly revolved around Sakamoto-san’s philosophy of humanity, discussing values related to various aspects such as the environment and society. Feeling that it would be a great loss to keep the conversation between us, I suggested to Sakamoto-san that we could have another discussion within the university’s framework. He graciously accepted.
Sacko: One positive aspect of that time was Sakamoto-san addressing the students. What is expression, how to confront oneself, how humanity has divided and destroyed society, and how to regenerate it… He expressed a desire to go to Africa, the birthplace of humanity, to contemplate his true identity. The discussion covered various topics, including post-9/11 New York. Every word left a lasting impression, and even now, each one resonates with me.

Moderator: In that conversation, when Sacko-san read out students’ concerns like “I can’t help but worry about what others think” and “I’m afraid of clashing with others,” Sakamoto-san exclaimed, “If you’re afraid of something, you can’t express yourself.”

Sacko: Exactly. He bluntly told the students, “If you’re like that, don’t do art.” It’s something we, for compliance reasons, couldn’t say so adamantly to the students, so it was great that Sakamoto-san said it. I thought there might be complaints from parents, but since it was Sakamoto-san, nothing happened, so it was a tremendous relief (laughs).

Moderator: The discussion got lively with the theme “Homogenization is Dangerous,” and eventually, you invited Sakamoto-san to be a visiting professor at your university (laughs).

Sacko: I thought, let’s just get it all out there. I thought Sakamoto-san might find it easier to get along with me if I spoke assertively. When Salif Keita came to KYOTOPHONIE this year, I was his interpreter, and we talked a lot about Sakamoto-san. Sakamoto-san was genuinely a good person. He expressed what he thought straightforwardly without beating around the bush. At the same time, he was exceptionally kind. Personally, that impression has only deepened for me.

Asada: At the beginning of this symposium, I mentioned a turning point that occurred from the end of the 1960s to around 1972–73, where both the avant-garde art and avant-garde left reached an impasse that resulted in them pushing beyond their boundaries. However, there was also a new development in the new left. It extended beyond the class struggle between capital and labor to address issues like feminism, which aimed to eliminate male discrimination against women, and ecologism, which attempted to halt the environmental destruction caused by industrial civilizations. Patriarchal dominance could be found in both capitalist and working-class households. Moreover, there were cases where capitalists and workers were complicit in the development and exploitation of nature. And there were calls to overcome this. In Germany and other parts of Europe, Green parties, who advocate ecologism, began to play a significant political role, not only in environmental protection but also anti-nuclear peace campaigns. In Japan, unfortunately, we haven’t reached that point. However upon reflection, Sakamoto-san may be seen as having undertaken a role similar to that of the Green Party, working alone.

On the one hand, he started considering the sounds of nature as music, receiving and transforming them through his ailing body. Simultaneously, when he heard about the massive tree felling related to the redevelopment of the Meiji Jingu Gaien district for the Olympics, he sent letters to the Tokyo governor and others, urging a reconsideration. Even in the final stages of his life, battling terminal cancer, he continued to actively engage in what a Green Party would do, and it’s something that deserves to be looked back upon with renewed respect. Discussing ecological and anti-nuclear issues with Sacko-san likely happened within this context. His efforts went beyond mere discourse. Whether gathering artists for “Zero Landmine” in 2001 to advocate for landmine eradication, or organizing “No Nukes 2012” to call for nuclear disarmament and a move away from nuclear power, inviting Kraftwerk (substituting “Radioactivity” with “Stop Radioactivity” to convey opposition to radiation contamination, as if to say, “Even robots are against radiation”) to Japan for a collaboration with YMO, it was thrilling political activism intertwined with music, and that is important to emphasize this once again here.

Additionally, taking my cue from Sacko-san’s remarks, Sakamoto-san, Takatani-san, and I essentially had a relationship rooted in mutual trust, where we could express our thoughts without hesitation. Nowadays the need to “respect others” has led to a trend to avoid saying anything that might possibly hurt someone, the result being people only make bland statements to guard against controversy and public outrage. Multiculturalism is supported by global capitalism, and the ethical principle of “respecting others” within multiculturalism can be rephrased by global capitalism and national interests as avoiding the risk of receiving complaints or claims for compensation from others, and only saying things that won’t be controversial. However, if one genuinely respects others, they should throw a straightforward pitch without reservation and engage in debate when necessary. Much like the animated series Tom and Jerry, where the cat and mouse get along and fight at the same time.

When discussing the concept of LIFE in Kyoto, we debated how to handle the final salvation part. When I suggested, “Don’t hype it up too much; it might be good to do something like ‘Light was. Salvation.’ on the last page of the poem by Paul Celan,” Sakamoto-san angrily retorted, “That might be fine for a book, but music is a time-based art, and it inevitably requires a certain amount of time!” Of course, since it was ultimately Sakamoto-san’s work, I respected his opinion. It was an interesting discussion though.

People who don’t consider the feelings of others are often deemed “unable to read the situation,” which can make life challenging in Japan (laughs). However, Sakamoto-san rejected the conformism of “reading the situation” right to the end. Perhaps that’s what he wanted to convey to the students at Seika University. While obviously one should avoid meaningless harassment, anyone aspiring to express themselves should never engage in self-censorship by reading the situation to prevent controversy. It’s a valuable lesson.

– Becoming a Member of Dumb Type

Moderator: Next we turn to an exhibition held in Beijing. Similar to the exhibition in Seoul mentioned earlier, many of these works were created in collaboration with Takatani-san. [The “Ryuichi Sakamoto | SOUND AND TIME” exhibition, based on the “seeing sound hearing time” exhibition in Beijing, was held from August 2023 to January 2024 at the newly founded M WOODS (People’s Park), Chengdu, a branch of the Beijing M Woods Art Museum.]
Moderator: In 2021, a performance called TIME was presented at the Holland Festival, an international arts festival. As Sakamoto-san was unable to leave Tokyo at this time, those who went to the site were Takatani-san, staff, and performers Min Tanaka and Mayumi Miyata. Let’s end the symposium with the trailer for this performance.
Moderator: This is footage from the most recent exhibition held at YCAM.
Moderator: And last year (2022) as mentioned at the beginning, Dumb Type represented Japan at the Venice Biennale.
Moderator: Sakamoto-san also participated as a member of Dumb Type…
Moderator: A solo exhibition by Dumb Type was held almost concurrently at Haus der Kunst, a museum in Munich.
Moderator: This work is Playback 2022. Originally created in 1989, it underwent an upgrade in 2018 and was presented at a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo the following year. Sakamoto-san was asked to provide the sound sources for the exhibition, and had mainly musician friends conduct field recordings in 16 cities worldwide. To this was added an unreleased track by Sakamoto-san himself, titled Tokyo 2021. The result was the limited-edition set of 12-inch vinyl, Playback 2022.

Moderator: Looking closely at the records one sees intricate map designs on the surface. This photo shows Sakamoto-san holding one at the Dumb Type office in Kyoto during his visit.
Moderator: This exhibition could be considered a kind of triumphant return following the Venice Biennale. “DUMB TYPE 2022: remap” was an updated version of the Venice showcase and took place at the Artizon Museum in Tokyo. Playback 2022 was displayed throughout the venue, in what was an impressive exhibition.

Takatani: For the Venice installation titled 2022 Sakamoto-san created a sound track lasting about an hour. During the production of this he expressed a desire to record the “sound of Japanese paper.” So I reached out to Kado-san of Kamisoe, who spoke earlier, and obtained various types of Japanese paper, which I then sent to Sakamoto-san. Those sounds were incorporated in the installation.

– Kyoto Camps, Kyoto Conferences

Moderator: Sakamoto-san visited Kyoto on numerous occasions. When we asked his management office how often he came to Kyoto, we learned that in the past 11-12 years, there were only two years when he did not visit. Considering that his base was in New York, there was the outbreak of COVID-19, and he had his own illness to deal with, it seems a very high frequency of visits. I heard that he enjoyed these visits greatly, dubbing them “Kyoto Camps” or “Kyoto Conferences.”
Moderator: Privately he met with individuals like Asada-san, Shiro and Yoko Takatani, and artist and musician Ryoji Ikeda. Ikeda-san is also a member of Dumb Type and currently bases himself between Paris and Kyoto. Two years ago, Min Tanaka performed at Theater E9 in Kyoto. Sakamoto-san went to see Tanaka’s performance with the Takatanis, and this photo was taken afterwards at the theater.

Takatani: I believe it was while he was in Kyoto for a meeting related to TIME.

Moderator: Now let’s move on to some photos taken by Sakamoto-san. These were provided by his management office and family.
Moderator: This must have been when he was in Kyoto.

– Ryuichi Sakamoto the cosmopolitan, Kyoto the cosmopolis

Moderator: This brings our symposium to an end. Before we show the trailer for TIME, I’d like to ask you both for some final comments to wrap up today’s conversation.
Takatani: In 2019, when we had the Dumb Type exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Asada-san and Sakamoto-san took part in a related talk event. While showing them Dumb Type’s works, I asked Sakamoto-san if he would join as a new member. The idea was to expand the relationships within Dumb Type even further, especially by working with someone who makes music. He agreed, and things proceeded concurrently with TIME. TIME was quite a long time in the making, now that I think of it, four or five years.

I don’t know what Sakamoto-san was feeling when he agreed, but him becoming a member was significant. Personally, I still can’t fully come to terms with or understand his absence. Since he passed away many people on social media have been sharing their encounters with him, all quite interesting. I met with Sakamoto-san quite often in Kyoto and New York, exchanged messages almost every day, or so I thought, but in reality, we only shared a very small portion of his vast amount of time. Sakamoto-san forged relationships with many different people, and I truly think he was an amazing person.

For this symposium, I looked back at videos like the “Mallarmé Project” and began to see things I didn’t understand before. So, by delving into the information that remains about him, and what others have written, I hope to get to know Sakamoto-san better, and derive inspiration from his life.

Asada: The last time I saw Sakamoto-san was in August 2022 in Kyoto, where we had dinner with Takatani-san and others upstairs at the Tan restaurant. We exchanged emails quite frequently until the end of the year. So, like Takatani-san, while I understand the objective fact of Sakamoto-san’s death, it doesn’t truly feel real. In a sense, artistically, Ryuichi Sakamoto is still alive. There is much within his colossal body of work that we don’t know, and there’s so much to learn. In that sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto, as an artist, is still living, with much to be unraveled in future. Of course, it’s terrible that Ryuichi Sakamoto as a person is no longer with us.

As evident from the story of his joining Dumb Type, Sakamoto-san was a collaborative artist who created new things with different people. What he did not do, is compromise. If something wasn’t good enough, he’d just come right out and say it. Which is what made true, unreserved collaboration possible. For Sakamoto-san, Kyoto was a place where he could interact with a diverse range of people and pursue such relationships. Tokyo is a megalopolis with a music industry, but to meet people from other fields, proper, formal arrangements have to be made. However in Kyoto, for instance, if you go to a place like Yoshidaya, the restaurant run by Ozaki-san’s partner Hiroko Yoshida, you’ll find various artists, craftsmen, scholars, and writers gathered there, all eager to sit around a table together. In Kyoto, Sakamoto-san could easily connect with all kinds of people, just like bumping into Laurie Anderson in Greenwich Village and going for a meal when he lived in New York, or being asked by someone passing by, “Ryuichi, when is the next gig?” and casually answering. This kind of atmosphere doesn’t exist in Tokyo but is more present in Kyoto — or maybe it’s a bit of an illusion about Kyoto (laughs). In that sense, I think Sakamoto-san came to love Kyoto, so visited Kyoto multiple times, combining ecological and historical fieldwork.

The quality of hospitality businesses such as restaurants and hotels, is high in Kyoto, and it’s much cheaper than Tokyo, which is a significant advantage. Sakamoto-san liked staying in Kyoto, where the hospitality culture allowed him to easily meet and talk to people from other domains. I believe he appreciated that culture. Kyoto residents should stop foolishly expecting a huge influx of foreign tourists to save the city, then complain about overtourism, and recognize the charm of Kyoto themselves.

Takatani: I agree. Sakamoto-san was incredibly cosmopolitan. He didn’t express his views from a Japanese perspective but rather simply as a human being saying “This is how it should be.” In the discussion with Sacko-san, he mentioned that the more we become divided, the more those in control benefit, while those being divided grow smaller and weaker. So Sakamoto-san seemed to say it was less a case of uniting and fighting together, as, unless we come up with a system where each of us can acknowledge the other, it will be difficult to go forward.

Asada: In the past, near Ozaki-san’s house in Kujoyama there lived an aesthete named David Kidd, and whenever David Bowie came to Japan, he would stay there. In the Nanzenji area down from there, there is a group of residences with stroll gardens and a pond created by Jihei Ogawa VII a.k.a. Ueji, using water from the Lake Biwa Canal. For instance, before getting cancer, Steve Jobs had planned to live there. Actually, Sakamoto-san also considered building a new residence on the site of Kidd’s house and had started preliminary work, but had to abandon it on receiving his cancer diagnosis. So it was not a case of the Japanese Ryuichi Sakamoto returning to Japan as he approached old age, after achieving global success. It would be better to assume he was simply drawn to Kyoto like Bowie and Jobs. He truly was cosmopolitan.

The term “cosmopolis” comes from the late Ancient Greek Stoic school. Another major philosophy of that time was Epicureanism, which is often interpreted as hedonistic. Both focused on living peacefully, saying in essence that we exist until just before we die, and once dead, are no longer here. Death is an event we cannot experience, so there is no need to fear it. Instead we should enjoy the present. In natural philosophy, while inheriting Democritus’s atomic theory they believed, “Atoms don’t move in a straight line, as Democritus said, but deviate slightly by chance. It is the interaction of these deviations that generates various natural phenomena.” This theme is also present in Marx’s doctoral thesis and is highly compatible with postmodern thought. The subtitle in the booklet of the 1984 album Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia is “For the Epicurean School.” I probably wrote that (laughs), but it’s not surprising considering the context. On the other hand, the Stoic school confronts impending death while rigorously disciplining the self. This is different to patriots not fearing death for the sake of their homeland. In the chaotic late Ancient period, they envisioned not a city-state or its alliances but a cosmopolis — a world city incorporating the order of the cosmos (not an Earth village echoing only with the voices of ugly narcissistic seekers of power like Trump). In that sense, the Stoic and Epicurean schools seem to be opposites but actually share some common ground. Anyway, being both Epicurean and Stoic, Sakamoto-san the cosmopolitan chose Kyoto within Japan. I happen to have Japanese citizenship and live in Kyoto, but I would never say, “Japanese people should learn the essence of Japan in Kyoto.” Instead we too should rediscover Kyoto as cosmopolitans, quietly enjoying life at this time of a chaotic world in the late modern era, and when necessary, not be afraid to engage in political struggle. The figure of Ryuichi Sakamoto, a great artist who loved pleasure and didn’t shy away from a fight, even after his premature death seems to continue teaching us how to live this way.

Takatani: As Nakanishi-san said earlier, it would be great to have events organized by people connected to Sakamoto-san. For example, if Kukangendai did a live performance. Opportunities like that could be interesting.

Moderator: Definitely something to look forward to. Thank you all for dedicating your time to our discussion today.

[End while watching the TIME trailer]

This symposium was held on June 18, 2023, at the Kyoto Art Theater – Shunjuza.

Organizers/Operators: ICA Kyoto + the Research Center for Performing Arts, Kyoto University of Arts
Planning cooperation: Kab Inc./ KAB America Inc. + Dumb Type Office Ltd.
Allow us to express our gratitude to the attendees for their generous contribution. Thank you all.

*The English translation was made possible by donations from attendees. Thank you very much.

*RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ＋ SHIRO TAKATANI「TIME」will be performed in Tokyo and Kyoto in March and April 2024. The Tokyo premiere coincidentally falls on March 28, the first anniversary of Sakamoto-san’s death. In Kyoto, performances will be on April 27 and 28 at Rohm Theatre Kyoto. Prior to that, in February, Shiro Takatani’s new work Tangent was performed at the same venue.

*Click here for Part 1.