He was a rebel.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died on March 28 at the age of 71, was one of Japan¡¯s most internationally recognized musicians, celebrated as an electronic innovator, movie composer and sometime pop star. Yet he always resisted the role of national institution: an avuncular, unthreatening figure who could be wheeled out on major occasions to serenade the masses.
That wasn¡¯t Sakamoto. Even as a child, he had shown an innate resistance to orthodoxy. As he recalled in a 2018 with the Financial Times, when his classmates were asked to write down their future ambitions, he demurred: ¡°I was very sure I didn¡¯t want to belong to anything. I just wanted to be individual.¡±
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