Ryuichi Sakamoto was a composer, producer, and artist born in Tokyo in 1952.
His diverse résumé includes pioneering work with the influential electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra, producing pop albums and numerous Classical compositions, two operas, and nearly 45 original film/TV scores for directors including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Brian De Palma, and Alejandro González Iñárritu. His film soundtracks won prestigious awards including an Academy Award and two Golden Globes.
Sakamoto also made considerable contributions to the art world through solo and collaborative installations and exhibitions in galleries and museums worldwide. Comprehensive collections centered around large-scale installations and spanning 30 years devoted to Sakamoto's artworks in various media were recently presented at M WOODS (Beijing, 2021; Chengdu, 2023) and The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Japan, Dec. 2024 - Mar 2025).
Sakamoto’s final theater piece, TIME, to which he was passionately devoted in his last years, premiered at the Holland Festival 2021 and continues touring the world. On 17 January 2023, his 71st birthday, Sakamoto released 12, his 15th solo album, comprising musical sketches recorded during his two-and-a-half-year battle with cancer.
Sakamoto could not perform live in the years leading up to his death, but in late 2022, he mustered all of his energy to leave the world with one final performance: a concert film featuring just him and his piano. A celebration of an artist's life in the purest sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is the definitive swansong of the maestro. Sakamoto passed away in March 2023 at the age of 71.
In memory of the artist, his family and friends launched “Trees for Sakamoto”, a tree-planting initiative that allows fans to help plant trees in various regions.
Born in 1963, Shiro Takatani is a visual artist and theater director, who works diversely with photography, video, lighting, graphics, and set design in his creations.
He is one of the founding members of the artist collective Dumb Type, established in 1984. In 2022, Dumb Type was selected as the representative artist for the Japan Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia and created a new work 2022, welcoming Ryuichi Sakamoto as a new member.
Besides Dumb Type, Takatani began a parallel solo career in 1998. In his solo activities, he has directed visuals for several theater productions, including Ryuichi Sakamoto's opera LIFE (1999). Takatani created his own performances La Chambre Claire (2008, Theater der Welt, Germany), CHROMA with music by Simon Fisher Turner (2012, Biwako Hall Center for the Performing Arts Shiga, Japan), ST/LL with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto (2015, Le Volcan – Scène Nationale du Havre, France), Tangent with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto from his last album 12 (2024, ROHM Theatre Kyoto).
Takatani has collaborated with Sakamoto on many projects such as the concert dis•play, toured in France (2018), FRAGMENTS in Singapore (2019).
Several installations they created together were exhibited at Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo exhibitions in South Korea, China and Japan.
TIME, their final collaboration performance was premiered in Holland Festival, Amsterdam in 2021 and has toured in Taiwan and Japan.
In 2015, Takatani received the 65th Prize of Fine Arts (Art media) from the Ministry of Education of Japan.
