KUALA LUMPUR: Legendary Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, known for his score for The Last Emperor, is fighting stage four cancer.
Reuters reported yesterday that Sakamoto had just live streamed a concert which he described as possibly his final one.
The 70-year-old composer said in a recent online message that his performance — broadcast to more than two dozen nations — came about because he could no longer complete a regular concert.
"My strength has fallen, so a normal concert of an hour to ninety minutes would be very difficult," he said.
"As a result, I've recorded it song by song and edited it together so it can be presented as a regular concert — which I believe can be pleasurable in the normal way."
The concert, which featured a Sakamoto solo on piano for 13 songs, included themes from The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, in which he acted alongside David Bowie and wrote the score.
It was streamed four times beginning Dec 11, with the last yesterday.
Sakamoto studied ethnomusicology at the Tokyo National University Of Fine Arts and Music, with particular interest in the traditional music of Japan's Okinawa prefecture, as well as India and Africa.
Citing classical musician Claude Debussy as his hero, Sakamoto became a keyboard and electronic musician known for film scores, especially Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and Bernard Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, for which he won an Academy Award.
In January 2021, he said that he had been diagnosed with rectal cancer.
"I have just turned 70, but how many more times will I be able to see the full moon?" he wrote.
"But even thinking that, since I have been granted life, I am praying that I will be able to make music until my last moments, just like Debussy."
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