[Meanwhile] Farewell Mr. Sakamoto

Sakamoto lived a grand and profound life.

LEE YOUNG-HEEThe author is a Tokyo correspondent for the JoongAng Ilbo. In Japan, last week was a memorial week for the late composer and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto. While staying in Tokyo as a correspondent, several celebrities died, but this seems to be the first time that a memorial fever continued throughout the week in newspapers and broadcasts.

NHK aired a documentary on his life Tuesday — and his last concert titled “Playing the Piano in NHK,” which aired in January. And Mainichi Shimbun ran an editorial in memory of the great composer. The Tokyo Shimbun ran a summary of an article about him meeting with 100 reporters as an avid anti-nuclear power plant activist.

Sakamoto lived a grand and profound life. In his youth, he was an “enfant terrible” who shook the world with his experimental electronic music. He was an award-winning film composer for “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” (1983) and “The Last Emperor” (1988), as well as an actor.

Sakamoto was an artist who directly spoke up about social issues, which is rare in Japan. After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, he was at the center of the anti-nuclear movement, and in 2015, he went out to the street to protest against the Abe administration’s handling of the revised security bill. In March, he sent a letter to the Tokyo governor to stop the redevelopment of the Meiji Jingu Stadium.

When asked why he raised his voice on social issues, he said, “I have to say that strange things are strange.”

Although I am only one of his many fans, I read beautiful writings of his friends in memory of him over and over. Critic Akira Asada wrote in the Asahi Shimbun, “He showed the life of a true artist who completes his life into a work of art.” Personally, the most moving words came from writer and producer Reiko Yuyama. “He was a man who took an astonishingly equal attitude to everyone. He was a true liberal who treated each and everyone fairly,” she said.

Sakamoto held onto the music until the last moment. He left music for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film “Monster,” which will be released in Japan in June. But his real last song is the school anthem for Kamiyama Marugoto College of Design, Technology and Entrepreneurship in rural Shikoku — a combined program of high school and junior college which opened earlier this month.

The school designed to foster technology entrepreneurs asked Sakamoto, who had been at the forefront of technology all his life, to make an alma mater for the school. As he became too ill to finish it, the song will be completed together with musicians and students of the school. That is an ending worthy of a true liberal.