Recorded and filmed as Ryuichi Sakamoto was dying of cancer, Opus – the Japanese film composer’s posthumous album and documentary of the same name – is clearly meant to be his final farewell.
As an album, it is fitting that the 20-song, hour-and-a-half recording of sparse piano played by Sakamoto is a retrospective, taking the listener on a journey through his half-century career.
The film won an Academy Award for best original score, making Sakamoto the first Asian to win the honour. The 1987 film, starring John Lone, also won best picture. The score also won a Grammy.
Elsewhere, the track “BB” is Sakamoto’s homage to Bertolucci, a tender love poem for his brilliant collaborator.
Opus also features the forlornly pensive music Sakamoto did for Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990), which juxtaposed emotionally lost American travellers with the ruthless vastness of northern Africa.
It also includes the music for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, a 1983 film about a World War II prisoner of war camp, directed by Nagisa Oshima, in which Sakamoto also acted. It has become his signature piece.
Sakamoto’s sound has an unmistakably Asian feel that is challenging to define, but evident through the use of certain harmonies, pentatonic motifs and scales. His sound is also evocative of Debussy but, to be fair, this is all Sakamoto.
Minimalist is another way some have described his ability to speak in the silences between the notes.
All the songs on Opus were immaculately recorded in Tokyo’s NHK CR-509 Studio, performed without an audience in 2022. The piano pedal shift, and, at times, his breathing, are present.
This testament to Sakamoto’s music underlines an artist’s commitment to his work that was there, to the very end. The tagline on the album reads: “Art is long, life is short.”
Opus is all about death, with segments, like the title piece that ends the album, resonating like a solemn prayer.
Sakamoto wanted to record his performance while he still could. He felt so drained after the recordings, and his condition worsened. He died on March 28, 2023, in Tokyo. He was 71.
“In some sense, while thinking of this as my last opportunity to perform, I also felt that I was able to break new ground,” he said in a statement accompanying the project.
Here is a man unafraid to face his catalogue of works and give it his own personal interpretation, knowing it would be his last.
In so doing, with a quiet dignity, he reminds us not to fear death.
Yuri Kageyama