Key Points
- Ryuichi Sakamoto's management said he died on 28 March.
- The Oscar and Grammy winning composer had also starred alongside David Bowie.
- As part of Yellow Magic Orchestra, his electronic innovations laid foundations for synth-pop, house music and hip-hop.
Pioneering composer and green activist Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose score for the movie, The Last Emperor scooped an Oscar and a Grammy, has died aged 71 after his second cancer diagnosis.
He was well known for his film soundtracks, including for the World War II drama Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, in which he also acted opposite his friend David Bowie as a prisoner-of-war camp commandant.
Having shot to fame in the 1970s with the influential Japanese group Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto's electronic innovations helped lay the foundations for synth-pop, house music and hip-hop.
He was well respected across music genres and even collaborated with punk legend Iggy Pop in the 80s.
Sakamoto went on to win an Academy Award with his score for the 1987 period epic The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, which tells the story of China's last emperor Puyi.
His management team announced Sunday that he died on 28 March, and a funeral was held for close family only, at his request.
"We would like to share one of Sakamoto's favourite quotes: 'Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, life is short," the team said in a statement.
Sakamoto, who married and divorced twice, is the father of J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto, born in 1980 to the Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano.
While he had lived in New York for decades, his prolific career made him a huge star in his home country, where he was renowned for his strident anti-nuclear campaigning.
Following the, he organised a concert against nuclear power near Tokyo, featuring Kraftwerk.
He also founded a conservation organisation in 2007 called More Trees, which works to promote sustainable forestry in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Sakamoto was active in his fight to protect tree cover in Japan, having on the topic just weeks before his death.
Despite suffering from throat cancer in 2014, Sakamoto continued to win acclaim for his work, including the score for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2015 film The Revenant.
In early 2021, the musician said he was undergoing treatment for rectal cancer.
