Born 1952 in Tokyo, Sakamoto debuted in 1978 with his solo album ‘Thousand Knives’. The same year he co-founded the pioneering electronic-music pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra. In 1983, Sakamoto scored the soundtrack for ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’ (1983) by Nagisa Oshima, in which he also co-starred with David Bowie. Since those early days he has released over a dozen solo albums, created art installations exhibited in various museums around the world, and composed more than thirty film scores for directors including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Brian De Palma, and more recently Alejandro González Iñárritu for whom he composed the music of ‘The Revenant’.
Aside from his musical work, Sakamoto has been a fervent defender of environmental and social causes, particularly committed to reforestation and supporting the victims of the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami, and anthropogenic nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.
In 2017, along with the release of his 16th solo album async; Sakamoto gave performances at the Park Avenue Armory (NYC); composed the score for Korean film The Fortress (Hwang Dong-hyuk); created an audio/visual installation work, IS YOUR TIME, with longtime collaborator Shiro Takatani, and the documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA (Stephen Nomura Schible) was released.