Because some Japanese Film Composers deserve to be known:
1 – Toru Takemitsu: Japanese New Wave Master
Worked With: Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Teshigahara…
Scores: Ran, Face of Another…
Listen More : Here
Excerpt:
Scores: Ran, Face of Another…
Listen More : Here
Excerpt:
Face of Another (1966, Teshigahara)
¤¤¤
2 – Toshiaki Tsushima: The Morricone of Yakuza Film
Worked with: Kinji Fukasaku, Hideo Gosha…
Scores: Battle Without Humanity, Graveyard of Honor…
Listen More: Here
Excerpt:
Scores: Battle Without Humanity, Graveyard of Honor…
Listen More: Here
Excerpt:
Yakuza Graveyard (1976, Fukasaku)
¤¤¤
3 – Akira Ifukube: Godzilla’s Musical Father
Godzilla (1954, Honda)
¤¤¤
4 – Masaru Sato: The Soul of Samurai Film
The Wolves (1971, Gosha)
¤¤¤
5 – Joe Hisaishi: All About Emotions
Worked with: Takeshi Kitano, Hayao Miyazaki…
Scores : Sonatine, Nausicaä…
Excerpt :
Scores : Sonatine, Nausicaä…
Excerpt :
Hana-bi (1997, Kitano)
¤¤¤
Who are your favorites Japanese Film Composers?
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Highly influential avant-garde composers such as Toshi Ichiyanagi and Joji Yuasa worth to be mentionned. Yoshida’s movies won’t be the same without these fascinating haunting & dissonant soundscapes:
The same goes for Matsumoto’s shorts (just check Yuasa’s brillant effort for At-man!.. http://www.ubu.com/film/matsumoto.html). On a more ‘traditional’ side, works from Masao Yagi brought some nice groovy blends into Toei’s sexploitation (i always found Tsuhima a bit too formulatic), same goes for So Kaburagi with Nikkatsu’s counterparts. I also came across some Richiro Manabe soundtracks which reveal a great sense of atmosphere (the dissonant Godzilla vs Hedora, the moody Crest of the Wolf, and some more groovier track in various pinku flicks).
oops.. Atman was made by Ichiyanagi if i’m correct, Yuasa/Matsumoto collaboration can be heard on Obscure Tape Music of Japan vol 7
Another brillant and twisted ’62 soundtrack from Ichiyanagi
Yuasa’s Etsuraku:
Funeral parade of roses:
riichiro manabe
shunsuke kikuchi
michiaki watanabe
takeo watanabe
hajime kaburagi
masao yagi
takeo yamashita
yuji ohno
isao tomita
any japanese soundtrack collectors interested trading mp3s? please contact me if you are interested!!
Let’s not forget about the great Hayashi Hikaru, responsible for The Naked Island, Akitsu Springs, Onibaba, Three Resurrected Drunkards, Death by Hanging, Blind Beast, Under the Flag of the Rising Sun etc.
Nice links and tips, Martin. Speaking of Yoshida, there’s also Ikeno Sei, who wrote some lovely music for Woman of the Lake and The Affair. You can hear some of the former in the beginning of the trailer for the latter, if I’m not mistaken:
I think it was quite common back then to use music from the same director’s earlier movies in trailers. For instance, Masumura’s Play’s (Asobi) trailer (can’t find it online) makes use of Blind Beast’s soundtrack, while Hayashi didn’t even work on Play. I wonder if the general shortness of the production periods is to blame? It was surely a good practice compared to what’s going on now, with the god-awful J-pop pervading pretty much every trailer at some point. Sono’s Love Exposure’s trailer is one of the very few examples I can think of where it actually fits in.
Ok, sorry, got carried away now…
thanks for the information on asobi! it doesn’t come as a surprise, this masumura flick is one of the very last produced by Daiei before bankruptcy! i also remember having heard Kaburagi’s nikutai no mon theme in a Nikkatsu SM, the same goes for Blind Woman Curse theme, StrayCat Sex hunter, aso ..
btw, the name of JA Seazer deserves also to be mentioned, the Tenjo Sajiki composer was not the most prolific, but his unusual soundtracks perfectly fitted with Terayama’s universe, especially for his superb sense of catharsis & melancholy
on a side note back to the asobi discussion, ‘the boxer’ trailer is also akind of oddity .. i don’t remember having heard these ‘Tsushima-esque trumpets’ in the movie
Yeah J.A. Seazer was definetly a good call. He composed a lot more stuff for theatre than for cinema though
Do you have any info on
Toshiaki Tsushima: The Morricone of Yakuza Film?
And why is he called Morricone and what’s the meaning of the word?
Masaru Sato: The Soul of Samurai Film. Why is he called like this?
Tried to find on google, but all i got was worthless or incomplete biographies and no word about why they are called like that.
Can someone help?
GintsDono> Morricone, that’s the man who composed this famous tune;
Does it ring any bells to you?
You left out Fumio Hayasaka. Ikiru, Ugetsu, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, New Tales of the Taira Clan. Pretty big omission. Perhaps it should have been Top 10!
While I have nothing but admiration for HISAISHI and to a lesser extent TSUSHIMA can anyone who truly knows JAPANESE CINEMA rank them above the immortal FUMIO HAYASAKA? Though he died young, he left an indelible mark on his chosen field. Without a doubt he was the greatest composer of the generation preceeding SATO and IFUKUBE. His greatest works have been mentioned above but they dont stop there. And if that wasnt enough, he brought IFUKUBE and SATO into the industry!
And while we’re at it it seems to me if you listen to his work, MASARU SATO is far closer to MORRICONE than TSUSHIMA…He is like a great combination of MORRICONE and HENRY MANCINI…
Actually, I amazed that nobody mentioned Yasushi Akutagawa and Toshiro Mayuzumi, both of whom should be, along with Ifukube, at the top of any such list. Akutagawa’s scores for Portrait of Hell, Village of 8 Gravestones, and The Incident are simply phenomenal and Mayuzumi’s scores for Tokyo Olympiad, Safari 5000, and the Hollywood films The Bible and Reflections in a Golden Eye are equally great.