Xiaoxuan Zhou

Ryuichi Sakamoto and “Zure”: A Case Study of Psychological Transformation Through Art

Xiaoxuan Zhou – Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan

Abstract:

Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was hailed as “the best known and most successful Japanese musician in the world”, died in 2023. Sakamoto wrote his first autobiography Music Makes Free (2009) at the age of 57, and published How Many More Times Will I See the Full Moon (2023) as a continuity. In these two autobiographies, we find that he was not only a great artist, but also an environmental activist, who had frequent discussion with scholars in the fields of philosophy and politics. In his autobiography reflecting on his past, we find a theme that continued throughout his life -- “Zure”. “Zure” in Japanese means deviation. However, Ryuichi Sakamoto uses “Zure” many times in different contexts to express different feelings. The first time he used “Zure” was to describe the discrepancy between music and his own experience, which was felt the first time in kindergarten when he was asked to compose. In addition, “Zure” is embodied in the discord between his own existence and the outside environment that surrounds him. Certainly, the sound of dissonance, and environmental sounds expressed as “Zure” in his musical works, and as his physical and mental experiences have accumulated, the musical expression of “Zure” has developed into contents that never existed before. In this study, we divided his “Zure” experiences into five periods. From the period of his musical education, the period he joined YMO band with two other members, the period after moving to the United States, and finally after the Great East Japan Earthquake and his struggle with cancer. This research discusses how did Ryuichi Sakamoto approach this feeling of “Zure” and to make it into his own artistic creation. Under this perspective, we became able to better understand how the artist delves into the mysteries of artistic creation and his own life.