Ryuichi Sakamoto

I have to follow my instinct and intuition and curiosity.

Music has become something different from the past, when it was one hundred per cent live. Throughout the twentieth century, it was recorded, and the medium adjusted.

I honestly like any sound. Birds. I have a very broad space to accept or enjoy anything except quiet.

It's a very intimate, closed universe, doing my own music. It's just me, basically. I have to inspire myself; I have to do everything by myself.

An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often diminishes the painting's aura. When an aura is lost, it is impossible to get back.

Somehow, I see music as a garden which has a lot of different styles: contemporary, classic, ethnic, Japanese, rock & roll, and so on. I can enjoy them all, and there is space for them all.

You can use existing music in a film, but creating a soundtrack is very different. One note can be enough.

I am worried that young Japanese people are not very curious about the outside world - which is so different to the way we were in the Sixties and Seventies. All they want to listen to is Japanese pop. They haven't even heard of Radiohead!

I loved the freedom of improvised music.

When I imagine some music in my mind, almost automatically, I imagine the piano keys.

For making music for myself, I just need to be happy. I'm the producer, the director, and the listener.

Asian music influenced Debussy, who influenced me - it's all a huge circle.