Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence!
posted by Artw at 9:24 AM on December 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

Hmm... I wonder if it should be on the Alternate Christmas Film list? It'd be unconventional...
posted by Artw at 9:33 AM on December 24, 2012

Okinawa Song from his Neo Geo album.
posted by needled at 9:34 AM on December 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wonderful -- thank you for these!

I've listened to Sakamoto's collaborations with David Sylvian for a long time now. Heartbeat is a personal favorite that should not be missed.

Forbidden Colors is the version of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with Sylvian's vocals.

Also, World Citizen.
posted by vers at 10:06 AM on December 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

And now for something completely different.

Here is Ryuichi Sakamoto surprising his friend and comedian Hamada Masatoshi while filming an episode of Gottsu ee Kanji.
posted by ruthsarian at 11:10 AM on December 24, 2012

I love Sakamoto. Flumina, the album done with Fennesz, is beautiful through and through. This album is one of my favorite things to listen to late at night or on cold winter days. It's among the best of the best in whatever genre of beautiful, introspective classical-ambient Steve Roach's Structures From Silence and Tim Story's Shadowplay belong.
posted by byanyothername at 1:36 PM on December 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have an interesting story about Diabaram. In the waning days of my college life, I put this song on a mix tape after borrowing the CD from a friend. I'd been accepted into Peace Corps, and while I waited to hear where I would be assigned, I wanted to stock up on some music to take with me. I had no idea who Sakamoto was, and naturally assumed the singer and language on the track was Japanese. By September, I was in Senegal, learning Wolof and working in preventive health care.

That particular tape became a well-loved and much-copied staple among my colleagues in Peace Corps. It started out with the magnificent track "Little Fluffy Couds" by the Orb, which opens with a rooster crowing, and so it became known as the Rooster Mix.

One night, perhaps a year after I arrived in Senegal, I was lying in my hut listening to the Rooster Mix, when Diabaram came on. Suddenly, with almost hallucinatory clarity, I realized I could understand all the lyrics. I could understand Japanese. I thought I must be losing my mind.

But of course it wasn't Japanese. It was Youssou N'dour, singing in Wolof, a language in which I was now fluent. I had heard that song dozens of times without actually hearing it, until that one night when my mind locked on to it and I understood. Over a year earlier, I'd picked the one Sakamoto song featuring the language spoken only in the country where I ended up being sent months later. And I'd copied the tape and given it to other wolof-speaking Peace Corps Volunteers, many of whom later reported having the same dramatic realization around the same time I did.
posted by itstheclamsname at 8:02 AM on December 25, 2012 [7 favorites]

I have an interesting story about Diabaram...

That is such a great story.

On the Beauty album the lyrics provided for Diabaram were a translation from the Wolof to the French. One almost got enough to almost get the gist. Which is not the same as getting it, unfortunately...
posted by y2karl at 12:39 PM on December 25, 2012