Ryuichi Sakamoto

For me, change doesn't happen on a linear basis; it zig-zags back and forth.

I was born and grew up in Tokyo, so I didn't know about nature.

I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being reborn through the soil is a process of nature.

I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, 'Nature tuned it.'

Music is like nuclear plants. In a way, it's true! Music is totally artificial. Still using some material from nature, a piano is assembled with wood and iron. Nuclear power uses material from nature, but it's been manipulated by humans, and it produces something unnatural.

The global view of cultures is part of my nature. I want to break down the walls between genres, categories, or cultures.

You're changing every day, right? Your curiosities and ambitions change, your ear changes, the music you like changes - and the music you want to make, too.

Our body is part of nature. Our creations, they're not natural. We build things that aren't natural, but our bodies, they're part of that system.

I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.

Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.

I have a cultural map in my head, where I find similarities between different cultures. For example, domestic Japanese pop music sounds like Arabic music to me - the vocal intonations and vibrato - and, in my mind, Bali is next to New York. Maybe everyone has these geographies in their head. This is the way I've been working.

When I do one thing for a long period of time, my attention is usually then drawn in the opposite direction.