RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

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.'

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

In Japanese culture, there is a belief that God is everywhere - in mountains, trees, rocks, even in our sympathy for robots or Hello Kitty toys.

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

The piano is the instrument I can play the most.

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.

I'm trying to relax, but it's hard.

I'm not the ambassador of Japan or Japanese culture.

I like to write film music that stands on its own.

I'm very shy about seeing my own face on the screen.

I don't really know about the art world.

Although I don't understand Russian, I like the sound.

Playing in London in 1979 was exciting: it was at the start of new wave, the transition period after punk, and there were a lot of radical, fashionable young people on the streets and in the venues.

I know Brazilian music. I have worked with Brazilians many times.

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.

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

In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.

Piano symbolizes interiority.

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.

I easily fall asleep during a movie.

My audiences are generally mixed. Some people like techno, others are into the pop music, and others enjoy my film music.

I'm lucky that I have people listening to my music, waiting to see me in North America.

Water is not free anymore. Our resources were free at one time, but now they are not. Everything is getting controlled by big corporations. I'm most worried about this.

It's all very well to say this or that on Twitter and Facebook, but ultimately, if you are a musician, it is going to carry more weight if you make your statements through your craft.

To show my everyday life to the world was not my intention.