Too bad Takemitsu only scored two Kurosawa works

Kurosawa had long standing relationships with Fumio Hayasaka (until his early death) and Masaru Sato (up to and including Red Beard). As you may now, composer Tōru Takemitsu scored 1970’s Dodes’ka-den and 1985’s Ran. The other five late films featured music by two other composers: Dersu Uzala (Isaac Schwartz), and Kagemusha, Dreams, Rhapsody in August, and Madadayo (Shin’ichirō Ikebe).

I think that Takemitsu’s score for Ran is among the best if not the best score for any Kurosaw film, although Seven Samurai and Yojimbo are also quite memorable. I know Takemitsu and Kurosawa had a fairly contentious relationship, but I wonder what music Takemitsu would have come up with for Dersu Uzala, Kagemush and Dreams in particular. Takemitsu’s close ties to nature in his music would have been well suited for Dersu Uzala and Dreams, and would have been more cereberal and less bombastic than the score Ikebe come up with for Kagemusha.

Purely speculative alt history, I know, but any thoughts on this?

That’s a very interesting question! I must confess though that I know very little of Takemitsu’s music outside of the film scores that I have heard. Would you be able to recommend some starting points for his other works?

While I know a lot of people consider Kagemusha‘s soundtrack sub-par and wish either the original composer Masaru Sato or perhaps even Takemitsu could have scored it, I’ve actually always quite liked what we got. In fact, it might be my favourite Kurosawa soundtrack. It can be bombastic, yes, but it can also be quiet and minimalistic, and all throughout it has some lovely melodies that mix Japanese and Western styles of composition.

An early work by Takemitsu that put him on the musical map internationally was his Requiem for Strings, which was highly praised by Stravinsky:

One of my favorite works by Takemitsu is a piece for percussion instruments called “From Me Flows What You Call Time”:

Another one his more enjoyable and famous works is “Towards The Sea”:

Of course, he also wrote many famous film scores and concert works utilizing both Japanese and Western instruments.

Oh by the way, a little pet theory of mine. Does this Takemitsu film score for Kobayashi’s “Hymn to a Tired Man” sound an AWFUL LOT like John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” song from 1971. Listen to these two pieces, and tell me what you think.
“Hymn to a Tired Man” (Theme)

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Somewhat apropos to a discussion about Kurosawa, since Kobayshi’s “Hymn to a Tired Man” and “Kaseki” have a similar thematic elements to Kurosawa’s “Ikiru”.
Kobayshi’s film was made in 1968 and was making the art house rounds (and showed at Cannes in 1969) at about exactly the same time John and Yoko hooked up in 1968 or so. As an avante garde artist it’s not unlikely that Takemitsu and Ono moved in the same circles in Japan, and certainly must have been aware of each other at the very least.

Thank you very much for these, Christopher! I have some homework to do.

I already took a listen to “Hymn to a Tired Man” and I can definitely hear a similarity in the melody and chord progression with Lennon’s song. Interesting!

This reminded me of another tune that Takemitsu composed, and which includes a melody that has become something of an obsession for me in the past, well, fifteen years now it seems. More specifically, the melody he uses in Dodesukaden, which I keep finding everywhere. I first wrote about it in 2009, and posted an update in 2021. There is actually another recent song that I need to add to the list. I shall do that now.

Kind of a sidenote, but I realized the extent to which Takemitsu was involved with scores from many directors this February, where within 12 films I watched in a month (including recent and non-Japanese films), and 8 had scores fully or partially by him. That included 4 directors and spanned ’62 to ’77. I didn’t think about this when I picked the films, I try to go into movies this day by selecting the first thing that pops to mind (for example, that director, or a certain mood, or a time period, or an era of production etc..). I was increasingly amused when his name popped up in the credits at the beginning. It seemed like a sign that the movie would be interesting!

He worked mostly with Kobayashi, and also did several of the few films made by Teshigahara. In addition, he also had a fruitful partnership with Masahiro Shinoda (probably my favorite of the Japanese New Wave directors).

If Lennnon did swipe from Takemitsu, he must have done a better job of covering his tracks than George Harrison. He tried to warn Harrison to change up “My Sweet Lord” a bit more to make the similarities with “He’s So Fine” less obvious. Harrison didn’t listen, and we all know how that ended up. Takemitsu either wasn’t aware or didn’t care about the similarities of Lennon’s song. He could have made a bundle.