‘The Last Emperor’: the epic Bernardo Bertolucci score Ryuichi Sakamoto wrote in one week
Introduced to the world by the music of Yellow Magic Orchestra and immortalised through his scores for films like Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, Ryuichi Sakamoto did truly incredible things with his 71 years. One of his most impressive feats, however, was composing the entire score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s lavish 1987 historical drama The Last Emperor in a single week.
Sakamoto was introduced to Bertolucci at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, where Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence was in competition for the coveted Palme d’Or. “Oshima introduced me to him at a party, and he was talking on and on about this movie he was producing, which was The Last Emperor,” Sakamoto told Criterion.
“Then, after some years, I got a phone call. Then a script was sent to me, and I was told to go to China immediately . . . but as an actor.” On reading the script, Sakamoto who shocked to see that his character, Amakasu, commits hari-kiri, a ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. “That didn’t sit well with me,” he confessed. “It was symbolic of this traditionalist Japanese stereotype that I don’t really like. It was kind of inconceivable for someone [as modern as] him at the time to commit suicide by seppuku. I thought it wasn’t right for the film, which was trying to be a historical tale.”
After working with Bertolucci to change numerous details that ultimately made the world of The Last Emporer far more believable, Sakamoto received another phone call from the director, this time asking if he would like to do the music for the film. “I said, ‘Well, how long do I have?’ And he said one week. One week for this giant, epic film! I asked for two weeks. Of course, I was complaining, but one time Bertolucci had said, ‘Well, Ennio Morricone did it,’ so I had to do it.”
And so, for the next week, Sakamoto worked tirelessly to craft 45 music cues. “I found Chinese musicians around Tokyo and recorded them, and then I brought everything to London. Just after arriving, I played the music for Bertolucci, the editor, and some other Italian crew members. I played a piece called ‘Rain’, and they started holding each other and crying “Bellissimo! Bellissimo! Molto bellissimo!” This is the pleasure of working with Italian people,” the composer concluded. “That is the reason I can’t stop working with people like Bertolucci.”
