The playlist Ryuichi Sakamoto curated for his favourite Japanese restaurant
The late pioneering Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto viewed music as an integral part of life and believed it could enhance every aspect of his being. However, when his favourite restaurant played a brand of music that wasn’t to his taste, Sakamoto intervened by curating a playlist based on their menu.
The establishment in question is Kajitsu, a Japanese Shojin vegan restaurant in the Murray Hill district of Manhattan. While Sakamoto loved the food which Kajitsu offered, the music plighted his dining experience. Therefore, he stepped in and provided them with a tailored playlist.
Throughout his celebrated career, Sakamoto, who died recently following a battle with cancer, won plentiful awards for his work, including the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score’ for his soundtrack for The Last Emperor. It would have cost Kajitsu a small fortune to convince Sakamoto to create a playlist for them and would have been unaffordable for a business of their size.
“Normally, I just leave,” Sakamoto said of music in public places which he dislikes during an interview with the New York Times in 2018. “I cannot bear it. But this restaurant is really something I like, and I respect their chef, Odo.”
“I found their BGM so bad, so bad,” he commented of the previous background music which played in Kajitsu. “Really bad,” he added. “It was a mixture of terrible Brazilian pop music and some old American folk music,” he said, “and some jazz, like Miles Davis.”
Sakamoto continued: “But at least the Brazilian pop was so bad. I know Brazilian music. I have worked with Brazilians many times. This was so bad. I couldn’t stay, one afternoon. So I left.”
Rather than bringing up his displeasure directly to the chef, Sakamoto went home and penned an email explaining his thought process. In the email, he explained: “I love your food, I respect you and I love this restaurant, but I hate the music. Who chose this? Whose decision of mixing this terrible roundup? Let me do it. Because your food is as good as the beauty of Katsura Rikyu. But the music in your restaurant is like Trump Tower.”
Sakamoto chose to curate an ambient playlist which was “not Brian Eno, but more recent”. He worked alongside music producer Ryu Takahashi to create the set of songs, including Aki Takahashi’s take on John Cage’s ‘Four Walls’, which he described as “so pop” and said: “It’s like a radio hit”. Other songs featured were Gavin Bryars’s ‘My First Homage’, David Shire’s ‘Graysmith’s Theme’, and Roberto Musci’s ‘Claudia, Wilhelm R and Me.’ There was also room for tracks by Aphex Twin, Nils Frahm, and Nicolas Jaar.
Listen to the full playlist below.
