The musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who has died aged 71 of cancer, spent his life as a restless traveller, both personally and musically. “I was born in Japan but I don’t think I’m Japanese,” he said in 1988, two years before he moved to New York. “To be a stranger – I like that attitude. I don’t like nationalities and borders.”
A founder member of Tokyo’s pioneering computer-pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, whose work between 1978 and 1984 has proved a lasting influence on hip-hop and electronica, Sakamoto was able to combine his skills as an academically trained musician with an aptitude for electronic music and an ear for countless musical styles. He sustained a lengthy partnership with the British musician David Sylvian after first working with his band Japan on the track Taking Islands in Africa from the album Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980), following which the duo collaborated on the double A-side Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music (1982).
