Trivia / Ryuichi Sakamoto

• Bad Export for You: The international releases of 1996 omit some songs for the tracklist for no particular reason. The US and Brazilian releases cut out the last three tracks, thus ending at "Parolibre", while the UK one only gets rid of the album closer, "Bring Them Home".
• Better Export for You: The 1983 Dutch release of Left Handed Dream adds the companion EP The Arrangement as bonus material; this extends to the Dutch CD release of the album, which includes the EP as a series of bonus tracks.
• Breakup Breakout: Outside Japan at least, he is much better known than Yellow Magic Orchestra are, due to his extensive soundtrack work and collaborations with Western artists. The fact that YMO have never been distributed too well outside of Japan may also contribute to this.
• Channel Hop: Sakamoto's work is scattered across so many different labels that he rivals David Bowie and Sparks in that regard.
  • In Japan, Sakamoto's work bounced between Better Days Records, Alfa Records (due to his contract as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra), School Records, Midi Inc, Terrapin Records, Virgin Records, Güt Records, and Warner Music Group before finally settling on his vanity label, Commmons (note the three M's). Sony Music would inherit the rights to a good chunk of Sakamoto's back-catalog in Japan, making it easier to keep his earlier albums in print.
  • Internationally, Sakamoto's catalog has changed hands even more frequently, shifting from Island Records, Epic Records, 10 Records, CBS Records, Virgin Records, Elektra Records, Milan Records, KAB America, and Decca Records, in many cases hopping back and forth between previous labels (for instance, Neo Geo was distributed by Epic in the US after being away from them since Left Handed Dream six years prior, while Milan has handled most of Sakamoto's international releases in The New '10s after briefly distributing his work in the mid-'90s).
• Creator Backlash: Sakamoto looked back poorly on his soundtrack for Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, to the point where he omits it from his autobiography and refused to address it by name in public appearances. According to a 2018 interview with film planner Toshio Okada, Sakamoto was actually eager to work with Gainax thanks to his fond memories of the anime he grew up with as a kid, but his relationship with the studio soured when sound director Atsumi Tashiro was given the final say of which songs would go where (as Sakamoto had already started work scoring The Last Emperor and couldn't be easily contacted).
• Creator Breakdown: Both async and 12 came off the heels of Sakamoto's battles with throat cancer and rectal cancer, respectively, and accordingly revolve around his newfound awareness of his own mortality.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Pretty much every Sakamoto album that Sony Music didn't inherit remains unavailable outside of secondhand reissues and fan uploads online, due to them still being owned by the myriad of labels that Sakamoto was on over the years. Because of his lack of commercial success outside of soundtrack releases, these labels have no financial incentive to reissue them, leaving them all in a state of limbo (and consequently contributing to Sakamoto's vocal distaste towards modern copyright law).
• Meaningful Release Date: 12 was released on January 17, 2023, Sakamoto's 71st (and ultimately final) birthday.
• No Export for You:
  • Being a Japanese artist, a lot of his releases were exclusive to Japan, unless he decided to release them elsewhere. Even when he did release albums overseas, tracks were often replaced by others, thus making the original tracklistings exclusive to Japan.
  • Neither the Japanese nor European configurations of Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia were released in the US.
• Posthumous Credit: Shortly before his death, Sakamoto collaborated with BTS member Suga (under the alternate stage name Agust D) on "Snooze", a homage to Sakamoto's early material. The song was released a month after Sakamoto's passing in memory of him and credits him as a featured artist.
• Remade for the Export: Done several times:
  • B-2 Unit had "Participation Mystique" replaced by "War Head" in the UK.
  • Left Handed Dream had the four tracks from the Arrangement EP replacing four from the original album (although three of these were simply Japanese versions of the Robin Scott tracks — the ones that weren't being "Living In The Dark" and "The Arrangement" respectively).
  • Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia was substantially altered for its European release, which featured only 5 tracks in from the the original (which had 9), plus one from its bonus single (which itself had two other tracks that weren't used). Two Japanese singles recorded months after the album, "Field Work" and "Steppin' Into Asia" were added. The former, featuring English-language vocals by Thomas Dolby, was the only single from the album and was moderately successful.
  • The international release of Beauty dropped "Adagio", compensating by adding the Jill Jones collaboration "You Do Me" to the start of the album.
  • Heartbeat had the Japanese versions of "High Tide" and "Sayonara" replaced by English-language versions. In addition, "Tainai Kaiki" was replaced with "Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki II) — Returning to the Womb" and "Cloud #9", both of which featured David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez.
  • Sweet Revenge had several tracks remixed and re-recorded in English, and the tracks "Anna" and "Psychedelic Afternoon" were removed from the international release.
  • Chasm replaced "the land song - music for Artelligent City" with "Song" and "Word".
• Similarly Named Works:
  • Sakamoto's "Once in a Lifetime" is unrelated to the song of the same name by Talking Heads.
  • Sakamoto's 1987 album Neo Geo is unrelated to the video game console.
  • Sakamoto wrote two different instrumentals called "Epilogue"; the first appeared as the closing track of Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1981 album Technodelic, while the second was included on his solo album Heartbeat ten years later.
• Star-Making Role: While he never achieved a real Breakthrough Hit as a musician outside of Japan, his award-winning soundtrack for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence would quickly catapult him into in-demand status as a scorer.

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