Episode notes
In the early 1980s a young composer born Mamoru Fujisawa adopted a stage name built on a cross-linguistic pun on Quincy Jones and became Joe Hisaishi. This episode explores how a boy from mountainous Nagano Prefecture, trained by ear through the Suzuki method from age four and raised on hundreds of movies a year with his father, developed the dual fluency in sound and visual storytelling that made him the musical soul of modern Japanese cinema.
We trace his studies at Kunitachi College of Music, his immersion in electronic music, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and minimalism, and the image album for NausicaƤ of the Valley of the Wind that launched his lifelong partnership with Hayao Miyazaki and the sound of Laputa, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki's Delivery Service. The conversation then turns to his counterscoring for Takeshi Kitano's stoic Yakuza Ā ...Ā