Haruomi Hosono is the sort of artist you keep rediscovering throughout your life. It may begin with Yellow Magic Orchestra, the pioneering synth-pop trio he formed with the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi. Or it could start with his solo work, where he’s traversed everything from exotica to tape music to boisterous art pop. Dive into his credits, and his name pops up everywhere in the past half-century of Japanese music. There’s the folk boom of the 1970s, where he played in the groundbreaking rock band Happy End, but also on albums from Sachiko Kanenobu, Morio Agata, and Nobuyasu Okabayashi. He was there during city pop’s rise, too, performing on classic albums by Tatsuro Yamashita, Taeko Ohnuki, and Minako Yoshida.
“I was listening to everything,” Hosono tells me at least a dozen times in our conversation. It feels like an understatement. During the 1980s, Hosono appeared on cult classics of Japanese new-wave and electronic music, including LPs on Yen Records, the label he ran with Takahashi. Obsessed with arcade games, he made the first album fully inspired by their soundtracks; aptly, it’s titled Video Game Music. He also plays on the debut Pizzicato Five album, forging a throughline from his love for lounge and easy-listening to the roots of Shibuya-kei. He made IDM in the 1990s, glitch pop in the 2000s, and jumped on a live album with Ichiko Aoba in 2013. He’s made numerous film scores as well, most famous of which is for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters.
Throughout our conversation, Hosono periodically asks for time to think about what to say, as it is impossible to name a single artist or album that could define any period of his life. Still, he persists, his face always jovial as he reminisces over Zoom. He’s stationed at the bottom left corner of the frame, which draws attention to the poster on his wall. It’s for the 1934 Laurel and Hardy comedy Them Thar Hills: a testament to his love for the Western culture of the time.
Don’t mistake his fondness for bygone eras as an unwillingness to grow, though. This summer, he’ll perform a rare concert at the Southbank Centre in London. “What I’m trying to do now,” he tells me, “is to see what I can do with young people—people who are 50 years younger than me.” For Hosono, there’s always something new to learn.
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Deanna Durbin: “It’s Raining Sunbeams”
I was born two years after [World War II] ended, so there was a lot of patriotic music being released at the time. There were also some Hollywood movie soundtracks—do you know Deanna Durbin? She has this song, “It’s Raining Sunbeams,” and I have the record [he grabs it and shows it to the camera] that’s an SP [Standard Play] made of shellac. It’s a song from a movie, Henry Koster’s One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937). I was also interested in Benny Goodman’s music, especially the drumming in his songs. I have a really strong memory of dancing to his boogie-woogie.
Johnny Horton: “The Battle of New Orleans”
I was listening to Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, and a lot of hits from the Brill Building publishers. They became hits in Japan, too, through the radio. At the time, Sony produced a transistor radio that was very compact, and throughout elementary school, I was obsessed with it, listening to music throughout the night on headphones. I would have to listen to it very discreetly and, luckily, I had my own room. I was really into this one country song, Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans”—it was a big hit back then. I bought the single on vinyl. Sadly, he got hit by a truck and passed away, and this was around the time he had another big song called “North to Alaska.”
I was always bored by Japanese domestic music, and as a kid, I was always interested in picking up music from overseas—the rhythms were interesting and the sound was good. Do you have children? Kids don’t intentionally try to get into something, they just genuinely feel interested in something and get into it. And that’s how my brain worked—I really loved this music.
In 6th grade, on Christmas Day, I was at this music store in Ginza. I accidentally touched a nylon-string guitar and, in that moment, I felt something happen. Something about it was different. I asked my parents to buy it for me on the spot [laughs]. The first songs I learned on guitar were by Hank Williams, and I learned them on my own. I didn’t understand the lyrics but I would sing the words phonetically [passionately sings].
Beach Boys: “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
1962 to 1963 is when something really important happened in pop music: Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” And then the Beatles came into the world. There were constant changes in these two years. Before this, there were a lot of veteran jazz musicians who started playing rock music, but the Beatles and the Beach Boys were not from that universe—they were amateurs who became rock singers, and they ushered in a new generation. I’m a massive fan of the Beach Boys and I respect Brian Wilson a lot, but I didn’t listen to the Beatles too much. There were so many girls who were obsessive fans and I thought, “I’m not going to get too into them.” [laughs] “Surfin’ U.S.A.” was the first Beach Boys song that I was drawn to, but I was into all their singles. My favorite album, though, is Surf’s Up (1971). I still learn a lot from the Beach Boys today.
The Beatles covered Chuck Berry, and that led me to the original Chuck Berry songs. I was young at the time and I felt his music was way beyond what I could possibly do—there was no way I could cover these songs. Also, there was a really big difference in the quality of the sound. This is actually one of the themes I’m still exploring to this day: the differences between original songs and their cover versions. That divergence, that gap, is really important to me. The way music was recorded in the 1950s and the 1960s is really different—back then, they may have only recorded with one or two microphones. And from the ’50s to the ’60s, there were a lot of developments in the way music was recorded. Things started to sound “better,” but songs from the ’50s were unpolished and really unique; studios are too good nowadays, and were even too good back in the ’60s, to capture that exact feeling, that authenticity.
I have this album, Flying Saucer 1947 (2007), where I recorded the country song “Pistol Packin’ Mama” by Al Dexter. I listened to this song many years ago, and what struck me was the sound of the trumpet. I bought a ribbon mic from RCA—it’s actually on the other side of the room right now—and I incorporated that into my song. I recorded the vocals, but also other sounds too, and I really felt the warmth of the music from using it.
Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde
Shortly before I was 20, Bob Dylan had a huge impact on me. I remember wanting to learn how to play “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right,” and I did just that. But when he released Blonde on Blonde (1966), I was shaken. It was too much for me to play those songs—they were too complex.
I eventually got into psychedelic music. This was a time when American hippie and drug culture was coming in, and I started making music in Apryl Fool. I was listening to, for instance, the Electric Prunes. In 1968 I heard Buffalo Springfield on the radio and thought, “What is this?” There was a military radio station at the time called FEN [Far East Network] that made a lot of this music accessible. It all started with the singles “For What It’s Worth” and “Bluebird,” but that station played the entire Buffalo Springfield album Last Time Around (1968). My first impression was that it wasn’t very vivid-sounding music, but it grew on me over time. I went to buy the imported LP and really delved into that world. As Apryl Fool, we would cover songs by the Doors and Vanilla Fudge, but Buffalo Springfield was what I was personally more interested in.
There were a lot of Japanese folk singers around me at this time as well, including Morio Agata, Kenji Endo, and Wataru Takada. I loved each and every one of them because their music was so original. Apryl Fool was a cover band, and because we were a cover band, I wanted to pursue my own music—that’s around when Happy End started. Happy End served as the backing musicians for Nobuyasu Okabayashi, who’s referred to as the “Japanese Bob Dylan.” This was made possible because we were on URC, a record label based in West Japan that was considered the Mecca of the country’s folk music scene. That environment definitely helped us get connected to others, to back different artists and go on tour. People often compared Happy End to the Band because they backed Dylan. And that’s how it was designed—we were supposed to be like the Band for Nobuyasu.
Back in the day, every year felt like a huge change was happening in music. I was not a fan of The Eagles because they kept sounding more mainstream. But anyways, back to The Band. I recognize now that they were musically very important to me. I was actually able to meet them in person, and Garth Hudson joined me on multiple songs for Road to Louisiana (1999), the album I put out with Makoto Kubota. I loved Garth’s personality. He wasn’t a very talkative person, and one day I asked him about that. He told me that the place where he grew up had a small population, so he didn’t talk a lot. I also remember that when I’d come out of the studio, I’d see him outside and—I was a smoker, but he was already smoking before me [laughs]. One day I went into his hotel room and saw a notebook on his bed labeled “Musician’s Jokes.” He’s not the sort of person who would ever crack jokes, but he had this notebook, and I realized right then that he actually did care about wanting to joke around. I had an even bigger love for him after seeing this. Though, I never actually heard him say any of those jokes [laughs].
Aretha Franklin: “Rock Steady”
In the early ’70s, I was listening to a lot of funk. I was listening to Sly & the Family Stone, the Impressions, Motown artists, and Billy Preston. This led to me playing funkier basslines. I had the greatest respect for Chuck Rainey, a studio musician; he was very influential to my career. There were so many songs he played on that I loved but it was really amazing when he played for Aretha Franklin, especially on “Rock Steady.” There’s an album by Minako Yoshida called The Door of Winter (1973). I played the fretless bass on that, and while I was inspired by Chuck Rainey beforehand, I felt like this was the album where I “graduated.” There was a short period of time where I felt like I was merely copying other musicians, and it was here where I felt like I was growing up; I wasn’t thinking too much about Chuck anymore, I was doing my own thing.
Lata Mangeshkar & Zouk
When you go to India, there’s always a lot of music playing. I was listening to so much music and it sounded like I was hearing the same vocalist again and again, and it turned out to be Lata Mangeshkar. I was so obsessed with her singing. Prior to this trip, I didn’t have many occasions to touch base with Indian music—I only knew that world through George Harrison [laughs]. First off, Bollywood films are very long. The theaters have A/C and are cool, and it’s where people go to avoid the heat, so the long duration actually ends up being great. I feel like you can partly trace the origin of rock music back to Indian music—it’s in the rhythms.
The movies always have great choreography, too. They’re too complicated for me to do myself, though. I would do popular dances that were simpler, like the twist. That move was always my favorite. And it was a popular dance in Europe, too, back when zouk—the African-based disco music—was big. I was in Paris recording for my documentary [Resonance of Hot Sand: Haruomi Hosono's Music Drift] and I would dance to the choreography I saw there [laughs]. Zouk also played a role in shaping my music. And when I look at the global music scene, a lot of American music on the charts right now feels like there is some element of zouk in there, particularly with regards to the rhythms.
Gavin Bryars: The Sinking of the Titanic
A lot of new wave music was coming out at the time, and I was listening to bands like the Flying Lizards—I liked stuff that was a little unusual. There was also a song called “Mozart” by Michael Nyman. The original song title was different [“In Re Don Giovanni”] but he released “Mozart” as a single and it became a huge hit. The album with [The Flying Lizards’] David Cunningham as the leader was also good, it was called Grey Scale. When I went back to my room tired, I’d always listen to stuff like that—that quiet, heart-calming music. Obscure Records, which Brian Eno founded, had many of my favorite artists, including Gavin Bryars. I loved The Sinking of the Titanic. In fact, my grandfather was on the Titanic. He made it home alive, so the music was very personal to me. The second side [“Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”] was amazing, too. And if anything, I was listening to the second side first. At the time, I was doing very tight techno music, so I wanted some quiet at home. That’s how it started—the music I played in my room was ambient.
Kraftwerk: The Man-Machine
As an extension of YMO, I was listening to stuff like Giorgio Moroder and, of course, Kraftwerk. I liked The Man-Machine—I had been listening to that since the beginning of YMO. I don’t remember much about those years… I was listening to everything, but around that time, the first group to impact YMO was definitely Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk occasionally visited Japan too, so we would go to disco clubs together, but I didn’t see them much after that. My own solo albums were a shift. I gravitated back to American music. I, of course, was listening to all the Van Dyke Parks projects. I also love calypso. I started listening to a lot of old ’40s music. While I was doing YMO, I was kind of away from the American music that I loved so much; I was listening to a lot of British music. But still… I really loved American music after all, like Ry Cooder, The Band, and so forth. Ry Cooder’s Into the Purple Valley, his second album—I love that one. The calypso arrangement there is good. This came out in the ’70s, but I was listening to it in the ’80s too.
The Traditional Japanese Folk Song “Esahi Oiwake”
Just before this, “world music” was trending globally. I worked with TV stations doing coverage of this, going to Paris, seeing live shows of stars like Cheb Khaled. Being in Paris drew me to live music. I was very drawn to folk music in general around that time, though of course I had my likes and dislikes. For example, I loved the “Bulgarian Voices” [The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir]. I also liked all Caribbean music. I was listening to Japanese folk music as well. There was an actual folk song—I took “Esashi Oiwake”, which is an old Japanese folk song—and added a little backing track to it for the first song [on 1989’s Omni Sight Seeing]. I saw a girl, Kasumi Kimura, sing “Esashi Oiwake” in a singing contest on TV. It was so amazing that I contacted her and asked her to sing in our studio. Around that time, Japanese folk music, or maybe just Japanese music in general… how should I say this… Because it was a time when the world had discovered “world music,” so too did the Japanese music community discover it, including their own. It was like the door to the world had opened. So, I often encountered such artists, worked with them, and did live shows.
Atom Heart
The “world music” era ended very quickly. During the Bush administration, there was the Gulf War, and because of the Gulf War, Arab nations closed their borders. So, when I made Omni Sight Seeing, it wasn’t created as “world music”; it was intended to be an “omni,” like “omnidirectional.” All these different musical movements were happening, and around the time “world music” ended and I was making my own ambient music, something called “mondo music” was trending. From there, I decided to make something in that direction and formed Swing Slow with Miharu Koshi in 1996. And then Atom Heart—Uwe Schmidt is his actual name—came to the studio. I had him listen to it, and he told me it wasn’t mondo [laughs]. Atom Heart was really unique, and the way he programmed music was just amazing. So, I already had my eyes on him, but he contacted me and asked if I wanted to work together. He released a lot of music and I liked all of it, and while I can’t remember about his earlier days—it’s so in the past, and I’m old now—I thought Señor Coconut was brilliant as part of his later career.
Carlo Rustichelli’s Film Soundtracks
With regards to La Maison De Himiko (2005) and the film music I was making, I was inspired by my favorite film music composer—his name is Carlo Rustichelli, and he composed music for an Italian director named Pietro Germi. I love his work: Seduced and Abandoned (1964), The Railroad Man (1956), and The Facts of Murder (1959)—that was my favorite. I simply liked listening to these soundtracks—I was simply a fan. I try not to analyze anything when I listen to music, as analyzing makes the music fall apart. It disassembles everything and it becomes boring. That’s my stance for all music.
Global Electronica
I want to mention this first: Nostradamus’ prophecy had said that the world was going to end in July 1999, and everybody believed that. That’s when I went blank and lost all motivation. Music had stopped being fun worldwide. But then, I started hearing weird music. Around that time, I was making music with Yukihiro Takahashi as Sketch Show, intending to create something new. Meanwhile, similar stuff was starting to come out around the world, which, before I knew it, became a genre called electronica. I was already intending to make that kind of music, but then I started hearing similar stuff from around the world. It felt like I was aligned with what the rest of the world was making. I don’t know why, but everyone started doing similar things. It was a very strange time.
That sort of stuff often happens. Back in the ambient era, it evolved into something called “ambient house.” Ambient and house were two different things—one had rhythm, the other didn’t. It was like water and oil, but people started playing them simultaneously in the house music scene, in clubs. The Orb was the first one to do that, and it’s from there that ambient house was born. Still, I was already doing something similar. What comes to mind now about this time is Múm, from Iceland, who also came to the studio. There was a lot of strange music from Iceland, but I can’t remember their names anymore. I used to love them.
Luiz Bonfá
The Great East Japan Earthquake that happened on March 11, 2011 had a huge impact. HoSoNoVa (2011) was made before that, and it was supposed to be released after the earthquake, but I was very apprehensive about it, thinking, “Is this the right time to be releasing music?” The label wanted to release it in April and, as a result, everyone listened to the album because nobody was putting out music. It helped them emotionally. That made me happy.
At that time, I was listening to stuff like João Gilberto. I also love Luiz Bonfá. I had a dream once, and this was before I knew much about him. He showed up in my dream, and somebody actually told me in the dream, “Luiz Bonfá is great.” I woke up and listened to his music and it was phenomenal. His music was used in this disaster film that is about an epidemic where an infection causes blindness. The title is actually just Blindness (2008). There’s this one scene that’s amazing—I’d love for you to see it—where blind people are listening to the radio and Luiz Bonfá’s music plays. I saw this movie after my dream.
Margaret Whiting: “Good Morning, Mr. Echo”
This was also true around the time of Swing Slow, but the music I was listening to in my childhood started coming back to me. As I told you earlier, I love country music and Hollywood film music. This was the same time I started collecting them again. I can’t name each one because there’s just too many, but I just absolutely love all 20th-century music. The music you heard in your childhood always lives in your heart—you never forget it. You may forget the music you were listening to during other phases, but there’s always this music that remains in you. I was curious to see what it’d be like to work with that sort of music. For example, with Swing Slow, we did “Good Morning, Mr. Echo,” which is a song I was listening to in my elementary school days. It’s by Margaret Whiting. What makes it great? Well, just listen to it. “Pistol Packin’ Mama” was the same thing—I was wondering what it’d be like to work with such songs now, and I wanted to recreate music from the ’40s or ’50s to have an echo of it in the present.
The Three Suns: “Harbor Lights”
If we’re talking about recent years, well, there’s the music I never stopped listening to. People may have forgotten about them, but there’s a trio called The Three Suns. They put out a lot of singles, including “Harbor Lights.” The Three Suns is a very important group: They came to Japan many times, and their music played on the radio almost every day when I was a child. Listening to that music turned me into this, it turned me into who I am today. And that’s the sort of music I actually want to do.