TOKYO — I read with sadness of the recent death of famed composer Ryuichi Sakamoto in New York City, after a long battle with cancer.
I first came to know of Sakamoto in the 1983 film by auteur Nagisa Oshima, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.” Sakamoto, a keyboard artist in the popular techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, played the role of a pulchritudinous Japanese Imperial Army officer, in charge of a military prison camp in the South Pacific, homoerotically attracted to one of his British POW’s played by the equally beautiful David Bowie.
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