Article: Toru Takemitsu.(composer)(Obituary)

TOWARDS the end of the second world war, when Toru Takemitsu, aged 14, was a conscript in a gang of labourers building an army camp, a friend played a recording of a French medieval chanson that had somehow escaped the censors. "I did not know there was such beautiful music in the world," recalled Mr Takemitsu, who, like other Japanese lads, was provided with a daily diet of clunky marching songs with such titles as "Holding the Remains of my Comrade". He made the decision that "if the war ever ended, I would become a musician." A year later Douglas MacArthur's victorious troops drove into Tokyo bringing with them democracy, chewing gum and western music.

If some of ...

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