Michiaki watanabe biography sample

So I took care of him when I lived in the apartment. After a while, I felt ready to become a composer. So I took action. A radio station had started in Nagoya. Koji Matsueda, came to see me. I talked to him and told him what I wanted to do. It was my first one. After that, I was asked to do more. CW: It was when I was 27, so it was I had lots offers.

There were other composers, but I got many offers. So maybe they liked me the best. I had never done it before, but I was able to write the music for those radio dramas. It was very natural for me to write that music. For example, when a family was eating dinner, I could naturally think of some appropriate music for that scene. CW: My first work was called Atomo Boy.

It was an action-oriented radio drama. I had to struggle a little bit to write action music.

Michiaki watanabe biography sample

Other than that, they were radio dramas, so there were no radical scenes. But I enjoy making music that is very beautiful and lyrical. So I had to accept the proposal I received. Of course, I wanted to give it my best effort, but there were no such textbook to teach you how to write this kind of music. So I listened to many soundtracks and saw movies for inspiration.

But in the early days when I was writing music for radio dramas, it came to me naturally. When I read the scripts, I would think of the music in my head. If I could not write the necessary music, then I could not become a composer. BH: Which movie would you say was the best example of your beautiful and lyrical music? CW: I only received few offers to write such music.

During that time, I wrote some radio songs. Since the producer knew I could do various things, I had many offers for work. On the radio, there was a program that played music in between poetry reading. They would read poems on the air, but there would be music in between the poems. I was working for the radio station, but I wanted to become a movie composer.

So I went to see my friend in Tokyo. My friend was a high school classmate, and when I went to Tokyo University, he lived near my home. His pen name was Ichiro Miyagawa. At that time, he was working as an assistant producer at Shintoho. After that, he became a screenwriter. He wrote for the TV series Mito Komon. I made a tape of the radio drama soundtrack and gave it to him.

He played it for the people at Shintoho. In the future, I will give him an offer. So please wait. So I prepared to move. I brought a futon and some clothes and moved to Tokyo. I looked for a cheap place to stay and waited for a phone call from Shintoho. You have a job. I had moved to Tokyo from Nagoya in the summer, maybe July or August.

When I got the job, it was December. So I waited for a long time. CW: It was Rokuro Hara was a composer of popular songs. He was a friend of Mr. Matsueda at CBC. While I was working at the station, Mr. Hara sometimes came over to visit Mr. He also told me to come to Tokyo. I looked for a place to live near Mr. We lived close together, so sometimes I visited his home.

So I went to Shintoho. It was my first movie at Shintoho. The director asked me to compose it using only guitar music. Maybe you can use timpani. So I prepared six guitars. At that time, I prepared six guitarists, but now I think that maybe two guitars, two contrabasses, and a drum set would have been better. Anyway, six guitars can make a good harmony, I thought.

For example, an electric guitar, a classical guitar, and so on. But it went well. CW: To make the film music with only guitar music was the first challenge for Mr. Maybe that is why Mr. Nakagawa offered it to me because he thought a new person would be appropriate for this new type of music. There was a very famous French movie called Forbidden Games.

That theme music became very popular in Japan. The Third Man was another score that influenced me. I remember that I was so excited to write the music for this movie. I earned a good reputation from that movie. Afterward, I received many job offers. I received 10 job offers every year. Please tell me your first impressions of Mr. Nakagawa, and then generally tell me more about working with Mr.

CW: Mr. For a while, I was working with Mr. Of course, I also worked with other directors. But we were like a set for a while. Since I had many job offers at the time, a secretary would reject some of the offers because I was too busy at the time. In those days, there were many movies. Two movies were released per week. The theme music of Starman was lyrically beautiful.

At Shintoho, there was a conductor who specialized in movies. He had a stopwatch, so he would time each scene. It had to match perfectly. This conductor introduced me to TV people and other companies like Nikkatsu. That conductor was very good. Sometimes, directors would change their minds and change a scene. When that happened, I usually talked with the conductor about how to adjust the music.

During that time, they recorded the music into the film directly. In the old days, American movies were made the same way. So Shintoho did the same thing as those old American movies. Other companies did it differently. They recorded the music separately and dubbed it in afterward. But Shintoho did not have the necessary equipment to do that. So the music was recorded directly into the films.

When they recorded the soundtrack, the sound effects were also recorded at the same time. They recorded everything all together. BH: In this situation, would you have the orchestra and the sound effects man in the same room? CW: They were in different rooms, but they did it together at the same time. So if the orchestra made a mistake, they would all have to start over again at the same time — sound effects and music.

They recorded it all at the same time. So they could not deviate from the plan. They had to stick to the plan. Later on, they incorporated the dubbing system. But before that, they made films like that for a short time. It was recorded in pieces. When I was a child, I lived in a residential area. But there was a small shopping area with a movie theater.

At that time, there were silent movies and talkies. Even though it was a silent movie, there was a person katsudo benshi who narrated it. It was all live. This is the story of a young man who will do what must be done but nonetheless strives for an unobtainable ideal—not just for his people but also the enemies he comes across. With Ritsu, Ars gains the ultimate warrior, and with Charlotte the ultimate mage.

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Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Policies and ethics. Skip to main content. Abstract This chapter is a long and rare interview with Michiaki Watanabe, one of the most outstanding composers in the history of Japanese animation. Access this chapter Log in via an institution. Chapter EUR Hardcover Book EUR Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout Purchases are for personal use only.

Notes 1.