Trying to interview Takemitsu was a tantalizing experience: his ideas were within immediate reach and yet hopelessly unattainable. Their richness and originality shone through his inability to express them: his English vocabulary was simply too limited. I have omitted all my innumerable groping questions. After all, ours was no dialogue—rather, we were comrades in a frustrating struggle for expression.

Rereading the interview after thirty years, I can still hear Takemitsu’s quiet voice and see his face, which remained expressionless (or showed the same expression) throughout—only his eyes were alive with the effort to find the right words. Despite his poor English, this monologue had a very special, a very Japanese atmosphere. For me, the figure of the shakuhachi master is like a painting or the subject of a haiku. So is Takemitsu’s lakeside house surrounded by thousands of cherry trees in full blossom.

I.

I am interested in all kinds of music: the widest range of folk music, jazz, or rock.

I am an autodidact as a composer, I learned directly from Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Cage, Stockhausen, Schoenberg, Bartók, and many others. I absorbed all these influences in an open and sincere manner.

Debussy exerted the strongest influence. Whenever I am about to write a new piece, I go back to him and study his scores carefully. Why? This would be difficult to explain. Perhaps it is a question of taste. Or perhaps because I am Japanese.

Debussy’s colors awake my musical fantasy. I have mastered the secrets of instrumentation, I know how to achieve beautiful sonorities. However, that is not sufficient. In the initial stages of work, when I imagine the music I am going to write, it is always colors that first emerge—colors in space, colors in time. For me, timbres are in close relationship with the perception of time and space. It is difficult for me to talk about this: I still have a lot to learn, I have not yet been able to mix enough colors. Each work is an attempt in that direction. Debussy was a master of colors—I am still only groping.

Apart from western music, I am also interested in traditional Japanese music and sometimes I compose for Japanese instruments. For the past two or three years, I have been studying the biwa.