Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 47. Chapters: Toru Takemitsu, Fumio Hayasaka, Akira Ifukube, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Mari Takano, Akira Miyoshi, Minoru Miki, Karen Tanaka, Hikaru Hayashi, Yoshir Irino, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Dai Fujikura, Hidemaro Konoye, Kosaku Yamada, Makoto Shinohara, Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, Sadao Bekku, Yoritsune Matsudaira, Toshio Hosokawa, Takashi Yoshimatsu, Jo Kondo, Yasuhide Ito, Keiko Abe, Yasushi Akutagawa, Takekuni Hirayoshi, Ushio Torikai, Maki Ishii, Ikuma Dan, Kaoru Wada, Yoshihisa Taira, Ry hei Hirose, Teizo Matsumura, Kikuko Kanai, Hisato Ohzawa, Mayako Kubo, Kiyoshige Koyama, Masamichi Amano, Shin-ichiro Ikebe, Shigeaki Saegusa, Roh Ogura, Yasuji Kiyose, Y ji Takahashi, Hiroshi Ohguri, Jun Nagao, Junko Mori, Joji Yuasa, Keiko Fujiie, Somei Satoh, Kazuko Hara, Kan Ishii, Makiko Kinoshita, Mamoru Fujieda, Akio Yashiro, Nagako Konishi, Kunihiko Hashimoto, Haruna Miyake, Tomojir Ikenouchi, Akira Nishimura, Takatomi Nobunaga, Makoto Moroi, Hifumi Shimoyama, Kimi Sato, Kikuko Masumoto, Yuzo Toyama, Ko Matsushita, Kazuo Yamada, Ken It . Excerpt: Toru Takemitsu Takemitsu T ru, October 8, 1930 February 20, 1996) was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He drew from a wide range of influences, including jazz, popular music, avant-garde procedures and traditional Japanese music, in a harmonic idiom largely derived from the music of Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. In 1958, his Requiem for strings (1957) gained international attention, led to several commissions from across the world and settled his reputation as one of the leading Japanese composers of the 20th century. He was the recipient of numerous awards, commissions and honours; he composed over 100 film scores and about 130 concert works for ensembles of various sizes and combinations. He also found time to write a detective novel and appeared frequently on Japanese television as a celebrity chef. In the foreword to a selection of Takemitsu's writings in English, conductor Seiji Ozawa writes: "I am very proud of my friend Toru Takemitsu. He is the first Japanese composer to write for a world audience and achieve international recognition." Takemitsu was born in Tokyo on October 8, 1930; a month later his family moved to Dalian in the Chinese province then known as Manchuria. He returned to Japan to attend elementary school, but his education was cut short by military conscription in 1944. Takemitsu described his experience of military service at such a young age, under the Japanese Nationalist government, as "... extremely bitter". Takemitsu first became really conscious of Western classical music (which was banned in Japan during the war) during his term of military service, in the form of a popular French Song ("Parlez-moi d'amour") which he listened to with colleagues in secret, played on a gramophone with a makeshift needle fashioned from bamboo. During the post-war U.S. occupation of Japan, Takem
