INDEX
Resonance Through Recitation: Ryuichi Sakamoto and Min Tanaka
How did the interactions go with Min Tanaka, who reads from the journals?
Omori: At first, we just went out for a meal. Tanaka also does some farming, so he talked at length about vegetables—things like the qualities of Fukaya leeks versus Kujo leeks. It wasn’t really a meeting or planning session, more like feeling out whether our energies matched.
During the narration recording, he paid close attention to every detail—whether to sit or stand, the pacing of the reading, the distance from the microphone. There was a moment when he was sitting and it didn’t feel quite right, but when he stood, his voice gained a centered, powerful resonance that really hit the mark.
Sakamoto’s handwritten reflections contemplate the nature of music — music that is left behind, music that endures, music that is not preserved, and music that simply fades away.
Omori: Min Tanaka and I are nearly fifty years apart in age, but whenever something didn’t feel quite right, I made sure to voice it. In those moments, both Tanaka and the other staff could sense it wasn’t working, and conversely, when it did work, there was a unanimous feeling of “this is it!” Recording under that kind of shared understanding was an incredibly valuable experience.
During production, did Tanaka ever speak personally about Sakamoto?
Omori: In our meetings, he did comment that “these are wonderful journals.” According to what he told me, when he spoke with Sakamoto in life, their conversations rarely touched small talk. Instead, they often tackled grand topics like humanity and war. The discussions were straightforward, without detours, and I think there was a resonance between them in terms of their ways of living and their characters.
