Echoes of Creation: Sakamoto, Toriyama, and the Struggle for Art

I'm thrilled that the manuscript for the third installment of my four-part series on Ryuichi Sakamoto's film music has been approved. I take great pride in my insightful analysis of the music for the scene where Puyi, having gained confidence from his successful visit to Tokyo, returns to the Manchurian palace.

Additionally, I have brilliantly unraveled a section of the main theme where the composer provides a seemingly convincing explanation of the music, yet is actually completely mistaken, Watson!

Since handwritten text and symbols are generally not allowed in explanatory diagrams, I use the drawing functions of MuseScore 4 (a free music sequencer) and PowerPoint (a built-in presentation software in Windows 11). To create explanatory videos, I also used the free version of ApowerREC, a screen recording app. Figuring out small technical tricks—such as changing font colors, making staves, time signatures, and key signatures invisible while keeping only the notes visible—was quite mentally exhausting.

The thought of eventually having to master a video editing software (preferably a free one) makes me feel dizzy. Speaking of which, I tried several apps for vertical roll playback on a piano keyboard, but Synthesia’s free version only allows 10 seconds of MIDI playback, and MIDITrial isn’t clear on whether it supports zooming in on the keyboard—making both of them not very useful. It looks like I’ll have to come up with more creative workarounds on my own when creating piano roll playback videos.

Akira Toriyama’s first death anniversary is coming up on March 1. Before his weekly serialization debut, he must have gone through a similar process of trial and error, enduring countless struggles. According to his editor at the time, before he finally secured a serialization, he had drawn approximately 500 pages of manga manuscripts over the course of a year—only to have them all rejected. Oh, gods, grant me even the smallest fraction of his unwavering optimism and the genius expressiveness that endeared him to so many.

(On a side note, I actually biked to his home studio last year. There’s a castle tower nearby—it used to be the residence of the warlord ODA Nobunaga. Although it was demolished long ago, a reconstructed version now stands in its place.)