Born in 1952 in Tokyo, Ryuichi Sakamoto began playing the piano at six. He listened to Bach and Debussy—artists he called “the door to all 20th-century music”—and grew up in a creative household: his father, Kazuki, was a well-known literary editor; his mother, Keiko, designed women’s hats. As a teenager, Sakamoto fell in with a crowd of hipsters who introduced him to the worlds of jazz and rock and roll. In 1978, he formed his first band, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and released his first solo album. By 1981, he was collaborating with the Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew. Four years later, he scored a dance composition for the choreographer Molissa Fenley. His film scores have earned Oscars, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and two Golden Globes, and his albums topped the charts. This exhibition celebrates the man who some think the most important Japanese musician in history. Photographs, archival materials, and film are paired with music from Sakamoto’s final album, 12, released in 2023, the year he died. —Elena Clavarino