In the final stages of World War II, a 14-year-old conscript named Toru Takemitsu huddled with friends around a gramophone, playing a forbidden French pop record with a needle carved from bamboo because metal was gone. This episode follows him from that moment through tuberculosis, the U.S. Armed Forces radio that became his lifeline, and a self-taught path to becoming one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.

The conversation explores why he rejected Japanese traditional music for years after it was co-opted by wartime nationalism, the experimental workshop where he manipulated tape independently of Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète, and the 1958 broadcasting mistake that put his Requiem for String Orchestra in front of Igor Stravinsky. It also covers how John Cage led him back to his own heritage, the concept of ma, the clash of biwa and shakuhachi with orchestra in November Steps, his S-E-A motif and sea of tonality, his devotion to Debussy and Messiaen, and the silence he wrote into Kurosawa’s Ran.

• Approaching sound as physical material rather than textbook chord progressions
• Chopping the echo off a dripping faucet to turn water into a percussive hit
• Ma explained: the tense, weighted silence between sounds as part of the music itself
• Refusing to make the biwa play Western scales in 4/4 and letting two musical languages coexist
• A three-hour private performance of Quartet for the End of Time from Messiaen in 1975