Akira Ifukube
One of the most respected of serious composers in Japan since the 1950s, Akira Ifukbe has also led something of a double life as one of the most popular and prolific film composers in Japan since the late '40s. He was born in Kushiro on the island of Hokkaido in 1914, which was one of the homes of the aboriginal Ainu. As a boy, Ifukube listened to their music, which greatly influenced his own musical creativity. Ifukube was a self-taught violinist and earned prizes for his early compositional efforts. He majored in music and forestry, and the latter provided him with his living until just after World War II, when he began teaching music as a professor at Tokyo Art University, and started writing film scores, principally at Toho Studios. His movie scores quickly distinguished themselves for their inventiveness and richness, incorporating Eastern and Western elements.
In 1954, Ifukube was assigned to score the Toho film Gojira, directed by Ishiro Honda, which provided him with a unique canvas on which to work. A science fiction film shot in a neo-realist style and inspired by a tragic incident involving Japanese fishermen whose boat was contaminated by fallout from an American H-bomb test, Gojira became a vehicle for some of the most expressive orchestral music of Ifukube's career. His also became the Japanese film music most widely heard in the West, when the movie was recut, partly dubbed, and released in America as Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Everything about the score -- the ethnic music associated with the Odo islanders, the grim march associated with the defense of Tokyo, the martial fanfare depicting the dispatch of the research ship, the ominous theme associated with Godzilla's attack on Tokyo, and the funereal chorale led by the bass strings, associated with the sacrifice of Dr. Serizawa -- was memorable.
Ifukube went on to write more than 250 film scores in a career lasting 50 years, including some of the most respected movies ever made in Japan, among them Harp of Burma (aka The Burmese Harp), for which he would appropriate the funereal music from his Gojira score and expand on its thematic material. But it was his Godzilla music, not just for the initial feature but for the best of the numerous sequels and offshoot films that followed, that would make Ifukube a popular culture icon. He would write many additions to and variations on his work in the original movie, and achieved a unique pop-classical career summit in the mid-'80s with Godzilla's Symphonic Fantasia, a feature-length video montage, drawn from all of Toho Films' horror/science fiction releases over the preceding 31 years, broken down into thematic sections totalling nearly two hours and scored to Ifukube's newly reorchestrated and recomposed themes from those movies, transformed into a four-movement symphonic work. He retired in the 1990s, but returned to Toho one last time to write the music for what was then proposed to be the studio's final Godzilla/Gojira movie, Godzilla vs. Destroyer, for which he reprised his 1954 work once more in a film with a direct link to the original movie. Ifukube remains a uniquely revered figure in Japanese music, among the nation's most respected and widely recorded (and performed) composers for the concert hall, and also the country's most well-known and widely recorded (and re-recorded) film composer. The only comparable figures in depth, breadth, and recognition in Western music would be Miklos Rozsa, Aaron Copland, or Bernard Herrmann, each of whom to some extent straddled the classical and film worlds on a somewhat limited basis, and John Williams, who achieved stardom (even super-stardom of a kind) as a film composer, although Ifukube's success in Japan rather transcends all of their successes.
© Bruce Eder /TiVo
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Discography
12 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Kaiju Crescendo: An Evening of Japanese Monster Music
Klassiek - Released by Supertrain Records on 18 mrt. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Akira Kurosawa Early Soundtracks
Tadashi Hattori, Fumio Hayasaka, Akira Ifukube, Seiichi Suzuki
Pop - Released by Screen Classics on 22 sep. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Apparitions for Percussion
Klassiek - Released by Soundset on 1 jan. 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Godzilla (Main Theme)
Pop - Released by JB Production CH on 31 dec. 1954
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Battle in Outer Space (Complete Original Soundtrack [2009 Remaster])
Pop - Released by Cosmica on 26 apr. 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Atragon - Complete Original Soundtrack
Pop - Released by Cosmica on 19 apr. 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
King Kong vs. Godzilla (Original Soundtrack Theme)
Originele soundtracks - Released by JB Production on 24 sep. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
L'Arpa Birmana (Original Soundtrack From "Harp Of Burman" 1956)
Originele soundtracks - Released by JB Production on 29 mei 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Three Treasures Medley: Main Title / The Birth of Japan / 8 Large Islands / Yamato People Each / Large Life / Ousu Life / Emperor Jin Ban Hiroshi Line / Zeng Bear Expedition / Kick-Off of Life Ousu / Ise / Uda Songs / Orange Princess Brother / Prayer (From "The Three Treasures" Original Soundtrack)
Originele soundtracks - Released by JB Production on 26 sep. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Plan to Transport King Kong (Theme from "King Kong vs. Godzilla")
Originele soundtracks - Released by JB Production on 26 sep. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Three Treasures Medley: Main Title / The Birth of Japan / 8 Large Islands / Yamato People Each / Large Life / Ousu Life / Emperor Jin Ban Hiroshi Line / Zeng Bear Expedition / Kick-Off of Life Ousu / Ise / Uda Songs / Orange Princess Brother / Prayer (From "The Three Treasures" Original Soundtrack)
Pop - Released by JB Production on 26 sep. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo