On March 11, 2011, an underwater earthquake later known as the Great East Japan Earthquake struck Japan. The disaster was the strongest earthquake in the recorded history of Japan and lasted six minutes. Approximately 122,000 buildings were completely destroyed. Approximately 20,000 people were killed. Of these, a majority drowned due to the waves of the created tsunami. 

Personally moved by the devastation of the earthquake, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto began the “School Music Revival Fund,” to raise money for repairing instruments and reviving music programs in the impacted schools. He later began the Tohoku Youth Orchestra for the students of these schools. During his work to restore the music of the devastated areas, he came across a school building that was condemned.

In the aftermath lay the “tsunami piano” which had been played throughout the years for school events and ceremonies. Now, it would be among many instruments destined to be removed and thrown away.

“It didn’t sound like a piano could sound, or respond as it should. I thought it was unusable. It was like a dead piano, the drowned corpse of a piano.” – Ryuichi Sakamoto 

Sakamoto was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. The album async emerged after this period of illness. While working on the album, Sakamoto’s reflection on illness and mortality caused a new profound interest in the drowned piano that had been discovered. As if seeing some part of himself in the piano, re-shaped, “re-tuned” by the wreckage of the tsunami, he began to find something beautiful about the way it sounded.

On async the sound of the “tsunami piano” can be heard alongside field recordings and electronic synthesizers, incorporating the seismic data into the restructuring of the piano, and the composition process. The album on its own is a uniquely beautiful and melancholic work, incorporating Sakamoto’s interest in the power both humanity and nature can pour into life and music, despite the tragedies of illness and natural disasters.

“The tsunami was nature crashing back in all of a sudden. That’s why, I’ve come to feel that the tsunami piano sounds wonderful. It was tuned by Mother Nature.” – Ryuichi Sakamoto

Want to read further? Check out: In the Aftermath: Reflections