Oto, chinmoku to hakariaeru hodo ni [Le Son, aussi intense que le silence]

Oto, chinmoku to hakariaeru hodo ni (Confronting Sound and Silence), released in 1971, is the first work by Toru Takemitsu confided to the Tokyo publishing house of Shinchosha. It was the writer Kenzaburo Oe who suggested its publication to an editor at Shinchosha, which subsequently became the composer’s primary publisher, publishing seven other works not counting the anthology Chosakushu (Writings, 2000).

Prefaced by Oe and the poet Shuzo Takiguchi, this volume brings together essays and interviews realised over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s in magazines, journals, and liner notes. The work is divided globally into five parts, thematic in organisation, and finishes with a chronological biography of Takemitsu by the music critic Kuniharu Akiyama. Various types of images, including sketches by the painter Keiji Usami, who also designed the cover, reproductions of works by Jasper Johns, and scores (ordinary and graphic) by Takemitsu, are inserted either between the essays or in the body of the text.

Wataru MIYAKAWA

15/03/2021

Trans. Tadhg Sauvey