You played keys for a funk band called Tetsu100% while at university, right?

Yeah, but we were never able to create an authentic black groove. Because Japanese people respect the music so thoroughly, they usually overdo it and it comes out deformed kind of. I still think when it comes to the beat, I’ve only reached the entrance. When I went to Brazil and heard samba and bossa nova, I thought, “Wow, this beat is yet another language!” People in South America are so in tune with the rhythm that it can make them cry. I have never been able to get that far or I haven’t arrived at the “truth” that is within the beat yet, so I feel I can still dig deeper.

As far as directors go, Yoshiyuki Tomino from Gundam is one who has his own unique philosophy. How was it working with him?

I wondered how I was to bring music to a person like Tomino-san, who exudes this atmosphere of difficult vocabulary being shot up in the air like clouds of flak composed of logic. Music is a right brain creation, so when it’s overloaded with words coming from the left brain, it’s hard to stay creative in a sense. It was difficult to transmit my thoughts through language to him, so I felt that talking to him stifled my creativity. It took me about half a year until I understood this. But after that I just tried to blow up all the jargon that was crippling me creatively.

This resulted in the creation of music which deeply moved Tomino-san.

I just wanted to give Tomino-san “real” music. After half a year of going back and forth with him, I simply decided that what he was telling me was “Just give me the ‘real.’” I believe there is a big difference between Japanese anime music and Hollywood film music. Hollywood needs its music to be background music which assists in the climax, but anime music is required to become a part of the film – and add to the emotions of the scene and the characters. Whether it’s climactic or not is simply a byproduct and not the goal.

Do you like talking with directors and producers?

I do, because most of them aren’t easy to deal with or understand. [laughs] It’s invigorating. We just touched on Hollywood but Japanese anime is really not vast and parliamentary like Hollywood films. There are a small number of people with exceptional talent that carry the whole piece, and I think that’s what makes Japanese anime so great. “As a result of our council meetings, we have come up with a piece that’s positively above average.” These types of projects rarely interest me. It may not be democratic but I’d much rather be asked to provide music for crazy people who come up with crazy projects. Works which express taboos within the human psyche outright, or works which express thoughts and habits of the producer. I think these are characteristic of Japanese anime.

Kenji Kamiyama was still a relative newcomer for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. How do you recall your involvement in this project?

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was a follow up series of sorts to the movie that came before it (Ghost in the Shell), so it’s really difficult to join these projects that have become very famous midstream. It’s like you’re also responsible for upholding the notoriety of the previous piece. That’s why I don’t like joining projects part way. But after meeting Kamiyama-san, he was a person who didn’t let up but was also a soft sort of flexible person. Kamiyama-san is also a literary person, so I would go to a Ghost meeting and he starts talking about Catcher in the Rye. It was episodes like this that made me feel I could go the distance. Apart from that, I’m really bad with mechanical stuff so much of the things discussed at Ghost meetings would go in one ear and out the other. [laughs] But I understand Salinger, so this was one of the turning points.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex saw you use even more techno, house, and drum & bass elements in comparison to your previous works. What was the concept behind its composition?

As I recall, I had an underlying theme which I devised myself which was to “be human.” There was a song with that name as well, but generally for a working person “be human” means to want to be more human. To a robot, it means to want to be a human. In an age where machines are able to think for themselves… Today there are entities like Hatsune Miku, but at the time I was thinking, “How far does a machine have to go in order for it to become a human?”

Motoko Kusanagi [one of the characters] is a female cyborg which presents the philosophical question, “Is she a human or a robot?” So the music for that project is generally melancholy, because she can’t become ever become purely human again. I was thinking of her and the cute multi-legged tank, Tachikoma, when I was creating the music. “Be Human” was a theme that basically sought to express identity.

I felt a lot of love for Tachikoma in the music as well.

Yeah. [laughs] I think problems like this will start occurring in the near future. The problem of identity and the interaction with robots and androids. Back then it was really just sci-fi.

With projects spanning anime, film, and advertisements, I expect in your work there are limitations with the deadline and theme among other things, how do you see these limitations and how do you deal with them?

I welcome limitations. I have very few boundaries regarding the world outside, so without these limitations I feel like I might just melt. [laughs] I absorb things just as quickly as they leave, so it’s comforting sometimes to know I have parameters. That’s why I love making music for advertisements. I’m more at home when I’m given a sandbox to play in. It doesn’t matter if the sandbox is big or small, I just need some sort of form or else I just drown in my own thoughts and it doesn’t amount to anything tangible. Limitations help me a lot actually.

Your work has created a network of Yoko Kanno fans worldwide, however you have never really released an album that bears your name outright. Why is that?

I really don’t know what to say… I had never really thought of something being distinctly my own, just that I have been fortunate enough to be involved in projects which help to give me that distinction. As for an album bearing my name, well, it just seems a little too conceited for me.

So you’ve been the producer for Maaya Sakamoto since her debut. Was this possible also because she was a “vessel”?

Probably. Recently, for about the last three months or so, I’ve really like Beyoncé for some reason. A couple years ago she released an album under the name Sasha Fierce, which made me think about why a person so talented would want to give herself a different name. I came to a conclusion that even a person as talented as her needed a different container, and felt a little sympathetic towards her. Even if an artist were to present themselves as who they are with great skill, there seems to be “something” which can be only expressed through a different personality. I guess it’s hard to view yourself objectively.

So as an entity, “Yoko Kanno” exists as a denizen of many different works and artists throughout the world in a way.

That’s why I’m always interested in which “me” my clients have brought a proposal for. I deal with many clients, some of whom know me through my film work, but don’t know of my anime work. Or vice versa. For example, I did music for the NHK television novel Gochisosan and there are people who think that is all I have done like, “Oh, Ms. Kanno I was not aware you did work for anime.” [laughs] Depending on which door a person came through to reach me determines how differently they view me and my music.

Recently there are probably people who have reached you through your theme song, “Hana Wa Saku,” for the NHK Disaster Relief Project.

Yes, the elderly seem to know me from that.

It has become a staple for middle school and high school choruses and is cited in textbooks for music classes. There may be many people that singing the song that don’t know that you composed it.

That is something I’m really happy about, because people approach it as a song that’s existed for a long time. Sometimes I’ll pass by a school that’s practicing the song or I’ll overhear old ladies saying how the song is hard to sing. [laughs] It’s a first time experience for me, and the fact that the song is loved for being a song is a testament to the benefits of being a musician.

When I wrote the song I was filled with anger, sadness, and despair towards the disaster and there were many artists that expressed those feelings through music. I, for one, really didn’t want to hear how people felt besides the people who were directly affected. The people who were directly affected were still in no position to express their feelings through song at the time. I didn’t understand how what a person who was not affected felt would do for the situation. I was really on the fence as to whether I was going to participate or not.

I think Shunji Iwai who wrote the lyrics to the song felt the same way. So, instead of writing a “disaster” song, I decided I would like to write a song which would be loved like “Akatonbo” [a children’s song about a red dragonfly]. So I spent about a week trying to get myself to feel like a four year old before I wrote the song. I always keep the feelings I have in a freezer somewhere within in me, so if I ever feel like I want to write a song as if I was 14 year-old I could do that. But it was the first time I ever went as far back as being four years old. It wasn’t all pleasantries and nostalgia though, because it was a song for charity and I wanted everybody to be able to relate to it, so they would feel like they wanted to be a part of the charity. Overall I hope that it was a success in many ways.

I would like to ask about your most recent work for Terror in Resonance. The fact that it was recorded at Sigur Rós’s studio in Iceland became one of the points of interest. The music seemed to reflect the desolate landscape. How was Iceland in person?

I went in with the goal of putting myself in that desolate landscape, and it was very sparse indeed. There were no trees and there were people living in a place that was hardly hospitable. What I noticed when I talked to the locals was there were many visionaries. They survive long harsh winters indoors in their imaginations. I was left with the impression that they were people with much grit.

Grit, you say. [laughs]

Yes. For example people in tropical climates worry far less about nature killing them if they were to fall asleep outside. However in colder climates – if you were to fall asleep outside – you’d die. I think it takes a very hardy spirit to be able to live in such harsh environments. The fact that they possess a mind which enables them to survive long winters without ruin gave me the impression they were very poetic. They have very few people that live there, so musicians play in different bands, they have other jobs, and their equipment is old, even broken sometimes. It seemed like the music they made was the product of necessity and passion more than anything else.

There were of course very loving and beautiful tracks, but they all had an underlying sadness. There was also a track with very violent guitar, which left an impression.

As if I was viewing the world with a cold stare? [laughs] Being angry at a world you can do nothing about, but at the same time having to accept that fact… A feeling of resignation perhaps? Like digging up a place in between despair and resignation, uneasiness and hope... all mashed together. I guess that’s what it sounds like. I think many people in modern society live with emotions like that bottled up inside them. People can’t live like that with all those emotions pent up inside them. So they play video games or look up stuff on the web. I dug maybe ten centimeters under the surface of that facade to create this music. It was a big deal that I was able to feel the harshness of the Icelandic environment as I was recording the tracks.

I have a good understanding now that music isn’t simply created through imagination for you, but also due to actual experiences.

I think dealing with sound on a tactile and sensory level is very important. So what I want to do most is to take a trip to find the roots of rhythm. I really want to go to Africa, but it’s hard with the Ebola outbreak going on now. I’ve heard from many people that the roots of rhythm comes from Africa, so I want to go to the place where the animals that became human beings first banged on something to make a sound. If I go there I may be able to find the reason for why the sound was made in the first place, and what they wanted to express through that sound. Was it for dance? Or was it for something else? I want to know and feel these things. If I can, I feel I can find a new way to express rhythm and in turn create more new music. I want to feel the music live with my body – and not through a CD.

There are still many places I would like to go. I feel there are still many undiscovered beats and rhythms which will sway the hearts of people. I want to find those sounds and play them. Finding a rhythm that makes me or anybody else feel like it’s totally OK to be alive, finding that sound is probably what I would like to do from now on as a musician.