RIP

I got this from the web site Henshin! Online: http://www.henshinonline.com/index.html

A FINAL OVATION FOR KUNIO MIYAUCHI-Famed ULTRAMAN Composer Passes AwayAuthor: August RagoneSource: Various Japanese News Services

© 2006 Tsuburaya Productions/Licensed by Tsuburaya-Chaiyo. Courtesy BCI Eclipse.

-->TOKYO - Famous film and television composer, Kunio Miyauchi passed away on November 27 at 4:13 pm at the Fuchu City Hospital as a result of Colon Cancer. Miyauchi had been living at his son Toshiro’s residence in Iwato-Minami, Komae City, Tokyo. Miyauchi was 74 years old. Born in the Matsubara section of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward on February 16, 1932, the youngest of five brothers, Miyauchi was surrounded by music as a child; his family was very keen on playing classical music, which filled their home. Since this was a normal part of his life, he took classical music for granted as he attended several prestigious schools such as the Nippon Gakuen. While attending middle-school, he and his brothers seemed to be more interested in Baseball than music. Even though Miyauchi's physical education instructor thought that he could make the pros, his parents decided to send him to music school. While attending Kunitachi Music Academy, the 16 year-old had an epiphany - not at school, but in a movie theater. During the U.S. Occupation of Japan, previously-banned American films were released in Japanese cinemas, and on one day in the Spring of 1947, Miyauchi and his friends went to see Irving Rapper's RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945), a biography of celebrated American composer George Gershwin. The young man was shocked by the film - or more appropriately - by Gershwin’s unforgettable music. These pieces struck a deep emotional cord within Miyauchi, so profoundly that it had instantaneously changed the course of his life.

As jazz started to gain popularity in Japan, Miyauchi took up the trumpet, and together with three of his fellow students, formed a band. Working slowly at first, they practiced in their spare time, until they were able to devote more time to this project. Around the age of 18, they found themselves playing dance halls and picking up regular gigs - and earning serious money for the time. But, then things suddenly changed for the young musician. Miyauchi had contracted tuberculosis, was forced to leave the band, and leave his school behind. While he was expected to recover in a year, his protracted battle with the disease lasted more than three years before he was strong enough to pursue a career in music. After he was back on his feet, he began working on arrangements under famed orchestra leader Tadashi Hattori. Before long, through his sister who worked at Aoyama Gakuin University, he was able to connect with composer Akira Ito of Nippon Broadcasting (later NHK), and secured a job arranging music for their radio shows. From there, Miyauchi joined Fuji Television, where he was making quite a name for himself composing theme songs and background music for the network’s melodramas. Even in the early phases of his new career, Miyauchi would employ electronics, experiment with sparse instrumentation, and combine disparate musical instruments, thereby gaining quite a reputation as composer on the cutting edge.

During this period, he was working on as many as seven different programs per week, and so film composer Ichiro Saito suggested that Miyauchi try his hand at working in the relatively slower-paced motion picture industry. Miyauchi’s feature film debut was for the Nobuo Aoyagi comedy LONG LIVE THE PARTY LEADER’S TERRIFYING WIFE (1960). His next feature film job at Toho was his atmospheric score for Ishiro Honda’s THE HUMAN VAPOR (1960), starring Tatsuya Mihashi and Kaoru Yachigusa. Then came Masuo Maeda’s AFTER THE KILLER (1962) for Nikkatsu, and back to Toho for another Aoyagi comedy, DURING A MEDICAL EXAMINATION (1964). Honda’s GODZILLA’S REVENGE (1969) was his last original film score. Unlike his contemporaries Akira Ifukube and Masaru Sato, Miyauchi was something of a musical chameleon - his score for THE HUMAN VAPOR sounds nothing like his score for GODZILLA’S REVENGE.

During the early 1960s, Eiji Tsuburaya’s son, television director Hajime Tsuburaya, thought that Miyauchi would be perfect to bring a new, contemporary sound to Tsuburaya Productions’ initial series, WOO. Even though this production was cancelled, and eventually transformed into ULTRA Q (1966), Hajime was still lobbying on the behalf of Miyauchi. Needless to say, Miyauchi got the job. His theme for ULTRA Q is perhaps the single most famous television theme song in Japanese history - akin to THE TWILIGHT ZONE theme in the U.S. - and his Ventures-inspired surf guitar piece helped to immortalize the hugely popular science fiction series. For his score, Miyauchi returned to atonal sparse instrumentation, utilized early synthesizers, and employed traditional Chinese instruments, creating a highly evocative and atmospheric score. For his next assignment, ULTRAMAN (1966-67), Miyauchi decided on a more action-oriented, jazz-influenced work, which drew heavily upon scores from American action films and the Italian new wave cinema, such as Alessandro Cicognini’s score for THE BICYCLE THIEF (1948). Another concept Miyauchi relied upon while scoring ULTRAMAN, was approaching the overall series with the sensibility of a Musical - sometimes scoring original pieces he felt were required for a particular story, and composing straight from the teleplays. Another important element of ULTRAMAN was the theme song, which is also equally an elemental part of modern Japanese pop culture, even forty years after it was written. In fact, the ULTRAMAN theme song was played as a wake up call for Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese astronaut to go into space in 1992.

Miyauchi also contributed theme songs for many television series, but did not compose the series’ music scores, including original theme songs for the Japanese versions of Hanna-Barbera’s THE HERCULOIDS (1967), THE FANTASTIC FOUR (1967), and P-Productions’ SPECTREMAN (1971-72). For the latter, he contributed four separate theme songs. Miyauchi enjoyed a long a prolific career in composing theme songs and background music for television, including Tsuburaya Productions series such as BOOSKA, THE FRIENDLY BEAST (1966-67), TRIPLE FIGHTER (1973) and DINOSAUR TASK FORCE: KOSEIDON (1979-80) - and his score for the animated series THE ULTRAMAN (1979-80) was recorded by the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. While Kunio Miyauchi has now departed this floating world, he has left behind a rich body of work that will be treasured by many generations to come - and he will live forever in the hearts of his fans around the world.