Japanese composer and vibraphone artist Masayoshi Fujita has been quietly and diligently making soulful, breathtaking music for well over a decade and a half. The contemplative artist, now living in a peaceful rural village in Japan, returns this winter with his brand new album Tranquility.
He talks to us about his early days learning music, composing for the Expo in Osaka in 2025, and how he’ll bring the great expanse of nature and existence to our playlists.
Congratulations on the upcoming album! For every artist, for every musician, it must be just a relief to get the project out.
But aside from those initial feelings, what are you most excited for when it comes to audiences listening to this body of work for the first time?
Masayoshi Fujita: This was made for the Expo Osaka last year, so I finished this music last year but as we decided to make it an album, edited and made made it new. So it’s kind of also fresh for me to present it to people.
I’m simply very curious in how people receive it and what they feel about it.
As you mentioned, this album grew out of that commission for the Expo in Osaka.
What was your first thought when you were invited to create a soundtrack for a place filled with 1500 trees; how did you even approach that?
I could imagine that the Expo site would be really busy, with so many people and I could also imagine that this forest area could be a relaxing area for them. I wanted them to first relax and take a rest. But I also didn’t want the music to be just comfortable background music.
As you listen to it, there’s some edge or something that makes you like, “What is it?”, or you find something unusual or interesting in it. I didn’t want just pretty, nice, beautiful music, but something with a little bit of edge and something interesting.
It is an absolutely stunning piece. You use frog calls to represent rain, which, when you think about it, you don’t think should work, and it absolutely does.
How did you go out into the natural world and find the sounds that you knew could work for this music?
Actually, the frog part was added afterwards because for this specific project, they installed a system with a sensor that detected the weather conditions at the site. I was asked to compose a bass piece and three different layers on top to represent the weather of the day.
The sensor detected the weather conditions in real time, and they chose to fade those three layers in and out depending on the weather; so I was asked to add sunny, cloudy and rainy layers, so the music would change automatically in real time. The frog part came from the rainy layer. I had the music in three different layers, but to make this piece for the album, I edited those layers and mixed them.
The idea of the frog came from that aspect of the project. The sounds of the music somehow came naturally to me. From the beginning, I intended to make it as simple as possible and leave more space between the notes and sounds. I had an image of the music, and it came very naturally to me.
The marimba is such a beautiful instrument; it’s one of the great underrated percussion instruments.
You’re writing about these trees, many of which have lived for 70, 100 or 200 years, and it’s stunning how the marimba captures that essence, that timelessness of nature.
A lot of your work reflects nature and the atmosphere around you, and you use the marimba so deftly. Is that something you’ve always felt able to do, or have you honed it over time through your compositions?
The marimba joined my instruments quite recently. I’ve been playing the vibraphone for a long time, from the beginning: more than 20 years, I think.
The vibraphone has aluminium bars, whereas the marimba has wooden bars, like a xylophone. The marimba is quite new to me. I first started using it for the album Bird Ambience, which was released, I think, in 2021. It has quite a different sound palette compared with the vibraphone, but the way you play with mallets is similar, so it was very natural for me to integrate it into my set, and widen my sound palette hugely.
It has a really distinctive sound character and gives me fresh images. I always get inspired by the sound of an instrument – the vibraphone too – but the marimba gives me a totally different image. It’s funny to say, but I can hear what the instrument has to say. So maybe the marimba told me what to do with it!
This project, especially making sound for a forest, was very natural for me. I almost had to do the same thing I normally do, so it was easy in a way. I didn’t really have to think about it too much.
You mentioned your background in percussion. A lot of young people going into music take up the piano, violin or guitar, or a more flashy instrument.
What drew you to this side of percussion?
I also started music by playing drums. When I was small, I liked American rock bands. My father played the saxophone: he’s a big jazz fan. He occasionally played with his friends, so there were instruments around and for a small kid, it was easy to make sounds on the drums.
Also my older brother played bass, and my father played sax, so the drums were available. I think that’s why I started. Around the age of 20, or in my early twenties, I got more into electronic music and started wanting to make my own music. With only drums, that’s kind of tough so my father would play jazz records at home. Soo I knew the sound of the vibraphone, and I liked it. I was looking for someone who could play vibraphone with me, but nobody played it.
Then I met a jazz vibraphone player for the first time, and he told me he gave private lessons. So I took lessons from him and played the vibraphone myself for the first time and I was amazed by the sound, even though I couldn’t play anything on it because I only just played drums.
I didn’t know anything about theory, chords or harmony. I took lessons from him for two or three years, but I couldn’t really learn from him. Then I decided to change my instrument to the vibraphone and just played around with it, learning by doing, I taught myself. That’s how I came to play the vibraphone.
Do you have a favourite or is that a favourite instrument or is that like picking between your favourite children?
It’s difficult to say. In a way, it is my favourite instrument, I think, yes.
You talked about people coming into the Expo space looking for rest, calm or a change of pace but in this modern world, a lot of people rush from place to place. When we go to exhibitions or expos, often we look for calm and a change of environment.
How conscious were you that you might be taking someone from an incredibly frantic state and completely changing their internal tempo through your work? Or did you let the project lead itself?
Yeah, I didn’t really think about making someone more relaxed or calming them down. I thought it would be quite natural. If you come into nature or a forest and then maybe sit down, you’ll most likely relax, I guess.
You’ve lived all over the world, and recently you’ve moved to this more remote mountain village. How do you feel that change in environment has changed your creative process?
It has kind of had an effect on me. I’m still thinking about it, but I moved here six years ago, and sometimes I find myself searching for sounds that make sense here in nature.
For instance, when I play urban-sounding music or make urban-sounding sounds in nature, with a view of the mountains and the forest, I feel a little weird sometimes, like maybe you’ve had the experience of going to a campsite or forest and suddenly realising you’re wearing very urban clothing that doesn’t fit with nature.
It’s a similar feeling. Some beats, noise or electronic sounds don’t really fit and feel weird, even though I liked them before. Somehow, they don’t make sense here. That’s the kind of feeling I have sometimes. When I make sounds here, I especially find myself resonating with the environment.
Do you feel it’s made you a better artist or composer, or is it just different?
I don’t know. I would say it’s made me more natural. Before, I can remember I could do many different things: experimental, noisy stuff, slightly classical things or relaxing ambient music. Now it feels more natural to make this kind of ambient or natural-sounding music.
In relation to nature, I want to talk about “Portal to the Universe”, which opens the album. I have a note that it was originally imagined as the last song of the day. I love that idea. It made me think about how we look at time as a natural flow.
As humans, we tend to block off time and nature and try to categorise things. Your placement seemed to usher in the idea that all these things are interconnected.
Obviously, I’m imposing my own thoughts on your artistic vision, but what was your intention in doing that?
I think it was just my favourite song, and it also has a very good starting mood, an inviting vibe. The label founder and I had lots of discussions when we were making this music into an album, because it was originally made as a soundscape for the Expo. That listening environment is totally different from listening to an album, mostly alone; so we had to work out how to make it make sense as an album.
At first, it was a little difficult. I had the idea of putting the songs in the order of their time frames. Actually, the second single, “Forest of Tranquility”, was the first song of the day at the Expo. But we changed the order, and I named the songs. Before, I just called it with timestamps.
We struggled to find a way to make it work as an album. We tried many different song orders, and I came up with more imaginative ideas behind the songs. From the beginning, I could feel that this song was my favourite and would fit very well as the first song. It’s a very inviting song.
You’ve described the track as drifting through the vast universe and the sea of memory, and it absolutely does that brilliantly! What memories from your own life appear when you listen back to it? Or do you know too much about it for your own memories or images to come up?
I don’t really think of my own past memories through the music. We thought it would be a good idea to name the songs rather than just use timestamps, so I was trying to come up with names and images for them. Even though I made the songs, I listened back after a little while and got inspired by the music.
It was a funny, interesting experience to get inspired by your own song. Then I came up with this idea that I could feel the universe beyond nature, and also the image of a sea of memory also came through conversations with the label, I remember.
There are samples of people chatting or a baby crying in the distance, and these sounds gave me the image of a universe filled with memories. It’s a kind of fantasy, but I had this image and really liked it. It fitted the image of the song and the story behind it. I like it very much, and I liked the way I got inspired by my own music. It was quite new for me.
You’ve said you wanted plenty of space between the sounds on this record. How has your relationship with space and silence in sound changed over time?
I think the space between the notes is very important, as important as the notes themselves. For me, the tail of a sound is the most beautiful part.
Especially with the vibraphone, it rings for a long time and disappears. That tail is the most beautiful part, I think. To show it or listen to it, you need a quiet moment.
We often say “silence”, but especially in music, most of the time it’s not silence: it’s a quiet moment. We need that quieter moment to hear the tail of the sound properly. I like to have space or quieter moments, and I think those spaces make the music even stronger.
Absolutely. Over ten years ago, in SHAKE+ you were quoted as saying, “In each tree or lake, there’s a spirit inside.” You’ve put out ten years of work since then.
Which piece do you feel captures your own spirit best? Or perhaps a top three, if you like!
There’s a song called “Requiem”… It’s quite a sad song. Also, in a way, the new song from the album, “Portal to the Universe”, represents that.
So something modern, one of your current pieces?
It’s difficult to pick because these philosophies… they are based on Japanese Shinto, an animistic religion and we feel that everything has its own god or spirit in it.
We have to respect everything: stones, mountains: even a toilet has a spirit in it. So we have to appreciate and take care of things. That’s the kind of mentality or religion, so-called.
It’s not something we consciously believe; it’s just there in our daily lives, so it’s very natural. It’s hard for me to separate it from my music. I feel that all my music has its own spirit or life. There are some songs I’ve made with more intention. Sometimes I wanted to make a cool song with beats, noise or effects. But I would say the more acoustic or very simple songs are very close to those philosophies.
On this album, you bring together the Armenian duduk and the Japanese shō, working with Hayk Karoyi and Mattias Hållsten.
What did they bring to the music that expanded what you’d already done creatively?
I invited them because the Expo had only one or two requests for the music. One was to give it an international, multicultural and festival feel. When I thought about internationality, I came up with the idea of inviting them.
Hayk is an Armenian musician who plays a really beautiful Armenian flute. Mattias is Swedish, but he plays a very traditional and quite unique Japanese instrument called the shō. I quite like this mixture of cultures and nationalities.
I thought it would be a very good fit for music made for a Japanese Expo, and it also gives the music a different texture. The shō kind of gives these long calls. In traditional Japanese music, it’s mostly used for ceremonies, and it gives you a spiritual feeling.
Hayk’s flute also gives the music a totally different texture. The vibraphone is a percussion instrument: it’s hit or played with a bow. He makes sound with his breath, so it’s a totally different sound source, which gives it a rich texture. So I could easily imagine that, and I really loved his way of playing the flute. It’s a very simple structure of musicians, but it gives a really wide range of sound while it maintains the space in between. It came very naturally to me, yes.
You’ll be bringing your music to Wonderfruit in Thailand. How do you adapt or change these pieces when they’re played live? How much do you tweak or modify when something is performed live?
The process of composing this music was half improvised, or mostly improvised, and I asked them [Hayk and Mattias] to play on it. I’m not going to recreate the songs in the live performance. I’ll prepare a basic carpet of music and play over it.
At Wonderfruit, I’ll be playing on the forest stage in the night, so I’m expecting to hear the sounds of maybe some song of insects? I don’t know, but I’m excited.
Wow! So you really play off the environment. You almost like the unpredictability it gives you, and you can work your performance with that?
Yes, yes, yes! I also get ideas from the sounds I’m making. I’ll improvise with the environment, and I’m really looking forward to it. I think it’s a perfect occasion to perform this live, I think.
With that in mind, do you have a preference between performing live and crafting a piece in the studio, recording that finite version? Is there one you prefer?
No, I love both! I grew up as a band kid, and now playing live has always been one of the most exciting parts and I still love performing live.
I also love creating music in the studio, taking time, really going deep into the music and my thoughts, looking for an image or getting inspired by the sounds of instruments.
The feeling of time and the creative process are totally different in a live performance and in the studio. In the studio, you can take hours or days to find one sound. but in a live performance, you have just a moment to react or come up with an idea. So they’re two totally different things, and I love both.
Forest of Tranquility is out on the 13th of November.