Tōru Takemitsu’s music is a fascinating amalgam of eastern and western influences, and has the exquisite delicacy and subtle colorations of Japanese painting. Though born in Tokyo in 1930, Takemitsu spent his first seven years abroad in China, where his father worked. Conscription into the Japanese army, aged just 14, further disrupted Takemitsu’s formal education. But his unconventional childhood fostered an unusual independence of mind and spirit, and Takemitsu was largely self-taught in many areas, including music. Jazz and western classical music heard on US forces radio had a major impact on the young Takemitsu. Berg, Schoenberg and Webern were his early musical heroes, and their influence permeates the Requiem for string orchestra, a breakthrough work from 1957. The American composer John Cage was another key discovery, his Zen-inspired procedures igniting in Takemitsu an abiding interest in the music of his own native country. Although he composed prolifically in many genres, Takemitsu is best known for his orchestral pieces. These include the diaphanous Tori wa hoshigata no niwa ni oriru (A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden, 1977), the James Joyce-inspired Riverrun (1984), and the spectral percussion concerto From me flows what you call Time (1990). While Debussy and Messiaen were obvious points of reference, Takemitsu forged a luminescent, totally distinctive style of his own, and at his death in 1996 was widely viewed as Japan’s greatest living composer.