[3] He was also a founding member of the Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop) in Japan, a group of avant-garde artists who distanced themselves from academia and whose collaborative work is often regarded among the most influential of the 20th century.

[4][5] His 1957 Requiem for string orchestra attracted international attention, led to several commissions from across the world and established his reputation as the leading 20th-century Japanese composer.

[8] Takemitsu first became conscious of Western classical music during his term of military service, in the form of a popular French Song ("Parlez-moi d'amour") which he listened to with colleagues in secret, played on a gramophone with a makeshift needle fashioned from bamboo.

In the late 1950s chance brought Takemitsu international attention: his Requiem for string orchestra (1957), written as an homage to Hayasaka, was heard by Igor Stravinsky in 1958 during his visit to Japan.

[8] This was no easy task, since in the years following the war traditional music was largely overlooked and ignored: only one or two "masters" continued to keep their art alive, often meeting with public indifference.

[23] In his solo piano work For Away (written for Roger Woodward in 1973), a single, complex line is distributed between the pianist's hands, which reflects the interlocking patterns between the metallophones of a gamelan orchestra.

[25] By 1970, Takemitsu's reputation as a leading member of avant-garde community was well established, and during his involvement with Expo '70 in Osaka, he was at last able to meet more of his Western colleagues, including Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Also, during a contemporary music festival in April 1970, produced by the Japanese composer himself ("Iron and Steel Pavilion"), Takemitsu met among the participants Lukas Foss, Peter Sculthorpe, and Vinko Globokar.

[28] The former, Green (or November Steps II) written 10 years earlier, is heavily influenced by Debussy,[29][30] and is, in spite of its very dissonant language (including momentary quarter-tone clusters), largely constructed through a complex web of modal forms.

His friend and colleague Jō Kondō said, "If his later works sound different from earlier pieces, it is due to his gradual refining of his basic style rather than any real alteration of it.

[33] Takemitsu's words here highlight his changing stylistic trends from the late 1970s into the 1980s, which have been described as "an increased use of diatonic material [... with] references to tertian harmony and jazz voicing", which do not, however, project a sense of "large-scale tonality".

Takemitsu wrote in his notes for the score of Rain Coming that "... the complete collection [is] entitled "Waterscape" ... it was the composer's intention to create a series of works, which like their subject, pass through various metamorphoses, culminating in a sea of tonality.

"[35] Throughout these works, the S-E-A motive (discussed further below) features prominently, and points to an increased emphasis on the melodic element in Takemitsu's music that began during this later period.

His 1981 work for orchestra named Dreamtime was inspired by a visit to Groote Eylandt, off the coast of the Northern Territory of Australia, to witness a large gathering of Australian indigenous dancers, singers and story tellers.

In Dream/Window, (orchestra, 1985) a pedal D serves as anchor point, holding together statements of a striking four-note motivic gesture which recurs in various instrumental and rhythmic guises throughout.

Very occasionally, fully fledged references to diatonic tonality can be found, often in harmonic allusions to early- and pre-20th-century composers—for example, Folios for guitar (1974), which quotes from J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion, and Family Tree for narrator and orchestra (1984), which invokes the musical language of Maurice Ravel and American popular song.

"[38] Toward the end of his life, Takemitsu had planned to complete an opera, a collaboration with the novelist Barry Gifford and the director Daniel Schmid, commissioned by the Opéra National de Lyon in France.

[41] Composers whom Takemitsu cited as influential in his early work include Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, Edgard Varèse, Arnold Schoenberg, and Olivier Messiaen.

3), and its specific timbres, are clearly emulated in Takemitsu's writing for brass instruments; even similarities of performance practice can be seen, (the players are often required to hold notes to the limit of their breath capacity).

[63] Takemitsu responded to this with his homage to the French composer, Quatrain, for which he asked Messiaen's permission to use the same instrumental combination for the main quartet, cello, violin, clarinet and piano (which is accompanied by orchestra).

"[63] The composition Rain Tree Sketch II, which was to be Takemitsu's final piano piece, was also written that year and subtitled "In Memoriam Olivier Messiaen".

[65] As Arnold Whittall puts it: Given the enthusiasm for the exotic and the Orient in these [Debussy and Messiaen] and other French composers, it is understandable that Takemitsu should have been attracted to the expressive and formal qualities of music in which flexibility of rhythm and richness of harmony count for so much.

He was fully aware of Debussy's own interest in Japanese art, (the cover of the first edition of La mer, for example, was famously adorned by Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa).

For Oliver Knussen, "the final appearance of the main theme irresistibly prompts the thought that Takemitsu may, quite unconsciously, have been attempting a latter-day Japanese Après-midi d'un Faune".

[70] Details of orchestration in Green, such as the prominent use of antique cymbals, and tremolandi harmonies in the strings, clearly point to the influence of Takemitsu's compositional mentor, and of these works in particular.

[73] During Takemitsu's years as a member of the Jikken Kōbō, he experimented with compositions of musique concrète (and a very limited amount of electronic music, the most notable example being Stanza II for harp and tape written later in 1972).

[79] One notable consideration in Takemitsu's composition for film was his careful use of silence (also important in many of his concert works), which often immediately intensifies the events on screen, and prevents any monotony through a continuous musical accompaniment.

Woodward [83] recalled concerts with Takemitsu in Australia, the Decca Studios and Roundhouse, London and at the 1976 ' Music Today'  Festival, with Kinshi Tsuruta and Katsuya Yokoyama; Takemitu's dedication of  "For Away", "Corona" (London Version) and "Undisturbed Rest" and of the inspirational leadership he provided Woodward's generation: " From all composers with whom I ever worked it was Toru Takemitsu who understood the inner workings of music and sound on a level unmatched by anyone else.

Posthumously, Takemitsu received an Honorary Doctorate from Columbia University Archived 8 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine early in 1996 and was awarded the fourth Glenn Gould Prize in fall 1996.

The Toru Takemitsu Composition Award, intended to "encourage a younger generation of composers who will shape the coming age through their new musical works", is named after him.