Tokyo Melody: A Film about Ryuichi Sakamoto

Shot in Tokyo and directed by Elizabeth Lennard, the film uses a "hands-off" nonlinear structure in which interviews with musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, concert footage of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and scenes of Sakamoto recording his 1984 studio album Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia [ja] are combined with stylized or naturalistic shots of traditional festivals, street dancers, the urban built environment, and city life in 1980s Tokyo.

"[1] The documentary opens with a shot of Sakamoto playing with an toy space gun in the park, reacting to the electronic sounds it makes, as a voiceover of his own voice quotes Debussy.

As the diagetic music of Sakamoto recording in the studio plays in the background, the camera cuts to blue-tinted footage of danchi apartment buildings, including shots of the tall central cavities equipped with nets to prevent fatal drops.

Gengo Hara (Beat Takeshi), so drunk he claims he's Santa Claus, absolves prisoners Lt. Col. John Lawrence (Tom Conti) and Maj. Jack "Strafer" Celliers (David Bowie) of a death sentence.

Sakamoto demonstrates the use of a Fairlight CMI digital synthesizer loaded with floppy "memory discs" to create samples and loops which can also be rendered visually on a monitor.

The camera cuts to short sequences of Japanese street festivals and groups of celebrants carrying an omikoshi, which segues to concert footage of YMO playing the song "Tong Poo" on stage.

The live footage is interleaved with a scene filmed by Lennard in which Sakamoto and then-wife Akiko Yano play a duet of "Tong Poo" on their grand piano at home.