[4] Mayuzumi was the first Japanese composer to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, for the 1966 film The Bible: In the Beginning....[2] He was the recipient of an Otaka prize by the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Purple Medal of Merit.

[6] Born in Yokohama, Mayuzumi was a student of Tomojirō Ikenouchi and Akira Ifukube at the Tokyo University of the Arts immediately following the Second World War, graduating in 1951.

He then went to Europe where he attended the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur de musique, studying with Aubin and becoming familiar with the new developments of Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez, as well as with the techniques of musique concrète[7] He was initially enthusiastic about avant-garde Western music, especially that of Varèse, but beginning in 1957 he turned to pan-Asianism.

As of 2025, he is one of only two Japanese-born composers to be nominated for a Best Original Score Oscar (the other was Ryuichi Sakamoto for The Last Emperor).

'Society for the Protection of Japan') to form the Nippon Kaigi, and was slated to become the organization's first leader, but passed away shortly before it was inaugurated.