Akira Ifukube's Chart

Japanese composer of classical music and film scores, perhaps best known for his work on the soundtracks of the Godzilla movies by Toho. Much of his childhood was spent in areas with a mixed Japanese and Ainu population, and Ifukube was strongly influenced by the traditional music of both peoples, and studied the violin and the shamisen. His first encounter with classical music occurred when attending secondary school in Hokkaidō's capital, Sapporo. His first piece was the piano solo, Piano Suite (later the title was changed to Japan Suite, arranged for orchestra). Ifukube's big break came in 1935, when his first orchestral piece, Japanese Rhapsody, won the first prize in an international contest for young composers. In 1938 his Piano Suite obtained an honourable mention at the I.C.S.M. festival in Venice. In the late 1930s his music, especially Japanese Rhapsody, was performed in Europe on a number of occasions. He composed his first film score for The End of the Silver Mountains, released in 1947. Over the next fifty years, he would compose more than 250 film scores, the high point of which was his 1954 music for Ishirō Honda's Toho movie, Godzilla. Ifukube also created Godzilla's trademark roar – produced by rubbing a resin-covered leather glove along the loosened strings of a double bass – and its footsteps, created by striking an amplifier box. He died in Tokyo of multiple organ dysfunction on February 8, 2006 at the age of 91.