Biography
Akira Ifukube (伊福部 昭, 1914 – 2006) was a Japanese composer of classical and film music.He was born on May 31, 1914 in Kushiro, Japan, the third son of a policeman. He was strongly influenced by Ainu music as he spent his childhood (from 9 to 12 years old) in Otofuke near Obihiro, where he lived with a mixed population of Ainu and Japanese. He decided to become a composer at the age of 14 after hearing Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring".
He studied forestry at the Hokkaido Imperial University in Sapporo and composed in his spare time; his first piece was the Piano Suite (later titled Japan Suite, arranged for orchestra). In 1935, his first orchestral piece "Japanese Rhapsody" won first prize in an international competition for young composers and was performed in Europe on several occasions during the late 1930s.
After graduating from University, he worked as a forestry officer at Akkeshi, and towards the end of World War II he was assigned by the Imperial Japanese Army to study the elasticity and vibrational strength of wood. He was exposed to radiation from unprotected X-rays and spent some time in hospital. After that he gave up forestry to devote himself to composition.
In 1947, he released his first composition for film, and over the next fifty years he would compose more than 250 scores for films. The highlight of his film music career was the music for the film "Godzilla" in 1954.
He died in Tokyo on February 8, 2006.