Tokyo
1980–1990·Tokyo, Japan
The kankyō ongaku (environmental music) movement — a uniquely Japanese answer to Brian Eno's ambient thesis, rooted in space, architecture, and corporate patronage. Centered around Satoshi Ashikawa's Art Vivant record shop and his Wave Notation series on Sound Process. Composers created music for prefab homes, department stores, cosmetics companies, and museum lobbies. Ashikawa's death in 1983 at age 30 decapitated the scene's organizational center, but the music kept coming. Rediscovered globally in the late 2010s through Light in the Attic's archival work.
