Japanese Beethoven Descends

A fifty-old Japanese man well-known as a “deaf composer,” Mamoru Samuragochi, is now in the middle of scandal that he did not actually created his music. His ghostwriter revealed a possibility that Samuragochi might have even not been deaf. A number of fake works have already been played in various opportunities, including international event, TV shows and classic concerts. While the people around him have been apologizing, Samuragochi keeps on silent.

Introduced as a man unable to hear any sound, Samuragochi has been dubbed as Japanese Beethoven, who kept on producing music after losing sound. As the second generation of hibakusha in Hiroshima, he delivered music called “Symphony #1, Hiroshima” and other works for handicapped people or sufferers of the great earthquake. A high school brass band won a grand prix in the national high school competition by playing a tune gifted by Samuragochi. Media applauded him to be a hope for everyone.

The story proved to be an empty myth, when a music college instructor, Takashi Niigaki, revealed that he was the ghostwriter of Samuragochi. Both of them met each other to produce music for a movie eighteen years ago, and Niigaki kept on composing music for Samuragochi along with his concept and image. He received reward worth ¥7 million for over twenty works in these twenty years. After realizing that a figure skater, Daisuke Takahashi, was going to use Samuragochi’s music for his performance in Sochi Olympic, Niigaki thought that he needed to tell the truth.

The news surprised all over Japan. City of Hiroshima deprived him of Hiroshima Citizen Award. City of Motomiya, Fukushima, decided not to use new song for the city with music by Samuragochi in the event of the third anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident of First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. TV stations and newspapers that reported his “amazing” stories apologized not being able to detect those fakes.

Who was wrong, anyway? Firstly, it was Samuragochi who lied about his “works.” However, there was commercialism behind the big sales of his music, which pushed him to keep on lying. Mass media added human stories in his activities as a deaf musician. Niigaki was happy about his originated music accepted by the public. Most people in Japan inevitably moved by the story, not exactly by the tune. Ghostwriters are everywhere in the world of art, including literature, paintings, or documentary films. It must be a good lesson for the Japanese who tend to be easily deceived.