One Summer’s Day

by Joe Hisaishi 1950-

Joe Hisaishi was born in Nakano, Nagano, Japan, as Mamoru Fujisawa. He started learning violin in the Violin School Suzuki Shinichi at the age of four, he found his passion in music. At the same age, he also began watching 300 movies a year with his father, which influenced his career.
He enjoyed his first success in 1974 when he composed music for the anime series called Gyatoruzu. This and other early works were created under his given name. During this period, he composed for Sasuga no Sarutobi (Academy of Ninja) and Futari Daki (A Full Throttle).
In the 1970s Hisaishi’s compositions were influenced by Japanese popular music, electronic music and new-age music as well as the Yellow Magic Orchestra (a Japanese electronic band in 1978–1983). He developed his music from minimalistic ideas and expanded toward orchestral work. Around 1975, Hisaishi presented his first public performance, around his community. Also, from 1978, he had worked for Brass Compositions for a long time. His first album, MKWAJU, was released in 1981, with Information being released a year later. His first major anime scores were Hajime Ningen Gyatoruz (1974) and Robokko Beeton (1976).
As his works were becoming well known, Hisaishi formulated an alias inspired by Quincy Jones, an American musician and producer. Re-transcribed in Japanese, “Quincy Jones” became “Joe Hisaishi”. (“Quincy”, pronounced “Kuinshī” in Japanese, can be written using the same kanji in “Hisaishi”; “Joe” comes from “Jones”.)
In 1998, Hisaishi provided the soundtrack to the 1998 Winter Paralympics. The following year, he composed the music for the third instalment in a series of popular computer-animated educational films about the human body. Again in 1999, he composed the score for the Takeshi Kitano film, Kikujiro whose title track Summer went on to become one of Hisaishi’s most recognizable compositions.
In 2001, Hisaishi produced music for another Kitano film, Brother, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film, Spirited Away. The opening theme to this film, One Summer’s Day, went on to become Hisaishi’s most famous composition, with over 16 million Spotify streams as of September 2021.