All those years in Japan when Christmas came around, I would sometimes hear on TV or in the stores, this haunting simple melody coming through the speakers. Didn't know who made it or what the title was, but it was always there. It would be years before I found out that it was the theme song for the David Bowie/Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一) 1983 movie "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence". I had known about the movie mostly for the star casting of the two pop stars but never was all that intrigued about catching it.
I'm not sure whether Sakamoto had ever meant this lovely little piece to be played around the Yuletide, but it's up there with "Christmas Eve" by Tatsuro Yamashita and "Christmas Carol no Koro ni wa" by Junichi Inagaki. Probably a lot of folks back in Japan feel that it is a setsunai song....rather wistful...meant to have people calm down and reflect instead of jump around in the usual seasonal jollity.
The above video contains the original arrangement of the theme from the movie. The soundtrack album came out in May 1983 where it peaked at No. 8 on Oricon. Not surprisingly, the song was once voted on an NHK music program as Sakamoto's No. 1 composition among his Top 10.
David Sylvian provided lyrics to the song under the title "Forbidden Colours" in the same year with Sakamoto providing the arrangement and keyboards. Sylvian's version peaked at No. 16 on the UK charts. Over the years, a number of artists have done their own covers of the song, including Hikaru Utada（宇多田ひかる)for her album "This is the One" (2009).
P.S. January 15 2013: Just wanted to let everyone know that the director behind "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", Nagisa Oshima,（大島渚）passed away today from pneumonia at the age of 80.
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