
Died at 112
male
Akira Ifukube (伊福部 昭 Ifukube Akira, 31 May 1914 – 8 February 2006) was a Japanese composer, best known for his works on the film scores of the Godzilla movies since 1954. Akira Ifukube was born on 31 May 1914 in Kushiro, Japan as the third son of a police officer Toshimitsu Ifukube, also the origins of this family can be traced back to at least the 7th century with the birth of Ifukibe-no-Tokotarihime. He was strongly influenced by the Ainu music as he spent his childhood (from age of 9 to 12) in Otofuke near Obihiro, where was with a mixed population of Ainu and Japanese. His first encounter with classical music occurred when attending secondary school in Sapporo city. Ifukube decided to become a composer at the age of 14 after hearing a radio performance of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, also cited the music of Manuel de Falla as a major influence. Ifukube studied forestry at Hokkaido Imperial University in Sapporo and composed in his spare time, which prefigured a line of self-taught Japanese composers. He taught at the Tokyo University of the Arts (formerly Tokyo Music School), during which period he composed his first film score for The End of the Silver Mountains, released in 1947. Over the next fifty years, he would compose more than 250 film scores, the high point of which was his 1954 music for Ishirō Honda's Toho movie, Godzilla. Description above from the Wikipedia article Akira Ifukube , licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Akira Ifukube

Original Godzilla Theme Music by
for Original Godzilla Theme Music by in Godzilla Reborn
Suggested by alecgroskreutz1

Godzilla Reborn, an American-made sequel to Godzilla 2000: Millennium, was briefly considered to be made with man-in-suit effects, a lower budget for Hollywood standards, and some of Toho's special effects workers. Godzilla Reborn was conceived by Michael Schlesinger, who also wrote the American version of Godzilla 2000. According to Schlesinger in an interview conducted by SciFi Japan, the proposed film started out as a joke between him and Jon Davison, whom he was friends with. He came across Davison on a lot and they briefly talk about the American version of Godzilla 2000 being liked by Toho. Schlesinger says "Yeah, and if this company [Sony] is smart, they’ll get you, me and Joe [Dante] to do the next American one." and they parted ways. Later on, he thought about it and realized it made sense and called Joe and Jon, asking them if they would like to work on a sequel and they agreed.