Watch Kraftwerk play Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’ at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival

Kraftwerk played a tribute to the late legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival this past weekend.

The iconic German group performed a rendition of ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’ during their headline set on Saturday, 27th July in Naeba. “The next composition is for my friend, Ryuichi Sakamoto”, they said to introduce the piece. “We are friends forever. Since our first Kraftwerk concert in Tokyo in 1981, and for the No Nukes festival in 2012. Sakamoto wrote new Japanese lyrics for me for ‘Radioactivity’, which we played that show.” They followed the cover with performances of ‘Geiger Counter’ and ‘Radioactivity’.

Sakamoto composed ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’ for the 1983 Nagisa Ōshima film with the same name starring David Bowie, Takeshi Kitano and Sakamoto himself. It was Sakamoto’s first film score. 

Sakamoto died at age 71 in 2023 after multiple battles with cancer. His final performance, titled Opus, was posthumously released as a film earlier this year, with the album version to come next month. 

Kraftwerk have been consistently touring since 2022 when their 3-D live show returned post-pandemic. They’ve since performed in Australia and New Zealand and held a career-spanning residency in Los Angeles in May. Cofounder Florian Schneider died in 2020 at age 73.

Watch a video of the Sakamoto tribute below.