The music of Masayoshi Fujita and nature go hand-in-hand. After thirteen years of living in Berlin, the Japanese vibraphonist and marimba player returned to his home country in 2020 with his wife and three children, settling in the rural village of Kami-cho, Hyōgo, peacefully surrounded by forests, mountains and animals. There, Fujita fulfilled a lifelong dream of creating music immersed in the rhythms and emotions provided by the natural world. Out of this transition came Bird Ambience in 2021, followed by last year’s Migratory, a record built on the image of migratory birds drifting across continents, hearing music rise from the land beneath them without emphasizing borders, but rather blurring together cultural traditions and roots into a seamless, communal sound.
Before the opening show of his 2025 Migratory European tour in Porto, Fujita spoke with us about the constant presence of nature in his life and music, the meditative qualities of ambient music, the freewheeling spirit that animated the collaborations on Migratory, and the evolving relationship he has with his two main instruments, the vibraphone and marimba.
What are your earliest memories of being surrounded by nature? Was there a particular moment in your life when you first became aware of the importance and power of nature, especially as something deeply connected to your music and creativity?
In my music, there are always images of nature or animals, especially for my acoustic stuff. I was born and raised in a suburban town near Tokyo, and it's not very much surrounded by nature. I’ve been wondering where those images come from, but then one day, when I was already living in Berlin and I went back to Japan to visit my family, I saw everything: a black kite bird (we have them everywhere in Japan), a mountain in the distance from my hometown, along with some greenery and trees. My mother is from a part of the countryside in Japan that has more rocky mountains. It was then that I realized those images are coming from my childhood memories. Somehow, I was attracted subconsciously to those images and they came through my music.
Did those memories and images contribute to your desire to pursue music in your early 20s and see it as a creative path?
Yeah, not only in my early 20s, but all the time. Now I'm living surrounded by nature, so I have more vivid images right there in front of me. Maybe less from my childhood, but more from the current, present nature. I have more influence from that.
You just mentioned your time in Berlin. Having stayed there for 13 years and now living in Hyogo, how would you describe the different ways these environments have influenced your music?
I'm not 100% sure myself about how it has affected me, but I'm also curious about it and I'm trying to understand. Now I try to look for the sound that better resonates in this environment or my new environment [in Hyogo]. Sometimes, when I play club music with hard noise, it doesn't fit with nature. I like the kind of noisy, experimental music, and I used those distorted sounds in my past albums, but nowadays I don't really feel like doing it. It feels outstanding in a way, but it doesn't really sound natural to me. Maybe you’ve experienced that, but when you go out in nature and you suddenly realize that you're wearing shiny clothes and shoes, you get this weird feeling that it doesn't really fit [your surroundings].
Yes, that’s true. I see what you mean.
You don't really feel it when you’re in the city, but once you’re in nature, you realize you don’t fit in. I have that kind of feeling with music and sound too. So, when I make music now, I have a nice view from the windows and I always try to look for the elements which can sound the most natural and fit the environment I’m in.
How did you manage to make that process seem more natural for you after you moved to Japan, of being one with nature when creating music?
When I first moved to be closer to nature, I remember that I didn't want to compose music to or for nature. It has to come out of me naturally, and I thought it would take some time to get to that point. Little by little, I started living there and having a new life. I cut the grass, go to the mountains, cut trees for my wood stove, make firewood by myself or with my friends (we do a little bit of farming, gardening and fixing houses as well). I’ve also joined community events in my village to get to know the local old people, their history and culture. By doing that, I'm mentally transforming into a new person, I think. I'm not very sure how it affected my latest album, but there must be some effect or influence. I haven't thought about it very much yet [laughs]. But I can say this Migratory album became more ambient than my past works - more natural and organic in a way. Also, since I moved, I’m more inclined to think of us humans as a part of nature. I didn't really say or show it in the album, but I had this as a fundamental thought when I created the album.
Do you see ambient music as a vessel for meditation and attentive listening, or at least for reflecting the emotions that nature gives you? Does it play a role in how you listen to nature and your own instruments?
I think it's different when I listen to and when I make ambient music. When I listen to it, it’s like taking a bath, relaxing (not meditating) and dipping yourself in the music. Of course, there are many different types of ambient music. Some of them are more interesting, give you more images, but then I'm not really relaxing – I just get more focused and inspired. When I make it, I'm trying to recreate the feelings I have when I'm in nature.
Does your use of field recordings also contribute to capturing those feelings more naturally?
It's difficult to say, but when I use field recordings, I always get the sense I’m doing a collage, rather than making the listener feel nature. Somehow, I feel it makes sense to include the sounds of nature in the music itself, but at the same time, I don't want to use it as a backdrop. I want to use it as one factor in the art piece, which ends up giving it a different aspect.
I think the collaborations on Migratory also share that same quality. They all contribute to the art piece in different ways and tie up the album title very beautifully - the idea of music and nature as something migratory, that travels between different cultures, traditions and sounds. On that note, I want to know what draws you to certain collaborators, whether we’re talking about Moor Mother, Hatis Noit, Mattias Hållsten or even your father on saxophone, and how they help reinforce the songs themselves.
Those collaborations came through naturally, even if I didn't really intend to collaborate with people in the first place. Each one has different stories attached to it. With Mattias [Hållsten], the shō player, we met at the EMS, an institute in Stockholm. I was touring Europe and, in between shows, I did a residency there. We got to talk briefly for half an hour and he told me that he played shō, which is quite rare (even in Japan), and that he was going there soon to meet his master in Tokyo. Afterwards, we contacted each other by email and he actually came to my studio to visit and record. I knew the sound of shō, but I didn't have any expectation of what kind of music or sound it makes, so I suggested doing an improvised recording. It was so beautiful and unexpected to me, so I ended up adding my parts on top of it and making three songs out of those recordings ["Pale Purple", "In a Sunny Meadow" and "Yodaka"]. About my father, he lived with my mother in Thailand for a long time, about 15 years or something. They moved back to Japan when my mother got sick, and then she passed away a few years ago. He was feeling down, so I told him to visit us, see the grandsons and play a little bit of saxophone in my studio. He loves jazz music and plays saxophone quite well actually. It was simply to cheer him up, but we ended up recording and I asked him to play something on my songs, even recording new ones [from scratch]. He just improvised and I recorded and edited everything. From those recordings, I made three songs: one of them also features Matthias ["In a Sunny Meadow"] and another is with Moor Mother ["Our Mother's Lights2]. Speaking of Moor Mother, she got to know the label and asked if there was any artist from Erased Tapes that could join in for an album of hers, so I contributed vibraphone on one track – it hasn’t been released yet, I think. She likes to contribute back in return, so instead of paying fees, I thought it would be a good idea to try and mix poetry and ambience. They normally don't really fit, but I thought, why not? One of the songs in which my father also played saxophone on is a bit percussive, so I asked her to record some poetry on top of it. And then with Hatis Noit, we’re good friends and often talk about our roots and relation to nature. She now lives in London and I was living in Berlin, so we’ve both lived as foreigners, which normally makes you think about your roots and origins. We share a common interest in Asian music as well, so I thought it would be nice to make one song with her [Higurashi]. I first recorded the sound of a cicada in my village and she sang over it. It came out so beautifully that I couldn't add anything else, the song was nice as it was.
I'm telling these stories because they all reinforce the migratory concept. As I was working with different people, this migratory image came to me. My father: Japanese, living in Thailand, only to come back to Japan and look back at memories of living in Thailand with my mother. Matthias: Swedish, but somehow plays Japanese traditional instruments; comes to Japan, visits me and goes back to Sweden. Hatis: born in Hokkaido, moved to Osaka and now she's in London, looking back at her time in Japan and her roots. Moor Mother: an African-American person who openly talks about the roots of black people and their rights. There’s also me: Japanese, went to Berlin to live for 13 years and came back to Japan. The process of working with people from across the world gave me the image of Migratory. Maybe because I lived in Berlin as a foreigner and I often think about my roots and origins, I didn't want to play Asian music or typical Japanese music, but instead to somehow blur those sounds. I had the image of migratory birds flying above, somewhere between Africa, Asia and Japan, and, from their perspective, they hear music from the land without seeing any borders, so the sounds get mixed. That was the idea behind Migratory.
I also wanted to bring the vibraphone and the marimba into the conversation. If you think back to when you first started playing these instruments, how has that relationship evolved over the years, and how have you grown as a musician through them?
I started playing the vibraphone when I was in my 20s, about 20 years ago, but the marimba is quite new to me. I started learning it during my last year of living in Berlin, so it’s been about six years. Those two are quite different for me. With the vibraphone, I taught myself how to play it and I’ve been using the same instrument all the time from the very beginning, so it's like having an old friend or partner. I was a lot more focused on the vibraphone itself, experimenting with different methods and experimental ways to play, looking for unique sounds. It’s quite a new instrument; it only has one hundred years of history, so I felt like there was still so much potential that hadn’t been explored. These days, I don't really try too hard to discover and make unknown sounds out of the vibraphone, since I already have my own sound. I'm still willing to try some new stuff with it, but I think I'm more interested in deepening my way of playing the vibraphone (with cello bowls) rather than looking for something new. The marimba is a way to avoid the cliché of when I play the vibraphone. When you’re playing it, you play with mallets, so it’s still similar, even if the sound and the way you play are still very different. It gives me a wider palette of sound, which was totally fresh for me when I first tried it. My marimba is a five-octave and the vibraphone is normally three octaves, so the marimba has a wider range of sound, and the bass is really rich. I can play it in the same way as a vibraphone, but the sound you get is totally different.
When you’re performing or recording, how much does improvisation and letting the music flow shape what you play, either on stage or in the studio? Does the audience or, yet again, nature also influence your live performances?
My live sets are changing quite a lot now. I was trying to recreate the songs on stage, so I planned, composed and arranged everything beforehand. I played [the songs] quite precisely on stage, but it was difficult for me, since there wasn’t much room to improvise. I’ve found more recently that I feel freer when improvising. I’ve played a few shows during the summer in Japan, but today’s show is maybe my first one that’s mostly improvised. It's hard to say, but it’s half-composed, half-improvised. That's how I learned when I played with Jan Jelinek. We had a tour in Japan this July and played both duo and solo performances, so I felt encouraged to develop a new setup for my own shows. When we play together, we always make a very rough plan, so we know what to do and what comes next, even if what we play is improvised. I also tried to implement this framework into my own solo performances. For today, I have some ideas about what to do in each song and how to flow between them, but I know it’ll be different every time. I can be more focused on the sounds themselves, on what better fits the moment, but also be freer, more reactive and creative.
Before we wrap up, I’d like to know what’s been on your radar lately, in terms of music, film, books or art in general? Are there any recent obsessions that have grabbed your attention?
I’ve been listening to the music of Penguin Café Orchestra and Haruomi Hosono’s old stuff. They all have this kind of fantastic, surreal world in common, where your mind can escape, and I’ve been quite fascinated by it recently.