Kentaro Haneda :: Biography

Note: This biography was written exclusively for Square Enix Music Online by Chris. The act of using it without advance written permission is regarded as a copyright infringement. It was last updated on September 1, 2006.

Musical polyglot Kentaro Haneda was born on January 12, 1949 in Tokyo and died on June 2, 2007 as a result of liver cancer. Having initially gained fame as a classically-trained pianist, he later scored animes, movies, TV shows, and games and contributed to numerous concerts, pop productions, and classical albums. He famously scored the initial instalments of the Wizardry series, opened the first Orchestral Game Concert, and created symphonic albums dedicated to the Wizardry, Ys, and Sorcerian series. His father died a year after his birth so he was raised by his mother, a door-to-door salesperson, and his grandfather. He encountered music for the first time at the age of four, when he joined a youth choir. In the second year of primary school, Haneda started taking piano lessons and continued at an amateur level under several teachers until junior high school. During his second year there, he decided that he wanted to pursue a musical career and begun studying under notable pianist Kazugo Ariga. He came second place on the entrance exams for the entrance of the eminent Toho Gakuen High School after tirelessly practicing Czerny's Etudes and his free performance piece, Schumann's Novelletten. While there, he practiced the piano for 12 hours on each of his free days, culminating in him becoming the top student. After experience playing in hotel lounges and unsuccessfully taking part in the Japan Music Competition, he joined university in 1967 specialising in piano performance. In 1972, he took the third place in the 39th Japan Music Competition playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. The same year, he came top in the year in his graduation exams and had acquired the status of virtuoso. He intended a prolific and diverse career to follow.

Active since 1973, Haneda initially worked as a studio musician. He worked on many pop records, notably performing the piano on the early works of singer Machiko Watanabe before becoming her bandleader between 1978 and 1980. In 1978, Haneda made his debut as an anime composer on the Treasure Island series adapted from Robert Lewis Stevenson's novel by director Osamu Dezaki. He was subsequently asked to score the series Muu no Hakugei and Kagaku Kyujotai Techno Voyager as well as the films The Door Into the Summer, Kyoufu Densetsu - Kaiki! Frankenstein, Virus, and, having previous scored its series, Space Warrior Baldios in the early 1980s. In 1982, he made a popular breakthrough with a dark and jazzy score to Space Adventure Cobra and the symphonic accompaniment to Robotech: The Macross Saga. With his award-winning multi-part soundtrack to Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Haneda was able to reflect the bridge between the personal and the epic. Other successes during the same period were Barefoot Gen, God Mazinger, Detective Holmes, Super Dimension Century Orguss, Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature, and Bye Bye Jupiter. In his mid-30s, Haneda focused once more on classical performance. With the NHK Symphony Orchestra, he performed Richard Strauss' Burlesque and subsequently appeared on several occasions with various Japanese professional orchestras. He developed a sizeable classical repertoire in the 1990s with albums dedicated to Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin. Having become a well-known Japanese artist, he was able to release numerous albums dedicated to the Beatles, Disney, the Christmas season, and Japanese poetry to commercial success, as well as an eight-part series of 'musical method' titles.

Haneda's first game was creating the music for the Japan version of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Originally a text-based American RPG by Sir-Tech, the acclaimed game was significantly fleshed out by ASCII for its initial 1985 Japanese release on early computers such as the MZ-2500, X1, FM-7, PC-8801, and PC-9801. Opening with an epic overture, light-hearted works dominated the score, while moody dungeon themes and a vivacious battle theme added to its diversity. The result was a classically rigorous, often Baroque- and renaissance-influenced, score with a distinct character. Haneda adopted similar formats for the subsequent scores in the original trilogy and ensured that, despite their computer's superficial sound chip and limited number of channels, each of his compositions were memorable and, in some way, very emotional. In 1987, influenced by the success of Koichi Sugiyama's Dragon Quest Suite, Haneda arranged his score for Wizardry into an orchestral suite. Due to budget limitations, he synthesized the album rather than conducted a live orchestra, but the musicality of the album was still exceptional. Its success inspired suites for third and, later, second Wizardry games, once again entirely Haneda's work. While Haneda did not return to Wizardry IV, a diversion from the rest of the series that received no soundtrack releases, he produced more elaborate and extensive scores for Wizardry V, Wizardry VI, and Wizardry: Llylgamyn Saga in the 1990s. Due to other commitments, he placed Tamiya Terashima in charge of their orchestral albums, but not at the drop of musical quality. Haneda's mature scores have continued to influence other musicians that have taken the series' helm.

Inspired by the quality of the Wizardry suites, Falcom hired Haneda to arrange Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa's scores for the PC-8801 RPGs Ys and Sorcerian. He arranged 1988's Symphony Ys and 1989's Symphony Sorcerian for performance by the King Symphony Orchestra. He arranged notable pieces from each score in a way that emphasised the melodies integral to their initial popularity while adding drama to them through lavish orchestration in a variety of styles. Uniquely, each album was arranged into four movements like a symphony and combined several tracks from the game in a medley-like format so that each told a story. In 1993, Haneda opened the first of Japan's Orchestral Game Concerts conducting performances of Wizardry's "Opening Theme" and Wizardry III's "Adventures Inn" from the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra. Haneda inspired this historic concert with Koichi Sugiyama and Yoko Kanno and its success inspired four yearly successors. While Haneda only contributing to the two initial instalments to the series — conducting Wizardry V's "Opening Theme" for orchestra and piano for the second — his lush arrangements were unforgettable. His final contribution to game music was 2002's Genso Suikoden Music Collection Produced by Kentaro Haneda, an arranged album for the first three games in Konami's Suikoden series; while Haneda didn't personally arrange, he directed the album to be mostly composed of classically-oriented orchestral and piano music, though some entries had jazz, Celtic, and folk influences. In 2006, his work on the Wizardry series was commemorated with a box set published on behalf of the Game Sound Legend Series that marks the final entry in his game discography.

In 1998, Haneda suffered from alcoholism. As a consequence of drinking consistently from morning to evening, he developed some health problems that required him to admitted to hospital in December. While there, he entered a coma for a week and required intensive care after developing Acute Hepatitis. After leaving hospital, Haneda stopped drinking altogether and began to make a short-term recovery from his liver damage. From April 2000 until the month before his death, he presented the long-running Japanese TV Asahi show Daimei no Nai Ongakukai 21 (literally The Untitled Concert 21). Broadcast every Sunday morning with the intention of entertaining as wide an audience as possible, Haneda endeared to many people with his warm and humorous style. He was also invited to lecture at the Tokyo College of Music. In 2004, he appeared with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuri Simonov performing Ravel's Piano Concerto, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and, in a later event, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. Several years before his death, physical weakness inspired him to reinvent himself as a conductor, but he planned a concert to celebrate his 35th year as a professional musician. Unfortunately, it was postponed as he was diagnosed with liver cancer and eventually hospitalised. On June 2, 2007 at 11:53 PM, Kentaro Haneda died at the Tokyo Shinjuku Hospital leaving his wife Sachiko. Japan mourned the loss of one of their most prominent musical figures and the news has also saddened many video game and anime fans in the West. His contributions to game music were secondary to his achievements as a pianist, conductor, anime composer, and TV host. Given how memorable and historically significant his game music works were, this is a testament to the breadth and eminence of his career.