Toshi Ichiyanagi (1933 to 2022) was a Japanese composer of avant-garde music, born in Kobe. He studied at Juilliard in the 1950s, met John Cage and, returning to Japan in 1961, brought chance and indeterminacy into Japanese new music, where they hit like a wave. Kaiki (1960) combined the sho and koto with harmonica and saxophone; Distance (1961) makes the performers play from three metres away from their instruments; Anima 7 (1964) asks for a chosen action to be performed as slowly as possible. Married to Yoko Ono from 1956 to 1963, he later wrote operas, concertos and symphonies for the concert hall, directed festivals and ensembles, and remained a central figure of Japanese music until his death at eighty nine.