In Remembrance: Kunio Miyauchi

     Kunio Miyauchi, the Japanese composer who worked briefly in films during the 1960s, has passed away on November 27, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan. He was 74.

     Born February 16, 1932 in the Matsubara section of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, Miyauchi studied music from childhood, eventually attending Kunitachi Music Academy as a teenager. As the popularity of jazz began to rise in post-war Japan, Miyauchi formed a jazz quartet with some friends before landing a job arranging for famed orchestra leader Tadashi Hattori. After a brief period composing for radio shows at Nippon Broadcasting, he secured a job at Fiji Television where he would work on as many as seven different programs in a week.

     Upon the suggestion of fellow composer Ichiro Saito, Miyauchi switched from the breakneck speed of television work to the comparatively slower pace of composing film scores. His first score was for the comedy Long Live The Party Leader’s Terrifying Wife (1960). Miyauchi’s next score was Godzilla director Ishiro Honda’s The Human Vapor (1960). He also scored the thriller After The Killer (1962) and the comedy During A Medical Examination (1964).

     In the mid-1960s Miyauchi was approached by Hajime Tsuburaya, son of Godzilla special effects creator Eiji Tsuburaya, to score the first television series being produced by his father’s fledgling television production company. For the series, an X-Files-like supernatural mystery show called Ultra Q, Miyauchi crafted a title theme that combined surf guitars with early electronic synthesized tones which would become one of the most famous themes in Japanese television history. He followed up his work on Ultra Q by with the jazz-influenced theme song and score for the series Ultraman.

     Miyauchi’s final film score was for Honda’s Godzilla’s Revenge (1969). He spent the rest of his career composing theme songs and scores for a variety of Japanese television series.