Akira Ifukube was born in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, in 1914, and was prompted to devote himself to music after hearing Stravinskys The Rite of Spring. Virtually self-educated, he completed his Japanese Rhapsody in 1935. The work won the prize instituted by the Russian migr Alexander Tcherepnin, who had moved to Shanghai to study Asian music and who sought to make Japanese music more widely known throughout the world. The judges, Roussel, Ibert, Honegger, Tansman, Harsnyi, Ferroud and Gil-Marchex, were unanimous in their decision. The work was first performed in 1936 under Febian Sevitsky by the Boston Peoples Orchestra, and in 1939 won the approval of Sibelius at its first performance in Helsinki, events that gave valuable encouragement to Japanese composers, whose work was still little heard abroad.
