Japan's 'Fake Beethoven' Finally Made His Own Music

A little bit of backstory on Mamoru Samuragochi, who had once been dubbed as Japan's "digital-age Beethoven" as he claimed to have been totally deaf and was credited for composing music for video games such as Resident Evil: Dual Shock Ver. (1998) and Onimusha: Warlords (2001).

For 18 years, Samuragochi had lived as the miracle composer, from around 1996 until 2014 when it was revealed that he wasn't in fact completely deaf, neither was he the one composing the music that had been credited to him.

His ruse had been exposed during an interview with a reporter who had noticed several inconsistencies about his being totally deaf and the behavior he had exhibited throughout the interview such as answering questions before the sign language interpreter had finished and answering the door when the bell rang.

Later on, when he performed his first symphony, another composer Takeo Noguchi noticed the similarities it had with other works like that of Gustav Mahler, which further caused suspicion about his story.

Then, in 2014, he confessed to lying about his deafness and his compositions, which were actually ghostwritten by composer Takashi Niigaki, a music professor, who had written all the previous music credited to Samuragochi, but didn't out him because Samuragochi bribed him with a lot of money.

Several years after the public admission, Samuragochi has changed his look and has also started to compose his own music. The video above is titled "MM Sakura Overture".

(Video credit: Malleus Maleficarum/Youtube)


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