In the high grass of an empty camping ground in Niigata Prefecture – not far from Matsudai – Sawako Kato and I stood, listening. Later we climbed a hill to listen to a metal sign resonating. Sounds washed with cicadas.

Nagoya born artist Sawako passed away in March, after a short illness. She preferred the term sound sculptor, and her work spanned electronic and computer music, field recording, performance and installation. Generous as a friend and collaborator, multifaceted as an artist, she placed intricate sounds across a vast stage.

Studying piano and Nohgaku theatre in her youth, she gained a masters degree in Interactive Telecommunications while living in America in her twenties. In an interview for a Japanese university website in 2017, she stated: “My specialty was the visualisation and audibility of various data and signals. The interaction of sound + video + α (sensors, natural phenomena, etc).”

Combining electronics, abstract field recordings, voice and a natural interplay with small instruments, her performances across the US and Europe in the early 2000s established her as an important and much admired artist. In 2010 she returned to Japan to live in Tokyo, where she conducted more research leading to a BA degree, and went on to play a central role in the country’s explorative sound and music culture. Her dedication to artistic enquiry was matched by her enjoyment of where it led her.

“The chemical changes that occur when people encounter music are really interesting,” she said in 2017. “I would like to create projects that connect people, things and places.”

In 2022, she wrote via email: “Personally, I am interested not only in sound but other waves and frequencies – electromagnetic waves, sunlight, infrared beams, inaudible sound (for humans)… The senses and ‘ears’ of humans in the future might be able to catch the frequencies which we can’t now.”

For Sawako, it wasn’t enough to pursue her own work. She helped others with theirs, either informally, arranging events, helping with tour planning and translation, or teaching Media Art, electronic music and coding to female students at Ferris University, Yokohama, and DIY music at Jiyu (free) University, Tokyo. Teaching helped her understand her own habits as a performer, she said. “Musicians have experience, so they can tell what kind of sound might come next,” she explained, “what kind of music that person has made, and the history, but beginners don’t have that, so… the goodness just oozes out.”

As well as hand-packaged CD-Rs, often made in the days before an event or to send to friends, her work could be heard on her Bandcamp and TinyTinyPress labels, appearances on compilations, remixes, improvised sessions and so on, for labels such as 12k, and/OAR, Winds Measure, Autumn, Anticipate, Cherry Music and Engraved Glass. She collaborated widely, with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Asuna, o.blaat, Kyoka, Tetuzi Akiyama, Taku Sugimoto, Taylor Deupree, Corey Fuller, Yumi Arai, Minamo and myself, among many others, often diverting listeners’ expectations in the process. “She invited me to play for her first solo album,” says Toshimaru Nakamura. “She invited guests and each had a recorder. Sawako asked them to record me playing from wherever they wanted. As I remember most went outside, recording the passing trains, or simply enjoying the beach.”

Sawako also performed regularly at gift_, a Tokyo design space whose approach included similar themes to her own: communality and using different processes to transmit ideas. Speaking of their friend, gift_’s Toshikazu Goto and Fumiko Ikeda said: “It would be no exaggeration to say that Sawako was one of the most precious people who had the greatest understanding of our activities. She left behind sounds, voices, and words and we want to continue listening.”

Hard to explain, even her most melodic work has multiple interconnected layers, either within the music or surrounding it. Perhaps you have to know more about all of her activities as an artist to grasp it. To hear it all turn liquid in her hands.

“Her musical path was a source of inspiration when I started playing and I learned a lot listening to her. I remember her humour and a very important sense of sisterhood, from her and between women playing experimental music in 2000–10, which was not the easiest time for us. Her music is a candle.” – Felicia Atkinson

“There was a grasp of the simple and the complex, the arbitrary and the chosen, the random and the designed that eludes almost every artist. But she had it. I never for a moment hesitated to use the word genius.” – Kenneth Kirschner

“Her music was very sensitive and her friendships very broad. Even now I think it is very difficult to know everything about her.” – Elico Suzuki

France Jobin had recently been working with Sawako on a project involving quantum physics. After sending her a text about loss and parallels, Sawako replied: 
“There is no start point, and there is no end point… just one point – now here… the coupled worlds are the same and both together. In Japanese grammar, we can skip subjects. So, sometimes the boundaries between you and me, this and that, here and there, become melting and ambiguous.”

Working across formats Sawako scored films, fashion shows, commercials, created multi-channel installations for gardens and buildings, gave performances that edged between clarity and fragility, released acclaimed albums of lower case electronic music and crafted soundscapes, but the one thing Sawako couldn’t do was push herself forward with the hard edges that the arts world often seems to demand. Instead she put her faith in her work, creating space for others and sharing her knowledge. It was simply who she was.

In February she was to perform at an event in Tokyo. Instead her music was played without her on stage. Known for her subtlety, most thought it intentional. A few weeks later Sawako melted through the boundaries.