Jarring end to fake Beethoven's symphony of lies
Real composer confesses, exposing liar who hears but cannot write music
All the music that Mr Samuragochi claimed as his own in the past 18 years was written by "ghost composer" Takashi Niigaki.
If there were an Olympic event for telling fibs, Japan's " Beethoven" would have won the gold medal hands down.
About the only thing still true about Mr Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, is that he was born of parents who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Everything else about him, from his total hearing loss since 1999 to childhood piano lessons with his mother, has turned out to be fabrications for the sake of peddling his music.
He stunned his countrymen over a week ago with the confession that a "ghost composer" had written all the classical works he had claimed as his own in the past 18 years.
His confession came just before a press conference by composer Takashi Niigaki, who described himself as Mr Samuragochi's "accomplice" and said he wrote the music which Mr Samuragochi then hawked to recording companies and music publishers under his own name.
Mr Niigaki told the press conference he had wanted to end the illicit collaboration. But Mr Samuragochi had pleaded with him to continue, threatening suicide with his wife if the composer refused.
Mr Niigaki decided to come forward with the truth now because one of his compositions was being used by figure skater Daisuke Takahashi at the Sochi Olympics.
The bombshell came when, in reply to questions about Mr Samuragochi's alleged total deafness, Mr Niigaki said: "From my first meeting with him, I never felt he had hearing difficulties."
Last Wednesday, Mr Samuragochi suddenly claimed in a handwritten message to the media that he had recovered his hearing partially three years ago, a development doctors described as close to impossible.
His latest "confession" came just 24 hours before the hard-hitting Shukan Bunshun weekly published an article exposed him as a liar extraordinaire. Bunshun even quoted his mother-in-law calling him an inveterate fibber.
Among the employees at a game maker to which he sold some game music, it was an open secret that his deafness was just part of an elaborate marketing ploy, Bunshun reported.
To his faked deafness, he added unkempt long hair and beard, wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, walking stick and a slight limp that were all calculated to give him the look of a tormented genius.
The media lapped up his story. In September 2001, Time magazine dubbed him the "digital age Beethoven".
There were also many red faces last week at the NHK public broadcaster whose March 2013 special on Mr Samuragochi helped to further spread his fame nationwide.
He said in the NHK special that music would "fall" on him when he was in deep meditation. One segment showed him in a darkened room - light, he said, gave him headaches - banging his head against a wooden wall whenever the stream of music in the head was apparently interrupted.
In a 2007 autobiography, he recalled at length his piano lessons with his mother that began at the age of four. By seven, he said, he could play Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata.
But his former schoolmates told Bunshun they do not remember ever seeing a piano in his house.
Mr Niigaki had also complained that Mr Samuragochi's account of his piano lessons was "stolen" from his own childhood experience.
Just who is the real Mr Samuragochi?
Straight after high school, aspiring to be in the movies, he went to a film studio in Kyoto and for a while played "kirareyaku" (people who are cut down by swords) roles in period dramas.
A later attempt to become a rock musician also failed after he let on that he could not write a melody in musical notation, or knew anything about chords.
The idea of masquerading as a composer apparently came to him after a fateful meeting with Mr Niigaki to ask the latter's help in orchestrating a piece of music.
The financial fallout from Mr Samuragochi's unmarking is severe. His CDs and DVDs have been pulled from shelves, and his nationwide concert tour cancelled.
Mr Niigaki, well-liked among the classical musical fraternity, earned about 7 million yen for contributing some 20 pieces in Mr Samuragochi's name.
Feeling guilty over the cover-up, he has submitted his resignation to his employer, Toho Gakuen School of Music, where he taught music.
However, his devoted students have created an online petition, asking the university to be generous and let him continue teaching.
The petition at
www.change.org has gathered over 10,000 signatures.
