If you have spent any time in the world of Joe Hisaishi concerts over the past few years, you may have noticed something unusual: events billed as “Joe Hisaishi” performances happening in cities he never visited, conducted by musicians he never met, performing arrangements he never approved. In April 2024, Hisaishi and his management company Wonder City Inc. decided that enough was enough.
A Statement That Had to Be Made
The official statement, published on Hisaishi’s website in April 2024 and later translated into English, Chinese, French, and German, is unusually direct for an artist known for quiet introspection. It declares that Wonder City Inc. “does not permit any unauthorized use or arrangement of Hisaishi’s music without proper procedures,” and goes further to note that some of these events carry Hisaishi’s name in their title — implying, to unsuspecting audiences, that he is personally involved. He is not, and he has not approved them.
The statement was updated again in February 2026, reaffirming the same position and directing fans to the official concert listings on joehisaishi.com to verify which performances he actually appears in. The message is clear: if his name is on the poster, check the official source before you buy a ticket.
The Scale of the Problem
To understand why this statement had to exist at all, it helps to grasp the sheer scale of what has been happening. In a September 2024 interview with the Nikkei, Hisaishi put it plainly: unauthorised concerts using his name are taking place “thousands of times a year” around the world. In China alone, he estimated that unpaid royalties likely amount to billions of yen.
The problem is not simply one of legal technicality. When an orchestra performs his music in an unapproved arrangement — altering harmonies, reorchestrating textures, rebalancing what he carefully weighted — the result heard by the audience is not Joe Hisaishi’s music. It is a version of it, filtered through someone else’s interpretation, without his consent. For a composer who has spent decades insisting on the precise relationship between sound and silence, between melody and space, this matters enormously.
Unapproved use of a composer’s name in a concert title compounds the injury. Fans who attend believing they are experiencing an authentic presentation of his work are, in effect, being misled. The damage is to them as much as to him.
A Long History of Fighting for Composers’ Rights
What makes the 2024 statement particularly interesting is not that it represents a new position — it is the public crystallisation of a philosophy Hisaishi has held for decades.
In a 2006 interview with JASRAC, the Japanese music rights organisation, he spoke at length about the international legal battles he had already fought over his film scores. Before Miyazaki’s films began reaching international audiences in earnest, Japanese cinema rarely travelled abroad, and the question of which country’s copyright framework applied to Japanese music used overseas was largely untested. Hisaishi says he was among the first to actively contest these questions in foreign jurisdictions. “I have fought quite a lot with overseas parties,” he said, describing disagreements over how to apply copyright law across different national frameworks.
His conclusion from those years of experience was not that international copyright law should be abandoned, but that it should be more unified — and that Japan should not compromise its own protections in order to accommodate other countries’ weaker standards. “If Japan has a way of protecting its artists,” he said, “that approach should be properly asserted.”
That the statement was later translated into French and German — added in a February 2026 update — is telling. The problem of unauthorised performances is not confined to any one region. It is a global phenomenon, and the gap between how rights holders understand copyright and how many organisers and promoters choose to interpret it remains wide, in Europe as much as anywhere else.
“The Desire to Listen Should Not Be Suppressed”
One remark from that same 2006 interview is particularly worth dwelling on, because it sits in productive tension with the strictness of the 2024 statement. Discussing the situation in China at the time — where his CDs had only recently become officially available, yet audiences already knew every note of his work from internet downloads — Hisaishi said: “There is no reason anywhere to put a brake on people’s desire to listen.”
His argument was not that copying is acceptable. It was that suppression is futile, and that the better path is to create legitimate channels: proper distribution, proper licensing, proper payment — so that the music can reach people who want it while the composer is fairly compensated. Restrict the illegal, but open the legal.
That logic, two decades later, is exactly what underpins the 2024 statement. The concerts are not being challenged because the music should not be performed. They are being challenged because the performances are happening outside the channels that exist to make them legitimate. Wonder City does grant permissions. Arrangements can be approved. Orchestras can perform his work legally. The process simply requires going through the proper procedure — which is not onerous, but which matters.
The Imitation Question
It is impossible to read the 2024 statement without thinking about another interview Hisaishi gave that same year. Speaking to the Nikkei in San Francisco in September 2024, he was asked about artificial intelligence and the music industry. His response was unambiguous. He has turned down every offer — from major technology companies and music industry players alike — to have his music used as training data for AI systems, or to have AI generate music “in the style of Hisaishi.” His reason: “I have no interest in the act of imitation.”
The parallel with the unauthorised concert problem is striking. In both cases, the issue is not the existence of the technology or the enthusiasm of the performers — it is the attempt to reproduce something that belongs to a specific creative intelligence, without that intelligence’s involvement or consent. Whether the imitator is a generative AI system or an orchestra performing an unapproved rearrangement, Hisaishi’s objection is the same: the copy is not the thing itself, and presenting it as such is a form of misrepresentation.
For a composer who has built his entire artistic identity around the idea that music must come from genuine creative thought — not from pattern replication, not from technical facility alone — this consistency is not surprising. It is the same principle, applied to different contexts.
What This Means for Fans — and How to Do It Right
Here is the part that often gets lost in discussions about copyright enforcement: Joe Hisaishi’s music is not locked away. It is not the property of a rights holder who refuses all engagement. The 2024 statement is not a closing of doors — it is a clarification of where the doors are, and how to open them properly.
The principle is straightforward. If you want to perform his music, arrange it, record it, or use it in a project, the path exists. What is required is respect for the composer’s work, and payment of the appropriate fees. That is it. Those two things — genuine respect and fair compensation — are the foundation on which legitimate use is built. They are not unreasonable demands. They are the basic conditions that any working composer deserves.
For standard uses — playing his music in a concert, broadcasting a recording, streaming a performance — the relevant copyright management organisation in your country is the first point of contact. In the UK, that is PRS for Music. In France, SACEM. In Germany, GEMA. In Japan, JASRAC. These organisations exist precisely to make licensing accessible, and fees are calculated according to established, transparent frameworks.
For uses that require the composer’s direct approval — most importantly, creating a new arrangement of his work — the contact point is Wonder City Inc., his management company. Correspondence in English is accepted. Use the official contact form at joehisaishi.com/contact to get in touch.
And this is the part I want to be clear about, because it matters: this process is not reserved for major concert halls or established orchestras. I can confirm from personal experience — and from the experience of others — that individual applicants are taken seriously. Requests made in good faith, through the proper channels, with genuine respect for the music, have been approved. The bar is not impossibly high. What Wonder City asks for is not perfection or prestige. It is sincerity, and the willingness to do things correctly.
And if you are attending a concert that bears his name: verify it against the official listings. The music deserves to reach you as he intended it.
The music is there. The process is there. All that is needed is the respect to use it properly — and the honesty to pay for what you take.
Sources: Wonder City Inc. official statement (joehisaishi.com, April 2024; updated February 2026); JASRAC interview with Joe Hisaishi (2006); Nikkei interview with Joe Hisaishi (September 2024).