“Chopin is the greatest of them all, for through the piano alone, he discovered everything” – said Debussy. The two giants with perhaps the greatest influence on the 20th C music and beyond, Debussy (1862-1918) and Scriabin (1872-1915), both admired Chopin (1810-49). They started their compositions for solo piano with pieces like Nocturnes and Mazurkas, clearly imitating Chopin who established these genres for solo piano. It did not take them long to continue what Chopin had initiated and to establish their entirely new and ground breaking musical languages. These two composers directly influenced two Japanese composers. One of them, Kósçak Yamada (1886-1965), heard “Poem” by Scriabin in Moscow in 1913, and went onto write pieces like “Homage to Scriabin” and “Poem”, along with the first Symphonies composed by a Japanese composer, and many of the very first operas in Japanese. The other, Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), called Debussy his “composition mentor”. “Chopin to Japan” explores these lineages, and reconfirms the notion that music is a universal language.