The short version
- Koreyoshi Kurahara's film Antarctica (南極物語, Nankyoku Monogatari) opened in Japan on 23 July 1983. Vangelis wrote the score.
- Two days before it opened, a single bearing the film's name came out: an "image song" sung by Keiko Oginome, who appears in the film. Vangelis was not involved in it in any way.
- His own theme single followed in August. The theme runs 7:26 on the LP and was cut to 4:45 for the single.
- Twelve million people saw the film in Japan, and it held the Japanese box-office record for fourteen years, until 1997.
In February 1958 a Japanese Antarctic expedition pulled out of Showa Base and left fifteen Sakhalin sled dogs chained up behind them. The weather kept the ship from reaching the base, and there was not enough fuel or water to go back for the dogs. On 14 January 1959 the next team arrived, and two dogs came out to greet them: Taro and Jiro, brothers born in Antarctica. Twenty-five years later Koreyoshi Kurahara made the story into a film, with Ken Takakura as the expedition member at its centre.
The composer the director wanted
According to Japanese Wikipedia, Kurahara was a Vangelis fan, and that is why he went to him. The timing was bad. Vangelis had just won the Academy Award for Chariots of Fire and offers were pouring in from everywhere. His manager named a fee that would have paid for several Japanese films of the day, and the producers came close to giving up. In the end they got Vangelis himself to commit first, then wore the manager down.
The score was recorded at Vangelis's Nemo Studios in London, with Raine Shine engineering. Vangelis composed, arranged, produced and played all of it. The LP has eight tracks. "Theme from Antarctica" opens side one and is the longest at 7:26; "Deliverance", at the end of side two, is the music that plays as the film ends. The score was nominated for the Japan Academy Prize for music.
Two singles, summer 1983
The film itself was promoted relentlessly. Fuji TV, which produced it, and Nippon Broadcasting, the radio station in the same Fujisankei group, plugged it day after day, and on opening day there was a TV special. A nationwide tour took along the dogs who played Taro and Jiro, and the actress Keiko Oginome. She plays the owner of Riki, one of the sled dogs, and is on screen in three scenes.
Oginome's song came out on 21 July, two days before the film opened: a 7-inch single on Canyon, the Fujisankei group's record label, called "愛のオーロラ" (Aurora of Love), with "白いレクイエム" (White Requiem) on the flip. It is billed as an image song inspired by the film, and the fold-out sleeve has stills from it. The music is by Tetsuji Hayashi, the lyrics by Tokiko Iwatani, the arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita.
When the American collectors' site Vangelis Collector finally tracked the record down, it had hopes. Was she singing the Antarctica theme? Had Vangelis written the song, or played on it? The answer, the site reported, was no on every count. Vangelis was not involved in any way, and the song was not based on any of his themes either.
Vangelis's own single arrived about a month later, in August 1983, on Polydor, catalogue number 7DM 0087. Side A is "Theme from Antarctica" at 4:45, side B "Antarctica Echoes" at 5:54, with a picture insert whose back is covered in Japanese liner notes. The A-side loses 2:41 of the LP's 7:26. The B-side is the same length as on the LP.
So the song with the film's name on it reached the shops first, and the music from the film came after. That was the order the campaign ran in.
Twelve million
Twelve million people in Japan saw the film. It became the highest-grossing Japanese-made film up to that point and stayed there for fourteen years, until Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke passed it in 1997. In 1984 it was in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The record got out of Japan in 1983 too, as Polydor LP 815 732-1; Discogs lists an American pressing that year, among others. The CD, 815 732-2, came out in Europe and the US in 1988.
The film is still on television. Search NHK's broadcast archive for Vangelis and it comes up: a 30th-anniversary remaster went out on the BS channel on the last day of 2013, and the same version was shown several more times up to October 2025.
How to listen
Play the LP straight through. The eight tracks add up to 45 minutes. Use headphones, and do not break off the opening 7:26. If you heard the single first, listen for where the missing 2:41 goes. While you look for it, your breathing slows to the pace of the piece. If Vangelis is new to you, start with our Vangelis guide.
If you send a friend one track, make it "Deliverance", the music over the film's ending, 4:29 long. The story of two dogs who held out on the ice for the better part of a year ends on it.
Where to get it
Antarctica first came out on Polydor in Japan in 1983 and has been reissued many times since the 1988 CD.