The renowned Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe vividly recalls gifts he received as a young boy growing up in 1930s rural Tasmania, given to him by family friends on return from Japan. One gift was a much-thumbed children's version of the "Tale of Genji," the other a cardboard-cutout castle.

Sculthorpe, who turns 70 this year, recalls these childhood gifts as the beginning of a lifelong association with Japanese culture and music that has influenced his composition over more than 40 years of creation.

"Usually, I employ Japanese aesthetic and musical ideas when they're related to my own, or when they can be easily incorporated into my musical language," Sculthorpe says. "The melodies of saibara [an early vocal form of Japanese court music] for instance, are very similar to the melodies that I fashion myself."

Sculthorpe's appreciation for saibara is evident in a re-worked version of his 1977 bilingual music theater work "Love Thoughts," performed at the Sydney Opera House early this year and later broadcast on national radio. Readings from "Manyoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves)," a 4,500-poem anthology from the 7th century, are woven through music and song played by an ensemble with koto. Two of Sculthorpe's favorite saibara melodies, "Ise no Umi" and "Mushiroda," are also used, and the work opens and closes with "Itsuki no Komori-uta," an ancient lullaby and his favorite Japanese folk song.

Sculthorpe's studio in Woollahra, Sydney, is decorated with objects gathered from his travels in Asia. In the corner there is a koto; a decorated folding screen dominates the desk and a cabinet full of delicate, wispy Chinese Song-Dynasty ceramics sits opposite the lounge.

With a head full of hair and his trademark mustache, Sculthorpe looks younger than his 70 years. No other Australian composer has enjoyed the success he has had. On the international stage, Sculthorpe's work is played more than any of his other compatriots.

Sculthorpe's development was shaped by the times he lived in and his experiences. At the beginning of his career he consciously rejected 19th-century European romantic influences. This came about in part because of his determination to develop a musical idiom concerned with expressing an Australian identity, most noticeably its landscape.

"The country we live in has an austere simplicity and our music should be long and flat, to match that," he said in 1968. This was also a period when composers around the world were pursuing eclectic inspiration. Sculthorpe, like other composers, looked north to Asia for his inspiration.

Sculthorpe describes his first encounter in the mid-1940s, with gagaku (Japanese court music) as a "revelation." In "Sun Music" he writes of hearing a recording of the piece "Entenraku (Music from Heaven)":

"The sensation was similar to my first taste of olives and, for that matter, oysters and anchovies: I was both repelled and exhilarated. Moreover, the piece flouted all the principles of composition that I then knew."

In 1962, Sculthorpe began lecturing at the University of Sydney in composition and world music (he is now Professor of Musical Composition, Personal Chair) and this led to an invitation in 1968 to a UNESCO conference on relations between Western and Eastern Art in Kyoto and Tokyo.

On this visit, he befriended Yoritsune Matsudaira, a composer and descendant of an old Japanese noble famiy. Sculthorpe desperately wanted to hear gagaku performed, and Matsudaira told him he could arrange for something "through a relative."

Much to Sculthorpe's surprise, a week later he found himself in the Imperial Palace sitting next to the relative: the Empress of Japan. They had tea and listened to a 13-piece ensemble (all Living National Treasures) performing "Etenraku."

The conference also allowed Sculthorpe to meet several leading Japanese artists: writer Yukio Mishima, architect Kenzo Tange, director Akira Kurosawa and ethnomusicologists Fumio Koizumi and William Malm. It was also then that Sculthorpe began a lifelong friendship with composer Toru Takemitsu. It was a relationship that would be beneficial to both. A 1969 visit by Takemitsu to Australia to see Sculthorpe resulted in the work "Eucalyp" and a later trip to Grooyt Eylandt in Australia's north inspired the 1981 piece "Dreamtime."

In 1970, Sculthorpe returned to Japan at Takemitsu's invitation and composed a piece, a gift, for Expo '70 in Osaka titled "Music for Japan." Appropriately, there are many allusions to Japanese musical forms in its composition. The opening drum mimics a kakko, a small drum used in gagaku; wind instruments recall the high-pitched flutes of kabuki; and the whole piece is carried by a low E note, in reference to his favorite gagaku piece, "Etenraku."

In the '60s, Sculthorpe considered himself something of a Zen Buddhist and even had a small collection of Buddha statues. During his 1968 visit to Japan he stayed at the Buddhist monastery Tenryuji, Temple of the Heavenly Dragon, in Kyoto. The lotus position, wooden pillows, an austere diet and the "incessant beatings" on his back with a split bamboo rod were something of an unpleasant shock for him.

Worst of all for Sculthorpe, a great collector of Song ceramics, books and Buddha statues, was the condition of having to give up all worldly possessions. However, the experience did allow him to learn shomyo, Buddhist liturgical chanting, which he would later assimilate into the 1974 opera "Rites of Passage" and the first of his four famous Sun Music pieces, "Sun Music 1."

While at the monastery a friend introduced him to a local Shinto priest, and Sculthorpe discovered a spiritual philosophy much more in tune with his own. The priest taught him about Japanese art, music, instruments and, lacking a common language, the concept of haragei (friends reading each other's minds).

Sculthorpe describes himself as a pantheist.

Takemitsu's death in 1996 was a shock for Sculthorpe and in 1998, a type of requiem piece written by the Australian and dedicated to Take- mitsu was performed in Tokyo. Titled "Great Sandy Island," the work is a counterbalance to Takemitsu's own island-inspired "Groote Eylandt."

Over the years, Sculthorpe has taken in other influences into his music. Javanese gamelan music and the melodies of Australian Aborigines have been important for his creative inspiration. Now, as he enters his 70s, Sculthorpe is planning a break from work and is refusing commissions. However, he feels composers as a group just naturally get better with age.

"My best music is probably ahead of me . . . we keep going until we drop."