The famous composer Minoru Endo died at a Tokyo hospital on Saturday morning due to a heart attack. He was 76. Known for creating more than 5,000 songs over almost the past 60 years, Endo was one of the most important forces behind the contemporary music scene.

Sources said that Endo collapsed at a party in October, and he received a heart bypass surgery the next day. This was his second bypass surgery, as he previously had one done in 1988. Since the operation in October, he had been undergoing rehabilitation, but his condition worsened on Friday night.

Endo was born in Tokyo in 1932, but was raised in Niigata. Because his family was poor, at the age of 14 he found work in a factory instead of going to junior high school. At the time, he had dreams of becoming a singer, so he ran away from home in 1949 to pursue the dream in Tokyo. He began teaching himself composition, but early on he found little success either as a singer or composer. However, he achieved his first hit in 1957 composing Takeo Fujishima's "Otsukisan Konbanwa."

Endo's career took off from there, and he made music for many top artists, including Hibari Misora, Saburo Kitajima, Masako Mori, Chiyoko Shimakura, and Kazuo Funaki. One of his better known songs is Mori's "Sensei," which he reportedly composed in mere minutes after seeing the song's lyrics.