Health problems have forced the celebrated Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, who is suffering from cancer of the oesophagus, to cancel appearances until January next year, he says in an interview with an Austrian newspaper due to appear Tuesday.

"I hope we shall soon be back on our feet," he told the daily newspaper Oesterreich, speaking by telephone from his home near Tokyo after living through the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear alert.

At the end of January he called off his concerts at home and abroad until August after a back operation.

Ozawa, 75, was due to conduct five concerts in March in Japan and five more abroad: two at Carnegie Hall in New York, two in Paris and one in Vienna.

He made a brief return to the concert hall in September last year and again in December before cancelling all his appearances to convalesce after an operation in mid-January for a lumbar hernia.

He had planned to make his return at Matsumoto in central Japan for the Saito Kinen Festival, but will have to wait until January 2012 at the earliest as result of a pulmonary infection and a hernia.

"That's why I have had to cancel all my concerts again, until January 2012," he told the newspaper, but "I shall be back - that's for sure."

Ozawa, who has worked with Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, gave notice in January 2010 that he would have to undergo treatment for cancer of he oesophagus, which was caught early according to doctors, and would accordingly have to cancel performances for several months.

Until 2010 musical director of the Vienna Philharmonic he spent almost 30 years leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra.