The 3 Rs of Music - Rob, Remake, Recycle

Entry #3 —04/05/2026

The voice of the restless youth.

Entry #2 — 27/04/2026

The 80s were a weird, sort of in-between time for Japanese teenagers. During the 60s, the young post-war generation that saw the reconstruction of Japan voiced their discontent earnestly, with multiple nationwide student movements arising and bringing previously ignored matters into mainstream discussion. The decade that followed was marked by a steady increase in the standard of living and the inception of a quieter, much more content generation. By the 1980s, and due to the economic bubble that would turn Japanese families into rather materialistic and economically stable individuals, the general discontent (or at least the public one) was low and buried under a much louder, busier, and fast-paced society.

This rather optimistic feeling contrasted heavily with the uncertainty of the Western world, who were living the dying days of the Cold War and had just exited an exhausting period of war in Vietnam and economic troubles that had left the youth with a rather bitter feeling, which was heavily reflected in music.

During the bubble growth, the import of Western culture in the form of movies and music took over the Japanese people, and a considerable percentage of Japanese teenagers grew tired of the more commercially centered and rather manufactured style of Japanese music at the time, reacting with their own countermovement of discontent.

That is when Yutaka Ozaki steps into scene, using his music to bring this silent discontent into the public scenario once again.

Ozaki was born November 29th 1965 in Setagaya ward in Tokyo, Japan. While he would grow up to become the voice and image of the restless youth and their complex struggles navigating Japanese society, in his early years he would be described as a rather frail kid, who battled a series of health issues, such as intestinal torsion and severe bronchitis, both of which left a long lasting damage on his internal organs, weakening his overall functions for life.

He showed artistic prowess from an early age, playing piano and shakuhachi (traditional japanese flute), as well as writing his firsts poems by the age of 10. A sensible kid, he was often bullied by his peers, which, at one point of the fifth grade, led to him refusing to attend school for six months. It was during that period that he picked up his older brother's guitar and fell in love with the instrument.

At 15 he would compose his first song “街の風景” (“Town Scenery”), forming his first band Noa and venturing into music head on.

Academically successful but set on questioning everything and everyone, Ozaki would be suspended from school indefinitely in 1982. He would use that time to sent a demo of his music to CBS Sony, where producer Akira Sudo would be left impressed by his voice and composition, deciding to sign him to the music label and helping him realese his debut album 十七歳の地図 (“The Map of a Seventeen Year Old”) in 1983.

It wasn't a huge commercial success, at least not inmediatly, but with it's raw and emotional style and heartfelt depictions of teenage struggles, it managed to connect with the troubled youth, desperate to find their place in the world and tired of the unfairness of society.

In 1984, at 18 years old, he would abandon school just before graduation to focus on his music—his final act of rebellion against the Japanese school system.

That same year, as his music gained traction, he would start holding concerts. Always known for his incredible performances, Ozaki would suffer a potentially fatal accident while climbing scaffolding in front of a live audience, which resulted in a broken leg and a pause on all activities for the rest of the year.

1985 would quickly prove to be a successful year, with the release of his second album. Ozaki jumped straight to the top of the charts and began his first real tour, one that would span 37 different performances from May to August. During that time, Ozaki continued production on his third album, which was released at the end of the same year and followed by a new tour.

In 1986, Ozaki took a step back from the spotlight and walked away from his label and family without a word. During that period, he went to live in New York City, looking to escape fame and driven by his fascination with the city, but quickly found himself struggling with drug abuse problems.

In the meantime, Sony re-released old content to try to keep the public's attention, but after Ozaki's return in 1987, and tired of the uncertainty, the label decided to drop him. Ozaki was profoundly saddened by the news, which caused him to sink even deeper into drugs. He quickly signed with a smaller label and began planning his next tour for July of the same year, but it had to be called off due to his drug problems.

In December of '87, just a few days before Christmas, Ozaki was arrested for speeding and drug possession. He would spend the holidays in jail, initially sentenced to 18 months, but reduced to just two after bail. After his release in February of 1988, he began working on his fourth album and got married to his partner Shigemi in May, with whom he would have a son the following year.

The album, 街路樹, would be presented to the public on September 1st, 1988, almost three years after its predecessor, and despite high expectations, it was immediately labeled a hit. On the 12th of the same month, he would present what some consider to be his best-ever performance: his maiden concert at the Tokyo Dome.

As unpredictable as one may be, Ozaki would choose to focus on the production of his fifth album for the next two years, taking another break from the public.

The long-awaited album, Birth, would be released on November 15th, 1990, and would further consolidate Ozaki's greatness, selling millions of copies nationwide. He would spend most of 1991 working tirelessly, holding more than 60 concerts with up to 70,000 attendees, setting up his official fan club, and photographing his daily life.

But it all came to a stop when, in the early hours of April 25th, 1992, Ozaki, who had been drinking excessively, stumbles out of a bar in Shibuya, Tokyo at around 3 a.m. He would wander for a while, until he ended up collapsing in the garden of a private residence. He was spotted by a neighbor at around 5:30 a.m.

After being rushed to the hospital, he began to regain consciousness, and his wife and brother were contacted. At his own insistence, and against his doctor's wishes, he decided to go home, where he slept under the watchful eye of his wife. But at around 11:00 a.m., he stopped breathing.

After multiple resuscitation attempts, the voice of the Japanese youth would be declared dead at 12:06 p.m., at just 26 years old. Cause of death: pulmonary edema caused by alcohol consumption.

This would supposedly mark the end of the story, but the public wasn't satisfied. In the weeks to come, several conflicting accounts and previously unmentioned details would force the discussion to stay relevant.

That spring morning, Ozaki had been found not only drunk but completely unrecognizable: naked, and covered in horrible bruises and scratches that indicated a fight. For a while, people could only imagine the state in which the star had been found, but after photos of his condition surfaced, people simply could not accept the official narrative.

Years later, in 1994, when his autopsy leaked to the press, it was revealed that Ozaki had more than two times the lethal dose of methamphetamines in his body at the time of his death, despite his manager's claims that Ozaki had stopped using drugs months before his passing.

The cause of death, despite public outcry, was labeled as natural with no foul play. The bruises were attributed to Ozaki's odd behavior (falling and rolling on the ground), most probably caused by his drug addiction.

Years later, TV Asahi would air a special in which they theorized about a possible murder attempt committed by his wife, whom Ozaki had been in the process of divorcing before his sudden death, but there is no substantial proof of this, and it has often been dismissed as mere speculation.

But speculation about his death, however persistent, risks overshadowing what actually made Ozaki immortal: his music.

Musically and thematically, Ozaki was an anomaly in the glossy, synth-driven Japanese pop landscape of the mid-80s.

Where his contemporaries sang polished hooks about romance and city lights, Ozaki delivered raw, confrontational anthems that spoke directly to adolescent alienation, social hypocrisy, and the suffocating pressure to conform. In a world plagued by impossible exoectation, he sang to those with no future and no name, and for that, the restless youth will never forget him.

I would invite everyone to listen to two of his performances (1985 | 1988) side to side and witness first hand the passion and desperation of his voice as the years passed. I think it's obvious for all those willing to see, that Ozaki was more than the spokesman of the youth, he was the very embodiment of their greatnesses and faults, and, on his last years, the living representation of their desperation, abandoning this world just as the bubble finished bursting, and a new generation took the place of that he had once spoken to.

Here are my weekly recommendations:

• I LOVE YOU
• 十七歳の地図
• 路上のルール
• 15の夜
• 街の風景

On Comedy and Music...

Entry #1 | 20/04/26

What better way to start this first ever entry than with a small lesson on music history?

The song recommendation of the week (the little box you can see on the right side of your screen) is "Luv Connection", a very well-known song originally published in 1994 as part of an album called "Future Listening!", the debut album of Japanese DJ, artist, and producer Towa Tei.

This album would mark Tei's first professional venture as a solo artist, having previously been part of New York-based house group Deee-Lite, best known for their 1990 hit "Groove Is in the Heart."

"Luv Connection," featuring NYC club singer Joi Cardwell on vocals, would quickly grow to become a hit in Japan and elsewhere, breaking into the US club scene in 1995. The album (featuring big names such as YMO's Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono, Pizzicato Five's Maki Nomiya, and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra member Yuichi Oki) would mark an era and position itself as one of Japan's greatest and most influential albums of all time, as well as establishing Towa Tei as a big name in the Japanese house and electronica scene, and as a pioneer of Shibuya-kei.

But the more observant amongst you have probably already noticed that the name next to this title in my song rec box is not that of Towa Tei, but a small, rather unknown artist by the name of KOJI1200.

KOJI1200, whose real name is Imada Koji, is a Japanese comedian born in Osaka, a city known as "the city of comedians" due to the number of big-name comedians native to the area, and the easy-going, cheerful, and playful nature of the Kansai people.

Imada would go on to have a pretty successful career in television, both on his own and alongside his comedic partner Higashino Koji, with whom he practiced a traditional Japanese style of comedy known as "Manzai" (a style that anyone familiar with any level of Japanese media will know, but which maybe we could explore more deeply on another occasion).

In 1996, with the help of Towa Tei as his producer, Imada would venture into music as a solo act, debuting with the name KOJI1200 and the album "アメリカ大好き!", featuring a rather comedic cover of Tei's hit song. [Note: I would definitely recommend everyone check out this album as a whole.]

Okay, but why is this important? Well, I just like the song, despite its lack of seriousness, but I also find the topic of comedians using music as an extension of their act pretty interesting. This may seem like a very specific type of situation, but it happens much more often than one would think in Japanese music.

There are plenty of examples, but today I'll share one of my favorites: Yaen.

Yaen was a band named after a prominent Tokyo love hotel of the same name, and composed of both members of comedy duo The Tunnels (Takaaki Ishibashi and Noritake Kinashi) plus nine of their staff members (men who worked on making props, costumes, and special effects, and even the duo's driver).

The "group" was originally formed to perform a parody of a Kinki Kids song on a well-known variety show called Utaban, but thanks to Tsugutoshi Goto (a songwriter who wrote parody songs) and Akimoto Yasushi (better known as Aki-P, a producer that many of us who are into idol music are familiar with), they made their official debut as a real pop group in '98.

Their songs tried to mimic typical boyband aesthetics, lyrical themes, and sound, but with common middle-aged men instead of young attractive boys. Despite the comedic intentions, the group did remarkably well commercially, releasing three albums, selling over 3 million copies, and performing on Kōhaku Uta Gassen (a New Year's Eve television and radio special that is generally considered to be a big deal for Japanese artists).

There are a lot of decent songs, but here are my main recommendations:

• 叫び
• Be Cool!
• Get Down

All three were released as singles in '98 and later compiled in their first album, STAFF ROLL, in 1999. As a bonus, I would invite everyone to watch the music video for 叫び HERE.