Issue #92: Walls
Exploring the new Laura day romance album and Seiko Matsuda's "Rock'n Rouge," plus guest recommendations of new singles
Hi! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
It’s only been two months into 2025, and so when I asked my friends below for their recommendations of new Japanese music, I allowed them to pitch any songs from last year as well to open up their options. It turns out the year has been so kind to already give us a wealth of new releases to get excited about because my writers here all hit me back with choices picked from 2025, each hailing from different spheres of music, too. Without further ado, I cede the floor to my guests in this third edition of Friends Recommends:
K recommends…
“Koe” by Hitsujibungaku [F.C.L.S.]
Hitsujibungaku entered 2025 at a well-deserved career high. As a fan of theirs since 2018, it’s been an absolute joy watching this hard-working band finally win mainstream acclaim by playing to their strengths, skillfully incorporating the raw, emotional core of works like Oshi No Ko into their established sound and worldview.
The band’s latest digital single, “Koe” (voice), is certainly no exception. Although they switch things up a bit in the arrangement, using acoustic guitar for added tenderness, they deliver another satisfyingly cathartic rock tune. In signature Hitsujibungaku style, the emotional lyrics feature a battle weary yet hopeful message that feels courageous rather than naive: “You’re calling me, I hear your voice / Though terrified, I call back, over and over, in my own,” goes the chorus in this fittingly touching theme song for a drama about fire dispatchers answering emergency calls.
Special mention goes to director Tai Nakazawa, who clearly understood the assignment and came up with a beautifully understated music video. I love the symbolism of the car, which frontwoman Moeka is never shown actively driving, as a metaphor for feeling powerless against one’s fate. All in all, the song leaves me incredibly excited for Hitsujibungaku’s next move in 2025. —K
Listen to it on Spotify.
K translates Japanese lyrics into English on her website. You can also find her on X and BlueSky.
CJ recommends…
”Effulgence (Zircon)” by matryoshka [Virgin Babylon]
After 12 years, the band matryoshka have made their long-awaited return with brand new single “Effulgence.” With a decent-sized cult following, many, including myself, wondered if we’d ever get new material from the band. So much time had passed, it started to feel hopeless; it’s still hard to believe we finally have a new release in hand. Now that it’s here, I knew I just had to shine a spotlight on it. After all, with how enigmatic this band is, it’s hard to tell if I’ll ever get that chance again.
“Effulgence” is split into two different versions, Zircon and Onyx, both essentially the same song except Onyx strips back the instrumentation to just the piano and strings. Despite being so similar, the added percussion in Zircon changes the tone drastically. Instead of the slight feeling of melancholy found in Onyx, Zircon evokes the listeners a grand sense of hope they wouldn’t have felt before. I have to give props to composer Sen for making such a small difference give way to two entirely different experiences.
This song also hits the way it does thanks to vocalist Calu. Her signature airy and almost whisper-like singing doesn’t overpower the beautiful instrumental, instead blending into it to become another crucial part. As her lovely, soothing voice weaves throughout the song, she amplifies all the emotions the song hits you with. And as the song reaches its crescendo, I can’t help but be moved every time. It’s a truly majestic thing to witness in action. —CJ
Effulgence is out now. Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
You can find CJ active on X, the r/Kamitsubaki subreddit, or the Kamitsubaki English community Discord always sharing music.
Dave recommends…
“Okazaki Kyoko No Ano Ko Ni Naritakatta” by TOKYO SYOKI SYODO [Cherry Virgin Records]
TOKYO SYOKI SYODO are a thrilling punk-pop group—their debut from 2019 gives a sense of a raucous live band that can veer from power-pop into riot grrrl scream-alongs on a dime, all displaying an impeccable pedigree of influences without sounding derivative. Their newer material across their two pink EPs is more polished but no less accomplished; their latest single, from pink II, is a driving, ska-inflected rocker that sounds readymade for a constant loop in a global reboot of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The song invokes Kyoko Okazaki’s groundbreaking manga, but at a generational remove from which the band can casually point out a towering inspiration and then go about their business without making a big fuss about it, like Olivia Rodrigo bringing along the Breeders on tour with a savvy shrug. The resulting music sounds better this way, too—an effortless series of bangers and bonbons, with as much snarl or sweetness as they care to apply. It's refreshingly weightless even when things get heavy, which is to say it all sounds fun. —Dave
pink II EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
Dave shares weekly playlists and writes about music from all over the world over in his newsletters, The Other Dave Moore. You can find him on Bluesky.
Al recommends…
“Old Friends” by YonYon ft. SIRUP & Shin Sakiura [Peace Tree]
For the past couple of years, I started following what I would consider an unofficial collective of indie singers, rappers and producers who are all more than down to collaborate with one another. Whether it’s a beat-maker creating songs for a specific artist (the fantastic pairing of Kota Matsukawa and R&B singer reina) or a bunch of vocalists performing on an artist’s multi-track release (bilingual talents like Wez Atlas and Sagiri Sól on Sam is Ohm’s Chaos engineering EP), not only is it amazing to get some great music as a result, but it’s also neat to see genuine camaraderie and respect between these insanely talented people.
2025 has just started, and we’ve already got another great example of what I just described in “Old Friends,” a song by Seoul-born, Tokyo-raised singer-songwriter YonYon that features a couple of her pals SIRUP and Shin Sakiura. Sakiura infuses cool hip-hop beats with peaceful ambience especially with the usage of gospel vocals and a fitting trumpet performance from Terakubo Reiya. All the while YonYon’s soft vocals and SIRUP’s signature blend of rapping and singing bring everything together for a fun and warm song to listen to. It’s a beautiful combination of everyone’s musical abilities.
Only recently have I learned that these three had any sort of connection with each other, but through the song’s lyrics, it’s easy to tell how much of a tight bond this trio has developed over the years thanks to the power of music. They reminisce about their shared experiences: when they first met in 2018 as a group of aspiring artists, when they held a performance together in Korea, just simply hanging out and having a drink one night. They compare life to climbing a mountain, and as these three take the difficult trek upwards, their individual journeys inspire one another to do even better things in hopes to eventually meet up again at the top of that “summit.” Despite all of them now following different paths in their respective careers, YonYon, SIRUP and Shin Sakiura continue to find value and gratification in this long-time friendship. —Al
Listen to it on Spotify.
al casually writes about Japanese media on the omunibasu newsletter, ranging from music, movies/TV dramas, anime and more. You can also find him gushing about his favorite idols & seiyuu on X.
Give it up for our guests! And now recommendations from me, which include a movie-as-album by an indie-rock favorite, jangle-pop that reminds me of Etsuko Yakushimaru, Mikugaze, some light touches of math (rock). There’s also another commercial jingle we’ll look back on—didn’t mean to cover three in a row, but that’s -pop for you.
Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Nemuru - walls by Laura day romance [PADDOCK]
*Recommended song: “Amber blue” | Listen to it on Spotify
Laura day romance begins Nemuru - walls with what sounds like a cozy slumber. A little further along into the story unfolding in the indie-rock band’s new album, it starts to dawn that sense of comfort in the opening track could lead into an eternal sleep. “Please wake them up / I just want you to let it stay / like how it is now,” Kazuki Inoue sings a tragic chorus of “mr.ambulance driver” despite the jauntiness of the song’s shuffling Vampire Weekend-ian rock. From the vocalist’s pleads to the rescuers, the lyrics in “Sleeping pills” read macabre looking back: the quiet declaration to put an end to it all wasn’t flowery poetry but a genuine call to action.
Vocal about his love of cinema since the band’s debut, 2020’s farewell your town, Jin Suzuki speaks in interviews about Nemuru - walls like a director promoting a feature film from how he elaborates on the kind of media works that he hopes Laura day romance’s third full-length will resemble: not a compilation of short pieces but one long narrative story, like two-part novels, multi-season TV dramas or Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. While the lyrics promote a sense of continuity from song to song, Suzuki liberally plays with time to tell his story, stepping in as editor as much as the eye behind the lens. The music similar flows non-linear compared to the unfolding drama. Rather than a grand rock epic that crescendos in tune to the narrative beats, the balmy, rich arrangements flow languid as they bask in the countryside stillness of their previous full-length, roman candles.
The ornate details in the hooks and melodies can be so sweet to downplay the melancholy underneath. In “Amber blue,” Inoue calls out the titular color like a pet name of a dear lover. Twinkling flourishes gradually fill the twangy rock as the singer’s feelings bloom, suggesting a charming start of a lovely affair. But of course, it’s a song named after a hue in the shade of amber: a life that’s been long expired, frozen in place. “A blue full of regret from becoming two,” she sings the rest of the chorus. “Just enclose it, more awkward the smile.” Like the rest of the album, “Amber blue” follows a relationship seemingly doomed from the start.
The lightness in which Laura day romance deliver the more tragic scenes throughout Nemuru - walls keep the band at a certain remove as narrators to their own story. It partly comes from the flashback being the album’s central plot device, and the unhurried music taps into this detached realm of memory. The band even nest a flashback in a flashback with the “deep breath=time machine” interlude literally moving back the clock to tell the story of how the characters first met in “a new life!” But the distance in which they sit to these unfolding experiences give way to an appreciation to experiences only earned when the events recede into the past, like they’re reminiscing these times as being a rosier memory than they actually were. It answers at least for how they can afford to work in such breezy melodies to tell a series of heartbreaking vignettes. Instead of being haunted from an absence, Inoue’s tender sigh in “platform” rings with gratitude, cherishing a memory where there was a voice responding back to her at all.
While the plot laid out in the album has yet to be written into completion by Suzuki — Nemuru - walls is the first of a two-part album, according to the band — it sets up in fine detail the story’s architecture: the atmosphere but also the connection behind the two narrators. The protagonists’ fates after the ambulance ride is left on a cliffhanger, and the album keeps mum about the exact relationship between the characters: are they more than “just friends”? But as Nemuru - walls drift in its in-between realms — the past and present, physical and subconscious, platonic and romantic — Laura day romance is starting to gain better clarity of their own creation.
Singles Club
“Blood Sugar Spike” by Hoshimiya Toto [self-released]
After being the awestruck voice at the center of a series of evocative electro-pop last year, Hoshimiya Toto settles her vocals down into a whisper and burrows it inside the breezy jangle-pop of “Blood Sugar Spike.” If the combo of the sighs and guitar strums brings to mind the whimsy of Soutaiseirion, perhaps it’s partly thanks to collaborator Jiyugaoka: teaming up with another soft-spoken vocalist Mizuki, the producer also invited comparisons to Etsuko Yakushimaru’s band with the guitar pop in their album Syndrome last year—word to Make Believe Melodies. Hoshimiya doesn’t get too indulgent with lyrical word salads like her inspiration yet the verse nonetheless reads oblique, gesturing to a spell of anxiety out of the singer’s control. The irony, then, comes from this ode to a blood-sugar spike being accompanied by such balmy pop rock.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Stella” by Emptei; “Sweet Chat” by Yuka Nagase & WaMi ft. yuigot
“Jinkai Ni Shizunde” by robounoishi [self-released]
Hatsune Miku laments her existential frustrations over screeching post-hardcore in “Jinkai Ni Shizunde”—sinking in rubbish. “Swept away like trash / and erased from memory,” the Vocaloid squeals before the music enters an extended breakdown, climaxing with a caterwauling guitar solo. Perhaps not too surprising a scene from a song by robounoishi, especially after last year’s brutal and brooding Pater Noster. But while a few tracks including this one dial into a similar bummed-out and snowed-in headspace, the Mikugaze outfit’s new album alternative mick actually does right by its title, serving more varied moods and expressions through the pairing of Miku and buzzing guitars. Take this ode to feeling like trash as the starting point into a great record.
alternative mick is out now. Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
See also: “Umie” by computer fight; “Shinryo Geka” by Sanketsu Tenshi Bungau-chan
“YOUTH” by tiny yawn [YAWN]
It’s easy to mistake the patience in which tiny yawn unravel their indie-rock in the band’s new Euphoria EP for a sign of laid-back ease. Despite the lightness in its math-y guitar riffs, the record’s lead-off track, “YOUTH,” wrestles with angst seemingly impossible to reconcile. They essentially present a dissection of a teenage mind trying to pay no mind at problems ranging from the self-centered (crooked glasses, ugly sneakers) to the intensely existential (what shall I be?). “If only there’ll come a time someday I’ll look back at this fondly,” vocalist Megumi Takahashi sighs in the chorus as the music finally reaches what sounds like a resolve. As they zero in on the anxieties rather than the exuberance of youth, tiny yawn give in to the emotional waves.
Euphoria EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Sepia” by Mele; “Without you” by yonige
This Week in 1984…
“Rock’n Rouge” by Seiko Matsuda [Sony, 1984]
No. 1 during the weeks of Feb. 13 - March 5, 1984 | Listen to it on Spotify/YouTube
Blooming from the sound of glossy, steady-footed disco, a heart-fluttering string riff gives the cue for Seiko Matsuda to get into the chorus starting with the now iconic lyric: “Pure, pure lips.” Those who heard the dreamy line in “Rock’n Rouge” for the first time in 1984 likely heard it as ad copy as much as a pop hook, with the chorus synced in a Kanebo commercial for its spring lipstick collection. “Isn’t it like a flower,” the idol herself asks the viewer about her freshly made lips towards the end of the TV commercial, right as the song completes its mood-setting refrain: “this spring colored by flowers, I will fall in love.”
Columnist cynanyc remembers this appearance of Matsuda on the Kanebo ad as a major happening. According to their article on Reminder, seeing a singer also as the main star of a make-up commercial was unheard of, with the cosmetic industry approaching the music and the model as wholly separate entities for their commercials. “The singers provided their voices in the music, and their names were credited on the bottom of the screen,” cynanyc writes. “The cosmetic industry and the model industry were well-connected, and they didn’t even consider the idea of a singer being in that spot.”
It only takes a glance at the Oricon charts around that time, though, to see Matsuda and pop idols in general had a powerful enough pull in media to move just about anything. Matsuda herself had been scoring number-one singles since 1980, “Rock’n Rouge” being her 13th. While her peers had yet to catch up to her numbers-wise as the year began, the titles atop the charts throughout points to 1984 as a breakout year for idol in the ‘80s. Tracking the number-ones is basically a trading of chairs between Matsuda, Akina Nakamori and Kyoko Koizumi with an occasional appearance of Masahiko Kindo and The Checkers. If pop-music consumers were all in on idols, it was only a matter of time that companies turned to them to borrow their star power to sell their product on TV.
Kanebo knew of the power of a pop single particularly well. The company saw the potential in the pop-music arena1 firsthand in 1978 as the singles featured in their CMs went back and forth on the number-one spot with songs commissioned by cosmetics competitor Shiseido. Since then, its campaign songs had grown into popular records, occasionally scoring the chart’s top spot. But despite its success as hit-makers, Kanebo ultimately needs the song to serve the campaign, not the other way around. If the collection’s main tagline of pure, pure lips didn’t fully inspire “Rock’n Rouge” into being, its existence hinged on that phrase with all the surrounding details built to elevate it into something unforgettable.
While the sprightly disco arrangement — inspired by ABBA, once explained composer Yumi Matsutoya2 — glows with the innocence behind the tagline, the narrative written by lyricist Takashi Matsumoto imagines its singer out to indulge in more risky pursuits. A boy with greased hair and a sports car tries to win the idol’s attention yet she can see all through his facade. “Don’t trip up all the sudden / saying, I l-l-love you,” she checks this so-called playboy, now all choked up when his moment finally comes, and takes the lead seemingly out of pity in this date to the beach: “Time won’t escape us / whisper in my ear a little more slowly.”
If Matsuda’s singles can be thought of as episodes from the fictional life of the idol, her desire for more glamorous, grown-up thrills (and perhaps more impressive boys) seems a natural development from her past records. Hearing her in this sports-car date to the sea in “Rock’n Rouge,” I reminisce on the beach-side vacation of “Nagisa No Balcony,” where she sends signs to a crush in hopes to spend the night with just the two of them. She plays coy, too, in “Rock’n Rouge” — “even if I say no to a kiss, it means I actually want it” — but ultimately guides the story how she wants to get exactly what she has set out to get while already knowing all of the tricks to his game. For all the talks of “Rock’n Rouge” being a groundbreaking moment for TV but also a new opportunity for the idol, Matsuda sounds more than ready for the cover star treatment as she takes full charge of her own narrative on the record.
This Side of Japan has a Ko-Fi as a tip jar if you want to show appreciation. A subscription to This Side of Japan is free, and you don’t have to pay money to access any published content. I appreciate any form of support, but if you want to, you can buy a Coffee to show thanks.
Next issue of This Side of Japan is out March 12. You can check out previous issues of the newsletter here.
Need to contact? You can find me on Twitter or reach me at thissideofjapan@gmail.com
I’ve covered a bit of what bloggers have dubbed “the commercial song wars” between Kanebo and Shiseido on a feature in This Side of Japan #54 if you want to read more about it.
“Rock’n Rouge” is one of the many songs Yuming composed under the pseudonym Karuho Kureda. For Seiko alone, she had previously done “Akai Sweet Pea,” “Komugiiro No Mermaid” and “Hitomi Wa Diamond” among a few others.