The music of the other world echoing in Tokyo 〈on the anniversary of Shinji Sato's death by the Fishmans〉〜English Version

Toward the end of the 20th century, there was a band in Tokyo that played "music from the other side of the world. The vocalist sang most of the songs in a high tone that included a back voice, and his voice was always wavering. Behind her, the drums always released a precise rhythm without wavering, and the bass guitar crawled around in a low, twinkling sound. The drums held the vocals in place with their solid rhythm, while the bass danced freely on the ground. Their music was filled with a strange sense of happiness, a kind of happiness where one's desires become small, one is freed from the reality on earth, and one feels "this is enough. This sense of happiness floated around softly, gradually becoming less grounded and detached from the earth, and the sense of reality faded away. The atmosphere was happy, but it was not good to stay too long. It was not paradise, not heaven, but the other world. When I listened to their music, I felt that the sound would guide me and take me to the other world.

　The vocalist and guitarist of the band could not wait for the end of the 20th century and left for the other world on March 15, 1999. No one can replace him, but no one can replace his brilliance. He was "talent" itself.

"Whenever I'm sad,
  it's your face that comes to mind.
  Whenever I was sad,
  it was your face that  made me smile."


"You cast an invisible spell
  You threw magic where I couldn't see it.
  I felt like you did."


"Her faith in me, her certainty...
  will change me."

Ikareta Baby
 Tayorinai Tenshi

Just looking at the lyrics like this brings tears to my eyes. This is just a small part of his talent. Sensitivity to the point of fragility, for which words like "delicacy" are far from sufficient. I wanted to see what kind of person with such sensitivity had become at the age of 58.

　The last live concert of his life was held on December 28, 1998. After that concert, the bassist who had been with the band since its formation left, leaving the band with only a vocalist and a drummer. The live performance can be seen and heard on DVD, CD, and streaming media.

Watching it, the band gives a flawless performance throughout.

Instead of gradually picking up the pace, the quality of the music was heavenly from the start, and remained so throughout the show. The players on stage became sharper and sharper as they played, and their sound became sharper and sharper, without a trace of looseness.

The vocalist is the MC during that show,

"Here we go."
"Oh, yeah."

During the live performance, the vocalist unintentionally said, "It's good! It was a live performance that left a considerable impression not only on the audience but also on those on stage.

The last song of that concert was a 40-minute long piece. The song begins with an endless series of quiet guitar delays that sound like rippling waves.

A soft, soft synth sound slowly begins to flow, as if emerging from the waves of the guitar delay sound. It was like a soft light shining in the darkness, but somehow sad. Slowly, slowly, the light begins to fill the space, when suddenly the drums cut through it and a guitar riff begins to sound like a recorder being blown with all its might. The listener's mind is stirred by the unstable phrases that seem to end in the middle of the song, but do not converge with the rest of the song. In the background, a sequential piano phrase reminiscent of the sound of an electrocardiogram heartbeat begins to play. This piano continues to play as a bass tone throughout almost the entire piece until the song ends, conveying the fact that this piece is alive. As if to weave through these instruments, the bass guitar twists and turns in a low tone and plays a thick single-note melody. The band's strong groove emanates from them, but the buzzing in my heart is increasing all the more. The vocalist starts to sing quietly, clad in a layer of this buzzing.

We ride off into the sunset together...
Calling to the wind, calling to you...

Long Season

As if to confirm fragments of memories, he spins delicate words and melodies to paint a mental picture. The band responds with a sound that is not many in number, but is dense and airy, enveloping the listener.

What song do you hum?
What do you remember?

Whether he is asking the listener or perhaps himself, he sings these lyrics over and over again like an echoing reverberation afterwards. As you listen to the lyrics over and over again, the meaning of the words fade away to become the sound itself, but the truth of the lyrics enters your soul.

　There is a long drum solo, a fiddle refrain, and then all the instruments come to an end. Then he sings again the same lyrics as at the beginning.

We ride off into the sunset together...
Calling to the wind, calling to you...

The song's structure repeats itself like a Möbius wheel. After a celestial fiddle solo and a ferocious, distorted guitar solo, the song eventually comes to an end. At the end of the song, the vocalist sings.

We're half in a dream.

The performance, which lasted for more than 40 minutes, ended with the vocalist humming in an unstable key that could be either major or minor, and the sequential brace of the piano, which had been playing throughout the song like a heartbeat, stopped. The long, long song entitled "Long Season" came to an end and the concert came to a close...

Seventy-seven days later, he left this earth.

In August 2021, "Rate Your Music," one of the largest music review sites in the U.S., ranked the live album "December 28, 1998: Men's Farewell" at No. 18 in the "top albums of all-time" category, the highest ranking for a Japanese album. It was also ranked No. 1 in the "Live" category.

Japanese music is currently attracting attention around the world, but most of it comes from anime theme songs and buzz generated by TikTok and other social media. Therefore, the excitement is usually for one song at a time. In this case, however, there is no tie-up, no theme song, and no buzz from TikTok. This is an evaluation of an album, and a live album at that. This fact is worth mentioning. An album sung in Japanese, an extremely domestic language, has received this much recognition. Even with the disadvantage of the language difference, the feeling that this live performance had transcended national borders and was conveyed to people overseas. I was so happy that I wanted to jump up and down and shout out to everyone.

See, I knew it was great! Fishman's is great!

　In this day and age, when "methods" and "ways of doing things" are so much in vogue and people are desperately searching for them, the creativity and feeling that artists possess has broken through something. If I were an acquaintance of Mr. Sato,

I would have said, "Sato-san, that's amazing! You are amazing!"

I would have said, "Sato-san, that's amazing! But for Mr. Sato, who must have been making music as if he were going back and forth between this world and the next, the idea that his work could transcend national borders was simply not possible,

"Hmmm, I see.

I guess he might have thought that his works transcended national borders.

　Still, I am happy. Even if Mr. Sato is not on earth, we can still see the music he made with his friends and the wonderful performance. And someone on the other side of the world can also feel the emotions that well up from the experience of seeing them.

　I will continue to listen to his music in this world. Waiting for the time when the temperature is about to go over 25 degrees in spite of spring.

The images used in this text were obtained through Fishmans official website〈http://www.fishmans.jp/〉 with special permission from their label.