Kenshi Yonezu/Hachi - LOST CORNER

Natalie.mu, August 21st, 2024 (Original Article)

After a Four-Year Journey, Arriving At a Place for Lost Things

Kenshi Yonezu has released his album LOST CORNER on August 21st.

LOST CORNER is his first original album in 4 years, with the preceding STRAY SHEEP having released in August of 2020. From "Bye Now, See You Someday!", the theme for the NHK TV serial Tiger With Wings, to Globe, the theme for Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki-directed "How Do You Live?" [The Boy and the Heron], to Moongazing, the theme for the video game Final Fantasy XVI, to KICK BACK, the opening song for the Chainsaw Man anime, to M87, the theme for the film Shin Ultraman, it's packed with many of the hits that have come out in those four years, not to mention 9 brand new songs including Junk, the theme for the film Last Mile releasing this summer.

To mark the occasion of releasing this epic 20-song album, Natalie.mu interviewed Yonezu about all the details around the completion of this work. It turns out a key phrase for LOST CORNER was "It doesn't matter if it's broken." We explore what feelings brought Yonezu there in this long, 7,000-word interview.

— The album was fantastic. I imagine it might generally end up being sold as "a showy album filled with lots of hit songs," but my impression listening to it was that it's an album that's delivering something to the listener one-on-one.

Thank you very much.

— About when did you come up with a general picture of what the album would be?

Truthfully, I'd intended to release an album sometime last year. However, I had a lot going on last year between my Fantasy tour, Moongazing (released in June), Globe (released in July), and so on, and didn't really have much time, so I ended up deciding to delay it a year. But the longer I delayed it, the more songs there were going out into the world, and the more collaborations there would be. So before I knew it, in the four years since STRAY SHEEP (released August 2020), I'd amassed a ton of songs, and I was like "hang on, this isn't good."

— What do you mean, not good?

It's kind of sad when an album only has two or three unreleased songs. I feel like the whole thing of albums is fitting songs you've never heard before among ones you have. To this day, I still remember how back when I was purely a listener of music, those were the sorts of albums I wanted. Thus, I had the thought of "what am I going to do about this?" Until now, my albums have always been around 14 or 15 songs, or sometimes fewer, but that would mean putting out an album that would've felt "sad" to me with just two or three new songs. I didn't want to do that. So I decided to just plain make some songs.

— So first of all, you had the desire to include a lot of songs.

The ideal I was proposing was having half the tracks be new songs. But there was the issue of "will that fit on one CD?", and ultimately I wasn't able to reach that.

— Most of the pre-existing tracks are from collaborations, a true lineup of songs that are important both culturally and for you personally. Did that fact have any connection to your vision for this album?

I basically hadn't established any path to head down, no clear vision of "I'll make my next album be like this." But around the time Globe was released last year, I got a clear feeling that I should somehow change from how things have been up to now. The question then was, what do I do? That feeling is actually directly linked to the song Junk.

— Meaning?

I think "junk" is really great. And indeed, I really like garbage collection trucks. Just this truck driving around town, playing a recorded voice going "This is the garbage collection truck. We take TVs, computers, phones, and appliances." I remember being oddly fond of that. And part of said message was the phrase "it doesn't matter if it's broken." Ever since I was a kid, I found that somehow meaningful, and it stuck deep in my memory. A voice with no intonation saying "it doesn't matter if it's broken" can come off as sounding lonely, and makes you wanna say "Don't say things like that, isn't it better if it's not broken?", and at the same time there's a sense of tolerance to it. It really tickled me, so I always remembered it. So, when making the song Junk, I pondered how "it doesn't matter if it's broken" might actually be a really important theme to me, and examined it. Both in consideration of my past career, and in the sense of asking how I'm going to live in the future, it seemed to have a certain quality that aligned with a core part of me. From that point on, I was making music with the phrase "it doesn't matter if it's broken" in the forefront of my mind. So while it's not like there was any clear decision to make an album like such and such, or to go such and such way, when I relisten to what I made, at this point I do feel that, however unintentionally, the songs do have a common direction of sorts.

— Junk may be the theme song for the film Last Mile, but more than that, it became a very important song for you personally.

That's true. I started writing Junk as the theme for Last Mile, but there was a different song for that which I scrapped. That song followed the film a little more closely, so to speak - I made it thinking "if I'm looking for a way to represent this movie without excess, maybe this is it?" But I ended up going "this doesn't have the right feel." The previous song had a chilly city feeling, but that didn't feel right, and we discussed making something that gave off a bit more warmth and kindness. So I got to work remaking it, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd already done what I could.

— Ahh, I see.

Around that time, a friend of mine was feeling really depressed. I went to meet them right away, and what I experienced, saw, and heard then left a big impression on me. By the time I met them, they were already calm and able to talk with me normally. They told me what sort of state they were in right now, and among their words was the phrase "I'm not broken." They were like "everyone looks at me that way, but I'm not broken at all, I'm entirely normal, I just got a little too honest." I couldn't deny that, accepted it like "I see," and left, but later on, I couldn't help wondering "is it that bad to be broken?" Even if you were broken, all that means is me needing to accept you being different from how you once were, and I believe that sort of acceptance of each other's ever-changing states is what communication between people is all about. Granted, I can certainly understand the coldness of society toward those branded as "broken," so it's not entirely that simple, but now I think it would've been good if I'd said "I don't mind if you're broken." That's how it connects to what I said about the garbage collection truck earlier, going "it doesn't matter if it's broken."

— I saw a private showing of the film, and when the song played at the end, I felt shocked by how much it got to the heart of it - how the feelings of these characters were made into song. How did it feel to you, creating this song, and then getting to hear Junk at the end as the film's theme?

How, indeed. I don't know what the viewers are going to think of it, and I believe that's entirely for them to decide. Still, while I do think there are surely parts that are properly linked to the film, my personal experience plays a large part. I can't keep the thought of "was this for the best?" from crossing my mind. I wasn't in a state where I could view it objectively, you know.

— A line from this song that left a strong impression on me was "For every thirty people, there's one in the minority / You were always one of them, and I make two." I think past songs of yours have expressed the perspective of minorities as well, but it really resonated hearing it be directly stated. What feelings do you have on that line?

Regarding the choice of "thirty people," the idea I had was that was about the size of a school class. "One in every 10,000" or "one in every 1,000" are expressions everyone's heard before, but I remember feeling as a kid like "whenever I am, whatever I do, am I always that "one"?" Even if I feel like we have the same tastes or some points in common, like we're living with similar perspectives, the more I come to think as such, the larger even slight differences appear. Is there no one in this world I can have an understanding with? Trying to pack in those feelings I've had for ages as well as more recent experiences, that's the expression I landed on.

— In Junk, you sing "Let's go look for the things we lost somewhere." I feel that this line is connected to the big-picture of the album, as well as the title song LOST CORNER, but did you have an awareness of that?

I believe I did. I really like Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go," and I especially liked the depictions revolving around "the lost corner." The phrase "lost corner" is used to refer to the land of Norfolk, with the nuances of "a forgotten place" and "a place dealing in lost things." The children in the story poke fun at Norfolk, like "they say that place is where all lost things end up."

— In the story, the English town of Norfolk is taught in a lesson as being "the lost corner of England," a desolate place no one goes to. Then the children read a double meaning into it, calling it "a place dealing in lost things."

And since no one goes there, even when it comes up in the lesson, there aren't any photos. I believe that sort of thing has the effect of making your imagination work. As the children grow up, it takes on a sort of relief-bringing form. The thing you lost might be gone right now, but "don't worry, if we go there, it's sure to be there" - it becomes an emotional support. Between the feeling of that change occurring, and the things that happen upon actually going there, it's a really good book. "Let's go look for the things we lost" is a phrase that took inspiration from that, I believe. But at that point, I hadn't even remotely thought I would title the album LOST CORNER. So as far as direct influence goes, it might stop at the lyrics.

— Did you decide the album title as "LOST CORNER" after finishing all the songs?

I decided in the middle of making the album songs. If possible, I would've liked to assign a title after finishing the songs completely, so that I could pick one that summed them up neatly, but that wasn't to be. Instead, I gave it the title "LOST CORNER" after it came to me suddenly. But looking back now, I'm able to tell myself that maybe choosing the title made it easier for me to see the direction of things.

— So then, how did you make the title song, LOST CORNER?

The last song I worked on was Good Morning, but that was pretty much a slight modification of something I used as background sound for my concert last year, so essentially, LOST CORNER was the song I made last. I was thinking the whole time that I had to make a song that summed up the album. And I had been imagining what sort of song that might be, but once I got to trying to make it, it was pretty difficult. I felt I should make something more organic, with a slow tempo, a so-called medium ballad, but it just wasn't sticking. As I proceeded, it ended up being a song so crisp it startled even me. But I felt immensely satisfied, like "yep, this was it."

— Indeed, it has a crisp texture, and a comfortable feeling like driving music. How exactly did it feel, realizing that this was what was sticking?

As far as my mentality at the time, I didn't want to be damp and moody. And indeed, Globe played an incredibly big part in that. Much the same is true of Moongazing, but making that song, I even thought things like "might this be the end?" Getting to making the theme song for a Ghibli movie feels like the greatest honor one can achieve in their life. Of course, it's not as if I started making music with that as my aim, and I never imagined something like that would happen to me, but it was a big enough event to paint over my entire life. I even thought "maybe I've been doing music all so I could reach this point." And so, while there was about half a year between finishing the song and it being released, I really had a sense of "oh, this is bad" that whole time. Like "once this releases, might my life as a musician be over?" So I was really emotionally frazzled last year. What I said before about planning to release an album last year, even - thinking about it now, I imagine it would've happened that way if only I hadn't been in such a mental state. I wasn't too aware of it at the time, but it's like I became timid about making music. It was a huge honor for me, but at the same time, it was also an immense burden.

— The experience of making Globe, having Hayao Miyazaki accept it directly, and seeing him cry before your eyes after hearing it - I can imagine that's the sort of scene that would show up when your life flashes before your eyes.

Indeed. It might be the very first one.

— And if you were to be told right after that "please make songs for an album," well, that seems like it'd be difficult.

There are a number of songs from last year on this album, and when I listen to them, I remember my feelings at the time like "man, this guy's struggling," and kind of have to laugh. Feeling that way, it was as if I had come to rather detest making music, thinking "it's hopeless" - but once some time had passed since the song's release, I arrived at a feeling of "there's no going back." It's pretty obvious, but the way you think about things changes as you age, doesn't it? You can achieve growth that way, but you can also experience a kind of loss. The more you grow, the more things you become unable to do as well. That's true both mentally and physically. So I made a sort of resignation. Rather than get all desperate to gain something, I'll accept losing things. That was the sort of change in thinking I had.

— You came to think about affirming the fact of losing things.

And by doing that, sure enough, things felt a lot easier, like I'd taken a weight off my shoulders. I think my teens and twenties were times of acquiring things. I'm currently this kind of person, and I need a side like this to live socially, so I'll take that into myself. I'll dispatch the thing I imbibed as music, and acquire many new things based on the reaction to it. I spent my time "living to acquire things," but as of last year, I started to think about "living to lose something." If growth and loss are two sides of a coin, then by flipping my perspective, I could even say I'm living to lose. Once I decided I'd approach life with that mindset, I came to feel "well then, anything's fine, right?" I'm making songs one after another thinking "what do I care?" I think that feeling is strongly expressed in the song LOST CORNER as well. Breezily going "listen, it's fine, let's take it slow." I use the phrase "beyond the curve where you can see the ocean," which is to say that taking that curve, the road will keep going on even if it's twisty, and it's important to take it at a speed where you can get a feel for it by yourself. When you think about it that way, many things stop mattering - I think this song expresses that sort of crisp warmth.

— This song mentions "the Norfolk sky," and Yonezu-san, you actually went to Norfolk in England. Was that last year, too?

Indeed, it was a short time after Globe and the film had been released. I believe that experience influenced this song as well. "A guitar casually bought and lost" is also just a true story. It was lost baggage. I bought a guitar in Norfolk on a whim, and lost it when I went on the plane to Paris. But rather than sadness or anger over it being lost, the reality that I lost it just felt so fitting.

— I mean, you had gone to Norfolk and all.

I was like "augh, I lost it!" And it got my mind turning. Losing it wasn't remotely a saddening thing. Maybe someone else was playing that guitar now. Why, I could imagine it easily. I had a lot of good experiences like that on that trip.

— Thinking of it that way, Junk and LOST CORNER strike me as the front and back to each other. LOST CORNER is a song that accepts loss optimistically, while Junk is a song that affirms being broken with kindness. Those feelings seem to form the central axis of the album.

Speaking of the song Junk, although I sing that "we're two pieces of junk," I feel that's a dangerous expression. I mean, that's self-deprecating, isn't it? I feel like I should understand, as someone who often self-deprecates, but when you use a self-deprecating expression with someone else, it can be a problem if you aren't careful. Trying to communicate while bringing harm to yourself may seem fine to you, but you might also be hurting people of similar natures or in a similar state, who have something in common with you. There's a risk involved. Writing this lyric, too, I put thought into how I could express it in a way that wouldn't thoughtlessly hurt people. I feel like self-deprecation falls into one of about three patterns.

— What patterns are those?

The first is that there's amazing people around you, and you just shrink yourself in comparison to them. "Oh, compared to you, I'm not a big deal at all, eh-heh" - that's a type of self-deprecation where you view yourself as lowly. Another type is matching eye-level, sort of the opposite situation - when the person across from you is shrinking or afraid, and you go "don't worry, don't worry, I'm no big deal either." These two are quite dangerous; I think there's a big risk of looking someone in the eye in a way that's uncomfortable. I do the second one in particular a lot, and while I'm humbling myself like "don't worry, don't worry," I might end up saying things I really didn't need to say, and it can feel like I'm hurling self-deprecation at the person, even if I believe I'm saying it out of kindness.

— Self-deprecation just lowers the value of things.

Right, right. So those two are dangerous, but I think there's one more, which is "admission." It's sort of like "I guess that's all I am after all, wahaha." I think this one is an issue of nuance, but there's a kind of self-deprecation where you accept yourself, but express it by mixing it with a sort of humor. Of course, it's self-deprecation, so I don't think it can be called completely harmless. Yet that frank, "this is how I am," self-approving form of self-deprecation might be the most comfortable to me. I even think sometimes that's the way I should be. So while Junk has the expression "we're two pieces of junk," and LOST CORNER also says "we're junk for sale," I wasn't aiming for one of those first two types of self-deprecation, but the third type of admission. There isn't any fear there, or attempted kindness or consideration, just a crisp cheerfulness. I had a desire for that sort of thing to reside in these songs.

— Continuing on, let me ask about the first track, RED OUT. With its aggressive and impatient feel, it's an extremely irritated-sounding song; what sort of place did you make this from?

I made this one starting from the bass riff. I think it was a rebound from "Bye Now, See You Someday!" As I remember it, after focusing so much on making "Bye Now, See You Someday!" into a morning song, I thought "look, let's just make a night song," and that's how it was born. Also, the pre-chorus for this song goes "Disappear this instant, disappear, disappear," over and over, yet in the last song LOST CORNER, I sing "Hey, no chance they'll disappear." The idea of inserting "disappear" and "won't disappear" all across the album struck me at around this time. Thus, it feels as if I started making this song by going off association from the word "disappear."

— So you had that idea before making LOST CORNER, then?

That's right. Without having any predictions about where the last song would end up, I had only a faint image of it being a song "imbued with something" that would say "it won't disappear."

— And with RED OUT having you shouting "disappear" in the middle of it, it becoming such a harsh song was a natural conclusion.

I have a kind of neurosis, so to speak... I think I'm someone who, more than the average person, has untoward imaginations or threatening thoughts that cross their mind and then disappear. At times like that, I think "disappear, disappear." The feeling of those moments, that disorder or whatever it is - I wanted to give form to that. Maybe I can simply describe it as having a "chuunibyou" feel, with me making it while remembering how I was as a child. While you're a child, you're full of vitality, so in contrast, you actually seek out death. As you grow up, that starts to invert, but while you're a child, that's inevitably where you lean. So I recall wondering it how it would go to make something about the recklessness of that time as my current self.

— How about track 3, "Margherita + AiNA THE END"? This song is a collaboration with AiNA THE END-san; how did you go about making it?

I'd actually been thinking "I want to call her someday" about AiNA-san for a while. Her voice is so wonderful it almost goes without saying, and I always felt her vocals themselves had a unique charm. This song is sort of the scrapped version of Every Day. I took a portion of what I'd made while thinking "I have to make a morning song, a midday song," and expanded that out. Both the melody and the word "margherita" at the start of the chorus came to me at the same time, but I was like "nah, there wouldn't be margherita pizza in a coffee commercial." So I scrapped it then, but later picked it back up to re-examine and build anew. Though me ballooning out the keyword "margherita" kind of just resulted in a song where I'm saying "I wanna eat margherita pizza."

— What was your reason for reaching out to AiNA-san?

While I was making the song, I got a real urge of "I absolutely want to have a woman sing this." It was a busy time for work, so I had to make the request rather suddenly, but I'm truly grateful she accepted it gladly. It's the sort of song that brings to mind affection or something sexual, so having a man and woman sing it might unavoidably make people view it in the sense of a heterosexual relationship, but that's not really how I think of it. It's more like two people chattering with each other in a coffee lounge or something, going like "the days are so boring." I'm not depicting a sexual love unfolding between those two, but strictly just two people facing the same direction. That's the mindset I made it with.

— How did you feel about the parts where your voice overlaps with AiNA-san's?

Viewing it like an instrument, it felt like a different beast. She truly does have a unique voice. There's a gainy-ness, or a partial roughness - a sort of sobbing-like nuance that only she can perform. Those things are openly on display in this song. She sang in a rather low key for me. That's also very sexy, and felt like a good kind of voice I haven't heard very often.

— This song also has a line about "inviting me to a sweetly bitter night." You talked about the sexual nature of it, but it's also a song about eating, so you're singing about both hunger and lust - in other words, desire in general. In light of that, it has a very frank feel.

Perhaps there is some frank dangerousness there, or else something you can perceive in an ethical or moral way. Not wanting to get defiant about it, but saying like "this is the sort of person I was born as, so what else can I do?" I wanted it to have that sort of pardoning, or affirmation, to it. It's not like I'm fully encouraging it, but I wanted to also bring out this sense of hopelessness. For me, I figured the best way to do that would be in a dance-number-like form.

— What about track 10, "Stop, Look Both Ways"? It gives a strong sense of urgency; around what time did you make this song?

This was around the start of last year. Like I said before, listening to it now I'm able to feel a strong sense of having lost my destination, and that kind of makes me laugh now. Like I'm "bracing for the coming impact" of Globe being released to the world. "What to do? Keep going? Shouldn't we stop for a bit?" I think it's a song that expresses that sort of mindset.

— Continuing on to track 11, LENS FLARE was revealed in your tour last year.

Right. At that time, it had the title PERFECT BLUE, being created with ideas from Satoshi Kon-san's film. Though that aside, I myself have lived for quite some time as a famous person. I stand on stage and am bathed in many people's gazes, and sometimes unimaginably violet language gathers around me from various angles. It's become standard for me to look at that and think "yep, that's the difference between the real and the virtual." In particular, on social media, people will excise just one portion of a person, go off showing it everywhere, and leave the real person far behind. I'm in the middle of that vortex, and I've seen my fair share, but most of it seems largely irrelevant to me. I'm able to perceive it in that sort of partitioned way now, but last year I was in a bad mental state, and viewed that stuff as a way of depriving people of their humanity. There are aspects of the rising "stan culture" that I find extremely grotesque. When you're constantly communicating in a way that sees only the surface-level, and then the person in question acts in a way contrary to your supposition, it's unbearable, like a shellfish stripped of its shell. It seems that phenomenon has been happening more frequently in recent years. Trying to ruminate on that sensation myself and make something from it, this is what resulted. People who like me might get worried hearing this song, but of course I'm grateful for the people supporting me, and it's not my intention to make you shrivel up, so I hope you can accept it as one of many possible expressions. Because I'm fine.

— What can you say about track 16, YELLOW GHOST?

This is also a song I made last year, and I made it deciding from the start to sing about sexual love. There's been a few songs, like Margherita, where it ended up being that sort of song in the end, but this one firmly approached it as the theme. Sexual love always has a "forbidden" aspect to it, I feel. In Japan, it's an act only allowed with a partner with whom you've made a contract. And it can be an incredible sin depending on the time and situation, too. With "love" having this part of it that tends to be made taboo in that way, I wanted to focus in on that part.

— I find this song has a very serious flavor to it.

Whenever someone loves something, they have to look at the "death" that awaits on the other side of it. The more you love something, the more you have to see the farewell that is guaranteed to come someday, AKA death. That leads to fear. I believe fear is connected to that place of "I don't want to lose it." And going in the opposite direction, fear is connected to loving someone. If you don't think of anyone as special, if there's no person who you can think of in that way, then I believe there's no real need for fear. It's like "I and Thou" - I feel there'd be no meaning to living. To fear something, to fear death or separation, must surely be because you feel love. Bataille apparently called part of sexual love "the little death," and in that sense as well, it feels like a thing extremely near to death. Thus, forbidden sexual desire feels like it gives a boost to that fact of looking at death. If it's an unforgivable act, if you're directly connecting two people's sexual love to sin, then that's all the more reason. That sort of sexual relationship relates both to living and to dying. I feel like it couldn't help but end up that way.

— Margherita and YELLOW GHOST are both songs with a motif of sexual love, but YELLOW GHOST seemed to have a sense of estrangement as well.

People who have committed some crime, who had no choice but to act immorally or unethically, may have done so with ill will in some cases, but even if there was no ill will, that sense still exists. It's not like I'm advocating for being immoral, nor am I affirming it, but I was making songs for this album with a mindset of "it doesn't matter if it's broken," as I discussed with LOST CORNER and Junk, so I simply had to make a detour there. This is less about whether or not someone is broken, but the situation of being treated by others as broken. I had a feeling that was absolutely required for this album.

— How about track 17, POST HUMAN? Per the title, it seems like it depicts a sci-fi kind of world.

When creating the album, we discussed making a robot to include with the Junk Edition. I had the people I always count on for art to make it, and it turned out super cute. I was so fond of it, I decided I'd make a signature song for it, and that's how it began. Thus, I constructed it with an industrial-feeling sound.

— I see.

At the same time, I thought about wanting to make it a song about generative AI. Recently, "AI" has been having a major effect all over, for creating things, drawing art, making music, making movies... I've always been interested by generative AI myself. Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" even depicts a sort of generative AI that, with the press of a button, automatically plays music based on your current mood. As a child, I thought "I wonder if we might see this sort of future someday?", but I feel like it's started up much sooner than I thought. So then, I tried out an app where you chat with an AI to befriend it. You can choose its voice, and it replies to things you say, so you can have discussions. At least at the time I tried it, its responses were fast, and it was interesting feeling like it was understanding what I was saying, but at the same time, there were replies that were like "I didn't mean it like that..." I felt a sense of cuteness and uncanniness existing together. When I look at images generated by recent AI technology, too, at least in its current stage, I get a sense of cuteness and uncanniness - or maybe it would be better to call it scariness - coexisting. It may be made with incredible detail, but there's always parts that make you go "a human wouldn't have done that." It's possible this situation might only be for the time being - if the technology keeps developing, maybe they might really come to be filled with expressions that are indistinguishable from what a human would make. So I thought it might be nice to record this current situation, this sensation, into a song.

— The song does have some dystopian imagery as well.

Wanting to write something with both scariness and cuteness, I realized the way to go about that would be to write it with an "unreliable narrator." The lyrics express a pure, unilateral love or affection for someone, but there's also the sense of "is this guy actually evil?", or "seems this guy messed it all up." To bring out both those sides, the use of an unreliable narrator seemed to fit best, bringing it to this form.

— The closing track 20, "Good Morning," was originally background sound used in the opening for your tour. What made you decide to put this at the end?

It just felt like a good spot for it. Between the talk of "junk" and "it doesn't matter if it's broken," all this carrying forward with a single idea culminated in the song LOST CORNER, and after finishing that, part of me thought "Maybe I made Good Morning so it could sit right here." The vocoder-like voice, the clattering sounds, it felt like it was in line with this album's tone. Putting this song at the end felt comfortable.

— My impression hearing it was that, because Good Morning was placed at the end, it's as if your perspective is changing from subjective to objective, like you're ending it by having the camera pull away.

I get that. I don't remember much about the time I was making this song, but I was just casually messing with a vocoder and digital choir, and it had this kind of broken feeling. I definitely had a desire to express that kind of thing. This nuance of being half-broken, barely clinging to life, and wringing out the last of your strength. I made slight adjustments like changing the piano's tone to sound broken to match that, and laid it there at the end. So it does have the feel of being made for the end of the album.

— Let me ask again about the album as a whole. Having finished the album, artwork and packaging and all, what sort of work do you think you've created?

It's been 4 years since STRAY SHEEP, but me being asked to do the theme song for a Ghibli movie was actually just before I finished making that album. As such, the pre-existing songs are almost all ones I made during the time I was dealing with Globe. I've said it again and again, but I was pretty exhausted, feeling like my very life as a musician might be in danger. However, through my experiences afterward, I was able to make the resignation of "nothing I can do about it." Not in a negative way, but as a forgiveness of the fact that I'm losing things. I became able to go "This is how it is, but oh well, that's fine in its own way, it's not all bad." I feel I've also been able to get some distance from my real and virtual selves, in a good way. The more people I reach, the more misunderstandings will pop up, like bamboo shoots after the rain. I'd never be able to keep up crushing them one at a time, so there's no use even entertaining them. Once I got like that, I tried thinking "Okay, so what is important to me?", and I think it's "having a domain that can't be taken away." Preserving a domain somewhere that can never be taken from me, no matter how much malice I'm exposed to.

— Having a domain that can't be stolen.

I think it can be anything at all, and it'll differ between people. I don't want to put into words what it is, but it's inside me too. That domain might be more cramped than I think, no big deal, a small thing. But if I'm able to firmly keep it, then even if there's an picture of me out there that's far removed from my real self, it's not like it's going to massively crumble. Being able to think that way has been huge. That's why I drew the cover for this album with the intent of doing a self-portrait. In the past, I might not have been able to do that, like the neurotic part of me would deny it, but now I guess I don't especially mind. No matter how much I'm exposed to the world, I have something that can't be taken away. I'm able to brace myself in that way now. I think this album might just serve as a record of that transformation.

— I think that sensation of "having a domain that can't be taken away" is an important one for you personally, and for people listening to the album as well, I feel there are things that speak to a variety of lifestyles and values. So like I said at the start, it's an album with a lot of hit songs, but it also feels like a one-on-one with the listener. It's an album that sings about loss, about things that can't be taken back, about losing your way, and affirms those things. And you're able to affirm them because you have something that can't be taken from you. That part included, I feel it'll definitely come across to the people who need it to.

I hope that's the case. I made all the songs on this album myself. Up to now, a good percentage of my title songs have had joint arrangement with someone else, but I decided that for now, I'd drop that for album songs. I opted not to bring in a third party. It might be a more ineffective form for music, yet I just have such a strong feeling of "but doesn't this feel better?" I didn't want to bring that into comparison with anything. It's fine if it's broken, it's just what I believe feels good. This album was made with a mindset of driving that feeling as far as it could go. That's why I had a ton of fun making it.

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