Kenshi Yonezu/Hachi - Nighthawk

Natalie.mu, July 13th, 2026 (Original Article)

Calling on Ambition and Desires for the Theme Song to "Kingdom 5: Decisive Battle of Souls"

Kenshi Yonezu has released his new song Nighthawk for streaming on July 13th.

Written as the theme song for the film "Kingdom 5: Decisive Battle of Souls," it's a rock number with a grand scale. With intense vocals over an oriental tone, it's quite a powerful song.

What thoughts did Yonezu take into the creation of this song? In this Natalie.mu interview, we approached it from various angles: his thoughts on Kingdom, the themes of "ambition" and "desire," and its connection to the 2026 NHK Soccer theme Raven, which was created around a similar time.

— Your new song Nighthawk is the theme song for the film "Kingdom 5: Decisive Battle of Souls." What were your thoughts when you received the offer?

Even before being approached about Kingdom, I'd read the manga. It was a work I liked a lot, so first things first, I felt grateful to be asked to do it. Writing a song for such an intense story that gets your blood pumping and adrenaline going was also a new challenge for me. It's a type of work I've not done much in the past, so I also had an interest in what sort of song I'd produce if I were to do it.

— What appealed to you about the story of Kingdom?

Kingdom is, simply enough, a story about the protagonist Xin's rise. Starting as just a little brat with absolutely nothing, he gradually gains more people who accompany him. I feel like a story like that gets me excited just on principle. I think there are aspects there that are somehow similar to myself. While it's not like I was actually in his position, part of me sympathizes with Xin's delinquent nature. Thus, I did often find myself comparing myself to Xin as I read, and so this song ended up being built around that sort of axis.

— Kingdom's Xin strikes me as a straightforwardly ambitious person; would you say you have that kind of side to you as well?

I do indeed. Calling it "desire" may be a bit overstated, but that is what I feel when I think "I want to be stronger," as well as "I want to make a good song." I believe I've had a strong sort of ambition in me ever since childhood. If I didn't, I don't think I would have even gotten to where I stand now. I imagine my mindset of "Let's do this!" is something I was born with.

— What about Kingdom as a live-action film series, specifically? When the theme song was announced, you described it in a striking way in your comment: "a festival that refreshes everyone once a year." So what are your feelings on them?

When I received the request, I took a look around me and realized anew that there were a lot of people in my vicinity who liked Kingdom. Some of them read the manga every week, while others don't keep up with the manga much but are always there whenever one of the films comes to theaters. So, after rewatching the films from 1 to 4, I came away thinking "what a festival." It's packed full of actors who are national stars, and while it has a dark and violent taste, where there may even be some grotesque scenes, it also keeps you up to speed with well-crafted dialogue. They're films that give off a strong creator's intention of "nobody's getting left in the lurch," and they throw wide the doors and say that anyone can come in. It's a humongous festival that happens once a year, and has a sort of broad acceptance of anybody. That's the impression I got.

— When making the song, did the film team have any demands or requests?

Before I started, I had one meeting with the producer. There, we had a talk about how the Kingdom film project was constructed, and what feelings had gone into the continued work on the films. However, as far as concrete requests for the song or demands for wanting it to be like such and such, there wasn't anything in particular, just "we would appreciate if you did it however you'd like." I felt grateful for that too, and decided I should start by using the things I've taken from the work as an axis.

— I hear you started work on the song after seeing a rough cut of the film. What parts did you latch onto?

When making this song, I took a step away from simply making a theme song out of my lingering feelings after the film ended; as I recall, I made it in a mindset of not focusing on anything in particular, just broadly heading into the large frame of "what I've gotten from Kingdom." Moreso than this individual movie, I was thinking only about "what kind of story is Kingdom?", I suppose.

— My own impression from listening to the song was that it seems to depict Xin's ambition, just as you said. Yet on the other hand, it's not solely a story of growth and success; it's a song that also makes you imagine the deeds and destinies in the background of that, and how many people are wounded and in pain during the battle. It struck me that those sorts of feelings might be another motif you got from Kingdom; what do you think?

I said earlier that I have strong desires, and the feeling of "I want to acquire what I don't currently have" is one I believe I've felt more than the average person since childhood. That goes for things you can buy with money, and also for abilities, like wanting to get better at singing or an instrument. Alongside those feelings of "I want to get stronger," I also feel a kind of strong embarrassment about them. There's another part of me that looks at it objectively like "what're you even gonna do once you get that strong?", raining on my own parade. I have that sort of rivalry within me, where I sometimes think "what a wretched way of life." In making pop music, making J-pop, I've been lucky enough to be listened to by many people, yet when it becomes something large-scale, I think it takes on a kind of violence that makes one think "I'm being subjected to something I don't want to listen to," or "I've had enough of this already." Part of me is embarrassed about that, while also having the feeling of "who cares about that, let's just do this." And even now, there's part of me that looks at that and goes "Are you for real? What're you doing?" like a wet blanket. I think that rivalry might be showing up in this song.

— The lyrics start with the line "Swallowed up by anger, we stood hesitatingly." There's also the phrase "A tattered rag that's almost nothing; to be proud of it, I needed to open my eyes." While these words may make you imagine a battlefield, it feels like it's also possible to read them as depicting inner feelings.

That's true. I think the idea that "if I don't become strong, I probably can't live" has stuck with me since childhood.

— In the Raven interview from the other day, you said that looking back on your childhood and "getting back on track" served as a wellspring for that song. Does that have some kind of connection to Nighthawk as well?

Somewhere in the middle of making Raven and Nighthawk, I started to get a strong sense that these two songs were emotional twins. They were made in close proximity, yes, but it wasn't just that - if Raven is the yang, Nighthawk is the yin. Raven is a song that, while not rejecting being in a group and unifying to defeat an opponent, establishes some distance from it. So if the vector of Raven is headed away from "desire," this song's vector should instead point toward that desire. However, I also feel "even if you go there, it's such a pointless thing." A sort of nihilistic "what could you even want so badly you'd hurt people for it?" I don't intend to authoritatively say something like "just by living, people will hurt others," and beyond that, people do have desires. To those other than you, those desires have a stench. I think that stench is perhaps thinking that "I'm stronger than others." So if have a grand desire or ambition, then indeed, I want to be as kind to others as I can be. I think that's basically how it is.

— I see.

Even when I'm talking in a place like this, I've become more careful with my words year by year, searching along the pathways as I speak in the hopes that my words won't be violent. Indeed, part of me thinks that's also because my desires run so deep. I'm well aware that my desires have a stench, so it's like I'm exercising self-restraint to not let out that stench too much. But I think Nighthawk may have become a song where I decided, let's show those desires as much as possible, with their stench and all.

— Did you have the idea of the title Nighthawk from the early stages?

That's right. Though really, it's like, "how long am I going to keep doing Kenji Miyazawa?" It's my second song using the word "nighthawk," even.

— There was the song "Nighthawks" on BOOTLEG (album released in 2017), wasn't there.

When I realized "ack, right, there's already "Nighthawks,"" I thought about changing it, but it was kind of unchangeable. Eventually I was like "forget it, there's no way" and just went with it. Even if I do think "it's fine to do something like that." The Nighthawk Star is unmistakably a story that's down in my roots, and I feel it became this sort of song because of all the things I'd pulled out from there.

— Rather than this song having some kind of relation to "Nighthawks," I suppose it's more like they share a motif that's linked to the desires and impulses within you.

That's true. It was so inevitable to me, I had a sort of unavoidable "oh well, what can you do" mindset about it. I mean, I came from NicoNico Douga, you know. To wind back the clock, the internet at that time was a sort of lawless land. In Tokushima, they don't show anime from the TV Tokyo lineup. So even if I wanted to watch Naruto, I couldn't. In elementary school, I would rent one volume at a time from the video store to watch it, but a grade-schooler doesn't have enough allowance to fully keep up with it that way. You'll give up before you can even get a proper start. So that's the kind of environment I grew up in, then in 5th grade, the internet came to my house. Thinking back, it was a really narrow place compared to now, but it felt almighty, like everything could be found there. Things I'd never seen nor heard before were tumbling around its furthest reaches, so I felt that by being there, I could obtain all of it. NicoNico Douga was also one of those "distant lands." With things like MAD videos, where someone took existing works and messed with them like toys to make everyone laugh. I have a real sense of being raised by that sort of place.

— A lawless land of sorts was your hometown.

That's right. I truly feel I became a musician growing up amid all that. Later on, talking to all sorts of bigshots in the music world, I learned that NicoNico Douga had an extremely poor reputation. I've heard things said like, it's the sort of place that lets comments fly by on top of the video, encouraging people to damage the video in a way, so an independent artist should never upload their songs there. And I thought to myself "uh, I mean, I came from there..." There are many formative things for me that are "bootleg" in some way, so I comfortably accept those sorts of low-quality, crude things, and have a strong sense that they fostered me. So I'm also kind of like "what do you know, huh?"

— Let me ask about the sound, too. The heavy groove and melody also contain a continental feel bringing it closer to Kingdom. It feels necessary that it's a wild and impulsive song, too. What ideas did you have about the sound and composition?

At first I thought I'd like to try a rock-esque approach, so I started by considering the drum phrases. I had a sense of wanting to make breakbeat, or maybe indie rock initially. But then, Kingdom has an East Asian style, right? There was a period where I really wanted to bring it back around to that, so I went looking up Shikoku legends, for instance, and dug through traditions from my birthplace of Tokushima. Combining those nuances together resulted in a song that's sort of like "rock, yet that being said..."

— And so one of the elements of the song became that sort of indigenous quality.

Right. Given what I'm actually using is shinobue flutes and such, though, I don't know whether it's actually suitable for Kingdom or not. I feel like this is just where I ended up after wandering around that area.

— I feel as if the groove isn't like Plazma or BOW AND ARROW, where the weight is on the first beat and it's falling forward, but is rather more relaxed, with the weight on the back.

What I'd been doing up to last year was extremely digital-style, inputting it on a computer and quantizing it, creating with a strong awareness of the grid. This time, I had a sense of taking a step away from that.

— You mentioned earlier that Raven and Nighthawk are a pair. The symmetry between the lightness and grace of Raven's flute, and the sweaty heat of Nighthawk, might have arisen from that.

Right. It wasn't as if I headed in that direction intentionally, but it's certainly there.

— So then, let me ask the same question as with Raven. Putting aside the fact of it being a collaboration, what sort of song do you feel Nighthawk has become in your discography?

I had a sense of it being experimental. Raven was a song going along the axis of "analyzing from within," yet I feel as if Nighthawk was like looking back on my life, my career thus far, and recompiling that in a way. I thought back on how that worthlessness and coarseness of NicoNico Douga I discussed earlier is down in my roots. Also, I re-read some short stories by Kenji Nakagami I read long ago, House on Fire and Golden Ratio Morning, so I think that sort of mood is also hugely present here. I thought how the desires which are written about there and my own ambitions have a similar quality.

— So desires and ambitions are key words for Nighthawk. How would you say you're currently approaching that ambition you've had since childhood, and those desires?

I think I should do my best to be rational. I believe I ought to be able to analyze my own desires enough to fully unravel them. Being that they're so stinky, I don't particularly intend to carry them with me to the grave. Perhaps all I can do is work at it while going here and there. I head over, and think "How wretched," "Is there something there? In truth, isn't it just hollow?" But then, if I head in the opposite direction, and dismantle my desires, what will be left? Will I live off nothing but air, or else will I no longer have a need to live? Music has highly emotional things at its core in the first place. So as long as I keep making music, I don't think I can escape my desires and ambition, and so I don't intend to discard them.

— I see.

Back when I was making Globe, the theme song for "How Do You Live?" [The Boy and the Heron], Hayao Miyazaki-san told me to "take the challenge with ambition." I think those will probably be guiding words throughout my life to come. They're still there in my mind even now whenever I'm making any song, so I think that's the way I'll engage with it.

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