やっと一枚目 At the tender age of twenty-five, while working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s Kamata district, Kazuki Tomokawa released his debut record, fittingly titled “Finally, His First Album.” Despite having already written hundreds of songs, including his first single “Try Saying You’re Alive!” composed during a long train ride past fields and rice paddies, it was this recording that introduced Japan to one of its most unique musicians of the postwar era. Each track, as record label executive Kiichi Takahara writes in the LP’s liner notes (translated for the first time), is not just a song but a “flesh-and-blood human being,” born from the singer-songwriter’s raw, guttural cries that would become a hallmark of his incomparable sound.
The 1970s in Japan was a time marked by a deep yearning for authenticity amidst the rise of television and media saturation. Tomokawa emerged as a musician with “the personality of a hydrogen bomb,” borrowing a phrase from his frequent collaborator Toshi Ishizuka. In an enlightening interview included here, members of the notorious leftist band Zun? Keisatsu (Brain Police) bluntly described him as a man amidst the “disingenuous,” the “wishy-washy,” and the “superficial,” who was delivering “real life, unvarnished.” These songs serve as lullabies for the lost, gazing not into the void but
