333music.net interview

[faith]

In mastering beauty, you must cross borders" says Kaya. As you can see from the photo, surely Kaya has a beauty that has crossed the boundary line of gender. And what he tries to express in his music, visuals, and live performances is the basic principle of supreme beauty, a decadent, aesthetic world in music~~
After Schwarz Stein dissolved in March of 2004 and about two years had passed, in April of this year he participated in the limited unit "another cell" to release an album, also "another cell", and will begin his real activity from his 6.23 oneman live at Takadanobaba. We received answers from Kaya regarding his first single, Kaleidoscope, set for first release at the live, his musical activities, and what he considers "beauty," and will be writing up the responses in the parts.

"What I want to express is a decadent, aesthetic world"

At this time you seem to be at the turning point in your career as a solo artist, and so I wanted to inquire as to your previous unit, Schwarz Stein, and your previous musical activities as well.

Kaya: In the beginning, I was in Rudolf Steiner before Schwarz Stein. We were unexpectedly visited by Mana during one of our lives, and he contacted us afterwards. With Mana as our producer, we changed the band name to Schwarz Stein, and carried out activities under that name for about 2 years starting from 2002.
After that, unfortunately Schwarz Stein dissolved too in March of 2004...

And after that?

Kaya: I was contacted by a number of bands asking me to sing for them, and I received some invitations, but I had a strong desire to think about what I wanted to focus on. And after that I made a proposal to one of Hora's aquaintances, who is also a composer, and started making plans for my own solo activity.

Even though Schwarz Stein disbanded, you still keep in contact with Hora?

Kaya: Yeah. After the dissolution Hora took the stance that he didn't want to return to the stage, and he's been carrying out work as a composer, but when I asked him if he wouldn't mind sponsoring me with some songs, he readily concented. Then, with his proposal that we try releasing them as a collaborational project first, we formed a one-time limited unit, "another cell". Our 1000 copy limited single "another cell" went on sale this April.

And why was Hora's picture on the inner jacket of the CD something like TV static?

Kaya: That was his choice. It seemed that his thought "I'm invisible." I did my first work with him, but now I'm going to be commissioning songs from various composers.

And how are you commissioning songs? For example, do you already have the lyrics, and then you tell the person you want a song you can use them for, or.....?

Kaya: I convey the image through words. That comprises the musicianship, ideology, and the like.

Ideology?

Kaya: Yes, it's not that deep though (laughs) So that people will see me and be able to understand me, I want to have a borderless feeling. I want to express myself without being confined to a certain genre or music, or sex.

Was that your plan from before you went solo?

Kaya: It was consistently from the time of Schwarz Stein, the desire to make decadence and aesthetics the main focus of my activities. As for the school of aesthetics, in the literary world it's the kind of feeling people like Tanizaki Junichirou and Mishima Yukio give off.

Please Continue!

Kaya: And as for aesthetics in the current music scene? I have a feeling it's bordering on visual kei. But I also think there's a falsely similar part to me, and I want to clearly establish that.

Can you explain your decadent, aesthetic world view a little more clearly?

Kaya: The decadent, aesthetic world I'm thinking of rises above personal darkness, it's....flashy and focused on extremes of beauty, shall we say?

And it includes an element of decadence?

Kaya: That's right.

So we can assume it's not an ordinary world then?

Kaya: Ahahaha! I suppose you can say that (laughs)

But simply because it's something unfamiliar that they don't know, that means that there must be people who will naturally want to secretly peep in on it I imagine.

Kaya: I think so. And no matter how you look at it, there's an element of minority ideology as well. Rather than portraying it as completely positive and spreading it to the world, I want tell people through my songs and performance, "Look at this world. There's also this one, one that you don't know!"

End part 1



..."borderless" is a flawed thing in the world of nichome though...
I go for that too, but mine's completely different...and DAMN. I got an interview call right in the middle of this ;_; my god, I want that job....

 

[Edgey]

Thanks for translating this Faith!
I'm quite interested to hear how Kaya's solo sounds! (I didn't listen to the radio interview so I really don't know anything about the new single. I want a surprise XD )

 

[Haku]

!!!

Thank you for translating this!

 

[kuroicat]

much <3333 thanks~!!

 

[Mukau]

I love his views

Thank you faith!!

 

[faith]

Part II

Kaya's first single, which he stated was made with the thought that he "wants you to feel his expression of beauty and inner darkness from many different angles, like a kaleidoscope that can detect all different kinds of beauty as well", will be on sale soon, and this time we are going to make it the focus of our discussion.

[A music genre that crosses over the boundary line of gender discrimination...]

Were your first solo release, and the Another Cell CD released this April, made under this concept of a decadently aesthetic world that you're trying to express?

Kaya: In respect to that matter, the contents have become something like a commitment of mine, on top of my decision to continue on with music. From the time I first sang with a band I had been thinking to myself, "Why is it that I'm singing I wonder?" but during the time I was in Schwarz Stein some part of that became clear to me. In the two years since we disbanded I was called by other musicians to join their bands and the like, and I touched upon all different genres of music, and as I progressed, I began to get a clearer sense of, "Ah, so this is what I want to do after all!" And during that time I thought to write some lyrics out for future reference. In my case, I'm the type who makes my own life experiences and things I've felt the basis for my lyrics.

Oh, and so the contents of this are...? (laughs)

Kaya: yeah (laughs)

And the lyrics for [Kaleidoscope] are also grounded in your own experiences?

Kaya: Kaleidoscope also has a coupling song, and they're meant to portray a sense of the world that I want to express to the fullest extent possible. Especially for the second song, "Remains of Mind", where it's more like I pulled together bits and peices from the diary I keep, rather that having written lyrics (laughs) It's safe to say that "Ruins of the Heart = remains of mind."

And these phrases that are written in your diary....

Kaya: Of course that's not all that's there (laughs). There's stuff like "Today I went to a cafe, and the tea there was really good," or "Today I got in a fight with OOsan. I'll do my best" in there as well (laughs). And from everything there, I picked up the parts that best express my emotions. They're excessively straightforward, and so at first I thought it might be best to change them a little bit, but in the end I think I want to make clearly expressing my feelings, a sublimation of sorts, an important part of my style in expressing myself. Like, gonna write it all out, it's now or never!(laughs)

So it's raw and new, right? (laughs) Now that I've heard the song, and heard what you have to say, I'm even more surprised (laughs).

Kaya: (laughs) Perhaps it is an overall raw feeling. But it doesn't mean I was going for that feeling. I few days ago I had a secret live, and after it was over I received quite a few ankets back saying "You were much more true to life and vivid than I expected" or the like (laughs).

From your appearance you're beautiful like a doll, but what you're saying is that it doesn't mean "artificial," but more "pure" or "natural"?

Kaya: Objectively speaking, I consider [Kaya] to be both male and female. It's not that I won't make you see it as either sex, but that they are both there in tandem. Two times the taste in one, in a way (laughs)

"A candy with two tastes"....like that Caramel Candy catchphrase(laughs)

Kaya: certainly (laughs) Male and female, to be either means to be able to express myself from both points of view, doesn't it? In order to express my world of decadent beauty, I want to be able to sing with the ache of both male and female. Being both male and female, being sexually borderless, I would like to convey that I think this is a very important thing. I want to shake up the view of life where people think because your male you have to be like this, and because you're female you have to be like that. I want to uproot the listener's senses....though if I say that, it's probably an overstatement of sorts, but I think I want to show people how wonderful it is to be borderless. And of course I also find that important in the surface of my music as well. This time, when I thought of what I consider beautiful instruments, for example a pipe organ or an orchestral hit, I decided I wanted the to include the sound of bells in the song. But I didn't just request that, and there's a koto in "remains of mind", an impression of not understanding anything.

Why a koto?

Kaya: When you think of an aesthetic world through music, don't you have an image of the Western Rococo style? But as for a specifically Japanese decadence, I think it includes both darkness and beauty. For example, there's been an unbroken flow of inhereted beauty and civilisation in Kyoto for more than a thousand years, but at the same time isn't there a sort of darkness you can't put into words? I absolutely adore that kind of thing, and so I wanted to gather that and express it in my music.

It certainly is borderless.

Kaya: Yes, and I search for that even in my music, not just natural borlessness (laughs)

Yah, I agree, for what it's worth ...but I don't know if it's just decadence...I mean, Minna no Uta have the beauty/darkness thing as well, not just cherry trees, and I should hope they're not imbueing the younger generations with decadecation.

 

[Kyuketsuki]

Thank you very much, faith!

 

[D]

Thank you.
I enjoyed reading that.

 

[evespikey]

Thanks for translating...I love his ideas about crossing gender boundaries..

 

[faith]

...I don't know if anyone'd be interested in this, so if you're not just skip it.
But when I was running around Nichome talking to drag queens I basically came to hold a very similar ideology. That's why I see Kaya as more of a drag queen-ish performer than a visual kei artist.
When I got Margarett to meet with me to discuss drag (some queens are really friendly), he said drag is partually about breaking down boundaries. That's why they dress up as women; they're so female that they cross over female and become aliens of a sort. And for him, at least, the other part was going places dressed up like that and serving no purpose whatsoever. Then people would look at him and go, "WTF is that and why is it here?!" thus challenging their expected world view and making them see that things aren't always the way they expect them to be. And that's why there's no competition between queens in Japan. Unlike the US, they don't do it to be the best, and some do it to challenge boundaries. From 2000-2002ish it was also lucrative, and so that was an incentive for some people...
I actually wrote a letter to Mana that talked about breaking down limitations and Nakamori Akina and all that >_< He was probably sitting there like, "God, not another one........"

Sorry, don't know if that was interesting to anyone. But that's why I adore Margarett.

The only problem, as far as I could tell, was that they still had mental boundaries against other people....

 

[faith]

This time I tried to get to the origin of what Kaya's been trying to express in our talk up till now. And after that, what should we expect from his first oneman live in Takadanobaba Area tonight? We also got him to hint about that (it's been sold out). But until the live, I'm sure you'll have all sorts of guesses from reading what he has to say!

[My live is a secret party from a dream. Let's enjoy the personal space we create together!]


When I see this photograph, I can see that you certainly do have a beauty that transcends gender. Eventually I got the sense that it was beauty that transcended that boundary.

Kaya: I want to express my world view of beauty and decadence visually as well as musically, and so I'm thinking of doing a lot of things with it. Or actually, I'm thinking I have to make that an ordinary thing.

Is the make-up and costume your own idea?

Kaya: Yes. I've always done my own make-up. These days, it seems that there are bandmen who employ make-up artists, but in my case make-up is one of the parts in the world I want to express, and so I think there'll be no meaning to it if I don't do it myself. As for the clothes, I've not studied the fundamentals of costuming, and so I still get advice from my stylist friends for the particulars.

And what got you into this world in the first place? Was it an interest in music?

Kaya: At first, my family likes music, and it really felt like the house was overflowing with it. So the very first music I became interested in was classical. I feel that's the foundation of everything. After that, I was really impacted by, or better yet influenced by, stuff like Dead or Alive. And I still do like it too.

Oh, he is close to the world you're going for!(laughs) But generation-wise it's not real time....right?

Kaya: It's not. It's because whenever it was the best record or something came out, I casually glaced at it and thought, "What? Who is this?" and it shocked me. After that...a long time ago I remember Julianna was really popular, right?

The disco during the bubble economy?

Kaya: Back then I was still in Shioku, in the Tokushima countryside, but I saw it on TV and thought how wonderful it must be there. It was just a little dirty looking as so I didn't automatically think, "I wish I could go", but I did think how wonderful it must be to to dance all night long amidst that music. And the 80's music world was also taking a growing interest in the visual aspects, wasn't it? And on top of that there was MTV. When I saw Michael Jackson and Madonna's music videos on those kinds of shows I was interested in their visuals. On the other hand, I liked Yamaguchi Momoe, Nakamori Akina, and Nakajima Miyuki too though (laughs)

(laughs)

Kaya: It's gaudy and flashy, but I'm drawn to things with a distinctive sort of darkness and beauty. I suppose that's been consistent since I was a child.

Certainly there's the gorgeous, flashy feel of the 80's in the world that you want to portray.

Kaya: I suppose so. As for that, I think the fastest way to get at it is through coming to the live. It's not supposed to feel like I'm the one standing on the stage and everyone else has come to see me, but rather like the old time discos, or modern day clubs, and I want everyone who comes to be playing the lead part. I want people to come thinking, "If I don't show up, the live won't start." There's a dress code for the live, "please wear something black."

The live area's borderless too.

Kaya: Exactly! And so I want everyone who comes to dress up too. So rather than a live.....I suppose it's more like a dream party?(laughs)

A secret party within a dream (laughs)

Kaya: Yeah. I'm planning some fun things from the time the place opens to the curtain call, before the live starts.

oh....? like what?

Kaya: That's a secret (laughs) Perhaps you'll be able to get a glimpse into an interesting world you're never experienced before.

I'll try not to get too frightened (laughs) I suppose that's important.

Kaya: Oh definitely (laughs) I want everyone to overcome the borders that lie before them and become immersed in my world of decadent beauty, and for those who think that's impossible, I want them to at least peer over from across the other side of their boundaries (laughs) Let's create a gorgeous party of our own.


"don something black, the other world's key~~~"(sorry, Velvet Eden moment)

Michael Jackson....Dead or Alive....anyone seen the picture of Pete Burns in a Thong? Or the Michaelquest flash? XD Awesome influences says I, though it doesn't matter.

 

[desqui]

"If I don't show up, the live won't start."
Ack! I must attend then! lol

Thank you so much for the translation! Incredibly long and tiring to read it was =P but interesting none the less
And now I've gained a little more respect for crossdressers (in Japan) and wherever else they think of it as less of a competition and more of a "crossing boundaries"

 

[faith]

...I'm a little bitter, actually XD (but this is drag queens, not cross dressers, and Kaya's not said he's a drag queen)
Boundaries...seem to be...personal ones. Like when I mentioned how women in Japan face discrimination Margrett got annoyed with me and said men face the exact same stuff! I'll agree that men are opressed too, in a way, but....

 

[Lede]

Thanks for translating, and the drag queen commentary

 

[desqui]

Aah now I feel bad because i miss named >.o Thank you for correcting me.. It seems i still fail..

 

[KK]

Wow, Kaya's so funny.

It's really weird how I feel about gender discrimination, like I have no idea how I came to think this way, I just always have; but I feel like, at least everywhere I know, men have it worse than/as bad as women. I don't know why I think that though. It just seems like it. I mean, just in my own personal life I feel like I am soooooo benefited by being a girl. Like at least ten times I've forgotten money for the train and the conductors (well the man ones, the women ones always hate me XD) are always like "aww, it's okay." And stuff like that.

But yeah, thanks a lot for translating all that ^^

 

[lady_toast]

Thanks for taking the time to do this, Faith. This interview is so amusing.

 

[Hime]

Thank you Faith, for translating this

The more I read stuff from Kaya, the more I like him and his ideals...well, were they his or not, I still like him for actualizing them @_@ this way making my life easier >_>

=

 

[Karot]

Dead or Alive were amazing.

I think Pete Burns is a work of art *sorry DoA fanboy * Yeah his birthday is on the same day as mines.


Kaya seems to get on pretty well, I think he has bright moments ahead of him.

That's all there is to say from me XD

 

[haetae]

thanks for the translations faith :]