Section 2: Kakusei ~ Awakening ~

1. Jibun no Ibasho wa Bando ni
~ My Place is in the Band ~

The first time had anything to do with a band was around the end of when I was 17.
Even so, many of my friends were in bands, and they knew that I played the drums, so they would ask me, "Won't you come be our backup?" However, I always declined.
They were all at a lower level than me, so I didn't want to play for them. That was my real motive. Because of this, I thought bands were stupid.
However, there were also friends I said "Fine" to, and without cutting them off, I started to drum for them.
When I went to rehearsals, the performers were as bad as I had thought they would be.
"What the hell is this?"
Until then, I had only performed on stage as a member of an orchestra. But there were vast differences in technique between an orchestra and a band.
"Is it all right to perform like this?"
I would go into the actual performances with these feelings. That was the time of the "band boom," and big amateur band events happened frequently.
The audience in these events numbered in the hundreds. Compared to orchestra audiences, who were more than a thousand people, it was tiny. To me, even as my first time as a performer at a live, I was not nervous at all.
However, the excitement of the audience at these lives was completely different.
If we simply just stood on the stage, there would be shouts of joy. The eyes of everyone who was watching would sparkle with anticipation.
The performance would begin. The crowd gets excited and rushes towards the stage. There are even some people who get up on the stage. The excitement and power coming from the guest seats advances up onto the stage.
Vocals and guitar and bass and drums. Just these 4 people, not losing power, have to push them back with this power of music. If they are pushed back, they will advance once again. There is a power and powerful collision like this and a huge undulation of the crowds, and it unfolds upon the stage.
"Awesome! What's this! Just what kind of band, with just 4 people, can make people feel like this?
"The performances are really bad. They're definitely not at a high level. So in spite of this, why is the audience excited?"
I was overwhelmed. This thing called a band was really cool.
It was totally different from classical music, and it was a whole new world.
During the performances, I began to search.
What was this power? Why did I feel so excited all over?
I began to see the answer little by little.
The orchestras that I had played in until then had many people playing the same instrument. There was a first violin and a second violin…and there were times when they didn't play the same part together. From the number of people needed to play one part, they added people, and there were a lot of times when you couldn't play because your part wasn't needed.
However, a band wasn't like that. There are only 4 people. Also, all the instruments are different. If one person plays wrong, it's all over. You can't make mistakes.
It means this: in a band, every person has a heavy responsibility. That responsibility exists equally among everyone.
If I thought it through and investigated this thoroughly, it made me very happy.
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have played. If I hadn't, I would have stopped.
From when I was very young, I had been searching for a place where I could belong. I wanted this place to not be a copy of anyone else's place.
In this group called a band was the first time that I found the answer.
 
2. Genkai o Shitta Baiku Jikou
~ A Motorcycle Accident That Showed Me My Limits ~
My father was a fickle person. The first time he taught me to drive was when I was 12. It wasn't an automatic transmission; it was manual. He said that it wouldn't be proper if I didn't know how to drive, so he taught me from the passenger seat.
The first time I rode a motorcycle, I had already gained all the knowledge of how to do so, and where the clutch and the accelerator were, so I was able to ride. At first, I rode really slowly. I think I was about 17.
The bike I learned to ride on was a Yamaha RZ250. Though it was a 250, it was a big bike and wasn't an unfavorable comparison to the 400. Because there were 2 pistons, it had great acceleration. It was really fast. If I had learned on another bike, I don't think I would have liked it as much. The way I rode was really dangerous. I think it's very strange that I never died. Going 70-80 kph, while passing the car in front of me on the left, I would suddenly get caught on a sudden curve between a telephone pole and the car. However, I rarely ever had an accident.
Then one day, I quit riding my motorcycle.
On that day, because it had rained the day before, there was a lot of sand on the road. However, I was riding along dangerously as usual, and on a particularly hard corner, my tires suddenly slipped. My bike and I both went sliding.
It was the curb on the right side. I could see a concrete wall just in front of me. As the wall approached, I knew.
I'm going to die!
In an instant, I let go of the bike, and it kept going straight ahead towards the wall. The front and back wheels got caught in the ditch in front of the wall, and the bike flew up in the air and started coming back towards me. I could see the bike coming over my head. Immediately after that, the bike slammed down into the road, seriously damaged. There was nothing left of the frame or anything else.
My right arm was injured. The asphalt really tore it up, and though I scraped it off with a knife, I still have the scars.
I stopped riding motorcycles. It was because I realized my limits.
So then after that, I turned to cars. I've had a total of 10 cars.
My first car was a Toyota Toreno. Called an "86," it was a famous car with the car clubs. It was the car of the guy from the "Initial D" manga.
Though I was driving a car now, I didn't change my dangerous driving ways. They often had to call the ambulance for me. Once, they had to call a fire truck because my car was on fire.
The end of my dangerous driving habits was the same as my bike. I crashed into something, and my car spun around and around. It turned upside down and crashed into the road surface, still spinning, and was half destroyed. I often wonder now how I survived.
I crawled out from under the car, making sure first of all that I was actually still alive. Then viewing my half-destroyed car, I absentmindedly started smoking.
Then I called my ex-girlfriend. Because I'd really been in love with this girl, I'd gone driving carelessly. Though we still both had feelings for each other, we had to break up.
She started crying and screaming on the phone.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
When I heard her voice, I realized for the first time. What the hell was I doing, making her cry? I was ashamed.
After that, I stopped driving recklessly. That was the last time I ever drove dangerously.
Because I wanted to see through to the other side of death, I was unbelievably reckless. However, in the end, I wasn't able to see anything.
Many of my friends have died. They wanted to live and they died, but I, who wanted to see what it was like to die, am still alive. I just couldn't bear to see that.

3. Kankoku Josei to no Kekkon to Rikon no Kunou
~ The Anguish of my Marriage and Divorce to a Korean Woman ~
When I was a teenager, I was very spoiled.
I had an absurd number of bicycles and cars. I didn't know the meaning of what I had. I didn't care about life or death. Those feelings of carelessness were swirling inside of my heart.
The thing that changed my life was a certain meeting with someone. I was nineteen. For me, it was a shocking meeting.
He was a customer in the casino – a bachelor in his thirties. Being a businessman, he had money. He also had a high social position and prestige, and besides that, he also had a beautiful woman with him. He was a perfect person.
At that time, I was working in the casino while also being an assistant for a band. The biggest reason I was backup drummer for the band was because of the charisma of the vocalist. He had a great flair for life in him, and it was his intention to go pro.
However, when this vocalist left to join another band, working as a backup had no more meaning for me.
So approximately a year afterwards, I left the band. Around that time also, I would go in and out of different livehouses, but I never saw my former vocalist.
At that time, I wanted to become more serious about music. However, I had problems [lit; temperature difference] with the people in the bands around there.
Around me, there were a lot of guys who didn't know much and who would say that if things went well, then it would be great to go pro. If they played in a band, then they would be popular with women. Almost all of them were like that. Music was a hobby to them. Their money all came from part-time jobs, such as working at a gas station or at a bar.
Because I was a host and a dealer at a casino, my way of lifestyle was clearly different from theirs. Because of this, I was never close friends with them.
There were times when I would wonder if I really wanted the nightclub entertainment lifestyle. The time when I met this man was exactly one of those times.
Even now, the first words that he ever said to me remain in my memory. "Which one is better, living and thinking that your life is wonderful, or living and thinking that whatever you do doesn't matter? For me, I'm going to live thinking that my life is wonderful."
He said this with a gentle smile.
As he said, "Which one is better?" I thought for a second.
I want to live thinking that my life is wonderful!
It was probably the first time I had thought that since I was born. Because before that, I had been hating life [lit: living in negation]
From that time on, I began to do things with him. I was with him as much as possible. I would go to his house and I would have conversations about various things with him. If I had time, I would be going to see him.
It was the first time I remember that I had an interest in a person besides myself. I wanted to become a person like him.
He would always say "Which one is better, this or that?" and he had a way of talking that was easy to understand.
However, the more we talked, I began to realize that his way of thinking and way of doing things was really different from mine. More than anything else, we were of different caliber.
I hate to lose, so until now if I met a person who was better than me in anything, even a little bit, I would learn that skill until I was better [lit: continue to chase after and cross over]. However, he wasn't at that level. I strongly felt that we weren't standing in the same arena.
Though it's been ten years since then, he hasn't grown nearer. I still don't think we are standing in the same arena.
At that time and place – when I met him – I was born.
I really believe that.
The time when I was nineteen was when I was born. So, as of now, I am still a child. And therefore, my mental age is probably young.
I particularly had no opportunity to become a casino dealer. After I quit the nightclub scene, though somehow there were a lot of other jobs I started, the last one was the position of top dealer at a casino.
In this place, I met someone else. It was a woman who was also working as a dealer there.
Prior to this book, there was an article about her in some sports newspaper. The headline read: "Gackt Marries Blond Woman 8 Years His Senior!"
This was even though in those days, I never had any relationship with a blond woman.
When I was going to record in Los Angeles, I had a conversation with a reporter at Narita Airport. Though I thought I told him not to ask me anything strange, I didn't think it would be anything like that. Immediately following that interview, things like that headline appeared. I read about it in a newspaper in Los Angeles, and I just laughed.
The woman that I have been separated from back then is not a Caucasian woman. Her nationality was Korean. However, I really don't care about things like nationality.
I think that in matters like this, nationality itself is a stupid thing. I wasn't concerned about it.
When you love each other and are together, you will say "I like you" [lit: suki] to the most trivial things. The shape of "like" will change. However, the underlying prerequisite is always love. I think that is the best way.
We got married because she told me "I want to legally become part of your family." [lit: seki o ireru – to be entered in the family register]. I said, "All right, but I'm not going to change anything."
"I'm not worried about the marriage registration, but it doesn't mean anything."
I think that on paper, her nationality was a problem. But she seemed like she wanted proof of our marriage.
However, I think that in the end, this became a huge burden for the two of us. Because we were married, we decided that we had to do this [marriage registration], but conversely, it most likely it strained relations between the two of us.
Crazy fans would do things like wait outside our house, and that became a cause of stress for her. They also harassed us a lot. Frequently, they would prank call our house and hang up without answering.
Under these circumstances, she gradually stopped leaving the house. Finally, she had a nervous breakdown.
"I think we should separate," she said finally.
Of course, though the crazy fans weren't the only reason for our separation, I think that she already had a lot of pressure on her from various other things.
We were married only for a very short time.
I will never marry again. If anyone's name is entered into the family register with me, that will be the time when I die.
If, just before I die, there is someone who wants to be with me until the end and she wants to be legally married with me, and there is proof of us having lived together, I will probably legally marry her.
I also don't want children. I don't think that children make a marriage last longer. There are couples who don't separate because they have good children, but that is very rare [lit: completely strange story].
I was watching a program on television once, where people were saying "No matter what happens, children should always have two parents, not just one." But I think that's a problem.
Children can grow up having just one parent, and children without parents can also grow up.
If the parents think, "We must stay together because we have children," children are always very conscious of what adults think and will feel that way too. And nothing will ever make them change their minds.
When parents love each other, it will mean something to the child. If this is not the case, the child won't know the meaning of having parents.
Of course, if I say that through this I have not even once wanted a child, that would be a lie. I have imagined what my child would have been like if she and I had agreed to have a child. But I will never have children. I feel pity for any child who would have my genes. This is because of the trauma I suffered from my childhood experiences. It was very hard for me. Living through what everyone imagined was an abnormal development became extremely painful.
If there is ever anyone who has my genes, they will have my abilities. I remember what happened when I was young. My parents gave me strange looks when I said I saw spirits, and I was suspected by adults of having a mental illness.
I don't want my child to have those same kinds of memories.
 
4. Hatsu Bando "Cain's Feel"
~ My First Band "Cain's Feel" ~
Cain's Feel is the band I was in during the time when I was in Kyoto. The origin of the name comes from "Cain and Abel," the son of Adam and Eve from Genesis in the Old Testament.
Where do people come from, and where are they going? I had a concept of what the human existence was like. Discerning the meaning of human existence is a hunger for making music, and I think it is why I make music.
Of course, it is an opportunity to meet other people.
In those days, after I quit playing drums, my band activities were blank for a while. I was working multiple jobs at once, and one was as a sound technician at the studio where I went to practice drums. It was once a week and paid hourly, which was fine with me, anyway, because I was touched by music and I didn't want to cut myself off from it. I also got music-related news there.
There was a livehouse in Kyoto that was holding a fairly large event. I was really taken by one of the guitarists. He was extremely cool. He had a tapper and a great stage presence. His figure remained prominently in my memory and I kept thinking about him.
At work back in the studio, I tried to ask one of the guys who came in.
"Do you know about the event that happened at the livehouse?"
"Yeah, I know."
I would see this guy whenever he came into the studio occasionally. At the beginning, he had a really hostile atmosphere around him. We didn't have a pleasant relationship.
He and the guitarist and vocalist in a group with him were famous for being Yankees and having fierce arguments with people, and also were the types of people to get into instant quarrels at livehouses. In the studio, they always had an attitude, and whenever they left, they were a group that.
Talking about that time that has passed, because I was still a child, I never knew when conditions would make me get into a fight. I kept having the feeling "one day I'll definitely have a run in with that guy."
To practice drums, I carried the drumstick case around with me, but also inside the case I hid a crowbar.
If you ask who had the bigger attitude, I'll probably say it was me.
That guy was one of a group. So at that time in the studio, it was me and him and two others. He always kept his cool and wasn't an expressive type of person, but rather the type to keep his feelings inside. Of course, he never talked to me. But if there wasn't any conversation going on, the atmosphere there was very empty, so I started talking to him.
"At that event, the band that was playing then, wasn't the guitarist awesome?"
And he said calmly, "That was me."
My eyes got really big. No way, I couldn't believe it! I never expected the cool guitarist from that time to be this aloof guy sitting right in front of me.
"You're not him, jerk!"
So we got in a fight.
"I'm him."
"No way."
"Yes I am!"
"Prove it!"
"Well, I've got pictures at my house, so you'll have to come over to my house."
When he showed me the pictures at his house, of course they were the pictures from that live. I'd taken pictures too, but the guy I was seeing in front of me didn't look like the one in the pictures. That was because he was wearing makeup. But even more than that, the guy I saw on stage and the one I saw casually everyday were completely different. The casual one was really aloof and quiet. But on stage, he was incredibly awesome. I liked the gap between the two.
That was You. You, the member of my band.
"Is that really you? It was wrong of me to not believe you."
"Well, now you know, so it's ok."
The guitarist that I was looking for was here now. From the bottom of my heart, I was glad.
From that time on, we became friends, and started saying spontaneously, "Shouldn't we form a band?" and began looking for other members.
However, the biggest thing was that we didn't have a vocalist. At the time, we said to each other, "Ah, we haven't got a vocalist," and then half jokingly, I said "I wonder if I can do it."
But then, You, who was commonly a gentle person, burst out, "Don't be ridiculous!" [4]
"It's not ridiculous!" I said back. We argued back and forth. At any rate, it was a confusing mess.
At that time, I really hated my voice. I never sang in front of other people. Neither You nor I knew anything about singing.
"Well, if it's not ridiculous, then in a week, try singing these songs," You said. He was still giving me grief about it.
So I said, "All right. I'll sing!"
A week later, at practice, I sang in front of him for the first time. After he heard me sing, You murmured, "You….why haven't you been singing?"
Even now, he often says that.
However, I had never imagined I would ever be a vocalist. In the band back when I was an assistant, to me, that vocalist was a really cool vocalist. He was not only fierce, but his singing was very beautiful, and he was a vocalist who could touch your heart with his feelings. He was very charming.
Back then in the time of the band boom, most vocalists had a very high range.
Great voices sang in the high register. My voice was low and my range was narrow. I had no idea how to make my voice high like that. Even if my voice was vocalist material, and even if I could sing in a higher range, at any rate, I was of no caliber to be a vocalist.
But, since there was no one else, that was the only thing I could do.
Singing in front of You was an opportunity, and in order to become a vocalist, I started voice training again. Though my voice remained low, through training, I broadened my range a little.
In order to gather band members, we made a demo tape of me singing and played it to all the guys who were said to be good.
"The vocalist is pretty good. Who is it?"
"It's me."
"You can sing?"
"Temporarily."
Even though I knew people when I played the drums, I didn't know anybody as the vocalist.
So because of that, we found members all at once and resumed band activities.
That was "Cain's Feel." It was my first band.

5. Kajino no Shoku o Sute, Ketsui no Jyoukou
~ Quitting my Job at the Casino, A Decision to Move to Tokyo ~
It is often said that the vocalist is the face of the band. Becoming the vocalist, I was able to understand this for the first time. Of course, the reason for that isn't that the vocalist is good looking. As the band's first line of defense, he is the one who sends the band's thoughts out to the listeners. I think this is what it means to be the "face."
Being the vocalist, wanting to be able to send my thoughts out to people's hearts was certain death. I was approaching a delicate time in my life. It was probably around that time when I became really serious towards music.
I could have led a materially rich life in the entertainment industry, but the industry left a mark, and I began to think that there was no productive job for me.
The shape of music remained. Having the things that I did turn into finished form [lit: shapes] was great. I began to feel strongly about it.
There were also words that a certain person said to me which I owe to them for giving me a new life. He said this to me when I was a child and had heard something that hurt me.
"There is surely meaning in this. However, shouldn't you make this into tangible form and leave [a mark] behind?"
Out of everything that I had, the only thing that I could make into tangible form was music. With music, I formed my thoughts this way.
I wanted to know the significance of my existence. If there were things that people who weren't me could do, that was all right. I was always searching for things that only I could not do.
With my music, I wanted to reach a world where I had to express myself.
When this feeling had become firm, being the vocalist, sometimes I talked about if I should go solo.
Perhaps it was a big chance. However, I felt that I promised myself to first see what it was like to be in a band, and I wanted to be able to have the band experience. I felt that I should not yet go solo.
At the same time, through a friend, I was introduced to Mana (the leader of Malice Mizer, which was then on hiatus). The person who I met him through said "The members are pretty interesting characters." I saw their outlook on the world on their CD jacket, and I also thought they were interesting, and I became interested in going to meet them.
I drove from Kyoto to Tokyo and met Mana in Ikebukuro.
The first time I saw Mana, I was drawn to him. The feel of the entertainment industry was in him, and he looked just like I expected him to. His hair was long and tied in the back.
Because in the culture of Tokyo, people didn't have cars, I suddenly found myself, as a sportscar-driving, suit-wearing man, commonly being asked, "What company do you work for?" Mana being an extremely wary sort of person, I thought he would ask me that same question.
But then, he said: "You don't look like a musician." Certainly, I might have looked like a host or a yakuza at that time.
However, Mana being Mana, he was dressed in a female goth style. He had on long pants, and high heel sandals that looked like wooden clogs. His face was covered by a wide hat and sunglasses…
I was drawn to him. If you put the two of us together, it would be a very unbalanced picture.
We didn't really have much of a conversation. I remember most what I talked about with Mana's friend who came along with him.
After that, we went to Kozi's (guitar) house, but when Kozi and I saw each other, I was drawn to him as well. He had red hair and he was growing a beard. Three of us, three different people. Our conversation didn't go anywhere.
The thing that broke the silence was Kozi's words.
"Is there anywhere in Tokyo where you'd like to go?"
In those days, when I had a problem, I would try to go to the headquarters of the Aum Supreme Truth cult at Aoyama.
Even though it was the middle of the night, there were a great many reporters out.
"What are you guys doing?"
"We don't know."
"Are you staying in Tokyo?"
"We don't know."
Somehow at 2 AM, the three of us wound up standing in front of the Aoyama Aum Cult Headquarters, and we viewed the riot of reporters with a feeling of relief.
After that, we went to Mana's house, and began delicately discussing the band.
"What instruments do you play?"
"Generally, I can play them all."
Then I played the keyboard there and sang.
I also told them my opinion of Malice Mizer's songs. I didn't dislike the gothic-like world that Mana wanted to create.
However, things that exist solely for the purpose of being looked at have to have their gilding stripped away some time. You can't just say "I'm making this in gothic form." If you can't put both substance and Medieval Europe into the center of something, it's no good.
We talked about this for three days. During this, I thought that the members of Malice Mizer were very fun people. Speaking in terms of their musical ability, they weren't very advanced.
However, they were fun. This moved my heart. I decided to join Malice Mizer.
I dropped everything and moved to Tokyo: my jobs as a host and a dealer, and the large income that came with that.
With my girlfriend, though we weren't married, I thought that I wasn't going to break up with her because I was moving to Tokyo.
Of course, we had a conversation about the two of us going to Tokyo together. However, if we went there, we would have no income. For a while, I couldn't get her to agree.
If I couldn't believe that taking her with me would be a good idea, then it was better that we break up. We talked about that.
There was nothing holding me back.
Of course, there were people who said "he's quitting this job because he thinks he's too good for us." Since I'd made up my mind about it, if there was someone who opposed me on this, I would just stop associating with that person.
If there was something I was clinging to, I would certainly have to come back. In order to have a reason to come back to Kyoto, I needed an excuse.
I hated to have an escape route. That absolutely negates success.
I was confident that I would have success. There was no point in placing safeguards to fall back on.
My target at that time was Asia. It wasn't Tokyo. It wasn't Japan.
I was serious. If I could make the world I envisioned into finished form, I could win over misguided Asia! What was in front of my eyes was, of course, the world.
I love European music. However, the field of my own music and the music that I like is different. The words are also different. The race of people is also different. I am Asian. Being Asian and gaining Asia is a gateway to the world. In Malice Mizer, I could do it!
That is the truth. After that, this thinking affected my entire way of behavior. That is the point from where I began to live.

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