TRANSLATE VIA DeepL : 'Visual-kei kara katakiki'.

 

Mana-sama, founder of legendary visual-kei band MALICE MIZER, invites various

The founder of the legendary visual-kei band MALICE MIZER, Mana, invites various band members and related people for a dialogue programme. The event is an opportunity to deepen the friendship between the musicians, with music and visuals as the common denominator. The guest this time is KAMIJO of Versailles.

In January 2023, four artists - Moi dix Mois x Versailles x D x Skyscraper Opera - will join forces to create a new scene called "Japanese Visual Metal" and develop various activities. The project was announced as a new generation of rivals and comrades. Please enjoy this dialogue between the two, who have begun to walk together into a new era as rivals and comrades.

Text and structure by MIZUNAKO HONDA

 

-KAMIJO: First of all, how did you two meet and what was your first impression of each other?

KAMIJO: One of my high school classmates was a guy called Kinzo, who was a roadie for MALICE MIZER before me. Through his connection, I also became a roadie, and that's how it all started. The first time I saw Mana in the flesh was on the street in front of the Meguro Rokumeikan, and even from a distance I could see him standing on the street, dressed all in black and wearing black sunglasses. I think it was around 1pm, which was around the time the live music clubs were opening their doors. At the time, it was the first time for me to be in Meguro, so the moment I saw him, I was shocked and thought, "What a place Meguro is! I remember being shocked. Meguro = MALICE MIZER - that was my impression.

Mana: For me, it was like a fresh young man had arrived.

KAMIJO: But now it's far from refreshing...

Mana: You've become completely steeped in aesthetics, haven't you?

KAMIJO: Since then, we have been friends for about 28 years. I have always watched Mana's back ever since I met her.

-KAMIJO: What kind of private communication do you usually have?

KAMIJO: Right now we are working together on the Japanese Visual Metal project, so I think we keep in touch more often than ever because of that and other things we discuss.

Mana: That's right.

KAMIJO: With the start of the project, I feel that the distance between you and Mana is getting closer by the millimetre, which makes me a bit happy these days.

Mana: (smiles) We went to eat eel, didn't we? Mana: (smiles) We went to eat eel, and she told me there was a good eel restaurant.

KAMIJO: We did go there.

Mana: We also went to an Italian restaurant and talked over a glass of wine.

KAMIJO: We talked about what aestheticism is. I really enjoy listening to Mana-san's stories, and having dinner with him is a blissful time for me. It was the same when I was a roadie, but the members of MALICE MIZER, led by Mana-san, are always mysterious in some way. That's why I'm really happy to hear what I didn't know at the time through their stories now.

-KAMIJO: Did it take a lot of courage to ask Mana to be a part of this project, given that she was a mysterious presence even when she was around as a roadie?

KAMIJO: Certainly it took a lot of courage. However, Mana herself knows best about her own presence and position in the music scene, and I also understood that she thinks deeply about her fans, so I thought that if I told her about this project, she would sympathise with me. I thought that if I talked to Mana about this issue, she might be able to sympathise with me. I was motivated by the feeling that there was no chance of working together.

Mana: When KAMIJO approached me about it, I simply thought it sounded interesting. At the initial stage, we hadn't talked about doing a live show yet, but he had ideas that I didn't have, such as running wrapping trucks through the streets of Shibuya. I thought it would be quite a novel sight to have the streets of Shibuya dyed in Japanese Visual Metal. I think my first impression was that it would be interesting and fun.

KAMIJO: I thought it would be strange if there were Japanese Visual Metal tracks running in the everyday life of the city. I thought that by having our music as a soundtrack there, we could create a good sense of discomfort, like the world in a film. Create a world where reality is no longer reality. That's how I felt when I invited them. So it's more like the events and live performances were incorporated into that world-building process.

When did you come up with the idea that it would be interesting to do something like this with Mana-sama?

KAMIJO: It's not so much that I came up with the idea again this time, but it's more of a root... I've always seen Mana coming up with idea after idea to surprise and entertain her fans, and I've always followed her lead, so it was inevitable.

Mana: When I was in MALICE MIZER, all I could think about was how to surprise people at live shows.

KAMIJO: Anyway, if you miss the opening of a MALICE MIZER live performance, you will regret it. I think I learnt first-hand that that's what a show is all about. It was natural for me, having watched Mana directly for many years, to always think about what I could do to excite the fans.

-I feel that the ism inherited from Mana's attitude is also alive in KAMIJO's own band activities.

KAMIJO: Of course there is. Above all, MALICE MIZER's live performances were so well-crafted that I absorbed them on a daily basis. For example, when we were going to do our first one-man show at La Reine, I felt the urge to do something, so I changed the black walls and floor on the stage of the Rokumeikan to white. However, we couldn't just do what MALICE MIZER had done, so we had to hit the point where we could do something that MALICE MIZER hadn't done, and that was quite a challenge.

Mana: It's true that MALICE MIZER probably didn't even change the colour of the stage walls. We did bring in a lot of decorations, though.

KAMIJO: I think MALICE MIZER raised the bar for all bands of the next generation. As someone who was following right behind them, I was like, "This is a deal breaker".

MANA: (smiles)

KAMIJO: MALICE MIZER had a concept of medieval Europe, so we decided to go Greek! We'll go with Greece! That's how far we chose a line that just barely didn't overlap...

Mana: I didn't really have an image of Greece in mind for Larene...

KAMIJO: No, in the end Greece was quickly rejected.

Mana: Oh, really?

KAMIJO: I guess I've admitted that I like the world view of 18th century France and other European countries. That's why I was a roadie for MALICE MIZER. I wondered what it would be like to twist that and still play Greek music. There were members who said, "But Saint Seiya would be good" (laughs), but I still wanted to do Roses... So I started to express what I wanted to do honestly. However, I felt that it would go against my own aesthetics to publicly state that I was allowed to play roadie for MALICE MIZER at the time.

Mana: I see.

KAMIJO: I tried not to mention your name before your debut. I'm sorry, but I was always rude not to put your name on Special Thanks as well.

Mana: I didn't realise that, besides KAMIJO, three of the four members of LALENE were roadies for MALICE MIZER, so I guess it was a bit strange to see them working together.

KAMIJO: There were quite a lot of roadies. At the time, I was always nervous about who would be taken on tour with MALICE MIZER from among the roadies.

Mana: That's how it was.

KAMIJO: We couldn't all go on tour together, so there was a good chance that I would be left behind as I didn't have a car licence. But for some reason, they usually took me along and I have a lot of very happy memories.

Mana: If you were on tour, did you visit any haunted places?

KAMIJO: Ghost spots?

Mana: Whenever MALICE MIZER went on tour, it was a rule to stop by haunted places.

KAMIJO: I didn't go there. If they had taken me to a haunted place, I might have quit roadies.

Mana: What?　You're not good with ghosts.

KAMIJO: I'm not good at them. If they had told me about going to a haunted place, I might have really flown before they took me there.

Mana: I see.

KAMIJO: Scary things are no good at all...

Mana: Back then, all the roadie kids, they all lived near my house. Kinzo and Mayu were probably a 30 second walk away, weren't they?

KAMIJO: Yes, they were. I was two or three minutes from Mana's house, but I was closer to Kami's house. So I was often invited to Kami's house.

Mana: I have the impression that Kami somehow took care of the roadies the most.

KAMIJO: Yes. I was taken to so many places. There were times when Kami would take me to go and hand out leaflets at the L'Arc-en-Ciel concert at the Shibuya Public Hall.

Mana: Wow, that's new to me, I didn't know Kami did that.

KAMIJO: That's right. I took roadies with me. He said something like, "A band has to work hard on its own".

Mana: That's hot.

KAMIJO: I also went to deliver CDs with Kami.

Mana: To the CD shop?

KAMIJO: Yes. For "memoire DX" and "Voyage - sans retour", we went around CD shops together in the equipment van.

Mana: It's true, back then we delivered the goods ourselves.

KAMIJO: We had a system where we exchanged directly with the shops and got a good percentage of the purchase, but that was a system unique to MALICE MIZER. That method was used from the days of demo tapes, wasn't it?

Mana: Maybe that was the case.

KAMIJO: It probably won't ring a bell with you if you're reading this article, but this is a pretty aggressive way of doing things. Basically, it's normal for newcomers to be commissioned. In that sense, I think MALICE MIZER is a legend. I also imitated the MALICE MIZER method in my own band later on (laughs).

Mana: I used to go around to different places with CDs. Many places in one day.

KAMIJO: The experience I gained from that time and the personal connections I made with the shopkeepers helped me in my later activities. I think it was because of those roadie days that the shops supported me.

The rest of this article is available on the Salon members-only page!