Make Believe Mailer 47: Help Never Hurt
Fujii Kaze Meets Asia
The ascent of Fujii Kaze as J-pop’s next big “thing” has been years in the making, with endless excitement from domestic media and headlines like “Fujii Kaze: The Biggest Japanese Musical Phenomenon Since Utada Hikaru?” courtesy of Nippon.com. He’s pretty much met those expectations at home in 2022, with his latest album being one of the best-selling and most-streamed of the year and live shows drawing ecstatic receptions. He recently filled in at Rising Sun Rock Festival, and Twitter loved it if my feed was any indication.
Now, though, Kaze is really settling into the role of the face of J-pop in the 2020s. That’s thanks in part to….uh, other people’s faces.
An example of how it works
Kaze’s 2020 song “Shinunoga E-Wa” from his debut album Help Ever Hurt Never has blown up on TikTok in summer 2022. While you can find examples of the rattling number soundtracking all kinds of content now, the most common example of its virality looks something like this: a user gets pictures or footage of a person or anime character they love, and play the Kaze song — which is a bit grimmer than you’d think, with the title translating as “I’d Rather Die,” and is about obsession to the point of Kaze singing he’d be willing to swallow needles to spend one more day with an object of affection1 — over it. Sometimes its the original, oftentimes it’s a sped up version as is the sonic fashion of the platform, but the song in any form has become, at least for this season, a staple within those snack-sized videos.
I now admit I can’t pinpoint the exact genesis of “Shinunoga’s” online success, but it clearly came out of Thailand in the last month-ish (seems like Thai celebrities getting in on it recently have also helped). That so many Thai subbed videos and Thai language content about the song has appeared underlines it.
Kaze’s 2020 song is, as you’d expect, enjoying surprise chart love in Thailand. What’s much more surprising is how much, and how it’s spreading in the region. “Shinunoga” topped Thailand’s Viral 50 chart on Spotify, the first J-pop song I know of to do so…and also managed the same in Vietnam, another massive Southeast Asian market. It’s creeping towards the top in Malaysia (#2 at time of writing), Indonesia and Singapore, while crashing into rankings in a wide variety of other countries (including #50 in Saudi Arabia).
Yet in Thailand…Kaze is doing something I’ve never seen before, at least in the Spotify-all-the-time era. “Shinunoga” has broken into the Top 50 Thailand chart, rubbing shoulders with BTS and The Weeknd. The song’s success has made Kaze’s debut album…released two years ago…an emerging entrant in the country’s album chart. TikTok success is one thing, but translating that into something more widespread…now that’s hard anywhere.
Japanese music of all stripes excels at going accidentally viral, running all the way back to “PonPonPon” and then enjoying success during the Facebook “funny page” days Pikotaro took advantage of. TikTok speeds everything up further, and all kinds of songs — from city pop gems to reworked indie-rock to anything anime related — can suddenly be everywhere, at least in one corner of social media. That usually leads to Viral Chart success, with a handful of older cuts and anime themes going as high as one in places like the United States. A song like Yasuha’s “Flyday Chinatown” is a recent example of an isolated surprise hit, and it enjoyed placement in a bunch of country’s Spotify Viral Charts.
Yet Kaze’s surprise breakthrough in Asia signals a potential new opportunity. Coupled with Ado’s current viral success in France (and, just starting to climb up in the States and other Asian countries) via her One Piece film songs, Japanese pop music has two visible viral hits, both of which have managed to go to the top spot in far-flung nation’s Viral Charts. Both get a boost from anime — the number of “Shinunoga” clips centered around, like, Naruto are staggering — but that’s a boost. The chance to actually highlight the modern state of J-pop via two stars set to be prominent voices for years to come is now present. Help from folks all over has arrived…now it will be interesting to see what moves come next.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
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This trend is, accidentally, a pretty good commentary on modern fandom too.
I actually had an insight during a J-Pop workshop I led yesterday (which included exploring Fujii Kaze's work) that his chill, laid-back tone and demeanor in his songs actually allows him to speak on more serious topics without being too heavy to pop audiences everywhere (e.g. Seishun Sick comes off as super carefree but the theme of being sick of youthful days and leaving them behind is more serious).