Part 1: So you’re a diehard superfan of a niche J-pop band – Now what?
The late afternoon sun beats down onto Merciful Kannon’s form as she recedes into the distance. I waited 45 minutes for the bus, but I can’t even escape its rays inside here. As I’m jostled around in my window seat, I wonder if I’ll get a burn on my right side later. I muscle through the motion sickness I get from using my phone on vehicles, and buy three concert tickets for next weekend. I look back out the window, and it strikes me how the suburbs anywhere in the world look like the suburbs anywhere else. What’s a nice Jewish girl from Toronto, Canada doing on local public transit on the other side of the planet? And what compels her to spend all that yen in one fell swoop?
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where to rewind this to. Maybe to a nerdy middle-schooler that liked Vocaloid, to the amusement of her peers who couldn’t decide whether it was stranger that they were singing robots, or that they were singing in Japanese? Fastening forward, her music taste began to expand. On one hand, a wider range of J-pop, on the other, a fixation on 80’s new wave and post-punk—with a thousand little outlier points of curiosity in between. Having properly matured into an edgy teenager (albeit the “SJW” variety of the 2010s), when coming across a translated interview with a J-pop band—who’s controversial anti-war, anti-censorship song and accompanying music video have both been banned from the airwaves— her interest is instantly piqued.
It doesn’t take long for her to become a fan, and luckily, a handful of other foreign fans are providing fanmade lyric translations online. Eventually though, middle-school bullying gives way to more advanced high-school bullying. She falls off having an active interest in Japanese music for most of her late teens and early twenties. She still listens to that band occasionally, on a casual level.
But, eventually, for that young girl, something would implode and snap. Or, just maybe, the pieces finally fell into place? She rediscovers that band during a difficult time in her life, and it saves her. It gets her through college, inspires her to give the dreams she’d long since given up on one more chance, and– Oy, we’re not even done with the intro, and the shmaltz has already started!
This, of course, is the extremely abridged version of my youth. This also isn’t the first time I’ve written about Urbangarde and it certainly won’t be the last. I haven’t even explained what makes them so great, or why I’m so obsessed…! But that’s not the focus this time.
On April 29th, 2026, Urbangarde released their 19th album, Senmi Ittai (千位一体). The title is a play on the Japanese word for the Holy Trinity, “sanmi ittai” (三位一体), the term by which their devoted fanbase (yours truly included) often refers to their current three member lineup: co-vocalists Temma Matsunaga and Yoko Hamasaki, and keyboardist Kei Ohkubo. With the official English alternative title of Milinity, the through-line and concept for the album is the union of not only the three of them, but the whole earth, alongside the whole universe. And with a new album comes a tour for it.
As it so happened, the release date coincided with my move to Tokyo to pursue my own music career. Having been stuck overseas for so many years, and with a busy schedule encroaching on the horizon, I couldn’t abandon fandom to focus on my own life just yet. I resolved to make the most of my opportunities to otaku-out while I still could. After all, when given the opportunity, one must play as hard as they work. Having reached that conclusion, my first months in Japan became a whirlwind of groupiedom.
As for this article series, it is of 3 P’s: Procedural, promotional, and personal.
The first: If you’re interested in exploring Japanese music scenes in person but are intimidated and don’t know where to start, I hope I can provide some helpful pointers. The only way to adapt to another culture is by making the stupid mistakes, and learning from them (unless you have someone stupider you can learn from.) If you ever find yourself in a similar situation to me, or even if you’d just like to casually check out some shows while on vacation, I’d be happy if you could make something of a guide from my misadventures.
The second: I want you to listen to my favourite artists, and the other artists I mention that are also awesome, and I want you to spend money on them, and to go to their shows in person, and give them more money there. Tell ‘em Cyd sent you.
The third: Unfortunately, there’s no extracting myself from writing about the band that, as embarrassing and cliche as it is to say, saved my life.
Before an album can be toured, it has to be released, so a release event seems like a good place to start. Held at Village Vanguard Shibuya’s iconic lower level event space stage, the mini-live and tokutenkai was, despite all my fanaticism, the second time I’d ever seen Urbangarde live in my life. My first was at a miscellaneous taiban two years back. This seems like a good time to take a break and explain some vocabulary:
- Live: If I say this, assume I mean “concert”. I’ll probably use them interchangeably here, but katakana “live” is used much more frequently to refer to shows of a pop, rock, et cetera nature, whereas katakana “concert” usually refers to more formal, classical-adjacent fare.
- Livehouse: Hole in the wall concert venue. Hole in the ground? Frequently, literally underground.
- Oneman: A live focused on one act, and one act only. The concept of an “opening act” isn’t really a thing. If there’s multiple artists they’re usually given equal billing, making it…
- Twoman: As the name suggests, double biller.
- Threeman: You get the idea. Beyond that number, it’ll probably be referred to as a…
- Taiban: Coming from a literal translation of “battle of the bands”, but without the competitive vibe. Not sure where the next act number cutoff is, but at some point surpassing a taiban is a…
- Fes/fest: You know this one! Probably.
- Tokutenkai: Meet and greet. Run of the mill for idols, an occasional occurrence among bands, especially the Vkei-adjacent. As the literal translation “special benefit meeting” suggests, usually a bonus connected to buying merch. Gotta pay the bills somehow.
Back to the release event. After a five song mini-set at that taiban in 2024, this five song mini-set (plus impromptu encore!) was the second time in my life I had ever seen and/or heard my favourite band in the universe live. Just hearing the soundcheck from the other side of the partitioned store floor sent electric currents through me. During the set itself, I experienced what could only be described as “autistic rapture”. Even if you’re not on the spectrum, everyone has their “thing” in life. I guess I’m in the unlucky camp of mine being based staunchly on the opposite side of the globe from where I was born. But being barred from it for so long, the rush of finally experiencing it— Well, it is good enough to make you pack your bags and move away.
The set list consisted of some all-timers, and a few songs included on the new album that were established staples of the current repertoire. The album itself is half brand new songs, and half songs had been previously released on various singles and EPs. As I copied the choreography to ‘Showa Hyakunen Shoujo’ (昭和百年少女), the first song on the album to be released, with a smile plastered across my face, I thought back to where I was in life when it came out nearly two years ago. In post-graduation depression, I’d spent most of my days curled up in sheets crusted over in my own blood and filth. Two other songs from the album were previously included in a mini-album that was only available through physically purchasing a CD. Cool, fine, I love physical media. The CD could only be purchased in person, at event venues. Man, how I had suffered. But I’d finally made it.
This time, unlike regular merch sales, participation was arranged by purchasing copies of the CD from that day’s venue, Village Vangarde’s Shibuya location. The number of CDs and tickets paired with them correlated to the prestige of your reward: getting your CD signed, taking a photo with a member, taking a video of a member, and so on. Yes, the mythical J-pop ritual of buying several copies of the same CD to support whoever you stan. But it’s not that bad, I like having spares to give to friends, and gently encourage them to also become fans… Okay, so it’s a little pyramid-schemy.
“You’ve really never been to an Urbangarde oneman or tour before?” Temma remarked. I’d said as much in my message from the online tokutenkai, held the previous night. Yes, I bought another CD for that too.
And it was true. I’d had a few trips to Japan under my belt by that point, but somehow, the timing never worked out. Mr. Matsunaga, Urbangarde’s leader and lyricist as well as co-vocalist, also has a thriving solo side career. My trips revolved around those shows. He holds yearly events for his birthday on August 12th, and mine is August 11th. So until one of us dies, I’ll have plans around then. There’s no denying that I’m deeply psychic-ly obsessed with him, but it comes from a place of profound professional respect.
“Yeah, I’ll be going to Sendai, that’ll be my first…! The tour sold out before I could get a ticket, because you can’t use Eplus from overseas, so…”
My sheepishly delivered stealth guilt-trip, the carefully honed secret weapon passed down from generation to generation of Jewish women from their mothers wondering why they don’t call, hit its target.
“Eh—!!” His shocked face was so adorable that it almost made up for everything.
“That’s horrible! It’s that hard for overseas fans to get tickets to shows in Japan…”
To create an Eplus account, you need an active, working, Japanese phone number. Just filling in the field won’t do. As part of the registration process, the number you entered will be called, and you have to pick up. It was my first course of action the moment I got my SIM card, yet it was still a massive headache with the process failing on their end about 38 times before magically somehow working on the 39th. By then it was weeks too late. The kickoff show of the tour in Tokyo had long since sold out, and I settled for the second stop in Sendai. How I’d get there, I’d figure out later.
At the time of writing, this is coincidentally topical. Recently, it’s become a hot button issue after musician NANO tweeted a call for support from overseas fans, generating ire spewed from every direction possible.
Many chimed in with tales worse than mine, putting in all the extra effort and money to get a ticket, only to be turned away at venue doors for lack of proof of address in Japan. Others responded in turn, expressing sentiments of “tough shit, it’s not for you, go home foreigner.”
The latter group missed the point that Temma’s incredibly endearing reaction and NANO’s innocent tweet illustrate: Japanese artists are completely oblivious to all this. For better or worse, overseas fans usually just aren’t on their radar, it’s true that we’re not the core audience. You do have to get used to putting in a little extra effort.
However, for readers of this esteemed publication, the horror stories are pretty much irrelevant. Those debacles are usually reserved for sold-out arenas, not basement livehouses. Most ticket services catering to indie or otherwise smaller acts work just fine with overseas credit cards, granted you have a working cell number and/or email to validate them with. The sole exception I have come across firsthand is Eplus. Eplus is a bitch.
As my personal schedule for June began to fill, I was filled with renewed determination to full-force groupie until then, even if it meant pushing my mind and body to their limits. The first trial was the weekend of the Sendai live.
I’m an anxious and disaster-minded person, so if I have to travel for an event, I like to arrive the day before just in case. On this occasion, this was not possible. The night before Sendai, Temma had an act under his solo banner in Tokyo. In fact, it was one I was particularly keen on attending. Nestled in the posh hills of Aoyama, under the venue Aoyama Tsukimiru’s iconic paper moon, was the second installment of ‘Sabukari Zoku Shourai’ (サブカリ俗襲来), roughly translated to something along the lines of “Invasion of the Subculture Freaks”. It was one of the countless events that I’d seen glimpses of on social media and longed to go to in person, with this one seeming particularly unhinged. A long-time online acquaintance of mine (completely virginal to the world of weird underground J-pop), happened to be visiting Tokyo, so I dragged her along. Based on what I knew about the event, there couldn’t be a better introduction to my world.
The evening began with DJ Cosplay Koe-chan on the turntables as attendees filtered in and started using their drink tickets. For the livehouse uninitiated such as my friend, to ensure the venue also gets a little something something, events will have a mandatory drink ticket fee you pay at the door. It’s usually between ¥500-¥700. It’s handy to figure out your go-to when it comes to exchanging it, a drink of choice that all the venues usually carry. I’m a year and a half straight-edge sober, so mine is oolong tea. Or, if you don’t want to have to pee during the show, you can just not use it, or if you have time, use it after. This time, I had my buddy to pass mine off to, who promptly exchanged both for two servings of plum wine.
As master of the discs, DJ Cosplay Koe-chan set the subculture atmosphere for the evening off right. A subculture icon in her own right, she served Sukekiyo Inugami realness while playing counterculture hit after hit. I was particularly happy to hear the theme to Furuhata Ninzaburo, the 90’s dorama I’d been binging. My friend pointed out a song from Revolutionary Girl Utena—lthough the show itself is sadly a blind spot in my watch history, I held myself back from explaining that I recognized it through it being the work of angura giant J.A. Seazer. Other crowd pleasers included Shinsei Kammattechan’s ‘Boku no Sensou’, the Evangelion battle theme, and a trap remix of the Buddhist heart sutra. And then… Finally…
How would I best prepare a layman for a Temma Matsunaga solo live…? First, don’t be afraid of the screaming fangirls. We don’t bite. You might want to watch out for him, though. He’s big on audience participation, consensual or not. He’ll also hone in on fresh blood, confrontationally serenading members of the audience that aren’t (yet) fans of his. Being a man of the people, he has a tendency to jump off stage and keep the show going on the venue floor. This live was a great example, with him traversing back and forth several times. Notably, ‘Temma’s Counting Song’ (天馬のかぞえうた) (‘Temma’s Mother Goose’ is the official English title) began with a costume change into a trench coat. Next, he descended stage to the bar to get a glass of “the most expensive stuff you’ve got! Actually, red wine is fine,” and drank half the glass back on stage, before passing the rest down to be shared among the audience (It was my first sip in a long time, but it was akin to Holy Communion). Then, at the bridge, Temma left the audience to continue chanting the lyrics “get pregnant, get pregnant,” while he leapt from the stage to the washrooms at the back of the venue, did his business, washed his hands, until he returned. And the song ends with a death rattle shriek, of course. I’ll leave the rest for you to experience on your own. Please come!
I can’t think of a better way to introduce Clitoric Risu, the night’s co-headliner, than Temma’s own description given during his MC: “If you’re going to do stupid shit, you have to be serious about it,” and Clitoric Risu takes it seriously. Clad in nothing but a speedo with a theremin-esque noise machine attached to his, erm, pelvic region, this nearly-naked unc was a force to be reckoned with. He performed with such fervour that glistening sweat poured down his bald head to every inch of his body. His lyrics were simultaneously comedic and heartfelt, little tales of the struggles that weirdo outcasts, middle aged men, and weirdo outcast middle aged men face. They were punctuated by performances of ‘Sake Sumo’, a little ditty that goes something like this:
“You or me, who’s stronger? Let’s do some Sake Sumo, let’s do some Sake Sumo.”
Proceed with chugging your alcohol of choice.
With the amount of alcohol I witnessed him consume on stage, it baffles me that he didn’t keel over, let alone that he performed to the level he did. In a case of “real recognize real”, his fans also inspired great respect in me. The group of thirty to forty-something men cheered with such abandon that it almost felt like a genderswapped version of Temma’s core demo, my own tribe.
Then came the encore/finale, with all the evening’s acts coming together on stage for a few songs and a few rounds of Sake Sumo. A few rounds of Sake Sumo turned into several. Clitoric Risu pointedly noted that the evening was dragging on (and descending into chaos) at Temma’s own insistence to keep the good times rolling, and that he was being a real pain in the ass. Perhaps as payback, he pushed the unsuspecting Matsunaga offstage to crowdsurf. For a moment, I was certain that my favourite musician was no longer in the land of the living. At some point after making it back onstage with his life, he began spewing mouthfuls of beer into the audience. I jumped into the line of fire like a dog to an open fire hydrant during a heatwave.
Remember, this man has a whole oneman in another prefecture tomorrow.
Somehow, the evening was safely reigned in, and ended with the customary tokutenkai. My friend (who had drunk enough for the both of us) and I gathered all our spare change to buy her a concert DVD to be signed (pro tip: merch sales are almost always cash only). I proudly dragged her up to Temma for a commemorative photo, and acted as interpreter as he apologetically explained that this was one of the weirder events that one could attend in Tokyo. I wished him luck for tomorrow, and made a beer and saliva-soaked journey back to my hotel.
At this point, I was functionally homeless. I’d secured a sharehouse, but the move in date was weeks away, and I was living out of my suitcases while hotel hopping. An upside to the trip: hotels in Sendai would be cheaper than Tokyo! A downside: I had to figure out how to store my massive non-immediate-essentials suitcase. I don’t recommend my course of actions, leaving it to the day-of and assuming there’ll be a free coin locker in Tokyo Station– there won’t be, there’ll never be.
However, I somehow, by the grace of god, wrangled a luggage storage service, and made my train. Not yet having bathed after the previous night, I was anxious to check in to my hotel and clean up. As soon as I could, I refreshed, dressed, and did my makeup at a feverish pace. I then proceeded to sit around for a while in anxious paralysis. Having sufficiently shot myself in the foot, I set off in a panic to make it to the venue in time for pre-show merch sales. Because of course there was, that weekend a festival, the Aoba Matsuri, was flooding the streets of Sendai. What should have been delightful only filled me with dread as I bobbed and wove through pedestrians. But somehow, I made it.
Tokutenkai tickets and merch safely in hand, I was free to exhale and watch the parade until doors opened for the show itself. And it was delightful. One after another, community groups gathered from all walks of life performed choreography that was both evidentially rehearsed to a T, and bursting with joy. The drums of the marching bands trailing them sounded the heartbeat of centuries of tradition, carried all the way down to the toddlers in matching costumes with everyone else and no real idea what was going on. It was beautiful, and I thought, “I’m really glad I’m alive to see this.”
That was a mistake, vis a vis my tear glands and keeping my makeup intact. I’d already had the same thought and accompanying involuntary physical reaction while watching the Japanese countryside roll past my train window that morning. Without getting too much into it, right before I was able to make the move here, I was at the very end of my rope. I didn’t have any backup plans if I didn’t get my visa, at least not any that involved being alive. I’d gotten it after all, but forget that– I wouldn’t be living a life where I needed a visa to move to Japan and pursue my dreams if it wasn’t for Urbangarde.
At the point in time I fell full-force into the fandom, I sincerely hated both the person in the mirror and the voices in my head. I was living on others’ expectations for me and denying a whole section of my passions, including the only “activity” that’d ever truly brought me joy, out of fear of judgement. There’s an Urbangarde song, ‘Umaretemitai’ (生まれてみたい); around that time, I remember playing the music video on my TV out of a surge of nostalgia, and bursting into tears.
“To become myself, I want to try being born
Not just anyone else, I want to be me.”
Whether it was as shallow and stupid as “I want to be cuter when I finally get to meet Temma,” and finally taking a critical look at my diet and health for that reason, or learning a new language from practically the ground up, gaining new hobbies and skills in translation, being inspired to return to old ones in poetry and prose writing, or, yes, taking one more shot at a long dead dream of being a performing artist/musician/idol, all of that came from one band. And there I was, about to see an actual show by that band for the first time in my life.
It was open time, the gathered crowd queued in assigned ticket number order. Mine was pretty crap in accordance with my lateness to purchase. I’d be resigned to the back half of the venue, I didn’t care. I found myself a spot on the Temma side of the room (audience right, stage left, if you’re curious). The pre-show background music was some movie score on the tip of my tongue. Imposing, ominous, yet a little playful and twisted. It perfectly embodied the majesty of a counterculture band in its 19th year. So much time spent in opposition to polite society has created a new nation-state in retaliation, or a few hours, this was more than a livehouse, it was a kingdom of misfits. The music swelled, the lights dimmed, the curtains parted. In the audience, every citizen united under Urbangarde began waving their flags as the leaders appeared on stage.
I’ll save the setlist play by play, but the anticipated songs from the new album were interspersed with surprise classics that shocked my system every time. “I’m hearing that song live… I didn’t die, I lived to hear that song live…” Cue waterworks, repeat ad nauseum, all live. Urbangarde’s complete command of the stage was juxtaposed with tonal shift of the MC break, wherein Temma mischievously stuck a piece of tape from a prop on Yoko’s arm, and immediately faced her wrath. The live continued, in tandem with me fighting for my life to keep my composure. By the time they concluded with their very first single ‘Sailor Fuku wo Nuganai de’ (セーラー服を脱がないで), I was hardly keeping it together. I reached my goal of making it through to the tokutenkai by the skin of my teeth. Temma spent most of our allotted time telling me about Sendai’s local specialty sweet soybean treat, and trying to remember how to pronounce “pistachio” so that he could provide a flavour comparison. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d already tried zunda. As we were given the “wrap it up” signal, I subtly noted that I’d had a lot of fun at my first Urbangarde oneman.
“Oh! That’s right…! It was your first oneman!”
“Yeah! So, um… Thanks! See you next time!” I turned to take my exit, go back to my hotel, and spend one more day on mini-vacation tomorrow before it was back to the grindstone all next week.
“Thank you! And Cyd, keep doing your best!”
As I exited the venue, the dam cracked. Sendai is only a few hours from Tokyo by train, so any friends that could have been a shoulder or a distraction over dinner had gone straight home, out of the picture. I meandered my way back to the hotel between chokes and sniffles. Back in my room, the dam really broke. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop it. Every good thing in my life from the past four years, and that was most of the good things in my life, somehow traced back to this band. Whether from the community I’d found around it, the confidence it had given me, the inspiration I’d drawn from it, or even firsthand, direct words of encouragement, from the artist I admire the most on planet earth. How many people are that lucky?
Like anything else welled up, all I could do was wait for it to run dry. After about three hours I was in a capable enough condition, albeit mascara-smeared, and salvaged a midnight konbini dinner.
The main goal on the next day’s tourist agenda was to go see and climb Sendai’s colossal Daikannon. Where did I get the idea? Temma, of course. A few years back, to commemorate turning 40 he set out to do a solo show in every single one of Japan’s 47 prefectures. The tour started in 2021, basically still peak Covid times. Stupid and crazy? Almost as stupid and crazy as a foreigner who is by no means fluent in Japanese moving to Japan to become an idol. Anyway, he filmed travel vlogs in each location, and it was as they were being posted that I fell down the rabbit hole. Despite my absolute lack of Japanese comprehension at that point, they were actually a significant motivating factor in my becoming obsessed. His charm transcends language. Dick jokes about the noses on Tengu masks also transcend language. The main feature of the episode for Miyagi prefecture was the Daikannon.
So I came, I saw, I conquered the stairs, I waited 45 minutes in the sun for a bus to take me back downtown, I realized that I hadn’t actually bought my tickets for the next weekend yet. And bad ticket entry numbers from last minute purchases be damned, I was ready to do it all again.
CONTINUED IN PART 2…!
Author’s note: With life getting a little too crazy, this article took so long to get out that Urbangarde is once again on tour. If you’re able to overcome the foul beast that is Eplus, tickets are available now, and you should go. [https://eplus.jp/sf/word/0000038197]
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