For this 21st Anniversary New Year’s Special Edition, we naturally wished to have these two appear! tetsu, author of this publication’s longest-running monthly column, and Nishikawa Takanori! These two, ridiculously well-known for being remarkably close, kindly divulged all the deep details of their story, from their meeting and reunion to the present day! They also combined their columns into one special creation! This laughter-filled discussion is not to be missed!

—

1 – about first meeting

Both born in Kansai just one year apart – the two youths, both devoted to music, had been fated to meet over twenty years ago! However, tetsu and Nishikawa did not begin to deepen their private relationship until only six years ago. At present, they share a trusting relationship in which they can express their naked selves. Meeting and Reunion. What dramatic story do these words signal?

– tetsu

– Nishikawa

—

tetsu and Nishikawa were both born in the same part of Kansai, and they are very close in age. It is also clear that they are very close in their private lives, but it is also a fact that their first meeting took place over twenty years ago.

However, the truth is that the two of them did not begin seeing so much of each other in private until far more recently, after they had already achieved their present respective positions.

Humans. A relationship constructed in the wake of position and achievement is a rather discreet one.

“Does he really love me and spend time with me because of who I am as a human being, not only for personal profit?” Such questions can make a person sick.

Furthermore, since tetsu and Takanori are both humans standing in the admirable position of Artist, there is no doubt that the number of people who can ever truly be allowed into their hearts is harshly limited, above and beyond any limit we ordinary people may face.

In spite of that, when the plan to create this interview was finally realized, their faces clearly portrayed the trust that they share, even as the session filled with their mutual smiles and laughter.

While the two of them do share a relationship of mutual respect as artists, they also have a bond in which they can show the non-artist portions of themselves with each other. In which they are not obliged to smile. The expressions they are putting on display today; are these their true human faces? Upon wondering this, I remembered the stoicity which they are both prone to display when it comes to their music, reaffirming my respect for them.

It is mid-November, at a certain place downtown. They completed the pair photo session first, then Nishikawa did his solo cuts first. After that, he waited in this room until tetsu came in.

tetsu [Oh? Have you been in here this whole time?]
Nishikawa [Oh. You came～ That’s right, I’ve been right here. (laughs)]

With that laughter exchanged in the place of a greeting begins the transformation of the room into a space where they can let themselves be for a day. During the photo shoot, a cameraman had asked them to “Get about as close as you would need to be to hold hands”, upon hearing this, tetsu took hold of Nishikawa’s hand.

Nishikawa [Hold on! He didn’t tell us to actually hold hands! (laughs) Just to get close enough to. Don’t actually grab me! (laughs) We’re gonna get outed!]
tetsu [Ehh? What? Doesn’t everyone already know? Isn’t it about time we had a coming out party? The truth is, we are ………. yeah (laughs).]

His laughter enticed all the staff members present to join in.

As appropriate for this new year’s special, the cover page photos are gorgeous and auspicious, shot before a prepared sheet of velveteen. When shown the test shots that the cameraman had taken earlier,
[Wow! That looks so new years-ish!]
came the gleeful reply from both tetsu and Nishikawa.

How is it? Such a gorgeous cover page! Surely it is among the most appropriate of all cover pages for the new years season?!

Additionally, the two of them happen to hold two of the longest running columns in CD-Data’s history! Incidentally, tetsu’s monthly feature {tetsu’s press} has appeared 88 times, and Nishikawa’s feature {Abareru! Kokka Touitsu Kurabu Z} has appeared 55 times. And plus! Let us celebrate this 21st anniversary issue of the magazine with new decorations! The festivities begin with this very interview. These gravia of the special anniversary issue will of course reveal all the details of their meeting and reunion, proceeding all the way to the present, retracing the steps that have led them to this moment. Let the talk begin in earnest.

—

– May I start by asking about the way you first met?
Nishikawa [We met in Shinjuku, around 2-chome right?](1)
tetsu [Wrong. It was at that beach in Kobe.]
Nishikawa [What? Really?]
tetsu [Yep. D’you forget?]
Nishikawa [Ahahaha. Really? That was it? (laughs)]
tetsu [Yeah. What was do they call that spot again? For cruising? You know, that beach in Kobe.]
Nishikawa [Ahahaha. Reaaaly～ (laughs) Whatever could you be talking about? You are such a strange person (laughs).]

– Where exactly was it that the two of you happened to meet?
Nishikawa [Where exactly was it, anyway? Without mentioning the beach in Kobe, please.]
tetsu [Hahahaha. OK, the first time we met must have actually been in Osaka, right? Yeah, yeah, that’s it! In Umeda! At EST1 in Umeda, I went “Irasshaimase” at you.] (2)
Nishikawa [Oh wow, that sure brings back memories! EST1 in Umeda! Next to the thing next to Walt’s Dou, right?
tetsu [Right (laughs). By the way, I used to work at Walt’s Dou too, way back when. (laughs).]
Nishikawa [Oh, really? (laughs)]

– What is Walt’s Dou?
tetsu [Well you see, Walt’s Dou is a music shop. But when we met, I was working somewhere else, in an accessory shop that engraved DOG tags and stuff (laughs).]
Nishikawa [Back then, everybody who was anybody in any kind of heavy metal band worked in a shop like that! It’s so typical.]
tetsu [Yep. In all the shops, all the guy staffs were band guys, well musicians anyway, and all the girl staffs were dating band guys.]
Nishikawa [That’s how it was, back in the day. In Osaka, in Kyoto, all over Kansai really, if you were a band man then you had that kind of job. At Kawaramachi in Kyoto, you could walk into any shop and the staff would all be band guys. Me, I had a job in a shoe store, but I only got the job because a friend of mine, a band man working in a name tag shop like yours, helped me get it (laughs). Oh yeah! It was CRAZY DANGER NANCY KEN chan from Kamaitachi, he had that kind of job at a place on Shinkyougoku. (3)
tetsu [Yeah yeah yeah that’s right (laughs).]

– Kamaitachi! That brings back memories! Now if I remember right, back then, the music scene, the band scene, was much hotter in Kansai than in Tokyo. I’m from Nagoya, myself, but I admired the Osaka scene a lot more than the Tokyo one, honestly. LOUDNESS, 44MAGNUM, Earth Shaker, it was truly the golden age of Japanese Heavy Metal. (4)
tetsu [Yes indeed, it certainly was. The band scene is Kansai was so hot, back then.]
Nishikawa [Oh yeah. Yes, yes you might be right. I wonder how the Kansai rock scene is, nowadays?]
tetsu [Yeah, I wonder. Guess it’s gone down?]
Nishikawa [Guess so? You sure don’t see as many kids carrying guitars around, that’s for sure. Or maybe it’s just ’cause we don’t ride around in trains much, so we don’t see ’em? (laughs) But there’s an impressive number of DJs and dancers around, compared to back then, you know? Nowadays.]
tetsu [Guess so (laughs).]

– Nishikawa-san, you have said that you made a.b.s. – abingdon boys school – the way it is because you thought it was sad that the young musician population was decreasing and “wanted to create a cool guitar sound that guitarist kids would want to copy,” correct?
tetsu [No way～ Hold on a second! Nobody can copy those complicated songs of yours! (laughs)]
Nishikawa [Ahahahaha. You think? Yeah well, a.b.s. is a band for adults who take their goofing off very seriously (laughs). But I really did think that way about things when I first started up the band～. You know how these days, there are all these video sites where you can watch stuff? I like to go on there and watch videos of L’Arc copy bands; it makes me happy. Sometimes they upload vids that make me go “Wow, what country are these guys from!?”, it makes me so happy to see how much effort these people put into copying L’Arc songs. Of course I like to see that happen with my songs, too. So anyway, I started a.b.s. because I thought it would be cool to have a band like that.]
tetsu [Yeah, I see. Obviously, it makes me very happy too.]

– I’m sure it does. Now if I may bring the topic back around to your first meeting?
tetsu [Back then, this guy was in Luis Mary, calling himself HAINE (laughs). He’s HAINE! (laughs).]
Nishikawa [Hey～! (laughs) Why did your voice get so loud all of a sudden? (laughs)! Talk more quietly (laughs).]

– (laughs) Back then, it was “LUNA SEA in the east, Luis Mary in the west”, as they said.
tetsu [Did people really say that? (laughs)]
Nishikawa [Um, yeah, back then we were sorta rival bands, so yeah I kinda think people did say that. Livehouses in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kansai would all fight to schedule one of us, so our tours ended up being at the same time. We spent a lot of time together back then. Their band name wasn’t even LUNA SEA like Moon and Ocean yet, it was still LUNACY as in crazy. Oh man, I sound like a walking encyclopedia right now, don’t I? (laughs) So yeah well, anyway, back then, I got introduced to tetchan through a mutual friend. That was exactly around the time that Luis-Mary was talking about going major and having our debut, but at the same time I was feeling really uneasy about it, my own band, and I wondered, “Is this really OK?”, I kinda wanted to start everything over from scratch, and if I could have just found members that wanted to start from scratch with me, I really would have gone back to zero. And yeah, that mutual friend of ours was a guitarist, and I had talked with him about how it would be nice if we could do that together, and he went “Hey I know this good bassist, actually,” and he had his eye on this guy so he suggested that I come along to meet him and so we went to EST1 and it turned out that it was tetchan.]
tetsu [Back then, that guy was pretty well known around Osaka, for being the guitarist of his band. The drummer of that band had been a friend of mine since high school, and I’d been in a band with him before, actually.]
Nishikawa [Oh, that’s right. Small world, eh?]
tetsu [At the time Luis-Mary was super well-known all over Kansai, so that day, I was all like “Oh wow, it’s HAINE from Luis-Mary!” Really, I was. I seriously thought “Wow, if I start a band with this guy, I could debut right now!”.]

– I take it you never got together as a band?
Nishikawa [Right. Even though I really wanted to make it with you.]
tetsu [What are you suggesting! (laughs) One day, randomly, I was just watching TV when I heard that Luis-Mary had their debut already, and I went “What the…. He already had his debut all lined up! He went and moved to Tokyo! Meehh～” (deep sigh)]

-tetsu

– I see, Nishikawa-san, you’re a traitor, after all.
Nishikawa [Nonononono. (laughs) I am not!]
tetsu [But you know what, it could be because of this that I was able to work so hard. I thought “Dammit～ I wanna get there too!” and worked harder for it.]
Nishikawa [I wanted to get in touch with you for so long, but then I lost track of that guitarist friend, and so I couldn’t get in touch with you, tetchan, and you slipped away. But hey, it wasn’t much longer until tetchan started up L’Arc, and you guys were playing at Namba Rockets, right? (5) When I went back home I dropped by Rockets and saw those flyers posted, and I went “Woah! I know that guy!”]
tetsu [Considering how much makeup I on for those flyers, how could you tell it was me? (laughs).]
Nishikawa [Hahahaha. I just knew. It was still the original lineup, and I could just tell it was you, tetchan.]

– When did you finally reunite?
tetsu [Reunite? When did we meet again? What song was it again? It must have been around the time I released my solo album, so sometime in 2002. I was going on a TV show and was waiting around backstage. That was it.]
Nishikawa [So that means it’s been about six years, already, since we met again. Wow, time sure flies. So that time, I was talking with a mutual friend about how we’d met years and years ago, but I was so sure that you’d have forgotten all about me so I didn’t have the guts to talk to you directly.]
tetsu [No way, I was thinking the same thing. “There’s no way Nishikawa-kun could remember me.” ‘Cause, yeah, Nishikawa-kun had been in Luis-Mary and debuted, and then became T.M. Revolution, I knew all that from TV and magazines, but I thought that to him I was just this random band man that he’d met a couple of times in Osaka; I figured you wouldn’t have put together that tetsu from L’Arc was that guy, was me. That’s why, even though we’d been on lots of programs together, I’d never spoken to you.]

– You both thought that way?
Nishikawa [Yes, yes. I was so worried about saying something weird to him that I never even said hi.]
tetsu [But then one day, one of our mutual friends told me that Nishikawa-kun had been talking about how we knew each other from way back when. That’s how I knew, “Wow, he remembers me!” and so about six years ago when we were on that program together, that was the first time we actually talked so that was our reunion. And it just so happened that we had some other chances to meet up, and on Music Station we even got to go on together and talk about the fact. I said “This guy betrayed me,” to Tamori-san (laughs).]
Nishikawa [I’m telling you, I never betrayed you! (laughs) You’re wrong. (laughs) How many times do I have to tell you before you’ll believe me? (laughs)]

– It did take a long time for you to meet again (laughs).
tetsu [Yeah. It really was an awfully long time (laughs). You know what, there’s a select clothing shop that we both like to go to during our private time, and we’ve even run into each other there.]

– Ah, I can see why. You both have very similar tastes, you wear a lot of the same things.
Nishikawa [Yeah, yeah. I like MANIAC’s stuff a lot too, I wear it a lot (laughs) Their select shops are pretty big and they carry all the main brands I like; you could say we like the same stuff (laughs).] (6)
tetsu [But you know, this one time the store’s lighting was was kinda dark, so I couldn’t make out faces clearly, and I thought there was this guy staring at me the whole time I was in there but it was just Nishikawa-kun. (laughs)]
Nishikawa [Yeah, yeah (laughs). But I really had been thinking about you that whole time, tetchan. Just when my band started sucking and I quit, that was when L’Arc debuted and took off, and this is kinda repeating what you said before, but it made me go “Wow, I’ve gotta work harder” and really stimulated me.]
tetsu [I see. So then you got to regret the way you dumped me and ran off to Tokyo, at least a little bit.]
Nishikawa [Like I said, you’re wrong (laughs). I never meant to dump you, or betray you (laughs).]

– But time passed, and the way you were able to meet again shows that you have some kind of destiny together, right?
Nishikawa [Yes. Having a photo shoot together and reminiscing like this, it feels kind of strange but it’s fun; it really does seem like destiny.]

-Nishikawa

– One rarely hears of people who became such close friends well after reaching adulthood. Not to mention that in this business, everyone has to put up their boundaries, it can be very difficult to meet anyone with whom to relax and be natural, correct?
tetsu [You can’t show your true colours much. But you know… Oh man, I’m letting on way too much (laughs).]
Nishikawa [But you know, I think that for both of us, no matter how close a relationship we might have with other people, we still couldn’t show our true colours the same way we can to each other. Isn’t that wonderful? (laughs) It is.]
tetsu [Yeah (laughs). Because there’s something nobody else knows about us, and we know each other that way (laughs).]

– But, indeed, from the moment you walked into the room, tetsu-san, and the two of you started to talk, the entire space seem to shift, heartwarmingly; I can feel it on my skin.
Nishikawa [Really? (laughs) Ah, this is bad, we might get outed!]
tetsu [You mean, as in the true nature of our relationship? (laughs)]
Nishikawa [Yeah (laughs). Back during the photo shoot you just took my hand without even thinking, didn’t you? (laughs).]

– Alright, alright (laughs). It’s simply that every time I hold a music-related interview, I naturally see the artist side of you, which means I meet the stoic, professional side of you, but this time, while of course you are here as artists, I feel that your true characters are being better represented, even down to the expressions on your faces.
Nishikawa [Yeah. when tetchan is around, I can relax. It’s kind of like what you said before, about how in adulthood, you have a much harder time trusting people, but with tetchan around I feel at ease. And he makes me want to show a little bit more of my true colours to everyone else. But it’s not like… It’s not like I would never do it otherwise (laughs). It really feels like I’m about to reveal everything, now (laughs). Oh, and it feels like I’m going back to how I was back when we first met.]
tetsu [I guess I feel the same way. It’s true, when we’re together I feel so grateful that I’ve been able to find someone that I can really be myself around. But sometimes, I think “Okay hold on, you don’t need to be THAT natural around me!” (laughs).]

– I’m jealous. I wish I had someone like that.
tetsu [I’m sure you do. I really want to treasure this destiny bond.]

Interviewer not identified.
Translated by Natalie Arnold

1. Tokyo’s pre-eminent gay district. Go back.

2. Recently renamed to simply EST, it is the shopping mall in Umeda, the north part of Osaka, where tetsu used to work. The shop he worked in still exists. Go back.

3. Kawaramachi and Shinkyougoku are both famous shopping streets in Kyoto. Kamaitachi was a rock band that existed from 1985 to 1991.Go back.

4. See: Tetsugaku Chapter 05 – Influential Music Go back.

5. Namba Rockets is a tiny live house in Osaka that was L’Arc’s home base during their indies era. Go back.

6. MANIAC WORKS , a brand tetsu is often seen wearing lately. Go back.