#dokugen

Note before reading:  This is  chapter 7 from Kaoru’s first book “Dokugen”, released in October 2015. Kaoru started writing a montly section in “Ongaku to hito” music magazine during Dir en grey’s hiatus in 2012, and later these publications were  selected and compiled in two books.

You can still get these books at  the Tower Records official site.

*The title of Kaoru’s section /book “読弦“(dokugen) can be translated as “string reading” or “reading the strings”* You can read other Dokugen content → here

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This time, the guitar I’m going to talk about  is one of the purple glitter ones I introduced in chapter 1,  the prototype of the model I’m currently using the most, the D-KV PROTOTYPE. I haven’t decided yet a name for this one,  the KV  is just the item’s stock number.

The motivation behind making this guitar is I started to feel that Ganesha, which I had been using until then, didn't suit me anymore.  But before, when I was wearing make-up, it did suit me. Maybe I felt something wrong with having this guitar.

That's why I decided not to make a model right away, but to try for a while a guitar called Viper, one that was already on the market. As I wrote before, when I got it and I started using it, the Viper model was able to reflect the ease of use and design I like.

 I customized this new one to the point that you won’t understand the changes until you take it into your hands and play it. First, about its looks, I decided to design it this way because I wanted to make the best use of the texture of the wood. To get the feeling that the wood grain is white, first you have to apply white paint to the extent that it soaks into the grain, then apply brown to the surface, and scrape the surface to get white grain.

Actually, I didn't intend to attach a tremolo arm to the bridge (the part where the strings are sticking out), but I was designing this guitar when we were making the album called “Withering to Death”, released in 2005. At that time, I used the tremolo arm for the song “Kodoku ni Shisu, Yueni Kodoku” so it was added but, in the end, as I used another guitar when I played it live. I didn’t need the tremolo arm, so it became such a mysterious customization…. like, why did I attach it?

Then, this guitar should have appeared on stage for the first time on October 23, 2004 at the Hibiya Open Air Concert Hall.

I remember the live performance of that day well, and almost at the same time  I was playing the notes of the song "Shokubeni", that starts with my guitar, my feet started to shake, and at that moment I felt an earthquake.

It was the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake.

I'm from Hyogo, and at the time of the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake (Kobe earthquake), I was working at a factory in Osaka doing a night shift. Because the inside of the factory was big, nothing fell on me, but I couldn’t stand because of the terrible shaking.

That day, due to safety reasons, the factory stopped, and I had to go home in the middle of that situation. I couldn’t go by train, bus or taxi, so I decided to walk a distance that usually took me 20 minutes by train. I walked back home on a road where the ground was cracked and sticking out, like you could see in films and manga.

I got hungry on the way, and at the gyudon shop I was told that the bowl I was eating was the last one, because they couldn’t cook rice as they ran out of water. I was so hungry that I should have felt it was really delicious, but for some reason, I didn't feel it was that delicious. I guess I was thinking somewhere in my heart that it wasn’t the right moment to be eating.

In my hometown, Hyogo, the buildings in the neighbourhood were completely destroyed and the highway collapsed. I walked home in such a situation. On the way, I made a phone call to my parents’ house, and I could confirm they were safe.

The house I lived in was okay, but I lived a few weeks without food, water, electricity and gas. A few days after the earthquake, the train started to work, so I was able to move to get food and water. Yes, you could go to the zones where nothing happened just for a few minutes. I still remember the strange feelings and complicated feelings of that time.

 At the time of the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake, we were pre-producing the album "DUM SPIRO SPERO", released later in August of that year. 

In the studio,  the 3 stringed instruments people were there and 4 manipulator sound masters, so we were immediately evacuated from the studio to a nearby park and we waited there for about an hour. We returned to the studio and started working again, thinking that the aftershocks had finally ended. When we saw the news on the internet about it, we completely stopped working. We were doing pre-production for a few days more after that, but I was doing it while thinking  many times “should we be doing this in these circumstances?”, “should we continue recording and pre-producing?”.

 Even if we did that, if we stopped, I thought that moment was the time to write songs and play the guitar. It's a selfish belief, but I hoped everyone would listen to that album soon and let everyone know that album would be released as soon as possible. With that feeling, I devoted myself to making an album.

I don't think music can save the world; things are going to be the same. I can’t answer properly when I’m asked why I think this, but I can’t help it because that’s how I think. Even though that’s how I was thinking, I thought that people who were connected to music would feel hope. I wanted to believe that.

"DUM SPIRO SPERO" means “as long as you live, you can have hope” in Latin. We only recorded unpleasant songs for this album, but it’s an album packed with more feelings than ever.

Every person goes through a morning every day, the night comes, and tomorrow will come again. No one knows what will happen tomorrow. “I’m going to live more frantically now than I did before”. I strongly felt like that when I made this album.

 It hasn’t change until now, yet, this year that feeling might not be that strong.

I am going to live to the fullest so no regrets will remain no matter what happens. It would be great if I could continue living like that, but if I can’t, I want to think I had a good life.

 With that feeling in mind, I'm about to go on a tour for the first time in a while.

 See you next month!

 P.S It seems that the factory that I was working in at the time of the Great Hanshin Earthquake has disappeared. I wonder if there is still a tasty bento shop nearby.

All right, now it's time to write about this. As the title says, it's about someone I've admired for a long, loooooooooooong time.

He is the guitarist of the band, which I first knew in middle school. I've written before, the first time I heard of them was recommended by a classmate, who was really into noise music.* At that time, I honestly did not accept the intense sound I had never heard before at all. However, there were a few songs on the album that I liked, and I had those songs dubbed onto tape and listened to them over and over again.

After that, the band's debut album was released on April 21, a few days after I entered high school. Somehow I ordered the band album that was totally unacceptable when I first heard it and bought it on my way home from school.

As I wrote before, I still vividly remember the first time I heard that album. I went home, sat in front of the radio cassette without taking off my uniform, opened the CD, held the booklet in my hand, and within minutes after I pressed the play button—the word "shock" could not be used to describe what I felt. Then, for about an hour, I fell into a feeling I had never felt before and I couldn't sit still. I wanted to tell someone how I felt as soon as possible. Despite these thoughts, I couldn't leave the album behind and ran out, but stayed home and listened to it over and over again from that day on.

Intense and beautiful.

It was the first time I had ever felt a sound like that, and the songs were just intense but easy to hum and listen to. I wasn't able to make such an analysis at the time, but I felt that I had come across something extraordinary. The visuals, which had only been seen as people in bizarre outfits, even came to seem super cool because of the great songs after I heard the sound, making me want to go to the live concert.

After looking up the magazine, I found out that they were having a live show in Osaka a few days later. The tickets were sold out, but I still wanted to go to the venue. I wanted to feel the atmosphere even a little bit, so I headed to the venue with all my money (5,000 yen). The venue was the former Osaka Kosei Nenkin Kaikan medium hall. There was a park in front of the venue, and I was nervous because there were a lot of people dressed in rocking styles, but not necessarily in cosplay. There were also many people selling scalped tickets, which were highly sought after. Since it was impossible to get a ticket, I went to the stalls that were selling goods. As the time for the show was approaching, the crowd around me was gradually dispersing. I saw some people putting their ears against the wall to listen to the sound leak, so I thought I'd give it a try when the show started, but I found someone who gave me a ticket and I ended up watching the live show!

That live was……………of course, X's live. Of course, the guitarist I saw there was HIDE-san. Seeing HIDE-san at this live changed my life.

To be honest, I thought X were monsters when I first saw them. Especially HIDE-san looked like an alien, not a person from this world.

After watching such a live show, I started searching for magazines with X on them. Even when I was at school, I wanted to go home early and listen to X's songs. I got deeper and deeper into them, wanting to listen to them all the time, wanting to touch X all the time.

Then, I really wanted a Mockingbird, the same guitar HIDE-san had, so I saved up my pocket money and New Year's money, and then went to a music store in Shinsaibashi Amemura, Osaka. I went to this music store because I had read in a magazine that they had Mockingbird guitars there, but in fact they did not, and I was told to make a reservation. I still wanted one, so I ordered it on the spot, but after that I didn't hear from them for a while. Six months later, when I thought maybe it had been forgotten, the shipment finally arrived and I got the Mockingbird. I was so happy that I kept touching it.

From there, I watched X's live performance in Kansai many times, and I also went to the Tokyo Dome live several times. I recorded all the TV shows with X on them; through the help of my friends, I also found and got videos of TV shows outside of Kansai. HIDE-san didn’t look like an alien on TV, he was kind of cute.

I never thought I'd be so addicted to them. There was nothing in my eyes but X and HIDE-san.

At that time, I heard that if you wrote a letter to HIDE-san and sent it with a return postcard, you would receive a reply, so I started writing immediately and sent the letter. I wrote about how I started playing the guitar after seeing HIDE-san, and that I wanted to form a band someday. Then, what a surprise! A reply came back!!!!!!!!!

(To be continued…)

Words from the translator:

When I first listened to X JAPAN's music, my feelings were similar to what Kaoru described. At the same time, I love HIDE as much as Kaoru does, even though I'm born in a world without HIDE.💗

*About the classmate who recommended noise music to Kaoru, you can read Chapter 2 of Dokugen. Here are two translations by different translators:

Chapter 2: “The transfer student who introduced me to the noisy music” by @thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness

Chapter II. A classmate who introduced me to “noise” music by @elenalester

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