My mother was an elementary school music teacher in Edogawa ward, Tokyo. My father was also a music lover who often played his classical guitar on his days off. I was forced to take piano lessons from the age of three, which I abhorred. I hated having to go to my piano teacher's house for my private lessons and detested my teacher who would always be yelling at me. Upon entering elementary school, I became embarrassed at the fact that I was taking piano lessons and when I was ten I negotiated with my parents to let me quit my lessons. Through all the terrible times, I ended up spending seven years of my life learning the piano. Since then, the upright piano cover in my room became nothing more than a shelf, and it would never be opened again. I remember hating early Sunday mornings when my father and mother would have a jam session with their classic guitar and alto recorder and recollect covering my ears with my comforter. At the time, I was really into sports and thought to myself, "Music are for girls!"

In junior high, I thought my brother's(who's 5 years older) collection of Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie and U2 cassette tapes were cool and I often listened to them behind my brother's back when I got home from school. Around that time, there was a show on Chiba television that played western music and I fell in love with Madonna, Culture Club, Aerosmith, Queen and Cyndi Lauper. The first cassette tape that I bought with my own money was Michael Jackson's "BAD." With the cassette tape player handed down from my brother, I played that cassette until it wore down the tape all the way through. Even now when I hear a song from that album, it brings back memories of that time in my life. I often snuck out of the house late at night to go to a friend's house or to hang out at parks, but in order to not get caught by my parents, I'd have to wait for them to go to sleep and in the meantime I listened to music. And the music that got the heaviest rotation during that time was Michael. I have fond memories of those times, softly closing the front door to sneak out in the middle of the night, coming home to a locked door and having to climb up 3 stories of the apartment complex to get back in, messing around on scooters with friends, and being questioned by cops for loitering passed curfew.

Around the end of junior high, I bought a guitar and got serious getting a band together. Until then, I never listened to Japanese music, but when I heard "Hitoni Yasashiku" by THE BLUE HEARTS in a Renown TV commercial, it blew my mind away. From then on, I spent my high school years only listening to punk music. Starting out with the Sex Pistols, Crash and the Ramones, I gradually got into more and more hardcore bands. I was a high school kid, sporting a mohawk and wearing leather jackets even during the hot, humid summers. During those golden days of rock bands, it was a time when all the girls would be into any and every guy that could play the guitar, and perhaps that was just an image, because I wasn't so popular amongst the ladies. Rather, most people might have looked at me with disapproval and kept their distance from me. At shows, I would perform while downing shots of Suntory whiskey(popularly referred to as:"daruma") and go out of control on stage; it was a despicable scene and embarrassing to even call it music. I think I just enjoyed thinking of myself as a punk. As pitiful as I was, this was around the time when I promised myself that I was going to make a living with music.

Upon graduating high school, I started attending professional music school and became a long haired, heavy metal, fast picking guitar punk. After completing music school, I wandered aimlessly without much direction in life while listening to underground progressive rock and jazz. Around this time, I heard about a music university in Boston that taught jazz and so I decided to study abroad and attend Berklee College of Music. And it was here where I met scores of talented musicians which in turn made me practice the guitar 10 hours a day, everyday, so that I could keep up. But after 6 months, realizing the limits to my skills, I put the guitar in it’s case…”bam” closed it shut, and quit practicing. This is how I quit being a guitarist and changed my major from performance to music business, and with that, I felt relieved. Soon after, I stopped listening to punk, heavy metal and jazz and began listening to the American Top 20 that was playing on the radio. I went clubbing every night, made loads of friends, didn’t think about the future and enjoyed the 5 years of my American life. When I look back on it now, it certainly sounds like I was headed nowhere, but for me, through my time in the states, I was able to finally realize what my relationship to music was and experience many things that I wouldn’t have been able to in Japan.

When I came back to Japan, the music industry was in a bigger slump than I had imagined; I sent my resumes and applied for positions as a guitar teacher at music schools, PA jobs at recording companies, and anything else that had anything to do with music, but alas, no luck. To be honest, I thought if I had graduated from Berklee and returned to Japan, I would be writing and arranging songs for some hot artist during the day and playing some jazz at a bar at night, being a sort of an outlaw, but making decent money…that’s the kind of lifestyle that I thought would be waiting for me. In reality, I was a door to door salesman selling teaching materials for elementary school students for six months. I’d visit every elementary school kids’ house on every block and talk my mouth off of how great the teaching material was; a fully commission based part time job. Out of about 20 other part time workers(they were mostly National University students) I constantly had the top sales, so the pay was pretty decent, but I was always thinking to myself, “How long am I going to be doing this?” It was around this time when I received a letter from one of the companies that I sent my resume to, asking me to come in for an interview. The name of that company was Johnny’s Entertainment of the famous Johnny and Associates, Inc. For me, never having any interest in Johnny’s, my frank opinion of them at the time was that they were just a machine churning out pop teen idol groups and having nothing to do with real music. It may had to do with the fact that I had just returned from overseas, but I didn’t know who the Kinki Kids were, I thought they might have been some newbie comedian group. But alas, since I did get an invitation, I thought I might as well go to the interview just for kicks.

I went in not taking it very seriously, but when I got to the interviewing room, I froze for a second… I completely looked out of place. Perhaps it was the 5 years I spent in the US, but the Japanese common sense in me was completely out of tune. Considering it was an interview for a position in the music industry, everyone around me wore sharp suits and were well groomed. As for me, I was in jeans, wore my hair in a top-knot, had eyebrow piercings and on top of all that, a black eye that I got in a fight a few days earlier was still slightly visible. I told myself, “It’s over” and with that, I felt relieved. After the first round of typical interview questions, the most important looking interviewer in the middle looked at me and asked, “Do you have any questions?” and so I thought it was a good chance and asked, “What does this company do?” Right as the question came out of my mouth, the two interviewers next to him were dumbfounded. But the interviewer in the middle still seemed to have an interest in my question, so I continued, “Is this place a talent agency? A publisher? Or a record company?”

A few days later, I received word that I got the position. The interviewer in the middle turned out to be the president. And as soon as I entered the company, I was given the responsibility to look over a tie-up project between Masahiko Kondo’s song and a television drama. Without any experience in the recording studio, starting with Masahiko Kondo, followed by Nenji Kobayashi, Yuko Asano, Goro Inagaki, Akiko Yada, Somegoro Ichikawa and other powerhouse actors, I recorded their songs and had to deal with all their talent agencies, the publishers and television networks. With the amount of work and all the pressure, it was the first time in my life that I understood what “stress” was and as a result grew white hair. I never thought that I would quit, but I did think that I could die. This is how I learned the work of a producer.

After that, I completed my work with the Shonentai and Kinki Kids and became the producer for NEWS. I wanted to produce a song that would resonate with the heart of the Japanese people, moreover I wanted to produce a hit song. And it was at this time that SMAP released “Sekai ni Hitotsu dake no Hana.” It was a great song. Although it was just my own personal feelings, I was upset that it wasn’t my song. Two years later, there was a project to release a CD for a collaboration between Shuji and Akira for a television drama and I was put in charge of producing it. Even from the musical composition selection process, most of the people wouldn’t quite accept the composition, “Seishun Amigo” that I had prepared. People would tell me, “This is outdated, lame. Is this thing even going to sell?” I ran around trying to convince everyone, at times even fighting head-on for the song. In the end, I somewhat forced it’s release. And the result? It became a massive hit, selling over 1.8 million copies. How about THAT! was how I felt. Soon after, I started a project forming a group with TEGOMASS and produced the song “Miso Soup” as it made their debut in Sweden. And as the time before, I faced a lot of opposition about the project, but I pushed it through. Those were some good times.

Working as a producer for Johnny’s was a lot of fun and I was able to experience countless things. As I hit the 5 year mark producing for NEWS, a lot of old memories welled up in my head; things that moved me when I was a child, picture books and songs that clearly stuck with me in my heart. I barely remember what I ate yesterday, but all these childhood memories came back overflowing. I recalled one song that my parents used to play on those Sunday mornings and I looked it up; it was an English folk song, “Green Sleeves.” The song writer is unknown, probably a song written over 400 years ago; and that song from those Sunday morning jam sessions that I detested, when I gave it a fresh listening, it was a wonderful song. It had a simple and beautiful melody. And this song will probably be passed on to the next generation, and to the next generation…I wonder what this is…

I took this as a sign and turned in my letter of resignation. Two weeks later, I started my own company. “Magonodaimade Production, Inc.” All right….. what to do now?