A roundup of spring songs from 90s Visual Kei
When spring rolls around, you hear all the cherry blossom songs everywhere—petals falling, meetings and partings, new beginnings—there are all kinds of spring tunes.
But aren’t they all starting to feel a bit samey and tiresome? The cherry blossoms fall, love falls apart, everything’s so syrupy… The themes aren’t bad, but I want something with more punch.
So I set my sights on spring songs with that ’90s visual kei vibe.
Some are from the 2000s too, but broadly, I’ve gathered visual kei artists who started out in the ’90s.
GLAY | A Person Who Loves Spring
First, we begin with this number from 1996.
It’s said that when TAKURO, the leader and the band’s lyricist-composer, traveled to Iceland, he was inspired by people enduring the extreme severity of winter as they waited for spring.
It’s a song that likens the shift from the harshness of winter to the arrival of spring to the changing states of the human heart, and its depth makes you reflect on many things as you listen.
Plastic Tree | Harusaki Sentimental
With the arrival of spring and the sight of cherry blossoms, this slightly bittersweet number portrays how they evoke not new encounters, but farewells with someone dear.
Plastic Tree has a great many songs with heartrending lyrics, and the lyrics written by vocalist Ryutaro Arimura are always brimming with delicacy.
Personally, I think they’re one of the bands that created a new wave not only in the visual kei scene but in the Japanese rock world as a whole.
This song perfectly marries its sense of delicacy, the imagery of falling cherry blossoms, and grunge-like distortion, and the piece itself is highly polished.
cali≠gari | Spring Day
Although cali≠gari is often discussed as a 2000s band, they actually began their activities in the early 1990s, so I’ve included them here.
Among visual kei bands, cali≠gari is often treated like a maverick, but they’re also a band with exceptionally good lyrics.
This song is striking for the word “sakura-yami,” and its lyrics are highly lyrical, vividly evoking rows of cherry trees and their scenery, along with nostalgia, poignancy, and a deep sense of longing.
Personally, this person is one of those who has had an enormous influence on me. Since Akira Sakurai—the guitarist and the lyricist/composer of this song—has roots in Showa-era kayōkyoku, the lyrics are characterized by a Showa-style literary sensibility that carefully selects words you don’t often see modern band musicians write.
Janne Da Arc | Sakura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nuntVd390o
This is also a song that overlaps cherry blossoms with someone dear (there are lots of spring songs like this, not just in visual kei), but compared to Plastic Tree it expresses things like a man's lingering attachment and desires more directly rather than using literary, abstract imagery.
Not only the keyboard in the intro, but I feel that instead of cramming in notes and playing intricate phrases, using sustain and creating lingering resonance and spaces fits the song “Sakura.”
Acid Black Cherry originally started as yasu from Janne Da Arc’s solo project, but since their hiatus has lasted nearly ten years now, I can’t help but think there must be fans who only know yasu from ABC anymore.
hide with Spread Beaver | HURRY GO ROUND
This person might need no introduction.
He certainly showed his talent as a composer for X JAPAN, and under the name hide as well—this work marks that new direction. The lyrics portray spring symbolically, allowing for interpretations about the cycle of seasons, life and death, and many other themes.
One of this person’s distinguishing traits is that they progressively stripped unnecessary elements from their guitar phrases. A symbolic example is that the phrases and tones in X JAPAN’s early “Kurenai” and in “Kurenai” from THE LAST LIVE are clearly different.
This piece as well showcases how the strings and the surprisingly pop, simplified phrases—hard to believe they’re by someone from a heavy metal background—bring out each other’s individuality. Both the early period, when he played full-on, and the later period, when he left out various notes and played more sparsely, are equally cool, which vividly reflects hide’s exceptional sense of balance when it comes to sound.
Gackt | Like a flower blooming in the field
These days, Gackt often appears on TV for rating checks and as a variety show talent, but he’s also an exceptionally skilled singer.
It’s similar to how Demon Kakka is treated.
His spring song is Like a Wildflower.
It's more of a graduation song than a spring song, but this piece has a very simple structure with accompaniment only by acoustic guitar and piano, and, just as the title suggests, it carries a wish for you to live strongly like a flower blooming in the wild.
When it comes to visual kei, there tend to be a lot of songs with sad elements, but knowing that Gackt, who used to be deeply rooted in visual kei, now sings songs like this, I really feel the passage of time.
L’Arc~en~Ciel | flower
A track distinguished by its acoustic-flavored intro; rather than using words like “spring” or “cherry blossoms,” the lyrics focus on the drowsy, dreamy feeling of spring.
Hyde’s characteristically abstract expressions broaden the range of interpretation and imagery, and it seems they deliberately pursued an acoustic approach reminiscent of Spitz or Mr. Children at the time of release, resulting in a very pop song.
Merry-go-round | Under a fully blooming cherry tree
This song evokes the moment when cherry blossoms fall rather than the season of spring itself, blending an aesthetic of decadence and an utterly pervasive sense of sickness.
A band whose lyrics are dark no matter where you look—belonging to the so-called Nagoya-kei, a subgenre of visual kei.
Their musical style is dark and heavy, with none of the pop-like elements that are present to some extent in today’s visual-kei.
Some listeners of this song may be reminded of the motif of the short story Under the Cherry Trees by the literary master Motojirō Kajii.
Even so, I think many of you have at least heard the phrase, “There are corpses buried under the cherry trees!”
The original work itself isn’t that dark, but as I was listening, I felt that the impact of the wording, the pleasing sound, and the darkness that emerges when you isolate certain phrases seem to mesh well with the inherently aesthetic and decadent aspects of visual kei.
BUCK-TICK | Sakura
This piece is notable for its guitar phrases,BUCK-TICKThis song does not contain the word “sakura” anywhere.
However, with various elements like the ephemeral, death-evoking lyrics and the guitar arpeggios, this title somehow feels surprisingly fitting.
And because I also feel a bit of melancholy about how short the spring season is, I introduced it as a spring song.
While the vocalist Atsushi Sakurai’s bewitching yet delicate singing style certainly adds to it, I think this song is exceptional in that it doesn’t rely on the simple equation of cherry blossoms equaling spring. Instead, it conveys—indirectly yet with clear intent, symbolically guided by the title “Sakura”—the fragility of springtime cherry blossoms, the loneliness born from the brevity of the season, and the sense of loss that comes with losing someone dear.
These songs are just a very small selection, and even within visual kei there are now plenty of more ordinary, spring-like tracks. Still, spring songs from the 1990s visual kei scene—imbued with a somewhat dark aura—stand apart from the spring songs so common today, and I think that contrast has its own unique appeal.
Be sure to find your own spring song, everyone.