Kazuki Tomokawa

At the tender age of twenty-five, while he was working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s Kamata district, Kazuki Tomokawa released his debut record, fittingly titled Finally, His First Album.

While he had already penned hundreds of songs, including his first single “Try Saying You’re Alive!,” written on a long train ride past fields and rice paddies, it was this recording that introduced Japan to one of its most unique musicians of the postwar era. Each track, as record label exec Kiichi Takahara writes in the LP’s liner notes (here translated for the first time), is not a song but a “flesh-and-blood human being,” birthed by the singer-songwriter and the raw, guttural cries that would become a hallmark of his incomparable sound.

PERSONNEL:

• Kazuo Suguro - (electric guitar)
• Tomokawa Kazuki - (acoustic guitar)
• Takashi Maeda - (bass)
• Takeshi Yagishita - (drums)
• Toshiaki Ishizuka - (percussion)

TRACKS:

• SIDE A:
• A1 The Flower Of Youth
• A2 Souls
• A3 Yumiko's Spring
• A4 Song From The Void
• A5 Grave
• A6 Hail The Wonderful Law Of The Lotus Sutra

• SIDE B
• B1 Phone Call
• B2 An Akita Phone Call Run Amok
• B3 World School
• B4 Resistance, Age 23
• B5 Mr Ishimori
• B6 First Bon
• B7 A Cat Burglar In The Night
• B8 Bright Night