Tone Glow 164: Hikaru Utada

An interview with the legendary Japanese pop star about embracing joy, the similarities between songwriting and architecture, and their love for the Cocteau Twins

Hikaru Utada

Hikaru Utada in Yokohama on the final date of their SCIENCE FICTION tour. Photo by Teppei Kishida.

Hikaru Utada (b. 1983) is a Japanese American singer-songwriter who stands as one of the most influential artists in contemporary J-pop. Born to the enka singer Keiko Fuji and the record producer Teruzane Utada, Hikaru was surrounded by music throughout their childhood, eventually making an English-language album as Cubic U in 1998. They soon got noticed by producer Akira Miyake and released their debut Japanese-language album First Love in 1999. It, along with its two follow-ups—Distance in 2001 and Deep River in 2002—are the highest-selling Japanese studio albums of the past 25 years. More recently, they released their eighth Japanese-language album BAD MODE (2022) and a compilation album titled SCIENCE FICTION (2024), which features newly recorded versions of early hits. Throughout the past few months, they embarked on the SCIENCE FICTION tour, which saw them performing in Taipei, Hong Kong, and various cities across Japan. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Utada on May 23rd, 2024 via Zoom to discuss motherhood, collaboration, and the long road to embracing joy.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Hello, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Joshua Minsoo Kim. I’m a music and film critic, but I’m also a high school science teacher for my day job.

Hikaru Utada: Oh my god! That’s so cool! (laughs).

I feel like it’s important for me to be in both of these worlds.

And they overlap! I really feel like art and science are really similar in certain ways. I’ve always been drawn to science. What artists do and what scientists do are essentially the same: you’re pursuing this idea you have, and sometimes you’re the only one doing this. You’re pioneers, you’re explorers—you may be the only person in the world who gets this idea or believes in this theory, or the fact that a song like this could be made. You’re always trying to discover new things, or make new things, or get to the truth of something. And sometimes it seems like it’s only true for you, but it could turn out to be true for others, too. You’re also always updating yourself.

Right, that notion of always updating yourself is something I think about a lot. I like to tell my students that we have to recognize that there’s always room to grow, that there’s always more we can learn.

I find overlap in the hard-work part and the genius side of things—this culture we have of putting people on a pedestal, of labeling people as “geniuses.” When I talk about how much effort and energy I put into making music, writing lyrics, or composing, the bulk of the reaction is people saying, “Oh, I thought she was a genius! I thought it just came to her but she’s actually a hard-working person.” Einstein didn’t come to a big revelation from taking a walk—and sometimes that may happen—but people have to put their heart into it, and there’s a lot of time and research involved.

I think social media can obscure people’s understanding of that. There’s this semblance that we’re getting a look into people’s lives, but we don’t actually see all the effort that goes into doing something. I’m curious about the sort of things you’d see from your own parents growing up—did you recognize that hard work was necessary to succeed when looking at your parents?

I was scared by how much music mattered to my mother. I saw it as an obsession, and sometimes it wouldn’t make sense to me. I would notice that the car would be gone and that we hadn’t used it for a while. I would ask my parents and they’d say, “Oh, we sold it to make money for the studio” and I’d be like, “Oh, okay….” As a kid I was thinking, “What’s next? School fees? The house? How much are you gonna put into this studio!” (laughter). I’d watch my mother sing in the studio until her voice was almost gone. And all the hours they were working…

Well, it’s not really work. When I think of “work,” I think of scheduled things that involve other people, like interviews. When I’m just working on a song or recording on my own, or even with other musicians, it’s just what I need to do in order to achieve what I want. I think with a genius or with people in these fields—where you’re the only one pushing yourself to do things—you have to have the capacity to suffer for what you want to do without running away from it.

Is that something you felt like you had to do when you were younger? I was reading through your own interviews and blog entries—

Oh my god! (laughter).

It’s been fun going through those. What’s really interesting about those early interviews, like between 1999 and 2001, is how you felt pressured at the time to be an artist because of your parents. You say that you maybe didn’t get to choose your profession. What was your relationship like with this act of sacrificing things to be an artist, and how has your relationship with that evolved over the course of your career?

I was nudged into the path of being an artist for sure. They never told me to do it, and it was always my choice, but now that I’m raising a child I can see the influence that caregivers have over the choices their child will make. Part of it is hereditary and your interests and what you’re good at, but I end up showing more enthusiasm with my son’s violin practices or his drawings and these other creative pursuits. I feel really enthusiastic about all his studies, but there’s a little sparkle in me when these creative things happen. I’ll take him to the studio, like my parents did, and he’ll see everything. I saw my parents make music so it seemed very natural to do the same for my son. I think I’m more fascinated by people who work in an office, in a way, because I’ve never done it and my parents didn’t do that either.

When I was doing those interviews, I was dealing with becoming famous so fast and so young. My parents had not warned me about that. For many years, maybe until I took a break and was able to put things into perspective, I really struggled with that. “I didn’t ask for this, and I didn’t know that it would be like this!” I didn’t know what would come with being in the public eye. It can bring some good things of course, but the effect on your psyche and your identity and your overall quality of life is really big. I was probably trying to balance the regrets I had—because I definitely regretted making a Japanese album for a while—with trying to accept that I’m good at this and that I like doing it. It comes naturally to me. 

I had to step away from music to really see this. It’s when I stepped away that I really thought I was a musician and an artist and that I couldn’t do anything else. I can be a mother and a friend—all of these other things are different sides of me—but at my core I’m an artist. When I was back in the studio and hanging out with musicians and engineers, I felt so at home. We all spoke the same language and we all understood each other in a fundamental way—there’s a safety in that.

It’s interesting for me to hear this spoken so plainly. I’m wondering if you could share two things with me: something that comes to mind in terms of feeling happy with your artistic freedom, and then something that comes to mind with feeling stifled as a public figure.

I was so lucky because artistic freedom was there from the beginning. And of course, I had support and help because making a song and making it a final product involves so many steps that I couldn’t do yet. In terms of what I wanted to do, I was so free. There wasn’t, “This should be more like this, you should say this.” I actually didn’t appreciate how much artistic freedom I had until I took my break. And in the last few years, I really realized that I’m such a free person, not just artistically, but with my life. I think that’s so precious. We are all free in a way, but it took that long to realize it for myself. 

I remember the producer who found me in Japan—I still work with him, his name is Mr. Miyake—saw me in a recording studio when my mother was recording. I was there after school and still in my uniform. He said, “Who’s that girl?” And then he heard who my mother was and he heard that I already made an English album on my own. He said, “Can she write in Japanese?” And I said I’d give it a try. I hadn’t written a Japanese song before—I was 14—but I didn’t want to say that I couldn’t do it unless I first gave it a go.

So I wrote a demo and it ended up being the song “Never Let Go.” I took it into the studio to record vocals, and it was just a rough track that the music would go with. I don’t really remember this, but he told me later on that I just went into the booth and told him I’d do one pass like this, another pass like that, and then for the hook I’d do an octave unison for both the higher and lower range and that we could double it. He was like, “Okay…” (laughter). He was really surprised that this girl walked in and knew what she wanted. We just laid it down like that and I got the deal for the album. From that point on, it was always like that—I’d bring demos into the studio.

The only time, ever, that I was given advice to change something that I didn’t want to was for the song “Kiss & Cry.” There was a line I put in that song that said, “The father is being laid off, and the daughter is cutting her wrist.” It has a cheerful melody and it’s a funky, fun track (laughs). But it was supposed to be used in a TV ad for Nissin Cup Noodles and my director said, “Oh, maybe we shouldn’t have this word ‘wrist-cut’ in it?” And I was like, “I really love that line.” It was ultimately my choice as I could’ve said no, but I said okay, and I changed it to something about a son’s internet use—it rhymed.

That was literally the only time that happened, and years later my director came to me and said, “You know, I keep thinking about that moment. I shouldn’t have had you change that line. It was so much better the way you had it.” So when I sing that song live now, I go back to those old lyrics. I didn’t take it lightly, and I didn’t explain it to anyone at the time, but right after my debut—which was the darkest time for me because of how much my environment changed—I was self-harming. That was the only time in my life I did that. It was a very personal line for me, a really tender part of me. And because it was so vulnerable, it’s probably why I was okay with changing it. Perhaps it all makes sense, though, because I can sing it the original way when I do live shows today.

In 2006, you mentioned that it’s “fear, loneliness, and bleakness” that motivate you to write all your songs. That’s a really intense quote. Do you feel like that has defined how you write songs from the beginning up to now, or has it changed?

I think it’s a bit different now, but it’s still one of the big sources. Maybe it’s not the source of all my songs, but my need to create comes from that. I think in my earlier songs, especially pre-break, you can feel those things in the music. The basis of why I need to make music is to process things that were too much to process at the time they happened. It can stay in me for years and years—decades maybe. There also might be feelings of intense joy. I have struggled with how to feel joy without feeling the pain that I have associated with it. The full picture of something always involves that dark side.

Would you say it’s still hard for you to lean into joy without this pain being involved?

I dealt with that for many years, especially after my son was born, but I had an a-ha moment. This came after years of looking within and having help with psychoanalysis. When I was dealing with those feelings, I was working on a song called “Gold”—the a-ha moment became the song. What I realized was that joy is something we all pursue—I mean, look at the Declaration of Independence, it says “the pursuit of happiness.” That’s one of the sad things about this modern view of happiness, that it’s something you pursue and attain. But actually, it’s always there. It’s not something you have to chase or find—it’s in you, or right by you, and you just have to notice it. Learning that was a really big moment for me. And since then, I’ve been getting better at it. If I’m feeling happy, if I’m feeling this joyous moment—and it can be a daily thing, a little spark—I stay in it. That’s really changed me in the past couple of years.

“Gold” was co-produced by A. G. Cook and you also have a remix of it by Taku Takahashi. I’m curious about the roles of other artists in helping you process these things. Earlier you mentioned how you feel at home in the studio when being with others. What’s the significance of collaboration for you in realizing these different ideas?

It depends on the collaborator. I haven’t made music like that with collaborators that much in the past; it’s more of a recent thing. After my break, I began working more with musicians and having live instruments, and at some point—I guess with BAD MODE, if I’m talking about albums, because the one before it had the most live instrumentation and I was so over it (laughter)—I really wanted to go back to my roots with more electronic sounds, or a mixture of electronic sounds and live instrumentation. For a few albums before my break, I was making the tracks myself.

It’s still a big part of what I do—programming the tracks. I make the demo and the basic ideas need to be there. I felt so satisfied with what I’d done in the past in terms of being a meticulous arranger or track maker that it’s become a big part of my identity. But at this point, I wanted the tracks to be more than what I could do as a track maker. I would rather focus on being a songwriter, where my ideas and my basic arrangement are all there, but then someone else could focus on making the tracks. I didn’t geek out enough in that world to have all the plug-ins (laughter). I really wanted to elevate the sound of the music with people who could take me there, but in the past, I found it hard to collaborate with people who were producers or track makers, and this is because I’m not just a singer who goes in and asks someone to make me something.

When my director recommended A. G. Cook, I wasn’t really familiar with his music. We set up a FaceTime to get to know each other, but I didn’t even listen to his stuff going into it. I wanted to know him as a person and just talk. That felt so great. I told him I was really interested in architecture because I think it has a lot to do with music—what we’re really doing is creating space, and the empty space is as important as what we’re actually constructing. Both his parents are architects, and all these things became connected. He said that he understood every part of the process because Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek, for example, also write their own songs—they’re not just singers. I felt really comfortable with him and I said, great, I’d love to do this.

What he does is I take a demo to him and I say, “Sorry, this is such a basic demo” but then he’ll say, “You have all the ideas you need in there.” He’ll really get what I’m trying to do and make it cooler, just way beyond what my demo was. He does things to what I’ve brought that I could never imagine and it works incredibly well. It’s like magic.

With someone like Floating Points, he doesn’t collaborate a lot with other songwriters. We’re more awkward (laughter) so for some songs it might take some time and we’ll have to meet again to discuss. “Is this too much? Should it be like this?” And then there’s a moment where it clicks. It usually will totally change from my demo, like it’ll be a totally different thing in the end. But it’s also not the sort of thing he’d ever make on his own.

I do want to ask about “Somewhere Near Marseilles.” I know that it was originally titled “Somewhere Near Cassis.”

Yes! In the very, very beginning.

I’ve been to both Marseille and Cassis and I was curious if you had been to the different calanques.

(laughs) I haven’t! Where are they?

There’s this incredible national park where you hike down this scenic route and it leads to this beach, the Calanque d’En Vau, and it feels like you’re at the edge of the world. There are these massive cliffs and it’s the most beautiful place. I thought that you may have been there as it feels like the sort of place that would have inspired a song like that.

Wow. That’s an idea for my next summer holiday.

You mentioned this idea of architecture and seeing your songs in that manner. Were there songs that helped you recognize that, or did it come about from making songs on your own?

I’m not an architecture buff despite being fascinated by it. I’ve bought some books that I haven’t read yet—I’m sure we all relate to that (laughter). I feel that with minimalist architecture, like with Tadao Ando and what he did for the Pinault Collection at the Bourse de Commerce—it looks like a bank but it was completely redone. It’s incredible—it’s my favorite modern art museum.

I saw some preliminary sketches for a different structure he made that is in Japan that has this water and a Christian Cross. A photographer I’ve been working with a lot, [Takay], belongs to the same gallery as Daido Moriyama. I know both of them, and Daido Moriyama took some photos of my mother when she was very young, so I was invited to the gallery to take a look at the original prints. The gallerist also brought out these Tadao Ando drawings from the back and I felt like they were demos. I’m not saying I’m as amazing as him, but there was this connection in my mind. It’s like you’re carving out space, and this also makes me think about solving equations and bringing things down to the most beautiful formula.

Everything begins with chaos. You could make a 1000-hour song if you wanted and it could have all the noises in the universe. But it’s about saying, “I don’t want this, I don’t want that” as much as it is saying, “I want this, I want that.” The most important parts of music really are those empty spaces that you’re carving out. You create a place for something, or for yourself. And then people can come into it when they listen.

When you’re creating these spaces, how much are you thinking about a listener being able to, for example, dance? How much are you thinking about the possibility of movement for a listener?

I just make music that I want to move to. I think that’s what you have to do. I don’t think I could think about what other people would want to listen to—I don’t even know what other people would want to listen to. The whole point is that if you’re enjoying music as a listener, you don’t know what new thing you would like because you haven’t even heard it yet. There are things that make me dance, but when I’m making something I don’t want to make stuff that’s already out there—and that includes my own songs. I can only make something that I want to listen to, that I want to dance to, that’ll make me lie down and put on headphones for an hour or two. And I can only hope that people will relate to it as well.

I was always fascinated by your interest in bears. You have mentioned bears for many years on your blog, your Instagram handle is kuma_power [Editor’s note: “Kuma” means “Bear” in Japanese], and you have the song “Boku wa Kuma.”

I can introduce you to [my stuffed animal bear] if you’d like. He’s in the living room right now.

Oh wow, yeah, can we see?

I’ll bring him over later!

Where did this love for bears begin?

I don’t know if my love extends to all bears (laughter) but it’s more for my bear. It’s for Kuma. He was introduced to me as a birthday present when I was 19 or 20. The moment I saw him, I felt like I knew him and knew who he was, which is complete projection, obviously (laughter). I was fascinated by how much I was projecting onto him. He became like my therapist in a way. It was like self-therapy, where I was feeling affection for this thing and it could be a comfort blanket—he was that for me. I didn’t really have something like that when I was a kid, and the comfort I found in him was fascinating. You have to receive comfort to really give it to yourself or somebody else, and he was my training wheels.

I didn’t look into it much at the time, but when I took my break and moved to London, the first thing I did was become a member of the British Library. I looked up things about the word “bear,” or the ideas that different cultures have about bears. I know people in Japan who see them as the holiest of creatures. And I saw connections between all these cultures and languages. “Kuma” is the Japanese word for “bear,” and in African languages it often meant things like “grandmother” or “initiation rituals” or even female genitalia. There was this association with femininity and the power that is in femininity. I don’t sleep with him every night anymore, but he sits on the sofa, or he sleeps with my son. He’s part of the family.

I think it’s amazing that you still have him and that there’s all this history. I want to ask how you feel like having a child has impacted your life and your relationship with music. A song like “Pakuchii No Uta” has a really childlike melody, and of course your son sings and plays on BAD MODE. What’s it been like to raise him, to have him take part in your music, especially since you made music with your own mother? There’s that song “Cold Moon” you made with her in the 1990s.

Yeah, wow. It has taught me a lot. It’s shown me a lot of things I couldn’t see before and has opened my eyes to see childhood differently. Like, it really made me grow up (laughter). It took me actually being a mother myself to understand my own mother a bit better and to really appreciate what she did for me. There was so much love and care, and I had that from my father as well, but I relate to her more because I’m a mother and also a working artist. I really get it now.

It has made me think, okay, I appreciate what they’ve done for me so much and it’s incredible that they gave me everything I needed—including not having some things that I wish I had. It’s that need and that void… I appreciate that they even gave me that because I had to fill it myself. There were things that I desperately wanted, and at that moment it was really difficult. But that’s what has allowed me to become who I am now—those are the things that actually define me and make me who I am. And I like who I am now.

What were the voids that you had to fill yourself?

I’ve been thinking about this because I was on a TV show recently as part of some promotional campaign for the album. I got a question from a fan and they said, “Is there anything in life you wanted but couldn’t have?” That could be interpreted in many ways, but I guess for him it looked like I had everything. My answer was, “It is actually my lack that made me a richer person.” I didn’t go into specifics at the time as it wasn’t appropriate, but what I was thinking of was how, as a kid, you want to be looked after, you want stability and reassurance, you have your emotional needs.

My parents did their best, and I’ve learned as a parent that all we can do is our best. There’s no way that anyone can do it perfectly, and there’s always moments where I’m like, darn, why did I react like that? And then I’ll apologize. Me being raised by a mother with a severe mental illness, which included psychosis—that was hard. There’s no one to blame for it, which is harder in a way. If someone’s an asshole to you, you can be like “fuck you!” and just walk away. But no, this person loves you but hurts you and terrifies you, too. And that can create voids.

You mentioned earlier that you self-harmed when you were younger, and I know that you have been seeing a psychoanalyst since 2013 or so. For you to be where you are today—for you to come to terms with all these realities about yourself and your mother and how everything has panned out—I’m wondering how much of that is a result of making music, how much of it is a result of having a support network, and how much of it is a result of meeting with these professionals. I want to ask you this because it isn’t something I feel is talked about often, and it’s easy for artists to brush it off and be like, “You can just push through and make art!”

It’s really worth dissecting that. The reason psychoanalysis works well for me, and why I was able to get into it very quickly, is because the process of examining your past and what’s inside of you is similar to what I do when making music. The analyst will take hints from little random things I say and ask, “Well, why is it that red flower? Why is it liquids?” They’ll make connections and then you’ll hit the jackpot, you’ll get a revelation like, ohhhh, that’s why. All these fragmented pieces of you come together and it creates this more whole self-image.

When I’m working on a song, I’m taking something that lies underneath what is conscious, and that’s why I have to start by writing the music and not lyrics. Lyrics require too much thinking for me, and music is a tool that is used to express things that you are not able to with words. Music is also a language, and it’s easier for me to translate emotions through it than with words. Feelings that may be buried in me or are not always accessible to me—even if it happened recently—come out when I make music. The music will also let me know what I’m feeling; it’s like a blurry picture that gets more and more into focus. And then things start to trickle out—consonants, vowels, words. These things grow from atoms to molecules.

When I’m through all of that, I’m really rolling around in my head with these big questions. I’m trying to make sense of what I don’t yet understand, whether it’s about me or just about the human experience. And when I go really deep, I feel like I come in touch with what [Carl] Jung would call the collective unconscious. “Gold” was a really big one for me about the true nature of joy and how to feel it. But something like that happens with each song, though maybe on a different scale. And that’s the whole point—it’s why I make music, it’s why I put so much into writing lyrics.

You once said in an interview, “People say food makes you beautiful from the inside out, but I think the words you read and the things you listen to are just as important.” I’m curious what things you’re currently reading.

I’ve been trying to read more about the creative process. I’m really interested in writing a book like that myself as it’s what people ask me about the most; I spend a lot of time thinking about it. There’s this one book, On Creating Things Aesthetic by Leonard Koren, and I found it in a tiny bookstore in London, right around where Supreme is. Haruki Murakami put out a book called Novelist as a Vocation, and I’ve only read the introduction to it so far but I related so much to what was written. I’m also a subscriber of Poetry, the magazine. It was recommended to me by Floating Points. I saw one lying around and he was like, “These are beautiful!” He got me hooked on them.

Is there anything we didn’t talk about today that you wanted to talk about? Or is there anything you’ve always wanted to be asked in an interview?

I don’t have anything like that. You have to see what the interviewer is like to know it’s the right place or time to be sharing things with. You’ve made me so comfortable—you’re really cool. I’ve been able to talk about things that I haven’t talked about before. Like with the self-harm thing, I never knew if I was ever going to say that. I never mentioned it publicly, but it felt fine to say it with you and it just naturally came up.

There’s a question that I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

I’m quite happy with who I am overall, but one thing in particular is that I love how objective I can be.

Like you’re able to look at something without bias?

Oh, I mean myself. I feel that I can look at myself objectively, which helps in many ways. I really appreciate that about myself.

How has that helped you recently?

I think that’s the key to a lot of the things I’ve talked about in this interview. If you can’t look at yourself from outside yourself, then you’re truly trapped. You’re lost and overwhelmed by your own emotions, and you won’t understand why the world or your life is the way it is. I do have a big capacity for being self-aware, and that’s important for being an artist, but also just for being a good friend. It’s also really important—like, really, really important—for being a good mom (laughter). Being a mother is a never-ending meditation of noticing things about yourself, of being mindful.

Thank you for taking the time to talk, and thank you for all the music.

Aww.

Something that I think is interesting is how so many people my age—I’m 31—grew up on the internet and learned about Japanese music through you. I think you and Shiina Ringo are the two big gateway artists for people my age, how in listening to you both we’ve ended up listening to more Japanese music and other international music in general. So thank you for that.

You’re naturally curious, so this is ultimately you and not me. But thank you so much for… thanking me for that, I’ll take the credit (laughter). I love your T-shirt by the way, I noticed it says Heaven or Las Vegas.

Oh yeah! You mentioned the Cocteau Twins in an interview once many years ago. They asked what music influenced you and you mentioned them and The Little Mermaid (laughter).

That’s so me! (laughter). Cocteau Twins are my favorite band of all time, no question.

Liz [Fraser] was so important for me. She made me recognize the importance and depth that someone’s voice could have even when you can’t understand what’s being sung. 

Yup. I saw her live once at the Southbank Centre in London around 10 or 11 years ago. I was in the front row. ANOHNI was curating this festival and somehow got Elizabeth Fraser to come out, and they were both on stage at one point—it was incredible.

Do you have a favorite Cocteau Twins song? I’m especially fond of “Ella Megalast Burls Forever,” and I also really love “Aikea-Guinea.”

Oh yeah, that’s one of my favorites too. My favorite Cocteau Twins song is “Lorelei.” I also love “Road, River and Rail.” Something about that really touches me, and the lyrics too when I read them. And I listen to “Fifty-fifty Clown” so much. Even that bassline… (starts mimicking the opening bassline) when it comes in, I can dance to it at any given moment. But yes, “Cherry-coloured Funk” makes it onto all my playlists.

You can’t start Heaven or Las Vegas, hear that track, and not play the whole thing.

Exactly! (laughter).

Hikaru Utada’s new compilation, SCIENCE FICTION, is out now and can be found at various streaming services.

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Thank you for reading the 164th issue of Tone Glow. “Anyone playing FF VIII, please tell me what the witch is like!! Please” —Hikaru Utada, 1999.03.03

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