Tone Glow 177: Toe
An interview with Toe’s guitarist and vocalist Hirokazu Yamazaki about his hardcore beginnings, arranging the band’s songs, and interior design
Toe
Toe is a Japanese rock band that can be credited for bringing Midwest emo guitars into the lexicon of Japanese pop and rock music. Like many of their peers, the group’s members had their start in the post-hardcore scene that defined 1990s Japan. Through the Cap’n Jazz-affiliated group Ghosts and Vodka, guitarist Hirokazu Yamazaki became interested in exploring a musical style that focused on hushed arrangements, softer instrumentation, and clearer mixing. Since beginning in 2000, Toe has released multiple EPs and albums, including The Book About My Idle Plot On A Vague Anxiety (2005), For Long Tomorrow (2009), and Hear You (2015). Recently, they released their newest album, Now I See the Light (2024). Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Hirokazu Yamazaki via Zoom on July 3rd, 2024 to discuss Toe’s origins, his interest in interior design, and the qualities that make the band stand out from others in the Japanese underground.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: What year were you born and where did you grow up?
Hirokazu Yamazaki: I was born in 1974 in Yokohama, which is a city right next to Tokyo.
When you think about your childhood in Yokohama, what memories come to mind?
I grew up neither rich nor poor—middle class. When people in America think of Yokohama they think of this one area called Minao Mirai, which is right on the bay—it’s very touristy. But I grew up in the city’s residential area. There was nothing outstanding or extravagant, very much “middle.”
Were your parents or family into music, or was this an endeavor you had to pursue on your own?
I had absolutely no musical or academic interests, and not too many were interested in art. That’s what I think pulled me into that… when I would hear from one of my friends that their family played jazz, or that their father was an old guitarist, I’d always be a little bit jealous. When I was younger I thought it wasn’t fair that they got this kind of influence and I didn’t.
What are the earliest memories you have of getting into music?
I always loved movies, ever since I was a kid, and I always went to this video rental place. I became friends with one of the guys who worked there, and he would recommend music. That’s where I found this band called Boøwy. They were an old pop rock band in Japan. There was always mainstream Japanese music on TV, but it wasn’t really “band music.” Around the same time, when I was in the 6th grade, there was a big band in Japan called The Blue Hearts. That’s another one I was really into.
This makes sense—their debut was in the late ’80s. So when did you first start picking up a guitar and playing? When did that come into play in your life?
It would be what is sixth grade in the US.
And how did that happen?
Through Boøwy. I told my parents I wanted a guitar, and [Tomoyasu] Hotei, the guitarist in the band, had his own model and there was a cheaper model of his main one. I don’t know what the exchange rate would have been back then, but it was about ¥30,000. Obviously I couldn’t play, but back in the day—even if you couldn’t play, and through word of mouth—just because you had a guitar, people would say, “Oh, that guy has a guitar.” So through that, someone older than me assumed that I could play, and he asked me if I wanted to come to the studio. He told me to play a certain song, and because I didn’t know how to play I just practiced it. That’s where it started. The guy that invited me was really into Japanese metal, and so there was a band called X [Japan] that was the biggest band at the time. So it was an X [Japan] song.
In Japan, in middle school and high school, there’s this kind of school event—a school festival. In the states it’s kind of like Battle of the Bands. What everybody used to do is make copy bands. They would play the music that they liked, so I did a bunch of those. In high school, I did some songs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And then at 18, right around the time I graduated high school, I started going to watch local indie bands, Japanese domestic indie bands. Up until then I always thought the music I was interested in was from overseas—Western music. This was when I first found out that there was great domestic indie music in Japan, and that’s when I realized I wanted to start my own.
What were the domestic bands that you were excited about?
Nukey Pikes. That was my favorite band.
I’m wondering what your first experiences were like playing live, as you were in a hardcore band initially. This is one of your first times in a band making original music, not doing covers.
It’s different music, but it’s still what I’m doing with Toe.
What do you mean by that?
The motivation to play in front of people hasn’t changed. The main thing that has changed is my taste in music,. The evolution of that is now Toe, but physically what I’m doing on stage is pretty much the same thing.
The transformation to me is super interesting. Your next band Dove, and Dove’s album Everything is Inside My Heart (1997) was produced by Nobukata Kawai from Envy. That album is more in the spirit of the screamo and post-hardcore stuff that was happening in Envy. You said your tastes changed. What specific things led to you and your friends deciding, “Okay, we’re gonna make the hardcore music that we were doing, and then we’re gonna change that over to this other stuff that we’re doing in Dove”?
(laughs). How do you know all this stuff?
I’ve been a fan of Toe for more than half my life, it was just from that.
It kind of reflects the band names that I’ve gone through over the years. I was young when I started, it was the first proper band that I did that wasn’t a copy band. And then from there, after a few years of doing it and seeing a lot of bands I started reflecting. When I started Dove, it was the same members as in the beginning. I love New York City hardcore. So in my maturing, seeing different bands, playing music, that’s the reason I switched over. My next stage of musical maturity was Dove.
What New York hardcore were you into? Gorilla Biscuits? What are we talking about here?
Sick of It All, Strife. Not really the new-school of Earth Crisis, I liked the old-school of NYC hardcore.
What changed with Dove then? Were there specific bands that opened your eyes, that made you realize “this is now the new music that I want to make”?
The band that Envy used to do before, called Blind Justice, I used to be a big fan of them. I would go and watch them all the time, and through them I would hear NYC hardcore—their recommendations. That’s where I got my biggest influences from.
To me, what’s really interesting is that I feel the beginning of Toe is a legitimately radical shift, not just in your music career but with what was happening in Japan. I think about the ’90s in Japan and what was happening in the underground. We have Envy, we have Bloodthirsty Butchers, Cowpers, Number Girl, Melt-Banana, Eastern Youth—all these different bands that get grouped together stylistically—but then Toe comes out with one of the first releases on Kensuke Saito’s Catune record label.
To me, I don’t really see it as a radical shift. Back in the late ’90s, a lot of music in my scene—though not necessarily those making post-hardcore—started crossing genres, started playing different kinds of music. Texas is the Reason, The Promise Ring, Cap’n Jazz. Within that kind of scene, even sound-wise, even the guitar tone became cleaner. Musically, it was almost closer to UK rock, but the background they all came from was hardcore punk. Dove was making harder music, but at home I would play with the acoustic guitar and mess around with arpeggios. I started making music that wasn’t for Dove, but just for myself. There was the guitarist from Cap’n Jazz who plays for a band called Ghosts and Vodka.
Right, Victor Villareal.
So they were instrumental, and that was a big inspiration for me. Around the same time, the drummer Dairoku [Seki] decided to quit and play more with Envy. I called Mino [Takaaki], who is the other guitarist from Toe, and started playing the acoustic songs that I was making as a band.
You mentioned these three bands that all came from hardcore roots, but they were also all American. What’s interesting to me is how you’re not seeing this as a radical change in Japan because it was already happening in America. How did you first find out about all this music that was happening in America?
I don’t think I was particularly knowledgeable about that music scene or anything. It was just that around me in Japan, these bands were huge. They were quite big, they were popular.
Did you ever see them live, or was it just the music that you bought?
Just the music. Back in the day there was no YouTube, so information I would get was from magazines, or going to record stores. So I had no idea! I listened to the music, but I had no idea how they played any of it or how their shows looked—it was all in my head. Once YouTube came out, I saw videos of Cap’n Jazz playing and it wasn’t what I imagined it to be. Back in the day before YouTube, everyone had a bigger imagination, a lot more creativity. You would buy a record or a CD and you would read all the liner notes, read all the lyrics, and in the special thanks section you would see other bands mentioned, and that’s when I would know, “Oh, this is how they’re connected.” I could build this family tree.
Were you and the other members happy with how the first EP, Songs, Ideas We Forgot (2002), turned out? I’m curious how you were feeling with regards to these first songs you made together in this new style.
I was about 24 or 25 when that came out, and considering how old I was and where I was at the time, I think I did pretty good for myself.
What new things did you want to try to do with your first studio album, The Book About My Idle Plot On A Vague Anxiety (2005)?
The first EP that we came out with was purely a reflection of what I wanted to do as a band, the acoustics. It was very, I don’t know if “easy” is the right word, but we didn’t waver on what we should do. “This is what we want to do as a band, these are the songs we want to play at the show.” For the first album, it was 2-3 years after we became a band and started playing shows. Scene-wise we were in the underground, niche music scene over here. This has kind of evolved now. The sound quality, the aesthetics, the packaging of media formats, how we do the show—I feel is not underground. Call it “overground,” or maybe kind of mainstream. When it comes to music and art that I release, that’s how I differentiate myself from other indie bands and the quality of that kind of music.
What is this “overground quality,” this “mainstream quality” that you’re using to separate yourself?
Regarding packaging, the aesthetics. It’s probably different for everybody, but when it comes to audio, the amount of time and, to a certain extent, the money that we spend on recording and mixes. Back in the day when we first started, there weren’t that many clean-tone sound bands around in the scene. Hardcore, distorted guitar—that was the signature sound. In the mix, you would hear it all as one sound. I guess it’s in the way it’s mixed; when a band has two guitarists, I like when you can hear the separate guitars on their own.
I’m curious how playing live shows has impacted the way you wrote songs. I’m assuming you had songs and you played them live, and I’m wondering if the songs evolved over the course of playing them in a live setting.
Not necessarily shows, but generally, Mino [Takaaki] and I would make 80-90% of the track’s demo, and then once it would get to that point we’d play it as a band, and after a few times we’d fix it as necessary. So we wouldn’t actually go into the studio as a full band to make the music.
Are you telling the drummer [Kashikura Takashi] and the bassist [Satoshi Yamane] what to do? Do you have ideas or are you just saying, “Here’s what we have, fill it out as you see fit?”
The demos that we make have the bass and drums in it, so we basically ask them to play as-is, but the drums we make in the demo are programmed. And obviously live drums and programmed drums are quite different. So the ideal would be for our drummer to keep the bits that I like in the song but then format it in a way that’s his style.
When writing these guitar parts, are you keeping the specific style of your drummer in mind? Or the bassist? Is that something that you think about or is it more like, you and the other guitarist are just going to do your own thing.
It is Mino and I doing 80-90% of it. But at the end it does become Toe, even though when I’m writing it initially, that’s not something I think about.
With your second album, For Long Tomorrow (2009), you introduced vocals. And there’s vocals on the new album, Now I See the Light (2024), on songs like “Loneliness Will Shine” and “Who Knows?” Who exactly is writing the lyrics and how are you going about incorporating vocals into your music, given that the overwhelming majority of your music is instrumental?
Regarding lyrics, I write them all. The first song that I put vocals on was actually on an EP [2006’s New Sentimentality] between the first and second album, a song called “Goodbye.” The bit that I liked about this was that everybody assumed we were all instrumental, so I like the surprise of it. When they heard this, I liked the reaction I got. That’s when I first started to think there were some songs that I wanted to put some vocals on. For one of our shows, there was a singer named Asako Toki that sang “Goodbye” for us at our show, and I liked the way she sang it, so I put it on our album. Before I make the songs, in the very beginning stages of making the music, I decide if the song should have vocals or not.
How do you decide on lyrics that will be in Japanese vs English? On the song “Loneliness Will Shine,” there are some phrases in English. You say “gone with crying” or “how come you don’t call tonight?” These sound like they’re emo lyrics too. Though obviously there are Japanese lyrics as well.
When I’m writing songs, I don’t actually sing or write the lyrics in any language. I’m kind of murmuring and humming the sound of what will be the melody. I guess I’ve done it both ways, but when you write the lyrics prior to the song, then the intonations won’t fit. So in the very beginning, I write the lyrics that fit the sound of the lyrics that I’m humming. So it’s more of, when it comes to English and Japanese, it’s phonetically what sounds will fit as opposed to, “I want this part in English and this part in Japanese.” It doesn’t make a difference, it’s an audio issue in the beginning. The words of the lyrics don’t really come from anywhere, and then in the middle it becomes a story as I start to put it together, and then at the end of the song it has a meaning.
Are you taking influence or inspiration from stuff outside of music—stuff from your personal life—when you write a song? Can you give me an example of a song on the new album and explain the impetus for writing it?
The quick answer would be “not really.” It’s not from personal life, but just kind of living my daily life. Everything does influence you, and once I start writing music or creating—when I get into that creative mode—I feel like everything does influence me. An example might be: waiting for the train to cross and the sound of the train. Everything does kind of feed into my mind and into the process of making music. I don’t think I’ve ever thought or said that my music is 100% original. I think it’s more a reflection of how I think of everything. I’ll think, “this would be so much better if it was this way,” that’s kind of the music or the output that I do. I don’t like when people claim they make 100% original music, because it’s never 100% original.
You mentioned this notion of listening to the train pass. Are you someone who is always attentive to the sounds around you, whether it’s nature or in the city?
Not “really” attentive, I don’t think. I’m starting to lose my hearing, I’m getting old. Sometimes I have problems listening to the mixes. What I’ve always been interested in is not really making something new, but taking simple things and combining it into a way that I think is good. That kind of relates to our sound, our music. Each part is very simple, but it’s about how it is mixed, how it’s combined. That’s what I see the beauty in, and that’s what interests me. In that sense, maybe I’m not attentive but I do hear these things, the everyday sounds, and maybe think, “this would sound so much better in this kind of combination.”
Like how it’s arranged—that’s so interesting, especially given the fact that there have been so many years between albums. The last studio album, Hear You, was released in 2015, and it’s been a long time since the follow-up. Before that, For A Long Tomorrow came out in 2009. Do you feel pressure at all to meet expectations for your music?
No, I don’t feel any of that pressure (laughter).
Is there a specific reason for the big delay between albums?
There’s no real reason. We aren’t contracted by a label, we don’t have a deadline. We’re all on our own. There’s a feeling that comes where we do want to do it, but a lot of us work separately from making music. This is just the way it is.
What’s your day job?
I’m an interior designer.
Wow. Hearing that after what you said about arranging songs makes so much sense. I’m wondering if you also see that overlap in the way you think about music with this interior design work.
Yeah, 100%. When I design, it’s definitely using simple stuff, everyday stuff, and arranging it in a weird way that’s interesting. It’s definitely the way that I think, the way that I work.
Is there a specific interior designer that you admire or look up to?
In the beginning, and even now, I always looked up to an English architect named John Pawson. He had a very minimal style. Recently, there’s Yusuke Seki. Totally different style than mine but I really like his work, I’m a big fan.
Toe is really instrumental in shaping the landscape of Japanese pop and rock music at large, just because of the guitar playing and how it’s now part of the regular vocabulary of many musicians today. Do you ever think about the influence your band has had?
I don’t think I’m a very good guitarist, and I don’t consider myself one. I wanted to make a band, and the guitar was the instrument that I could kind of play. That’s what I like—a guitarist that’s not really a guitarist.
So the guitar is just this vessel, the conduit for you doing what you want to do in a band? It’s just a tool that’s available?
That’s exactly right.
Do you consider yourself more of an arranger than a guitarist?
What I’m doing now is, in my head, the ideal situation. I’m in a band with the people I want to play with, making the music that we want to do, and doing shows that we ideally want to do. There’s not one specific kind of thing as far as being an arranger, but I’m a band member, I’m a songwriter, and maybe to a certain degree maybe I’m a producer. This is my vision.
Are there any plans for the band to tour the US at all?
Not concrete yet, but hopefully [in 2025].
Are there any new Japanese bands that you’re into right now?
I don’t really listen to a lot of bands these days (laughs). But for the past week I’ve been listening to a lot of MFS [Mother Fuckin Savage], the rapper.
There’s a question that I end all of my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing that you love about yourself?
Maybe that I’m quiet.
What aspect about being quiet do you like?
Nothing really in particular, but a lot of my friends, especially my bilingual friends, tell me that I’m a very calm person. That’s something that I like when I hear it—my calmness.
Toe’s newest album, Now I See the Light, is out now via Top Shelf. The album can be purchased at Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 177th issue of Tone Glow. Let’s quiet down.
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