Yu~ki

Name: Yu~ki
Date of Birth: August 8th
Place of Birth: Fukuoka
Height: 175 cm
Weight: 54 kg
Blood type: A

Yu~ki is the bassist and probably the oldest member in the group. He plays the scariest roles in the group, including a vampire and bat.

Some Yu~ki facts...

On his musical experience in the early days, Yu~ki admits he liked listening to popular music. He liked Tomoyo Harada. He liked Hong Kong action movies with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan too, so he would also listen to the soundtracks of those movies. "I often mimicked Bruce Lee," he says, "and I often climbed up to the roofs of the neighborhood. I guess I was very active at that time." He was so involved in it that he actually made up a set of nun-chucks (just to name a few) by himself from scratch! (It's well-known that the coffin which was used in the early MALICE MIZER stage was made by Yu~ki.) When he was in junior-high, Checkers was popular. (Yu~ki is from Kyusyu district, just like Checkers.) This was when Yu~ki started listening to Rock & Roll. "At the same time, I got very interested in fashion," says Yu~ki. "Even when I was much younger I was very conscious of the others. I didn't like to wear the usual clothing so I liked the dull colors like black, brown, or gray."

Yu~ki was a mature high school student. After entering high school, he started playing bass. Inspired by Checkers, one of his friends bought a sax and just pretended to play it since he didn't know how to use it. It was around this time that Yu~ki started playing in a band. His friend asked him to play bass in a band which played copies of Japanese bands. They used to get together in one of the members' house and play. With the drums set up, they "made very big sounds", and the police actually came there twice! ("Maybe the neighbors turned us in," he muses.) Since they were already in their 2nd year of high school, they composed original pieces but they were not really serious. "We were just pleased to make sounds together and eat candies," Yu~ki says. "We had plenty of time anyway."

The band got a little more serious after joining some contests and winning prizes. They started feeling more confident in themselves. Yu~ki quit his job. "It was like momentus(?)," Yu~ki says. "My parents told me to get a job in my hometown, but I found a trivial job in Tokyo which convinced them to let me go to Tokyo and get the job with our (band's) drummer." Yu~ki came to Tokyo with a bass and a small luggage. But he quit the job soon because he enjoyed playing the bass more in a studio than where he worked. Yu~ki says, "I asked our guitarist, (who is my old friend), to let me stay in his apartment, and I did part-time jobs." Since he didn't know how to promote the band's musical activity, Yu~ki had to bring their demonstration-tapes to live-houses. In Kyusyu, the band had been Beat-Rock, but gradually they changed according to the music they listened to and the environment surrounding them. Yu~ki says, "Since we came to Tokyo, we were not Visual-kei but Positive-punk wearing all-black costumes." The band's concept was dark. But their guitarist pursued melodious sounds, so their pieces were easy to listen to.

Then Yu~ki met Mana. "(Mana) came to our last concert and asked me to play bass in their band." On MALICE MIZER's style of sound in the early years, Yu~ki says, "The core was the same, such as the classical music approach. But we were much like an authentic band, and we didn't play keyboards and strings together in sequence (automatic play). It wasn't because we couldn't do that, but we didn't come upon that idea. When we decided to make albums as an Indies band, we got changed." Yu~ki's first impression of Mana and Közi was that they were "really interesting. Their interplay was really stimulating. I agree that bass requires stableness and guitars are rather free, but they drew me in an unexpected direction." After original vocalist Tetsu left MALICE MIZER, the band took almost a year to find a replacement. Yu~ki says, "It took such a long time to get a vocalist that the other members even asked me to sing!"

MALICE MIZER was reincarnated after recruiting new vocalist Gackt. Yu~ki says of their "new" start, "We received a lot of reactions from the audience, some of which were both expected and some not. But I agree our fans should have been surprised to see that I wore a silkhat and moustache, and Gackt was like a vampire. Our old fans must have felt some complicated feelings. Those who could recognize our change as a new start still assist us, I believe." Eventually, the band became increasingly popular. Asked how he felt when MALICE MIZER were close to debuting as a major band, Yu~ki says, "Although we got so busy as MALICE MIZER that we couldn't keep our part-time jobs, we were still poor. We necessarily didn't intend to become a major band, but we just thought we could make something. The more popular we became, the harder we felt it was to convey our message to more people."

Asked what type of artist he wants to be, Yu~ki says, "I believe I can rely only on myself after all. I want to create music which is self-convincing, and through which I can express myself and enjoy. I am looking for music which only I can create, including visual aspects of course." Asked if he has a favorable image of himself which his fans might have, Yu~ki says, "I want to stress that MALICE MIZER and I are not identical. I am myself after all. I want to surprise the audience as well as the other members, so feel free to surprise(?). I guess the other members want to do so."(??) On his attitude as a bassist: "I composed "Syunikiss" (from "Merveilles"), but I was not aware of being a bassist when I composed that piece. I am a bassist but I don't adhere to an instrument of bass. But I still want to be a bassist."

Asked if he has any ambition as MALICE MIZER and as himself, Yu~ki says, "In terms of MALICE MIZER, I want to explore new sounds more. In terms of myself, I want to explore other than bass. I want to create a new world, getting a new sound. In order to achieve this, I have to change my current lifestyle... I feel anything I've found in everyday life has stimulated my creativity." If he had a vacation, Yu~ki says he would probably travel. Or play eccentric musical instruments!

What else? Yu~ki is a very reserved person. During high school, he was impressed by a band named Bauhaus. He was also interested in the fretless bass which was played by the bassist of JAPAN. "It has a peculiar feeling of volume and peculiar expression (of sound)," he says. "I was very impressed by that." After coming to Tokyo, since his old friends liked dark music, Yu~ki liked Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins (?). "Those music helped develop my sense of music," he says, "by which I guess I started to think about the relationship between music and human." After that, he started listening to Michael Nyman, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and French pops music. "But I guess music to me is not the center of my life," says Yu~ki. "To me, music is just what makes me relax or what makes me positive. What I'm really looking for is not music but sounds, even though I'm not clear about the sounds which both MALICE MIZER and I are seeking, but I guess I'm going forward." He adds, "I'm interested in total harmony (of composition) rather than simple bass play. I think the other members think the same as I do. I want to go beyond being a musician. From now on, I'm eager to adapt very ideal forms. But first, I want to mix my world with the other four members' worlds which I haven't done harmoniously."

When Yu~ki was in elemtary school, he received a certificate for painting. When asked what part of a woman's body does he look at first, he replied, "I look at the whole atmosphere rather than a specific part, like from hairstyle to clothing momentarily, and then I look at her breasts." He thinks it sexually appealing for a woman to have "very, very light skin color, almost transparent so that you can see the veins underneath." The first thing he does when he gets up in the morning is eat chocolate, (he recommends "strawberry-flavored Caprico"), and vitamin jelly. The food he would like to eat again is everything he ate in France, including the hard bread and sweets. The people he respects the most are his parents: "I started to think like that after I got out of my home. I've realised that what they've done for me was very painstaking. Now I respect them."

On cosmetics: He doesn't have any favorite maker, "but in terms of liquid eyeliner, I used 28°C by Shiseido. But I really don't care about the cosmetic itself. I think if I can make my face as I imagine, I'd just work on it using anything, which might not even be a cosmetic." In terms of private clothing, Yu~ki says he doesn't like showy body things: "I like the clothing which has a casual cut. It's very beautiful. The point is the combination of lines and colors. I have 2 types of clothing: one is suits, and the other is second-hand clothing." There's no specific boutique he goes to: "Wherever I find good things, I buy it." As for shoes, Yu~ki says it depends on the clothing: "Basically, I like antique shoes which give off a warm feeling in terms of colors and material."

On music instruments he's played so far: "In kindergarten, I played Kenban Harmonica (a small keyboard with a mouth organ piece attached to it). When I was an elementary school student, I learned the usual instruments students learned in school. And in Junior High, I never touched a musical instrument because the music hours meant playing soccer hours to me. Then when I entered high school, I 'met' music again. Maybe I played a guitar in my friend's house, but after making a band, what I bought was bass (because the band had no bassist)."

Yu~ki's charming point is "everything." He hates gambling: "The Pachinko place is very crowded. I don't like it. And I don't like alcohol or tobacco either." His favorite music is Chopin. Yu~ki can be relaxed the most in a bathtub. But when asked to name his fave hot springs place, he replied, "I want to keep it a secret, because if I tell, it'll become crowded. Right now it's very isolated, and when I go to the hot spring at midnight, there's nobody there so I can take a bath alone, looking at the moon. It's amazing."