DEEN -- Mirai no Tame ni（未来のために）

Last night, I was watching "Matsuko no Shiranai Sekai"（マツコの知らない世界...Matsuko's Unknown Worlds）on TV Japan. The premise of his show is that guests come on showing off their most beloved hobbies, no matter how unusual. I've seen folks coming on with their grand collection of things including bookmarks, designer scotch tape and Hello Kitty, and when it comes to food, some of these fellows show off their favourite restaurants and even having some of those dishes come straight onto the set to be sampled by host Matsuko Deluxe（マツコ・デラックス）.

It rarely happens, but once in a while, a celebrity or former celebrity even shows up to surprisingly reveal his or her own obsession. The episode that I caught yesterday featured the vocalist of the 90s band DEEN, Shuuichi Ikemori（池森秀一）, and his huge love of soba. In fact, he proudly boasted that he eats the famed Japanese noodles almost 365 days a year, and of course, he gave his recommendations of various soba restaurants around the nation and even demonstrated his own particular way of cooking soba.

As such, I just had to feature a DEEN song today. So this is "Mirai no Tame ni" (For the Future), the band's 7th single from June 1995. Remembering their style, the uptempo song is very much DEEN and even reminds me of some happy TUBE tunes.

With that title and the nostalgically happy vibe, I figured that it just had to have been a theme song for some TV drama. Well, I wasn't 100% correct; it was never a theme for some romance-comedy, but it was used as the campaign song for NTV's baseball telecasts that year. In fact, Major League Baseball manager Bobby Valentine, when he first came to Japan to skipper the Chiba Lotte Marines back then, became a fan of the song.

Ikemori and drummer Naoki Uzumoto（宇津本直紀）composed the song while the former took care of the lyrics. "Mirai no Tame ni" became DEEN's 2nd No. 1 hit after "Hitomi Sorasanai de" （瞳そらさないで）from the previous year and ended up ranked No. 66 on the yearly charts. It also showed up on the band's "SINGLES+1" BEST album from 1998, which was another No. 1 hit for them. That compilation managed to come in at No. 34 for the year.