Ningen Isu -- Mujou no Scat（無情のスキャット）

Y'know...if you had told me over 30 years ago that there was this Japanese group whose members dressed up in kimono and rocked out on the same level as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden in the ultimate Battle of the Bands, I would have recommended you to lay off the One Cup Ozeki for the foreseeable future.

And yet, Ningen Isu（人間椅子...The Human Chair）exists...and has done so since 1987 when guitarist Shinji "Wazzy" Wajima（和嶋慎治）, bassist Kenichi "Suzuken" Suzuki（鈴木研一）and initial drummer Noriyoshi Kamidate（上館徳芳）first teamed up as a hard rock band. Since then, the drummer's chair has changed a couple of times so the current guy is Nobu Nakajima（ナカジマノブ）. So we've got Wazzy looking like a wizened shogi player taking a break, Suzuken's most frightening Buddhist monk and Nakajima appearing as an intimidating gangster type...what's not to be scared of?

I'm not a huge rock fan and if I ever did a round of headbanging, I would probably limp off within 30 seconds with a strained neck. However, even I was mesmerized by Ningen Isu's "Mujou no Scat" (Heartless Scat) from their 21st and latest album "Shin Seinen"（新青年...New Youth）released in June 2019. When I first heard this and saw the length of the song (a little over 8 minutes), I realized that I didn't end up turning it off midway; it didn't feel like the eight minutes dragged on. Though I couldn't really understand Wazzy's lyrics (there is some attempt at translating them here), he certainly delivered them with panache and majesty, and then there were the acrobatics on all instruments taking on Wazzy's melody like me on a medium-rare tenderloin after having been on a steak-free diet for six months. Wazzy even provides some of that scat in a metal tune.

You can get some better insight about "Mujou no Scat" and Ningen Isu from the "J Pope on J Pop" blog since I'm not the rock expert here. "Shin Seinen" has become the band's most successful album thus far, reaching as high as No. 14 on Oricon. I'm not sure whether Ningen Isu will ever get that invitation to the Kohaku Utagassen, but wouldn't it interesting to see them perform at next year's Olympics? Rock on, Wayne! Rock on, Garth!