Translation of the June 11th 2022 Interview with Tatsuro Yamashita by Yahoo Japan News (Page 3)

 

Continuing from Page 2 yesterday, the interviewer and Yamashita go into the latter's life as a youth on Page 3.

I'll Never Forget the Days When I Had No Money

Interviewer: Yamashita begins looking back on his youth: "Getting to my current age, I start remembering my teens, twenties and thirties." The singer was born and raised in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. He laughs when he says "Tokyoites can be sarcastic." He was a high school student during the campaign against the Japan-US Security Treaty.

Yamashita: I was a fairly model student in elementary and junior high school, and I had an interest in science. But when I got into high school, I was really hooked on bands and on top of that, there was that whole thing on the Japan-US Security Treaty in 1970, so my life took a bit of a spin and I ended up dropping out. My high school days were what you would call it now, something close to non-attendance. Science was pretty much impossible for me in university, so I entered the Faculty of Law (Meiji University) and studied about copyrights, thinking that I could go into a music publishing company, but about three months after I got into Meiji, I started a band and I dropped out. And then came along Sugar Babe which I set up and I made my debut at 22. Personally, though, I felt like a failure.

Back then, my father told me "There's no use in having someone the likes of you not going to school in my house, so get the hell out of here!". In the beginning, we never got any money from the company which represented Sugar Babe, and some months later, it went bankrupt, so those were some truly rough times. But fortunately, we were brought in for commercial jingles, so we didn't end up starving to death. The third commercial that we did was for Fujiya's Heart Chocolate. Our family ran a neighbourhood shop that sold stuff like bread and candy, and one day when Dad and I were eating in the kitchen without saying anything to each other, that commercial popped up on the television. When I told him that I was the guy behind the jingle, he took a quick glance at the TV and then said nothing else after that. I realized that in this world, no matter how much I can talk the talk about making the best music, if I can't put it out in some form, it doesn't mean a damn thing.

Interviewer: Yamashita has very clear memories of when he didn't have money.

Yamashita: There was a cash register in our shop which would ding whenever the drawer gets pulled out a centimetre. So when I pulled it out a mere five millimetres, I stuck some Scotch tape on a toothpick and took out 200 yen which I used to get a round-trip train ticket. I'm sure Dad knew about it, though. One day, when I used that money to head out to Shibuya from my hometown of Nerima (Ward), I participated in a rehearsal for a concert. I went to the studio and saw nothing but popular musicians there, and when it came to dinner time, they were thinking of doing some takeout for BBQ eel or sushi. Then, they asked me "Hey, Mr. Yamashita, what about you?" to which I lied to them and replied "Ah...I...uh, already ate". That is the one thing that I have never forgotten about my poorest years (LOL).