The Love & Tears of Fatima : The Inside Story
*** translator's notes are in [ ] brackets
Everyone, do you know the story of how Fatima came to be? It is a
story meant to cry over, one filled with pain, but one meant to warm
your heart. Don't you want to take a look? The members bonds were
connected by the little puppy Fatima . . . We'll tell you about it,
sly reader. By no means should this leak to other people, that'd be
bad!
Well then, are you prepared? Let's enter Fatima's world. Whether or
not you believe it is up to you.
SHOXX: So the name of Fatima, I heard that there was a supposed secret hidden or something like that.
Sanaka: That's the story before I met with Mizuha and Lay . . . At that time, I was working part-time at a pizza place. In the winter season, I dressed as Santa and had to deliver a pizza to this really fun Christmas party where everyone was at, and on my way home I found this ball. I felt something so I stopped my bike and saw in this box these incredibly cute puppies sitting inside of it. . . . But I was living in a mansion so I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to keep it, but then the second I met its eyes it had me. I thought about waiting for a bonus from work, but then I just decided to take it home with me. In the fairy tale "Blue Beard" the wife, Fatima, found out the secret but she managed to survive. I wanted my little puppy to grow up to be strong and curious, so that I could attach the name Fatima to it. I was walking Fatima and a fast car ran over my favorite puppy. Lay was driving that car. "That asshole!", I shouted and then although we had a fight, I felt a close affinity with him.
SHOXX: In spite of having run over your precious Fatima?
Sanaka: I think it was fate . . . . Then the two of us warmly buried Fatima. But, because I knew I could never forget Fatima, the two of us formed a rollerblading circle and called it Fatima.
Lay: I will carry this crime with me while I live. Because I love animals.
Sanaka: We would often practice rollerblading around
Odaiba when it wasn't busy and it was there that we collided with
Mizuha when he was returning from a bathhouse, all by chance! We didn't
know why he'd come from Kasai to Odaiba from a bathhouse.
"Where's Arakawaku?" he asked. Since he'd made a mistake in coming
to Odaiba instead of Arakawaku, we decided to take him home. But since
he'd been hurt in the collision (his head, you know) it turned out
that we rollerbladed him home, me supporting his head and Lay carrying
his legs. Then we found out Mizuha's house was a bathhouse! (Laughs)
Because Mizuha was chilled after just taking a bath, the three of
us decided to take a bath together. While we were in the bath, we
said to Mizuha, trying to entice him, "Join our rollerblading circle
and you can become fast!" But it seemed Mizuha was seeking another
'speed.' At that time, we didn't know anything about music, but because
Mizuha loved music, he was like, "I want to be like Yngwie! We'll
make music, and it'll be a fusion of orchestra and rock!!"
"I don't know much about it, but, let's do rollerblading and also
do music!" he said, so it came to be that we had an orchestra of three
people. So we changed our name to "High Speed Orchestra Group Fatima."
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SHOXX: So, what parts did you each have at that time?
Mizuha: Sanaka played the violin, Lay the cello, and I played the viola.
Sanaka: Immediately after we put the group together, we noticed that we needed a rapper. So in the magazine, "Gekkan Orchestra" we began to look for members to recruit. We wrote in it, "Looking for a rapper" and somehow 4ge came to do it, saying, "I'm a rapper!" But an orchestra with a rapper was this completely new thing. So it came that we invented this new genre, "Orchestra and rap!"
4ge: Then we went on a four-man tour in Okinawa. But there wasn't any livehouse for us to play at, so we just ended up performing on the beach. At that time, Towa was selling tacos. Around that time, Towa had a darker complexion so because of this, I thought he might be black and so I mistakenly started to talk to him in urban/slang speech, "Yo brotha!" I said.
Mizuha: After that, we bought some tacos and just talked about things, asking Towa various questions. Things like this, "What can you just not stop eating?" "Kappa ebisen!!" "But I thought it was tacos!?" Then while we were talking, this noisy guy came up to buy some tacos too, but he was being pretty aggressive about it. Lay hates aggressive things, so, he suddenly started a beat-down. Another fist-fight! We all joined Lay as reinforcements, but somehow 4ge was the only one who ended up grappling with the noisy guy. So all of us, four of us, because Towa joined up with our cause, ran to help out 4ge. And it was because of this that our bonds with Towa formed.
Sanaka: There Towa joined up with us and our group "High Speed Orchestra Rap." He'd do this while still selling tacos. He started out playing an iron plate 'cause he'd hit it, but because he was able to keep up the rhythm so well, we decided that he would play a steel drum. Then we actually had a full band, and became active, however, we really weren't very popular.
Lay: Eventually, we received an audition at a LIVE house, but the reaction was: "Rollerblades?? That's so old-fashioned!!" . . . So, we didn't get that one. Then, we decided to get rid of the rollerblades and completely change our attitudes concerning the band. We would also change our instruments because we wanted to do something new. All of a sudden, we were like, "Let's do a rock band!!" But we decided, "We still need to be ourselves." So we would create dances in a certain formation that would really show who we are. First, we hadn't done any type of makeup before that, but then we thought about it and said, "If we were to use makeup, that'd probably attract girls to us." So then it came that we sort of changed to a more visual band.
4ge: Towa and me were already ahead of everyone on that one, because we were so urban-looking and different....
Sanaka: At that time, ganguro people were really popular on TV shows for the heavy white makeup they wore. It was the "Bihaku Boom." If it wasn't for these people, we wouldn't have gone to this building in Ginza where you can find this kind of makeup. We were able to find the makeup and wore it on the way home. When we were walking, we heard someone's voice addressing us, saying, "You guys are really white, huh. I like that type of thing. Come over here, would you?" It turned out it was the editor of SHOXX! We went over to him and he introduced us to the concept of visual kei bands. He said, "I really think you should look into this." And we wondered if we really could, and perhaps become popular this way. That's when we decided to become visual kei artists.
Lay: Previously, we'd been wearing rollerblades. These made us tall when we wore them, and subsequently shorter when we took them off. (Laughs) We really wanted to wear tall or maybe big-heeled shoes. But those weren't very good for running around and dancing. So we went to SWEAR [ a shoe company that makes both tall and sporty shoes. ^^ ]. At SWEAR they asked us to do a collaboration with them and so it began. I thought a collaboration with a good shoe company would be a good idea.
SHOXX: You'd want to do more collaborations, wouldn't you?
Sanaka: Of course. We also talked about how piercing and tattooing would be important now. It just so happened that we got another collaboration deal with Metal Bee. There they pierced some of us and I got my butterfly tattoo on my chest. But, the fact was we still didn't think we'd done enough collaborations.
Lay: Around that time, the five of us went to a hamburger place in Sendagaya and were eating. That day happened to be Halloween. Because of that, we were wearing costumes. We saw that there was another group of people there who were doing the same thing. We felt like there was some kind of affinity between us, so we approached them and found out that they were Vanilla. Since we'd just started this music thing, we thought it'd be cool if we could do another collaboration -- this time with another band, Vanilla. But we took it a step further and decided to do a collaboration in the burger shop itself as well, and so that's when we took some photos of us together.
Sanaka: That's the photoset that we sold at the live in January at West.
Lay: We saw there'd also be an opportunity to do a show with them, so we collaborated on a oneman.
Sanaka: We wanted to make the experience memorable, and so we decided to sale a CD with us collaborating.
SHOXX: That oneman show was great, huh? I didn't think you'd do it in that way!
Lay: Us too! We didn't think we'd do it that way either.
4ge: I definitely wanted to collaborate with Kuro-Kosugi-san. I said to him, "I like black people, but it doesn't seem like there's many in visual-kei." But Kuro-kosugi-san said there really were some!
Towa: We thought about how we were going to do a two-drummer type of thing, but finally we were able to do so. I think it was interesting and we did a really good job!
SHOXX: Mizuha-kun, who did you collaborate with?
Mizuha: With Shinobu-kun.
Sanaka: Shinobu-kun had "meat" [ the kanji for niku ] written on his forehead, but everyone was calling him "prince."
Mizuha: I had "meat" [ niku written in hiragana ] on my forehead. I was trying to reinforce the prince.
Sanaka: This collaboration with Vanilla was a part of my life collaboration, and it was full of good energy. Next, I want to do some collaborations with girls. These would be "private" collaborations, however.
Lay: No one really saw it happen but, the puppy Fatima and I collaborated. After telling this tale, I feel like a giant weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
SHOXX: You've been carrying this for awhile, huh.
Lay: The truth is yes. If I could leave with one word, I'd say, "Ganbare yo." You cried, didn't you? (Cries)
