wah’s Summer of Music: Part 1

Posted On August 27, 2025

I love music, but I’m also very bad at finding new music to listen to. And when I do find new music to listen to, I usually learn that the band or solo artist is no-longer active, or worse–someone has died. For a while the only artist I was going to see live regularly was Omokage Lucky Hole, but with the onset of the pandemic years back, their activities were put on hold for quite a while.

Luckily, this summer the stars aligned, and multiple artists I like happened to put on some great shows. In this series of posts, I will share my experiences going to see Matsunaga Tenma, Sakamoto Shintarō and Omokage Lucky Hole live over the summer.

Matsunaga Tenma – July 8th, 2025@Shinjuku Red Cloth

Huh. To my surprise, it seems like I hadn’t yet found the chance to write at length about the greasy and perverted music goblin that’s Matsunaga Tenma on this blog–until now. For those who don’t know the legend, here’s a primer. 

Matsunaga Tenma is an artistic dude who has his fingers in many pies, including novel writing, film production, poetry, and acting. While not a super well-known guy amongst civilians, if there’s anything he’s most well known for, it’s music–he’s the bandleader for the subcultural pop unit URBANGARDE, and since 2017 he’s also been leading a minor solo career. A friend of mine from back in the Ayase days turned me on to him last year, and since then I’ve collected all his albums to date. While his stuff with URBANGARDE still hasn’t completely clicked with me, his funkier solo stuff gets my toes tapping. Needless to say, his tunes are on somewhat heavy rotation when I’m out and about in Tokyo, or just kicking back at home. The dude has also covered Omokage Lucky Hole, so he’s a real one.

So what’s this guy all about? Well, Tenma’s whole thing is that… he’s just a gross dude. His debut song is titled Love Harassment, which is a funky pop number about him forcibly asking the women of his desire if they’re fine with being “love harassed” by him. I would say that 95% of his songs are about how he really just wants to get under girls’ skirts, or simply lean deeply into how slimy he is. Meanwhile, the other 5% are about him confronting the reality of being a burned out, gross, and old dude. Obviously, this is music made for me. While not every single number hits it out of the park, his average ain’t bad.

A peek at the dude’s schedule reveals that he’s quite active, making a lot of appearances throughout the year. He seems to perform at many larger festival-type events, which typically don’t grant any single act much time to show off their stuff, so to get a decent taste of what he sounds like live, I slid into a show headlined by just him and another pop unit at the Shinjuku Red Cloth, located past Golden Gai and near Higashi-Shinjuku station. I hadn’t been in a cozy venue like this in a while, and it seemed half-full with around 30 or 40 people. Looking at the crowd, I was immediately struck by the high number of women. The amount of dudes, including myself, likely came to under ten. Of course, I was the only gaijin.

For better or for worse, whenever I go out to see music, it’s usually to see an Omokage Lucky Hole gig. And to me, OLH is a minor band–but OLH also fills up venues that house nearly 500 people. So being in this tiny basement in some godforsaken section of Shinjuku really put things into perspective. Sure, I’ve been to shows in tiny basements in Koenji, but those are typically for small indie bands. I suppose Tenma is more or less indie given he’s publishing himself under his own label, but I got tickets for this show on the mainstream ticket vendor e+ for around 3,000 yen, whereas I typically pay up 1000 yen or so at the door for those indie engagements. I suppose this is normal, but it was a bit of whiplash for me.

The stage was shielded by a giant shutter, and when the time came, it started to creak open, revealing the crooked, gaunt and haunting figure of Tenma, dramatically backlit. He started “typing” on an invisible keyboard, matched to the opening sounds of Sō Darō, Dō Darō, kicking off an energetic 9-song set.   

The setlist was as follows – 

Tenma’s setup was simple–just him and his guitarist, with canned tracks coming through the speakers. He had an amazing energy on stage, and seemed quite happy that around 30 people were there watching him be a weirdo on a Tuesday. He caressed the mic stand erotically for many songs, changed his glasses three times, messed around with his coat a lot, and in general bounced around vigorously throughout the whole set. His guitarist really helped pump up the songs, and in some cases turned certain songs around for me–I’m not a huge fan of Parfait Hyōron on the record, but hearing it booming through the speakers with live guitar backing and Tenma screaming into the mic, it just hit different. 

Following the opener of Sō Darō, Dō Darō, Bokutachi wa Shippai hit heavy live, and I also grooved nicely to the slower-paced Night Safari in person. I would have loved for him to do Love Harassment (especially since he was wearing his Love Harassment tie!) or Pornographer, but I suppose that’s just an excuse for me to see him again. He went completely mental performing Seiyoku at the end of the set, jumping down into the audience and singing among us, before dropping dead to the floor and writhing around. I wanted to take pictures, but no-one else was, so I didn’t want to stick out[1]But the women waiting for the next act got their video setups ready immediately when their guys came on, so maybe it didn’t matter…. 

Between songs, Tenma took to the mic for one MC bit. He greeted the crowd by calling us all ghosts, in reference to the fact that a giant catastrophe was set to hit Japan on July 5th according to a prediction made in some old manga that never came to pass. He then went on to address other timely topics, such as the extreme summer heat and the Lower House Elections–but the most important topic he mentioned was the freezing of his Twitter account due to it not having a strong enough password. “Elon, why?!” Tenma pleaded. 

He closed by talking about some surgery he got to help with a throat condition he had, and at the same time starting making constant references to End of Evangelion and its use of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Jesus bleibet meine Freude for some reason. He hummed the piece several times to describe a) how he felt when waking up from the anesthesia and b) how he feels now, with his throat cured. “When I woke up, it felt just like the live action part in End of Evangelion where you see Misato, Rei and Asuka in real life!” Apparently he was an Eva kid, and vividly remembers the “Summer of Eva” from 1997, when End of Evangelion came out.  

Unfortunately the second act didn’t hold my attention, so I bounced out after picking up a t-shirt for my boy. Tenma’s a great showman, and this little performance was a lot of fun. At the end of this show, he announced a solo engagement the following month, which piqued my interest.

Matsunaga Tenma – August 12th, 2025@Shibuya Star Lounge

I ended up seeing my boy Tenma again for his solo show at Star Lounge in Shibuya! I won’t drag on for too long here, but he’s definitely better with a live band. The live arrangement keeps the songs loose and organic, and it helps that he has a great set of people backing him up. I think next time I see him live, I’ll make sure he’s playing with the full band.

Apparently this gig was his birthday show, which concluded with a cake being brought on stage, and everyone taking a group picture[2]Find ya boi.. Along with celebrating his birthday, this show was also put on as part of a tour to promote Deko-Chin, an independent film he made… which is now no-longer running in any theater near me. During one of his addresses to the audience, he suggested everyone unleash their “inner 2ch poster” and flood all the user reviews of his film by simply copying and pasting “Deko-Chin” over and over again to get it back into theaters… which is tempting to try!

The setlist was solid, and even dropped in new tracks titled Boku ni Shiyagare and Protein Love, which the band seem to have been playing at recent shows according to an old post on Tenma’s YouTube page. Both were catchy and smooth tracks, but in the middle of Protein Love the entire audience was forced to do squats, and I hope I’m not expected to do the same when listening to the song on my own. Along with these new songs, he also delivered a cover of the Japanese hip-hop number Tokyo Bronx. There was also a cool jam session in the middle that let me float in a cozy and jazzy space for a while, which eventually transitioned seamlessly into Love Harassment, which also marked the first time I heard the song live. 

Once again, there were a bunch of women in the audience, but with Tenma being the only act on the marquee, there were more of his dude fans who made the trek out to see him. But still, I remained the only gaijin–a huge relief after walking through the hoards of tourists in Shibuya just to get to the venue. 

The setlist in Japanese can be viewed here, with an English translation below –

Encore

As always I was trying to be quick with this, but I also just don’t know when to stop typing. Check in again soon for my report of Sakamoto Shintarō’s show at Liquid Room!

Notes
Notes
↑1 But the women waiting for the next act got their video setups ready immediately when their guys came on, so maybe it didn’t matter…
↑2 Find ya boi.
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