Viewed from above, the famous pedestrian crossing outside Tokyo’s Shibuya Station resembles the world’s largest and best-organised wall of death. Stand at its centre point as thousands of Tokyo residents and wide-eyed tourists hurtle across the intersection from every conceivable angle, and you will experience true sensory overload.
The blur of human traffic is accompanied by a dizzying, truly deafening collage of sounds. The relentless metallic clinking from the district’s Pachinko arcades clashes against the effervescent beats of the latest J-pop and K-pop hits bleeding across from the SHIBUYA109 mall, the world’s wildest, loudest department store. Advertising jingles blare out from the giant neon screens overhead, and loudhailer-wielding street vendors yell enthusiastic exhortations to embrace the joys of consumerism.
It’s a jarring, disorientating, almost overwhelming experience, yet also exhilarating, intoxicating and weirdly life-affirming. This rush of sensations mirrors the emotions stirred while listening to the city’s latest breakout band Hanabie, whose joyously chaotic, thrillingly intense, hyper-kinetic second album, Reborn Superstar!, released in the summer of 2023, was heralded in this magazine as signifying “the arrival of Japan’s next great crossover metal stars”.
Such predictions do not faze Hanabie at all. In awhich saw the quartet - high school friends Yukina, Matsuri (guitar/vocals) and Hettsu (bass), plus 2023 recruit Chika (drums) - rebelling against misogynist corporate culture, and violently rejecting assigned gender roles.
