Five hours after that story where Kyo refers to Catwoman as his "girl friend", he uploaded this video of him in sukekiyo makeup, with the classic Batman theme song in loop, and the word "Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die" inverted underneath it all...
PSA: I added 5 pages to the side bar, the first are a summary of Toshiya’s, Die’s, Kaoru’s and Shinya’s gear by brand:
Bass gear (64 items & counting)
Guitar gear (98 items & counting)
Drums gear
And two other pages:
References (magazines & books scans about gear only)
Timeline (to help browse pics/gear from their numerous tours)
I hope this will be easier to navigate to retrieve a specific gear item :)
I’ll try to update both pages regularly as I’m still finding new guitars/basses I’d never seen before! (Some links are still missing as I didn’t publish pictures of those items yet)
Please let me know if you notice any mistake, missing gear or other things I could add~
Drum gear page updated with the info from Shinya’s profile on pearldrum.com, more to come soon with what I can find in various gear magazines I already own :)
I’ll also try to add an amp/pedals page to the side bar!
(Whenever Dir en grey tours somewhere new in Japan, Kyo has said a rare MC during the show along the lines of: "Hello [city], we are DIR EN GREY." Apparently there are still two prefectures where Dir en grey has yet to play.)
I got to witness one of his rare MCs during the Phalaris tour last December. He just went “OoOOoooOOooOsaka OoOOOOOOsaka” so many times it sounded like some sort of Dir en Christening of the city of Osaka.
Because take my word for it, a city doesn’t properly exist before the Lord Almighty until Dir en Grey haven’t stepped on and it their frontman hasn’t properly growled its name and nothing else for five straight minutes. Periodt.
Toshiya's interview in Ongaku to Hito 2024/06 - translation notes (re: Atsushi Sakurai)
Toshiya mentioned that no matter the race or country, those in front of him at concerts are all human beings, in the end. The only difference is that people outside of Japan are more free.
He was given Atsushi Sakurai's shoes by "Sakurai-san"'s family and was told: "Take me to many places with these shoes." For that reason, he felt kind of obliged to get out and visit Europe on the last tour.
Toshiya thinks that if Dir en grey had not been invited to tour in Germany a decade ago, they may have stalled in Japan and, without room to grow, the band might have been over. It was the mentality that they were in when composing Withering to death.
He went to see Buck-Tick's concert at Garden Theatre (after Sakurai's death?) and he was moved by his mentions of the parade continuing forever, even if he becomes a ghost.Toshiya got a DVD as well but he has not been able to watch it yet.
Apparently hide was supposed to attend Dir en grey's first concert at Shibuko in their debut but he passed away just a few days prior. He went to hide's funeral and, from what I gather, seniors were very emotional about that.
The same day that Toshiya first wore his Atsushi Sakurai-inspired costume to film Yurameki, the news of his death came... But he had learned of it a few days earlier, when it actually happened. Otherwise, if he had discovered it on the same day of the music video being filmed, he simply couldn't have done it.
"Then, for the first time in years, I cried a lot... Like, I was scared."
Music helped him heal.
In Europe, he saw people wearing T-shirts (of Buck-Tick or Atsushi Sakurai). Toshiya took pictures and sent them to Yuuta from Buck-Tick, which made him happy.
I still have trouble writing about Sakurai as a BT fan of 20+ years. In hindsight I wish I had worn my BT shirt the day I met this guy. I hope Sakurai’s shoes go many places.
The wholesome-ish friendship between Shinya and Kyo
Their latest playful Q&A in Haiiro no Ginka vol. 100 has prompted me to compile examples of this weird but overall wholesome relationship that Kyo and Shinya have and which is not obvious at first.
Situation #1
In October 2017, Kyo gifted Shinya with a custom white version of a MadaraNingen one-piece. As far as I remember, that article of clothing was not available for purchase in white at all, to the public. And of course, we all know that Shinya prefers to wear white.
Situation #2
I think that in response to Shinya sharing a video of him briefly playing with the minicars that were sold as tour goods in This Way to Self-Destruction, Kyo posted a story on Instagram of him revving up a bunch of mini-cars and persistently making them hit his phone propped up on a counter and displaying a picture of Shinya. At age 43. To which Shinya made an Instagram post vaguely hinting that: "Good children should not play with the mini-cars to hit someone's picture!"
Kyo's Instagram Story "The proper way to use mini-cars" video
Shinya's translated response
Situation #3
In late 2022-early 2023, Shinya publicly celebrated his bandmates' birthdays via emojis on Twitter, and Kyo was the only one to respond, in kind.
Situation #4
Kyo posted a cryptic picture of Shinya's video meeting with Mana in an Instagram Story and he has mentioned on Twitter at least once that he was watching Shinya Channel (the making of the FaFa onigiri).
In the same vein, Shinya took his failed attempt at needle-felting a pink bunny in March 2022 and turned it into a miniature hammer-wielding bunny in October 2022, in response to sukekiyo unveiling their Mosaic Shoujo PV which featured Kyo in the killer bunny suit.
Situation #5
This very old video of Kyo teasing Shinya by pinching the side of his dress, Shinya reacting by pushing Kyo a bit and Kyo falling into a robot dance in response.
(o)
2:04
7:28
Situation #6
The coffee maker. In one of the live talks held during the COVID-19 pandemic at concert venues, Shinya mentioned having a coffee maker which was of no use to him, and Kyo expressed interest in taking it from him. Later, in the Galacaa livestream talk between the two, it was revealed that Shinya had promised to give Kyo his coffee maker, but he never pulled through on that offer. Kyo, sporting a doodled face to hide his own, insistently questioned Shinya on this unreliability when the topic was brought up by fans in the comments. Shinya kind of struggled but ended up explaning that the coffee maker was really useless because of a defect, that it would not have been an appropriate gift anymore. But he forgot to update Kyo about it after he tried to contact the manufacturer. Kyo replied like: "Oh, alright then."
2021.04.06 a talk event at Meguro Rock-May-Kan film screening at Namba Hatch with Kyo and Shinya - PART 1
Report by とあ on twitter (topics
At some point, Kyo took the matter to Twitter, confronting Shinya about it with their respective member photos to illustrate the dialogue, and Shinya replied the same way.
Kyo and Shinya on twitter, 2022.06.12
Kyo: So where's that coffee maker?
Shinya: Thinking it's somewhere in my kitchen I forgot about it🥺
Ky
Situation #7
In that same livestream, Shinya is so used to Kyo's bullshit by now that he completely ignores Kyo's doodle face sheet and casually leans forward to look past him and at the interviewer, sat on Kyo's right. After a while of this, the interviewer points out to Shinya that Kyo is insistently staring at him with this disturbing face, which is when Shinya becomes startled and nervously laughs upon realizing that, also making Kyo chuckle.
Situation #8
More often than others, Shinya and Kyo are documented chatting on the chairs backstage while they wait for everyone to be ready to start the show. Maybe there's something to be said of how they are the two members of the band to leave the stage the quickest, while Kaoru, Toshiya and Die stay for a while to throw picks.
Situation #9
Miscellaneous pictures of the two:
Situation #10
Apparently it was Shinya's earbuds that Kyo used to play with the cat (also Shinya's?) in this famous old video.
Situation #11
Other interactions on Twitter include commentary regarding the song battles that fans were voting on via that same website, during live broadcasts from their manager Fujieda on Galacaa. Kyo and Shinya were the only two members reacting to the songs that were pulled out of the box, Kyo sometimes replying to Shinya's own tweets wondering what he meant or outright questioning his preference.
DIR EN GREY SONGS BATTLE 2022.03.16
Kyo's and Shinya's comments
Mr.NEWSMAN VS audience KILLER LOOP
Shinya: どっちかといえばこっちの方かな・Having to choose
Another interaction consisted in Kyo copying Shinya's tweets regarding the release of their Phalaris album and twisting Shinya's cute comments into hellish versions.
kyo_official twitter 2022.03.15
Shinya: We're releasing an album! Definitely get it k!ʕ•̫͡•ʔ
Kyo: We're releasing an album! Come to receive
Situation #12
Probably a bunch of elusive comments throughout the years, but here's an example of something that Shinya said about Kyo in a magazine interview.
Shinya, on The World of Mercy during composition
By the way, apparently drums and vocals were the first to be completed for this song.
He a
Situation #13
In Haiiro no Ginka vol. 100, the members were asked to send each other member five questions. Some chose to personalize them based on what they actually wanted to ask of the others, while a couple decided to send the same questions to all, but members were not told who the questions came from. Kyo picked up on that anonymous part of the game and when answering Shinya's set of questions, he ended each of his short answers with a second sentence that can either just be the Kansai dialect for: "Aren't you Shinya!", or in other dialects, translates more to: "Shinya, you bastard!" hahah. From what I saw, nobody else hinted at who they thought the questions came from in their answers. In reverse, Kyo took up two of his five alloted questions for Shinya with the simple statement: "You don't know you're dead yet!", a quote from Fist of the North Star which is highly intimidating as it hints that someone has defeated the character so easily and lightning-fast that they are a dead man standing, their body having trouble catching up with the reality that they were slaughtered. Shinya, in response to that repeated tease, stubbornly replies in his polite and formal Japanese that: "No, I'm not dead." Their Q&A with the other members were not nearly that quirky.
Situation #14
At his SERAPH birthday concert in 2023, Shinya said that his three treasures in life are:
DIR EN GREY
SERAPH
sukekiyo
Situation #15
Kyo replying to Shinya's post featuring a very old picture of Kyo (which was however respectfully hidden by Phalarisu-kun) by pulling out the oldest/youngest postcards of Shinya he could find, also commenting to paraphrase Shinya: "Postcards that probably no one has anymore." His own postcard depicting him peeks from underneath.
Shinya replied to that with: "I tried to look for it but couldn't find it 🥺"
Situation #16
On Twitter, Shinya posted a photo with other artists which he explained as: "Yesterday, we had a birthday celebration for everyone born in February and March 🎂 Happy birthday everyone 🎉🎉🎉"
To which Kyo directly replied: "I wasn't invited." (born February 16th)
And Shinya responded with: "The DIR EN GREY guys are a bit mean 🥺"
Kyo never replied to that.
Situation #17
Going to combine two things considering how long ago they were.
Shinya and Kyo were the first members of Dir en grey to meet, and the day right after I posted this compilation happened to be the 28th anniversary of when they first performed together.
There's also an anecdote that, way back then, no one in the band knew how to contact Kyo because none of them had his phone number, but eventually Shinya just casually revealed that he had it all along and said: "Oh I'll just call him"
Situation #18
Shinya and Kyo are the only members who are clearly dog lovers in the band, while Die and Toshiya are part of the cat team. Shinya used to have a dog (chihuahua?) and Kyo now has Pun-cha. Shinya recently wore a sweater with a dog on it.
Situation #19
In a tweet that Kyo has since deleted, he wrote that if there was one grudge he still held, it was that he never appeared on the cover of a Rockin'f magazine. Shinya also wasn't featured, so he added that while he doesn't have a grudge against them, he has declined interviews and comments for a certain magazine after that.
Situation #20
During their European tour 2024, Kyo and Shinya embarked in a playful spat on Twitter, seemingly out of boredom while traveling on the tour bus. It was funny the way it culminated in both of them forcing the other to subscribe to their fan clubs to find out more. On Kyo's side at least, I didn't see anything related to that on kyo-online for real hah.
Kyo replying to Shinya's comment about sleeping 50cm above him on the tour bus:
"So does that mean that if I leave my body, we'll merge? Wil
... Did I miss any? And there will undoubtedly be more to come!
Thank you very much to shinyaburashka, mementoboni, lamenty45 and degtau for your help!
Does anyone remember Kyo and Kaoru's sc*t p*rn phase?
No, I haven't gone mad. I mean, not any madder than Dir en Grey are already mad.
I saw someone reblog this gem of a Dir en Detail, and I had to write something about it.
TWO MONSTROUS NUCLEAR STOCKPILES - 清水寺, 2000
So, according to the legend, at some point during the year 2000, Kyo and Kaoru got together, ate two space cakes each and made an electrovomit nightmare of a song.
Two Monstrous Nuclear Stockpiles is the name of their two-men act, and the only title they ever released is called Kiyomizudera (Pure Water Monastery, a temple located in Eastern Kyoto). I was unable to figure out if the title has anything to do with the content of the song.
Interestingly enough, Two Monstrous Nuclear Stockpiles is the name of a song by English punk band Discharge, released in 1981 on their EP Never Again.
It's a song about the Cold War, and the lyrics read only,
Should east and west be ever divided
Resigned to living, living in fear
The two monstrous nuclear stockpiles in Discharge's version are East and West, presumably the USSR and the US. In Kyo and Kaoru's version, the monstrous nuclear stockpiles are... them both?
Kyo and Kaoru's version also appears to have something to do with war, if the voice insert of US President Nixon (?) mentioning the need for Americans to access the magnitude of the war is any indication.
But hey, so far this is a PG story. Enter Kyo. The following year he released his first poetry book, 自虐、斂葬腐乱シネマ (A cinema of masochism, burials and decomposition).
Sold with his first poem book was a CD called 第三帝國楽団 (Third Reich Orchestra). This CD included four songs, including a remake of Kiyomizudera, retitled Skaportrono / Kiyomizudera Porn Type.
Skaportrono doesn't mean anything, so it's likely a deliberate misspelling of "sc*t p*rn", used to try and soften the blow label-wise.
Besides the obvious shock value title, the lyrics are nothing your garden-variety softcore punk fan cannot handle:
Black cats* tied up in the shower and
porn showers inside their canned food
Long lines waiting for Nikkatsu** p0rn
B-grade erotica and narcissism
Dictatorships are on an insane rise
Dictatorships and insane risings
SM porn is rising like crazy
SM porn and insane risings
Scream machines*** and retro showers
Screaming open flowers**** and erotic showers
Screaming horror and pleasure in the shower
Screaming anime and hypnosis in the shower
* "Black cat" can be slang for female privates in Japanese
**Nikkatsu is a Japanese film production company known for creating poor quality p0rn and BDSM content in the 1970s and 1980s. Watching Nikkatsu films would have been the ultimate transgression for teens of Dir en Grey's generation.
***"Scream machines" likely refers to Japanese adult actresses and their high-pitched sound effects during explicit scenes.
***** "open flowers" here are slang for female private parts.
Ah, one more clever punk way Kyo found to take jabs at Japanese society, held hostage by a strange force that keeps it sedated with erotica, poor-taste adult content and animation.
The Kyo Poetry series - Poem III: "Room 304, spring and I"
In the window cherry blossoms flutter, as they do
Slowly, gently swaying, swaying, swaying.
As my awareness and the sky began to dim,
tears fell on a hand holding mine so, so tight.
- who did that hand belong to?
Those endlessly crying eyes were trying to tell me something
with their familiar perfume, swept away by the spring breeze,
- yet one more precious thing I was to lose.
One more thing that no one will ever find, a flower…
— a white hospital room —
Tomorrow I wish to turn to ash, to sand, and sleep under that very cherry tree
- no, please, may this not be my last wish.
Each and every gently swaying petal is a teardrop
in the night, fluttering, then quickly dropping.
Kyo, in 前略、お元気ですか、最果ての地より名も無き君にあいをこめて..., 2004
--
My analysis
This poem is the first of a series of three poems titled "Room 304". I believe room 304 might be a hospital room. This short poem series appears to be about three different people suffering/dying the same hospital room a short time apart (the two following poems will cement this idea).
I read this first poem as the final thoughts of a dying person. Their awareness is dimming and they are no longer able to recognise their surroundings - they don’t seem to able to tell whose hand is holding theirs and who is crying next to them, or whose perfume it is that they can smell. The final verses are haunting because they imply that everything their life is will soon be scattered like petals (Kyo likes using this image a lot - e.g. The Final) and lost like cherry blossom petals at the end of the season.
Read the rest of my translations of this book
Poem I: Without further ado
Poem II: Dear Reader
If this poem has any link to the previous one, this likely to be another bite at modern-day Japan. Japan takes pride in its Buddhist undertones (land of peace and lull). However, he contrasts that with a feeling of melancholy that takes over people at night.
Translator’s disclaimer
These are are just my own interpretations and I took some liberties as a translator to make this poem make sense in English. Yes, I know that the original book contains some English translations, but they're obviously Google Translate. Japanese is very hard to translate to English since sentence structures are very different. Japanese is a highly contextual language, whereas English is explicit. Thus, certain passages can have multiple interpretations and sometimes it’s impossible to know what the author really meant. This is just my own take. There are other takes out there. You don’t have to take my translation as the ultimate source of truth. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Kyo Poetry series - Poem I: "Without further ado"
Have you ever woken up with the urge to translate and comment on Kyo’s poems from back in the early 2000s as if your life depends on it?
Well, I have, because I’m a weirdo.
So for the sake of this series, take it or leave it; here is my translation and commentary on 前略、お元気ですか、最果ての地より名も無き君に愛をこめて… (Without further ado, how are you? I keep on wondering, lovingly crying out this question to all of you from the farthest lands.), Kyo’s second poem book, released in 2004.
Poem I: [Untitled]
Without further ado, how are you?
Without further ado, how are you? I keep on wondering, lovingly crying out this question to all of you from the farthest lands.
Like children dreaming; struggling to swim through submerged alleys
with your beloved red shoes stored neatly in your balconies. *
Inside your fish bowls, the night is warm and young women ask for ice water, laughing,
while beyond our borders mothers hold their children every day
and throw their love into seas of flames.
Flowers adorn the side of the road and yet you turn away
and even if Ed Gein were to make a mask of your face, it would bear a smile**
and you’d still be feeding on this lovely world you adore,
Hating the rest of them more than you love yourself
Hating the rest of them more than you love yourself
Hating the rest of them more than you love yourself.***
Their subliminal words, deeds and doctrine are an effective Hail Mary
As the sky and earth turn to ash in 194586815****
Oh go admire those pouring mud tears
of my nameless brethren and their tears thou shalt nor forget, never…
There lies that flickering great power of the modern-day,
oh pray to God it doesn’t disintegrate
oh thee playable yellow monkeys,
thee tame yellow monkeys,*****
why don’t you inject that so-called HIV up your asses?******
- it’d be just sex, not rape, so cry me a river
just like in a soap opera
oh, cut the crap.
Rusty water cups
reverently carried by girls with bob cuts
that I stare at with my pitch black eyes and who surely don’t feel a thing
- ah, where has our innocence gone?
Only creeping, crawling maggots
that won’t deign to say hello.
To them, I shall not say a word, just trample them beneath my feet.
* Red shoes in the balcony
In traditional housing in Japan, shoes are stored in the “genkan”, i.e. the entryway area of the house. During summer, shoes may be stored in the balcony to avoid bad smells. The author mentions that these shoes are red, which is quite specific. I believe he might be referring to a very popular 1948 post-war film, The Red Shoes. The Red Shoes is a complex interplay between art, love and ambition. The red shoes themselves symbolise the irresistible allure of artistic ambition and the relentless drive for perfection. They represent the protagonist's desire to excel in her art form, even at the cost of her life. The film serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming consumed by one's passions to the point of losing touch with reality.
** Ed Gein
Edward Gein was an American serial killer. He made various objects from the skin of his victims and bodies he dug up from cemeteries, including human skin face masks.
*** Hating others more than you love yourself
This is a reference to a Buddhist concept according to which hating anyone or anything is a reflection of one’s self-hatred. In Buddhist philosophy, one should love others as much as one loves oneself (even horrible people). One should accept dissenting opinions just like one accepts parts of oneself that aren’t perfect or necessarily good. This is a very quick and simplified explanation of Buddhist compassion, but you get the picture.
**** 194586815
This series of numbers is a date and time: 6 August 1945, 8:15 am. This is the exact time the Hiroshima atom bomb was dropped by the United States.
***** Yellow monkeys
Yellow Monkey is a WWII-era slur for Japanese people, akin to “Japs”. The author is referring to Japanese people being tame, gullible and accepting of their government.
******* HIV up the ass
I didn’t make this sound any more vulgar than it is in the original text - the author used very strong language for this one.
---
My analysis of this poem:
I read this as a political statement. The narrator is unreliable. In the first few lines, he appears to address his own people (the Japanese) with tender words ("how are you? I keep on wondering, lovingly crying out..."). He paints a picture of comfort and picturesque happiness ("inside your fish bowls", “red shoes stored neatly in the balcony”).
In the second half of the second stanza, the poem takes a turn, and he begins to contrast Japanese comfort with the horrors going on in the world that his people are oblivious to.
He criticises the reader for not reacting to such horrors, comparing their indifference to a cruel mask of disinterest and self-absorption. He claims that "their words" (presumably the government's?) distract from reality, as it happened during WWII prior to the atom bombings.
More notably, he appears to criticise Japan’s fragile political system, implying that it relies on the indifference and acceptance of “tame” Japanese people.
He describes a mass of people who all look and act the same (“girls with bob cuts”, a popular hair style in Japan) and how they do not appear to react to his (presumably political) appeal (“my pitch black eyes”). He thus despises them, as evident in the crude final lines.
Translator disclaimer
These are are just my own interpretations and I took some liberties as a translator to make this poem make sense in English. Japanese is very hard to translate to English since sentence structures are very different. Japanese is a highly contextual language, whereas English is explicit. Thus, certain passages can have multiple interpretations and sometimes it’s impossible to know what the author really meant. This is just my own take. There are other takes out there. You don’t have to take my translation as the ultimate source of truth. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Dir en grey was never meant to be a grey silver coin.
So. I like The Devil in Me. I like it better than I liked anything in Phalaris or The Insulated World. I think it's the best piece they've put out since Arche.
And to those who complain about the new artistic direction, here's a meme I didn't make:
And while we're on this topic, Dir en Grey was never, ever, not even once, meant to be a grey silver coin. Grey silver coins don't breed new coins and aren't worth much in themselves.
Dir en Grey is a name they came up with based on a 1995 song by Lareine:
It starts with the words "灰色のあなたに", which means "to you in gray". The second line is a repetition of the first but in a world salad of three different languages:
Dir, which is the German dative case for 'you', which as a standalone can be translated as "to you".
En, which is a French preposition translatable as "in"
and "gray", which is the US English spelling of the colour grey.
So yes, Dir en Grey means "to you, in grey". I'm pretty certain that any instances of the band saying they initially thought it meant "grey silver coin" are just them trolling their audience. They knew exactly what it meant because Lareine spelled it in good old Japanese front and centre.
ANYWAY. Why am I ranting about this?
Because "to you in grey" means that this band has something that they want to give their audience. And they don't want to give it to us in black or white. They want to give it to us in grey. Grey is the desaturated version of literally any colour, in line with Dir en Grey's intention of toying with literally any style.
And that's what they're doing with the Devil in Me. The bass kicks ass. The whole thing is dense. It sounds like a very tightly wound coil. The layered vocals sound like ten thousand possessed Kyos being exorcised simultaneously barking Kyos dumping all their trauma in their weekly therapy appointments.
Mixing is okay, and better than in Phalaris. I have no clue why Dir en Grey keep choosing to work with shitty mixers that make their songs sound muffled and muddled but hey. Maybe the good mixing budget went on Gucci.
Bottom line:
Great effing song
Dir en Grey is still unpredictable, confusing, and now also somewhat pink
...which is great!
Kyo is firing on all cylinders in three bands and still manages to have the devil in him - kudos.
More kudos to Toshiya, his bass is the thread that holds this song together.
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