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Tooru Nishimura

I just randomly solved one of the biggest and oldest mysteries regarding Dir en grey. Namely, the origin of Kyo's most famous "real" name, Tooru (亨). For the longest time, I thought it was a misreading of the Kanji 京, they do look quite similar after all. It's also said that "Tooru Nishimura" is the name of a Japanese ANV director, but I was never able to confirm this.

Most importantly, though, this name was also used in a KERRANG! interview in 2009, which is how it spread among Western fans. As such, you can find it on many, MANY fan websites and even some Wikipedia pages of Kyo (in various languages).

Well, it seems that Tom Bryant, who penned the article, either misunderstood them - after all, Die's real name is given as Daisuke Andou and Toshiya is called ToshimaRa Hara - or they lied to him. However, what I think most likely happened is that he got those names from random fan sites. These fan sites, in turn, apparently got them from Haiiro no Ginka #15, released in 2002. More specifically, it's from the attached page. As you can see, Kyo is asked for his name and he replies with 亨.

Back then, the connection between Japanese and Western fans was most likely very different, information was often translated by inexperienced translators, Kyo gave joke answers in interviews and of course, there was no DEGwiki :D So the old fans took his reply at face value, published it on their fan sites and so it spread across the internet.

Of course, Kyo also confirmed that his last name is "Nishimura" in various ways, such as his photobook and Haiiro no Ginka. It was also known to fans that were around when Masquerade was a thing, since it was used as a contact address on their demo tapes.