This is the second part of a comprehensive, career-spanning interview with KAN. It comes from a book entitled KAN in the BOOK which was published in 2020.

Text: Morita Kyoko
English translation: Henkka
KAN: Website, Twitter, YouTube

Note: You can buy KAN’s physical releases on CDJapan.

2002–2004

— I’d like to ask you about your life in Paris.

KAN: I think it was around 1994 that I first started traveling to all sorts of different countries. Little by little, I began to feel like I wanted to try living abroad. And so, at the end of February 2002, I moved to France.

I started out by going to language school. In those early stages there were a few Japanese students, a Brazilian, a Nigerian, a Filipino, a Korean—our class of around ten people.

Japanese people are diligent when it comes to studying, but we tend to not really speak up, right? The teacher would ask the class a question and the students from all the other countries would be quick to respond, but of course all their answers would be wrong. Finally, they’d ask one of us Japanese, and we’d give the correct answer. In the beginning, that is.

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KAN is and will surely always remain one of my personal favorite pop songwriters. Today, nearly 20 years since I first discovered him, I appreciate his music more than ever. This translation is my humble tribute to this funny, relatable, and really just immensely endearing man.

This is the first part of a comprehensive, career-spanning interview with KAN. It comes from a book fittingly entitled KAN in the BOOK which was published in 2020.

Text: Morita Kyoko
English translation: Henkka
KAN: Website, Twitter, YouTube

Note: You can buy KAN’s physical releases on CDJapan.

1987–2001

— To begin with, how did your debut come about?

KAN: I took part in Yamaha’s EastWest amateur band contest and Young Jump’s Sound Contest ’84, and I did okay—I won prizes in both, coming in 3rd place or so. I got like a “Merit Award” as well as a “Good Looks Award.” (laughs)

— Oh really? (laughs)

KAN: Back in those days, a lot of young sound directors at record labels were going around looking for promising musicians in hopes of discovering and developing them themselves, and they were attending all kinds of contests. That’s how I was approached by one Mr. Hirano from Polydor Records, and I went into the studio to record demos of six or so songs—some of them were programmed, and some I recorded with band members from my college days.

Then we started looking for a production company. But one of those candidates, that company said they wanted to work with a different label instead of Polydor. Hirano was all sullen, like, “I’m gonna be left out of this thing, huh…”

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