Remon Nakanishi
Produced by Agatha, Remon Nakanishi’s debut album Hinano Iezuto (Souvenir from the Countryside) (2022), together with Sparrow’s Arrows Fly so High (2024) by Suzumeno Tears—the duo of Agatha and Miyuki Sato—marked an important new paradigm for pop music grounded in local and vernacular sensibilities in post-pandemic Japan.
Rather than treating min’yō as a standardized rural repertoire for professional singers, or preserving folk performing arts as frozen cultural heritage tied to specific regions, Nakanishi instead turns to songs and entertainments that circulated fluidly among ordinary people, shaped by use, occasion, and social setting rather than by the stage or the archive. His repertoire embraces not only min’yo’s formal beauty but also earthiness, calculation, cruelty, and humor of everyday life, and —through Agatha’s refined arrangements— blends these elements with diverse musical styles from around the world in striking and unexpected ways.
Remon Nakanishi did not simply emerge in the 2020s as a cute min’yō-tinged pop star clad in a kimono and heart-shaped sunglasses. From his teens, he was deeply fascinated with grassroots performance cultures, participating in bon odori—communal summer dance festivals traditionally held to honor the dead and bring local communities together—across Japan, and creating paintings and contemporary dance works inspired by these experiences. He has also worked with an off-note label focused on marginal music and performance traditions in Japan and East Asia, and has guided reading groups devoted to early modern popular performance materials written in difficult cursive scripts.
After nearly two decades of activity between high art, Japan’s underground culture, and folkloristic research, his career as a singer took shape through his involvement with Monogatari Uchūno-Kai, a correspondence course in Gōshū Ondo—a narrative song-and-dance tradition from Shiga Prefecture known for its long, episodic storytelling and improvisatory performance—founded by Tadamaru Sakuragawa. The group became a focal point in the alternative bon odori scene that has grown since the 2010s, and also gave rise to Suzumeno Tears, Nakanishi’s closest musical collaborators.
When live performances were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, album production began in Agatha’s home studio, leading to Hinano Iezuto. This was followed by ODORI ONDO, a 12-inch single in which extended Gōshū Ondo narratives unfold across two contrasting sides—one set to hip-hop, the other drawing on molam from northeastern Thailand—vividly reflecting the dynamics of today’s alternative bon odori scene.
A committed revivalist of popular festivals and entertainments transmitted across Japan since premodern times, Remon Nakanishi is, for that very reason, a distinctly contemporary and alternative artist—one whose work and performances continue to open new spaces for vernacular expression in the present. (by Yusuke Wajima, musicologist)
https://linktr.ee/remon_nakanishi
