When listening to music, I repeatedly encounter the sensation of "disappearing."

A song ends, a voice recedes, and the lingering resonance of the sound fades. The melody that should have been heard slowly becomes ambiguous within memory. Yet, strangely, just because it has disappeared does not mean the music is gone. Rather, what remains after it vanishes is often the very essence of the song.

In Chara's voice, there is a lingering presence that feels slightly on the verge of disappearing from the very beginning. Though she sings with strength, the contours of her voice melt somewhere. Rather than delivering words clearly, it is a voice where the emotion preceding the words seems to blend directly into the air. It holds sweetness, vulnerability, and innocence. Yet, it is never fixed to any of them. Listening to Chara's songs, I feel that a voice does not exist solely to be preserved. A voice also exists to disappear. The moment it reaches the listener, a piece of it is lost. Yet, within that way of being lost, emotion finds its home instead.

Haruomi Hosono's music also carries a sense of disappearing. It is not a dramatic loss, but a gentler vanishing that melts into the landscape. The sounds do not assert themselves excessively, leaving empty spaces. They seem to ring continuously, yet before long, one forgets they were ever there. However, remembering them later, one realizes those sounds had altered the temperature of the room. Hosono's music holds little obsession with preservation. The sound becomes a place, a journey, and the air itself. Therefore, it is fine for it to disappear. Including the act of disappearing, it fully becomes music.

When listening to Sakanaction, disappearing becomes somewhat more urban. The night's water surface, reflecting lights, club basslines, smartphone screens, someone's departing back. There, one senses that emotion cannot be preserved well within the speed of modern life. One must have felt something, yet the next notification arrives immediately. The heart must have moved, yet it is instantly lost in the noise of the city. Sakanaction's music understands this way of vanishing. Emotion arises within the city, reflects, amplifies, and then quickly recedes. It is danceable, yet lonely. Cold, yet physical. Within this contradiction lies modern impermanence.

Nice Hashimoto's songs carry a more everyday form of vanishing. Not a grand narrative, but things that slowly drift away in daily life. Time spent with friends, roads traveled, casual conversations, a person once loved, the atmosphere of those days. They do not end with clarity. One day, you notice they have grown distant. It is not so dramatic that you can never return, but you can no longer return to the exact same place. A small loss of that scale. Yet, life is perhaps built of such small losses.

In Quruli, there is movement and impermanence. Boarding a train, leaving the city, traveling from Kyoto to Tokyo. Familiar scenery flows backward. People and places seem to remain there forever, but in truth, they change little by little. Listening to Quruli's songs, I feel that scenery is not a fixed entity, but something to pass through. Stations, rivers, slopes, shopping streets, housing complexes, train tracks. They are the background of daily life, yet at the same time, things that will one day be lost. Every time a person moves, a place becomes a memory. And from the moment it becomes a memory, it begins to disappear little by little.

Off Course possesses a formal structure of parting. The more polite the words, the more the irreversibility stands out. They attempt to wrap what has already ended in gentle language. Retiring individuals, those left behind, messages left undelivered. Yet in the end, only the voice remains. The parting in Off Course's songs is not merely sad. There is an attitude of attempting to beautifully bid farewell to what is disappearing. Rather than holding back, it gives shape to that which vanishes. That becomes the song.

In Japanese songs, I feel this sense of "disappearing" has flowed continuously. Scattering, dusk falling, flowing, receding, fading, unraveling, blurring, not returning, passing by. This is not simple pessimism. While it is close to the concept of impermanence, it feels less like a Buddhist doctrine and more like the texture of everyday life. Cherry blossoms scatter. Dusk arrives. A river flows. A train passes. Summer ends. A voice recedes. Time with someone becomes the past before we know it. Japanese songs have sung of these things countless times.

The important point here is that disappearing does not exist on the opposite side of meaning. To disappear is not to lose meaning. Rather, it is precisely because things disappear that meaning arises. Indeed, meaning can be harder to find in things that remain forever. While things preserved eternally offer security, they lose their tension. Knowing that something can be seen anytime, replayed anytime, retrieved anytime—the moment we think this, its singularity begins to fade.

Past musical experiences held more imperfection. Hearing a song by chance on the radio. Not knowing the song's title. Recording onto a cassette tape only to have it cut off midway. Lending a CD and never getting it back. Mishearing the lyrics. Changing the music arbitrarily within one's memory. Yet, perhaps that imperfection is what made the music truly ours. Precisely because it could not be perfectly preserved, the body struggled to remember it. Precisely because we could not listen to it repeatedly, a single encounter left a powerful mark. Precisely because it would disappear, we listened closely.

Now, AI is moving toward preservation and reproduction. Preserving voices, reproducing personalities, and mimicking past writing styles. Restoring images of the deceased, and repairing old audio sources in high definition. Making lost things visible once more. I do not wish to simply dismiss this in itself. There is meaning in restoring lost records, and I understand the desire to hear someone's voice once more. The wish to protect memories is also a deeply human one.

At the same time, however, there is danger in this. How far should we preserve things that were originally meant to disappear? Might we alter things that held meaning precisely because they vanished into something else through reproduction? Do we fill the pain of absence too much with technology? Do we treat those who are gone as if they are still here?

Disappearing, too, is a part of meaning. I feel we need to reconsider this sensation in the age of AI. Preserving everything is not always abundance. Being able to reproduce everything is not always kindness. Remembering everything is not always how we cherish memory. Forgetting, fading, growing distant, never returning. These, too, are part of the human experience.

Rather, it is precisely because things disappear that people sing. Whether it is Chara's voice trembling, Haruomi Hosono's sound melting into the air, Sakanaction's beat reflecting off the night city and vanishing, Nice Hashimoto's words sinking into daily life, Quruli's train letting the scenery flow backward, or Off Course's parting leaving only a voice behind. There exists a technique of leaving something behind in a manner distinct from preservation. To leave a trace, it disappears. By disappearing, it remains. Within this contradiction lies the song.

A song is not a perfect record. It gives a temporary form to things that are vanishing. And that form, too, disappears once the sound ends. Yet, that way of disappearing remains inside the body. Therefore, listening to music might be a practice in being present with things that disappear. Listening while knowing it will end. Tuning our ears while knowing it will recede. Opening our bodies to that moment alone while knowing it cannot be preserved.

In an era where AI attempts to preserve everything, music teaches us something else. We do not need to fear disappearing so much. To disappear is not a failure. It is not the defeat of meaning. Disappearing, too, is a part of meaning. Rather, meaning deepens through the act of disappearing.

The sunset is beautiful because it is ending. The cherry blossoms are beautiful because they scatter. The voice remains because the person is no longer there. The song remains in the body because it has finished playing.

Beside that which disappears, the song is playing. And even after it finishes playing, only its way of disappearing quietly remains.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-05-31