Keisuke Kuwata’s lyrics can feel strange when read as text. They sound like English despite being in Japanese, or resound like Japanese despite being in English. They seem to hover on the edge of having meaning and having none, yet the moment they become song, they suddenly sound right. This sensation has always intrigued me.

Normally, we read lyrics for their meaning—what they are saying, what story they tell, what emotion they convey. But with Kuwata’s lyrics, they do not hit the mind first; they hit the mouth. They rest on the tongue, pass through the throat, and become rhythm. Turning into strange English or peculiar Japanese, the words begin to roll around inside the body. This is a remarkably special quality.

Kuwata was one of the earliest artists in Japan to write lyrics in English-style Japanese. The attitude seems to suggest: who needs literal meaning? It is a song, so it only needs to resonate. It just needs to feel good in the mouth. It just needs to move the body. Yet, this is not actually the case. Kuwata’s lyrics possess profound meaning. It is simply that this meaning is never placed there as an explanation. Rather than resting on the surface of the words, the meaning rises from their resonance, their fragmentation, their vulgarity, their bashfulness, their jokes, their prayers, and their seasonality. While seemingly breaking the meaning, he constructs a different, deeper layer of it. This is where his genius lies.

For instance, Kuwata’s words are always inhabited by the physical body: the sea, alcohol, sweat, love, eroticism, night, summer, rain, wind, aging, death, laughter. It is not a pristine, sanitized body. It is slightly untidy, a bit vulgar, a little shy, and somewhat crude—yet thoroughly alive. The music of Southern All Stars has always carried this human warmth.

Take the title "Sexy Grandma on Tobacco Road" as an example. Tobacco Road, sexy, and grandmother. Words that normally would not share space belong to the exact same landscape in Kuwata’s world. It contains aging, sensuality, jokes, the blues, and the back alleys of the Showa era. He does not sterilize aging. He does not limit sensuality to youth. Within the laughter, he embeds the passage of physical time. This sensibility is quintessentially Kuwata.

On the other hand, Kuwata also writes songs like "Hotaru" (Firefly). Serving as the theme song for the film *The Eternal Zero*, "Hotaru" is one of the deepest prayers in the Southern All Stars catalog. A firefly glows, yet its light soon vanishes. It seems to be right there, yet remains elusive. It appears to draw near, only to drift away immediately. The word *hotaru* carries the traditional Japanese sense of impermanence. It connects to *Grave of the Fireflies*, to summer, to war, to the departed, and to memory. It glows and vanishes. That is why it lingers.

Ordinarily, Kuwata deconstructs language. He plays around. He toys with English-style Japanese and embraces the ribald. Yet, when such a person sings "Hotaru," the impact is remarkably powerful. When someone who can joke so freely offers a serious prayer, it carries weight. This is because he understands meaning. While appearing to treat meaning lightly, he knows its true gravity. Rather than lecturing solemnly, he occasionally breaks the structure, lets it slip away, turns it into a laugh, or hides it within the resonance of English. Some emotions become too heavy when expressed solely in Japanese. Translating them into English introduces a subtle distance. Yet, that distance can sometimes leave a deeper resonance of sorrow in its wake.

The same applies to "ONE DAY." Into the humidity of Japanese, brief English phrases are inserted. Encounter and loss leave an imprint on the body in just a few lines. English is not used merely to look cool. It acts as a buffer to avoid expressing emotion too directly. But because of that distance, the reverberation reaches us. Kuwata’s language possesses this way of releasing tension. He does not present heavy things in a heavy manner; he lightens them, yet never thins them out. This is the mark of a master.

Southern All Stars have always been at the center of pop music. They are broadcast on television, sung in karaoke, and listened to as songs of summer, of the sea, and of romance. Yet, upon closer listening, they are doing something remarkably strange. They dismantle Japanese and deconstruct English. They turn pop ballads into rock, and pull rock back into pop. Blues, Latin, Showa nostalgia, literature, politics, jokes, and prayers are all blended together. Even so, the music reaches the listener perfectly. This is truly extraordinary. It is experimental, yet never paraded as an experiment. It is popular, yet never shallow. It is playful, yet never lightweight. It is commercially successful, yet profoundly deep.

Listening to Southern All Stars and Keisuke Kuwata suggests that popularity and experimentation do not have to be in conflict. Rather, truly powerful expression performs rather dangerous feats internally while wearing a face that welcomes the masses.

Kuwata is also deeply versed in the classics. Japanese literature, pop ballads, the blues, the Beatles, John Lennon, Showa-era entertainment, vocal phrasings, and the particular humidity of the Japanese language. Because he has internalized these elements, he is able to dismantle them. When someone who does not know the form breaks it, the result is merely a mess. But when someone who knows the form breaks it, it becomes a leap forward.

"Japanese Literature I Want to Sing Aloud" was the ultimate manifestation of this approach. Instead of reading Japanese literature as revered culture, he sings it aloud. Soseki, Dazai, Chuya, Kenji, Akiko, and Akutagawa are returned from the printed page to the mouth, the tongue, and the rhythm. He returns literature to the physical body. This is a remarkable achievement. Written words carry meaning, but the moment they are voiced, they become more than just literal. They turn into sound, breath, phrasing, laughter, and song. Kuwata knows this. That is why reading Kuwata’s lyrics on a page sometimes fails to reveal their true form. They only rise to life when sung.

This is somewhat similar to Yosui Inoue’s unique lyricism. Yosui’s words float slightly detached from literal meaning, yet when heard in his voice, they reach us like memories. Words like *kaze-azami* (wind-thistle), *yume-hanabi* (dream-firework), and *natsu-moyou* (summer-pattern) cannot be found in a dictionary. Nevertheless, we understand them when we hear them. If Yosui’s language shifts words toward illusion, Kuwata’s language shifts them toward the physical body. Yosui’s words become dreams; Kuwata’s words become flesh.

We understand Kuwata’s words through the mouth. Thus, while seemingly declaring that literal meaning is unnecessary, they actually carry immense meaning. That meaning enters the body before the mind can process it. Listening to them, the mouth moves, the body sways, a slight laugh escapes, a touch of shyness arises, and tears come close to falling. The meaning follows afterward.

Viewed this way, Kuwata’s music feels incredibly important in the age of AI. AI excels at organizing meaning. It makes text clear, summarizes, classifies, connects contexts, and explains. Yet, something like Kuwata’s language cannot be handled so easily. This is because the literal meaning is intentionally broken there. And yet, despite being broken, a different level of meaning rises from it.

English-style Japanese. Mondegreens. Vulgarity. Joke. Prayer. Summer. Death. Fireflies. Lennon playing in a Japanese-style cafe. These elements are not logically connected, yet they find unity within the song. Despite the leaps in logic, they connect when viewed as a whole. This is precisely what AI struggles with. AI explains connections, whereas Kuwata connects without explaining. Furthermore, this connection is not intellectual; it is physical. It connects in the mouth, in the rhythm, in the phrasing, in the shared shyness and laughter, and in the scent of the same summer. That is why we, the listeners, understand it even if we do not know its literal meaning.

No literal meaning is needed, yet meaning is present. This contradiction is the true scale of Keisuke Kuwata as a creator.

Listening to Southern All Stars makes one feel that the Japanese language can be far more free. It does not have to be correct. It does not have to be overly beautiful. It can be crude, it can be anglicized, and it can be strange—provided it passes through the body. Language does not merely carry meaning; it makes the body resonate. Kuwata has spent his career doing exactly this.

Constructing a deep Meaning Layer while deconstructing literal meaning. Praying while joking. Experimenting while enjoying commercial success. Lightening the tone without thinning the substance. And occasionally, with a song like "Hotaru," quietly placing a fading light before us. At that moment, we realize: the English-style Japanese, the vulgarity, the jokes—all of it might have been a path to reach this very depth.

When meaning is liberated from explanation, it does not disappear. Instead, it rises from a place much closer to the physical body. The lyrics of Keisuke Kuwata show us this truth.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-06-05