The night is still young.

In these words, there is a subtle untruth. The night is not always young. Cities age. Shops vanish. People change. We too grow older. Yet, in the singular moment we play music, the night occasionally regains a trace of its youth.

Listening to Maki Nomiya’s "The Night Is Still Young," one feels this sensation. Memories of Pizzicato Five. The light of Shibuya-kei. Fashion. Shows. Cinema. Advertising. Quotation. Editing. Tokyo. These elements rise once more within the dark. Yet, this is not a literal return to those days. It is about sounding the night once again, with the full knowledge that we cannot return.

The music of Pizzicato Five always dwelt on the surface of the city. Rather than excavating deep secrets, it edited the exterior. Favorite movies. Preferred brands. Beloved streets. Cherished records. Desired colors. Outfits. Lovers. Today’s mood. By arranging these fragments, a "self" begins to take form. Rather than being shallow, it was music that elevated superficiality into a formal style. We define ourselves not through inner depth, but through the combination of things we choose. Like a profile column in a fashion magazine, self-introduction seamlessly becomes the style of the city.

Maki Nomiya existed at the absolute center of this phenomenon. Her voice. Her posture. Her clothing. Her gaze. Her hair. Her movements. Her theatrical poise. While a singer, she was also a model, an actress, and a symbol of the metropolis. In Pizzicato Five, a song was never merely sound. It was the jacket art, the wardrobe, the photography, the video, the typography, and the citations. Music sounded as style.

Thus, the phrase "The Night Is Still Young" is more than an invitation to go out. It sounds like a call to reconstruct the city once more as a style.

The night is still young. In truth, it may no longer be so. Shibuya has changed. The record shops, the magazines, the cafes, the meaning of clubs, the distribution of fashion, and the ways we encounter music have all transformed. What we once had to walk the streets to find now flows directly onto our screens. Unfamiliar songs. Unfamiliar clothing. Unfamiliar films. Unfamiliar storefronts. Unknown people. Once, we had to move our bodies to meet them.

Going to Shibuya. Walking to Harajuku. Stepping into a shop. Browsing the shelves. Flipping through a magazine. Buying a CD. Noticing a track playing in a cafe. Observing someone's outfit. Stepping out into the midnight streets. The city was not something to search online, but a terrain to walk. The music of Pizzicato Five and Maki Nomiya remains profoundly bound to this manner of walking the city. Listening to music meant walking the streets. It meant choosing clothes. It meant watching films. It meant entering cafes. It meant curating a version of oneself.

In "The Night Is Still Young," this sensation persists. Tokyo at night. Those who have not yet gone home. Stilted conversations. Glinting glasses. The opening of a taxi door. Descending the stairs to a basement. Music drifting from a speaker. The texture of fabric. Red lipstick. A black dress. References to old films. Perhaps these things have drifted some distance away from the actual streets. Yet, within the music, they remain alive.

This is the quiet wonder of pop music. The city changes. People age. Eras end. Yet, when we play a track, the atmosphere of that particular night returns, if only slightly. It never returns completely. Indeed, because we understand it cannot truly return, it carries a delicate sorrow.

The phrase "The Night Is Still Young" sounds bright. Yet, in this brightness lies the clarity of someone who understands time. When a young person says "the night is still young," it differs from when someone who has traversed time says it. The former suggests that something is about to begin. The latter is spoken by someone who knows what has already ended, yet chooses to dance a little tonight anyway. Maki Nomiya’s "The Night Is Still Young" sounds of the latter. That is precisely why it resonates.

It is neither a mere affectation of youth, nor pure nostalgia. It is not an attempt to return to the past. Rather, knowing that the past is unreachable, it calls the night back into being. There lies a mature pop sensibility.

Youth is not merely a matter of age. Stepping out into the night. Playing music. Dressing up. Curating oneself. Pretending that the party isn't over yet. And occasionally, letting that pretense move your body. Perhaps youth is found in these gestures. Yet, it is not eternal. The dawn breaks. The shops close. The song ends. The taxi arrives home. The makeup is washed away. The clothes return to the hanger. Morning comes. Therefore, the night is young. To say it is young is also to say it cannot endure.

Here lies the sense of transience in Maki Nomiya's music. It is flashy, brilliant, stylish, and light. Yet beneath that lightness exists a deep awareness of time passing.

Pizzicato Five was music of the surface. Yet, surface does not imply shallow. Time reveals itself upon the surface. Clothes grow outdated. Makeup reflects a specific year. The texture of a photograph shifts. Magazine layouts speak of their era. Billboards, storefront names, and the texture of sound—all harbor the spirit of their time on their surfaces. Therefore, to work with the surface is to work with time itself. Without ever speaking of inner depths, an entire era rises through a dress, a sound, and the name of a street. Pizzicato Five achieved this. And Maki Nomiya was the physical embodiment of that era.

It was not just her voice. Her very presence was an edited surface of Tokyo. Hearing that voice now, it evokes more than simple nostalgia. The city we once traversed returns. The self from those days returns. Yet, the instant it returns, we know it is different. We have changed. The city has changed. The physical body that listens to music has also changed.

We might never walk the night as we once did. The occurrence of randomly discovering a CD on a shop shelf has dwindled. The sensation of encountering an unknown culture in a magazine has faded. The moments spent reading someone's taste in music or cinema through their attire have grown distant. Yet, when we play the music, the night returns, if only a little.

Curiously, the night holds space for memory. Night lies closer to the past than day. The light softens. Outlines blur. The sounds of the city shift. Our age feels less defined than under the sun. In the dark, we can briefly pass by our former selves. "The Night Is Still Young" is a song of that fleeting encounter.

Tokyo in the nineties. Shibuya-kei. Pizzicato Five. Maki Nomiya. Fashion. References. Editing. Pop as performance. These elements drift back into the current night. Yet, this is no museum exhibit. It is still playing. A little weathered, but still functional. A little nostalgic, but still danceable. A little wistful, but still light. The balance is exquisite.

As we grow older, our relationship with the night shifts. In our youth, the night was pure potentiality. If we went somewhere, we felt something would happen. We felt we would meet someone. We felt the city would transform us. Simply walking while listening to music turned the world into a film. But the night of adulthood is different. There is fatigue. There are tomorrow's plans. There is family. There are physical limits. We can no longer push ourselves endlessly. Yet, when we play music, the night opens slightly. It isn't over yet. There are moments when we can believe this.

"The Night Is Still Young" is a song for those moments. It does not restore youth. Rather, it is a song for our altered selves, in an altered city, to form a relationship with the night once more.

The night is still young. Yet, we have changed. These two statements do not contradict each other. Precisely because the night remains young, we see our changed selves clearly. Precisely because we have changed, the youth of the night sounds with a delicate sorrow. Music sounds this distance. It does not return us to the past; it allows us to hear our distance from it.

Maki Nomiya’s voice carries that distance. Light, elegant, stylish, yet possessing a voice that somehow knows time. The city has changed. We have changed. Yet, the night remains a little young. That lingering sliver of youth is what the music sounds tonight.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-06-21