Yasushi Takayama: the Man from Mo Wax Japan
Updated: Mar 10, 2022
Little is known about the man who helped James Lavelle to fulfill his wildest dreams. Yasushi shared with us stories about his childhood and aspirations as a young man all the way to reaching the position of A&R for the legendary Japanese record label that is Toy's Factory. Here's the first part of our conversation...
Jon
Can you tell me about your childhood and how it was for you to grow up in Japan in the 70s/80s?
Yasushi
I was born on June 26th, 1971 in the Ōta-ku area [South] of Tokyo which is known as an industrial area so there's a lot of factories there. We are three siblings in the family, I have a younger sister and a younger brother, and me and my younger brother Fumitaka both run the Rush! Production record label together.
Both my parents were born right after World War II in the 1940s and at the time, the government was encouraging people to have a lot of children, so many families had like three to five children. The [Summer] Olympics in Tokyo happened in 1964 [the first Olympics held in Asia] and Japan was becoming a lot more abundant financially than previous generations. So I grew up with a lot of electrical appliances, I used to play soccer and kids were able to play soccer and baseball too.
Jon
Do you remember what sort of music was played at home when you were a little kid?
Yasushi
So from the age of 3 to 10, I was really into a kid TV show called Ponkikki [Hirake! Ponkikki on Fuji TV ran from 1973 to 1993 and its concept was based on the US program Sesame Street], it was on TV every morning and I was always watching it. There were a lot of very famous songs that came out of that TV show and one of them was "Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun" [Masato Shimon / Canyon, 1975], like a million-selling record. But there were these instrumental songs that were played on the show and I really liked them as well. I watched it again when I was in my 20s and then I realized that they were using Beatles tunes in the background, so I got into western music through that TV show.
My mother used to sing in a choir as a hobby and my father collected tapes and records of Japanese music that he was listening to on the hi-fi system, so I remember being into music from a young age.
Jon
What was the first record that you purchased with your allowances?
Yasushi
The first record I remember buying and really getting into, not just the music but the visuals and the music video, was Michael Jackson's Thriller [Epic, 1982]. When I first heard it, it blew me away!
Jon
Michael Jackson is clearly pop music and you were 10 years old when it was released so how did your musical taste evolve as a teenager?
Yasushi
So when I was an early teen I was really into a group called Godiego and they were known for singing a lot of animation theme songs like "Monkey Magic" [opening theme for the 1978 television series Saiyūki, known in the west as Monkey] and "The Galaxy Express 999" [theme song for the series of the same name designed by Leiji Matsumoto who later worked with Daft Punk]. They were a Japanese band but there was also a foreign member [Steve Fox] and so they were very influenced by western music.
Then my parents bought me a stereo tape recorder, so I started recording songs off of TV or commercials and I got into editing my cassette tapes and making mixes out of them. Like, I remember Michael Jackson being in a very famous Suzuki scooter commercial [in 1979] and there was another commercial for a whisky brand with Sammy Davis Jr. [Suntory Whisky, 1974] where he was doing human beatboxing. So those were the kind of things I was recording.
Then when I got into high school I started getting into Def Jam Records and The Beastie Boys and I was really into Madonna and Guns N' Roses too. There was a really popular West TV show that featured music from the US charts, it was called Best Hit USA [on TV Asashi from 1981 to 1989] and I would often record those shows on VHS and then edit them.
Jon
So right from the beginning you were into video and audio editing, but were you interested in DJing as well?
Yasushi
When I got into high school I really wanted to start DJing but it took a while for me to save up enough money to buy gear and when I turned 18, I was finally able to buy all the equipment. That's when I started practicing, like mixing and scratching and that got me into DJing at my friends' parties and stuff. I had a dream of traveling to places like London, New York and Paris, so I was thinking "If I can make enough money through DJing, maybe I will be able to visit those cities."
Jon
What was your DJ name back then?
Yasushi
So I was going by two different names. When I would play at clubs I would play hip hop and it was often in cities like Roppongi [South West of Tokyo] and Yokosuka [Kanagawa Prefecture]. There were a lot of African-American people who were living in the military bases that are in Japan and they would come to these clubs. They couldn't say my name very well and so I went by the DJ Yashi moniker because I figured that it was easier for American people to say that name. And then when I played in other clubs where it would be house music, disco and reggae, I would just go by my real name Yasushi.
Jon
Did you go to college after high school?
Yasushi
In high school I was in the soccer team and I was pretty good at it, but at the same time my grades were quite bad. So my teacher told me "Maybe you could go to a sports university and play soccer there but you'll have to shave your head though," because back then you had to have a shaved head to be on a sports team and I didn't want to do that. I also didn't have the money to go to other more famous universities and I still had that dream to travel outside of Japan. And so I decided not to go to college.
Jon
In Japan there is this sort of elitist kind of education, but were your parents supportive of your passion since they were into music themselves?
Yasushi
Actually, my parents were really against me going into the music industry. They were telling me "You know, after high school just get yourself a regular nine to five, we don't care what job it is as long as it's a proper one!" And they were really against me going out at night and performing and stuff.
Jon
Do you remember what was the first show that you went to and how determinant it was for your professional career afterwards?
Yasushi
So that was around June 1987 when I remember going to the first Madonna Tour in Japan [during the Who's That Girl World Tour, she performed from June 20th to 22nd at the Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo], it really gave me goosebumps and blew me away! And then the same year I was able to go to the Michael Jackson concert in Yokohama [during the Bad Tour, he performed 5 times at the Yokohama Stadium between September and October 1987].
It was really difficult to get tickets for concerts like that back then, but I had a friend who was good at getting tickets so that's how I was able to get them. I mean, those two concerts persuaded me that I wanted to do something in music.
And there's another Japanese group called Complex featuring singer Koji Kikkawa and a famous guitarist named [Tomoyasu] Hotei and as I was a big fan of them, I went to their show in 1989 [Complex Tour]. Hotei was also in a very popular group called Boøwy before that, they were very popular in Japan.
Jon
How was it for you to connect to that foreign music?
Yasushi
So I didn't understand the lyrics but I was listening to the vocals as if they were instruments. But you know, I was still a teenager at the time and so I didn't really go as far as reading deep into the liner notes or anything, until after getting into the music industry when reading liner notes and stuff like that became very important to me. Back then as a junior high school student it was more about the overall performance of these artists, like how sexy Madonna was when she was dancing or like seeing Michael Jackson moonwalk, so it was also like the visual aspect.
Jon
In the early 90s you went to the UK for the first time, so how did you manage to go there and was it business related?
Yasushi
So after high school I was really into music, fashion and films but I couldn't really decide what I wanted to do. My first job was at a rental video shop where I was working on weekdays and weekends I would be performing at DJ gigs. And so I did that for like four years until I got a job at a company that was promoting artists like Nobukazu Takemura, Silent Poets, Natural Calamity, Spiritual Vibes and a group called UFO (United Future Organization was Yabe Tadashi, Raphael Sebbag and Toshio Matsuura and I was involved in their street promotion). I also helped out Mondo Grosso on Tour dates in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka.
In 1994 there was a show [coming up] for this really well known group Pizzicato Five, so the company had some records pressed in London and they were supposed to sell them at their concert. And so since I was a young guy, the company said "You go to London, you go and pick up these records and bring them back," so that was the first time I ever got to go to the UK. And it was just for one day, just so I could pick up the records that were pressed there and bring them back to Japan!
Jon
I guess that it must have been quite confusing for you to be in London just for one day, unable to communicate very well, completely jet lagged and basically on your own but still doing business?
Yasushi
I remember the immigration being really strict and that scared me because I never had endured something like that before. I didn't have any money so I couldn't use a taxi and so I took the subway and this was the first time I actually was in a train with people from all kinds of different cultures which was also a big surprise to me. I remember my surprise to see people in London not using umbrellas when it was raining. But at the same time it made me feel like this is what I really wanted to experience in life, so all these new different things were really exciting to me.
And then I had another opportunity to go to London in February of 1995 as an assistant for Nobukazu Takemura where I was basically carrying records for him. And there was an event at the Ministry of Sound [nightclub in London belonging to the record company of the same name], it was called the Brownswood Sessions and people like Gilles Peterson, James Lavelle, Patrick Forge, Galliano, Mark Murphy and Palmskin Productions were playing there. And then from Japan there was Nobukazu Takemura, DJ Krush and then UFO performing there.
It was just around the time when acid jazz started to change and when jungle music which later became drum & bass came out. People were also playing Brazilian records in the clubs and then at the same time artists like Tricky and Portishead emerged into trip hop, so all these new different kinds of music were coming around at the same time. The club was filled with like 4500 people and I was totally blown away by that experience! I also had brought a video camera with me and I filmed all that so that was very formative for me.
That time I stayed in Europe for a little over two weeks and while I was in London, I was able to go to meetings with the Ninja Tune guys, I also got to visit the Kiss 100 FM radio station to promote the artists I was with and I went record shopping, so it was like at Mr Bongo and Soul Jazz. But I also went to Paris for five days and I got to meet a lot of artists and Yellow Productions too.
Jon
Were you still working for that promotional company at the time?
Yasushi
So I was still working for [them] and going to London kind of helped me join Toy's Factory because they already had this label called Bellissima! Records back then. And this label had artists like Nobukazu Takemura, Silent Poets and also Spiritual Vibes. Natural Calamity also joined Toy’s Factory Later.
Toy's Factory wanted to get more into the club music scene and they'd seen that I was already very close to these artists and knew about it myself. So they asked, "Can you join our label? Because we don't know how to deal with these artists and we don't know much about the club scene." So I was like 24 or 25 back then and so I joined the company as their youngest employee.
Jon
It seems to me that early on Toy's Factory was all about Mr. Children and basically a lot of US metal and so it was this very specific field of music for a long time. Then you came in with this different spirit which was a u-turn for the label but at the same time they gave you a lot of money to make it really happen, how do you explain that?
Yasushi
Back when I joined Toy's Factory, labels like Sony were already heavily invested in club music, they were releasing a lot of hip hop but also techno artists like Derrick May or Jeff Mills. Then labels like Avex [Trax] were releasing Japanese hip hop, house, Metalheadz and they were also releasing Mo Wax records early on. And so as you were saying, when I joined Toy's Factory they were more known for releasing metal and hard rock but also a lot of j-pop bands like Speed that were a famous girl group back then.
Since they wanted to get into the club music field they gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted and they also put a lot of money [on the table] to bring the artists' visions into reality, so I was thankful for that.
Jon
How did you ascend to head of promotion for the record company?
Yasushi
When I started to work at Toy's Factory, my actual position was A&R for Bellissima! Records which was the label that had Nobukazu Takemura. At night I would do all my Bellissima! Records work like going to clubs and stuff, but then during daytime I also had to do PR work for the company and that included street promotion for the pop acts and kind of bridging pop music with club music.
So one of the biggest pop rock groups for Toy's Factory was Mr. Children and they wanted to do something that was more club-like. Then at first what I wanted to do is to get The Chemical Brothers or The Prodigy to remix them but that didn't work out. And right around 1997 I got in touch with James Lavelle who was doing UNKLE with K.U.D.O (Major Force) back then. They [gave me] just an instrumental track with no vocals and so that was kind of a problem, but the song did pretty well [Mr. Children / "ニシエヒガシエ (West)" from ニシエヒガシエ / Toy's Factory, 1998].
And then I also connected other pop groups like My Little Lover and Speed with dance music artists. I got a lot of those pop acts into more street magazines like Hot Dog [Press] which was quite popular at the time and I also had different directors making music videos for them.