Section 5, Chapter 1
Boku no Sekai wa Live ni
[My World is Made of Lives]

The truth is that I am horrible at appearing on TV. I don't think that it's like me at all. I'm really really bad at it. I'm terrible at talking on TV and it makes me so nervous. I've always thought that I don't like the atmosphere of it.

Oftentimes, I'm able to talk with people on TV who have a lot of funny things to say, but when I think of something funny to say, I never say it. Even when I do say it, no one ever laughs.

"What are you talking about? Was that supposed to be funny?"

Everyone always says that.

I'm surely getting worse. Even when I talk to my friends now it's like that.

I want to make people laugh, but I'm probably the kind of person who isn't able to do that.

Though I'm bad at appearing on TV, when I appear on "Hey! Hey! Hey!" [Music Champ] I always have a lot of fun. The two guys in "Downtown" [trans note: the two Heyx3 hosts, Matsumoto Hitoshi and Hamada Masatoshi] are more than just geniuses. They're wizards.

I rarely ever think that anyone is scary when I talk with people, but the two guys in Downtown are scary. They can really read people's souls. They are incredibly smart, and the expression "sharp" fits them perfectly.

For example, a knife that doesn't appear sharp on the surface but when placed on top of a cabbage cuts through it instantly is quite shocking. Very scary. If you place it on a cutting board, it cuts with a ringing noise. It's a feeling of "Whoacno way!?"

After recording, I fall down in the middle of the recording room. Unlike most other people, I exhaust myself completely. If you were to compare me as a knife to them as a knife, it's very vexing. So I make a great effort to polish my "knife" self to a shining finish. In my heart, while I do that I say "ganbare, Gackt."

I'm not talking about the way they talk on the show. Just the way they hold people in their hands like tools is so incredibly unbelievable.

I would, as soon as possible, like to be released from the grasp of those people who can be thought of as geniuses. That would make me very happy. So I always get out of the way of things that scare me. That's what I always do on "Hey! Hey! Hey!"

However, no matter how I look at it, there are still lives in my world.

On music shows on television, we only get 3 minutes to perform. We performers think about what we want to do and are made to complete just one song in that time because of the circumstances. That is a really horrible thing to do.

However, at a live, in order to make full use of the song, you think about the performance. In my case, lives are a time where I can think about and express each song individually.

I have never once thought in a way as to make the song fit into set boundaries. For example, in order to perform one particular song at a live, if I think that fire is necessary, I will propose that the arena have a pillar of fire on the stage. At that time, if it is said "that's against the rules," then I will say "well, let's think of something that we can do instead."

There are many ways of innovating in the world. That's just one way of utilizing those ways.

Generally, when I am deciding something, I really hate using the words "pretty" and "ugly." I will decide whether to make people do something, but what I don't like is lining up everything that is "pretty" without getting any results.

It is the job of other people to decide what the rules are. Of course, if you break the rules, you will be punished. Trying to think about what we can do without breaking the rules is like a game. In this game, you must choose the best option.

In the case of the pillar of fire, for example, though they kept saying "It can be only 4 meters at the most," then I did not turn around and say "Oh well, there's no way around it. What about 3 meters and 90 centimeters?" Instead, I kept saying "No, no. I want it to go up 15 meters." They thought about it and then they, who at first said it could only be 4 meters, finally said, "Well, 12 meters is ok. But 15 meters is too much."

Of course, in order for this to happen, you have to keep trying and trying. When you don't believe it will happen, keep trying. The people on supervision had to go one by one around the hall, access the safety of it, and we had to conduct practical demonstrations for them before we could get it.

On the "Kagen no Tsuki" and "Jougen no Tsuki" tours, we made it rain inside the hall, and that kind of inside rain had definitely never been seen before at other locations, though it had been seen outside. However, using water, we made it rain inside.

Making that into a reality required us to clear all the pivotal points. We didn't just need to take the equipment into account. The backstage people, the supervision, the staff, other people who had dealings with the hall were all included, and we had to prove to all of them that this rain was absolutely necessary and that it was not dangerous. One by one we cleared those hurdles and had rain inside the hall for the first time.

Commonly, other artists would not be able to do this. I really do think that my staff is superior to others, and I will always think that. I had a meeting with all 20 of us together. There, 10 of them said, "That's impossible." Five of them said "That sounds fun." Four said "I don't get it." And then I said "We can do it!"

And then, if everyone else besides me had then changed their statements to "we can do it!" we would have had an awesome result.

But though they all thought it would be really great if that could be done, the other 19 pragmatically said at first that it couldn't be done, and so couldn't free their minds creatively.

However, to me, one of the important things to think about is if it would be interesting or not. It's not really about if we can do it or not. I'll do it because it is interesting.

If it's easily said fundamentally, it's my duty to say it. Afterwards, with everyone, we will then think about how best to do the task. In that vein of thought, if the other 19 people also had this mindset, then it would have yielded a great result. It is my duty to make my staff aware of this fact.

Doing this, taking the power of each staff member and combining them together, my lives have become very "can do."

In practicality, if you ask "isn't that dangerous?" well, fire is fire. That's a fairly obvious thing, but something only has to start burning, and the stagehands will shout "Ahh!!!" and evacuate everyone and put the fire out in great excitement. Half the time, it's because of something like the costumes burning, because the pillar of fire was right beside me about a meter and a half away.

During rehearsals, it's a little frightening and hot. However, during the actual show, I didn't remember any of that. The costumes, which are made of linen, will burst into flames at the slightest spark. But then, it will only be after the concert is over that I'll discover that the costumes caught fire.

This time, they made the water fall without missing a beat. Everything was soaking wet. We were also prepared for it to be slippery.

Something I don't want you to be mistaken about is that we did not go around saying "It's raining. We're making it rain. That's so cool."

Rather, we say, "To express this song, rain is necessary, and through the rain, what will the audience feel when we express the main character's feelings?"

In order to express the feelings in a song, if you think that acrobats are necessary, before you start rehearsal, you should first practice on a trampoline. That's not because you want to get really good on a trampoline. But I say this because if you yourself can't do something, then you shouldn't talk about doing it. So naturally you should practice.

Once, they brought a trampoline out and I jumped on it, and then had a system for making the trampoline disappear. Because people were jumping over one at a time, they could jump two meters closer. When we jumped, it was on the trampoline, but they landed on a padded mat, so it hurt. We were also wearing hard boots, so that hurt our bones and the hip.

Because the stage ended there lengthwise, if someone made a mistake, they would probably fall off the stage.

Not everyone thought that they could do it by themselves, and those who didn't couldn't jump. Because they were thinking "he's making me do this," they definitely couldn't do it.

I think that something like that is said by people for most everything.

First of all, there are things that you believe you can do yourself. Things that you think you want to do. If you think you can do them, you prepare yourself for it and then you do it.

If you can do everything, then go ahead and do everything.

That is my policy.

Section 5, Chapter 2
Shiya no Doraibu de Kyoku wa Umareru
[On Late-night Drives, Melodies are Born]

In the middle of the night, when I feel really dull, I get in my car and go driving by myself. Driving on the Tokyo-Nagoya Expressway, not thinking about anything, doing nothing but stepping on the accelerator, I watch the landscape flash by.

Then suddenly from behind, I get a shock as if hit with a baseball bat. Bam! It feels like I'm hit in the back of the head, and it practically hurts.

When I am in control of myself again, I can place a transparent screen in front of me. On this screen, still images are reflected. These images are converted to moving images and a story is projected. A thin filter appears between my eyes and the real world outside, and on there, I feel like images suddenly appear and come to life.

In those images, since the beginning, there have been times when the images are accompanied by sound, and also times when it's just the images. There have also been cases where it's just the melody and other times just the rhythm. Sometimes I have no idea what the images mean. But something that doesn't change is that there is always a story inside of me. These then become certain themes that rise to the surface. I get inspiration from these images, and melodies come out of them.

If the story is put down in individual characters, it becomes a short story, and if it's extremely short, it becomes song lyrics.

I usually realize these images when they hit me hard. This might occur frequently, and then there are times when it's far in between. When it doesn't happen, though people say to me "Please write more songs!" I can only say "I'm trying, but it's not working." At those times, I can do nothing but wait.

I always feel like that about my songwriting. It's the foundation of songwriting and I can't change it. Previously, I had a studio at home. I thought that if I had a studio at home, wouldn't it make it easy for everyone to gather there and to write songs? I thought I could also write songs that way.

But that didn't work, and when I thought about it some more, whenever I'm able to compose something, it's always an unexpected occurrence. It's when I'm looking at the landscape or when I'm driving. When I think "I need to write a song!" I can never do it. In the end, the studio doesn't matter. I hate shutting myself in to write songs.

A story always begins with the idea coming in from afar and hitting me with a bang.

So, even though the record company says "We need a new song by this date," it's not that easy. Generally, I have to push back the release date.

For Moon, I pushed back the release date a whole four months. Though I did that, in actuality, it took eleven months. From now on, things will probably take even more time.

Though this is not an apology to the fans who have been waiting, I'm a different kind of personality and not a "commercial author." I'll put out what I want to put out. I'm not going to compromise or make excuses. No matter how many months it takes, until I turn out something that's good enough, I won't make compromises. That is my duty. Furthermore, I believe that that is the final product that the fans wait for.

When writing lyrics, I want to use Japanese to its utmost. I love the beauty of the Japanese language. So I don't use English if I can help it. Compared to other artists, my ratio of English usage is extremely small.

It's very hard to match up Japanese words with music.

There are a great many ways to match up English words with each musical note. However, basically in Japanese, one word does not match up with one note.

For example, let's say there are these lyrics: "ano toki, paatii de kimi o mite." In English, it would be "When I/saw you/at the/party." You're able to push the whole line of "ano toki, paatii de kimi o mite" into four notes.

However, in Japanese, four notes are just four notes. You can only put in "ano toki." The main difference between Japanese and English is the percentage of words you can put into one note. So everyone is using English and becoming good at writing lyrics.

I feel sometimes like I need to get away from that.

However, when I first heard the theme song to "Fist of the North Star," it left me with a deep impression. I thought that part of the song was saying "You are shock." But then when I looked at the lyrics, it turned out that the lyrics are actually "You wa shokku." [note: "You wa shokku" is "You are shock" in Japanese >.> It's also the theme song to Hokuto no Ken, apparently]

I was shocked. Not because of anything to do with the meaninglessness of the phrase, but because my ears couldn't tell the difference.

That's not to say that I'm denying the use of English. Using English is also an interesting way of doing things. Of course, you're free to use it. However, because I'm Japanese, I want to put the beauty of Japanese into every note of music. I don't want to run away from that.

When I heard B'z's "Itsuka no Merry Christmas", I cried. I thought, why does this song bring to mind such a lonely scene? [lit: why does a lonely scene appear]. "Mou Ichido Kiss Shitakatta" was great too.

Though the one who writes the lyrics is Inaba-kun [note: Inaba Koshi, B'z's vocalist], he does it with a lot of passion.

Also while listening to Mr. Children's Sakura-kun's [note: Sakurai Kazutoshi, Mr. Children's vocalist] "Dakishimetai", I started clapping without thinking about it.

When I listen to a wonderful melody, I'm always moved. However, I'm not just moved. I'm also proud to be Japanese just like them. I'm proud of the fact that, in the Japanese music scene, there are people here who can write such marvelous music like this. When I was touched by the troubles in their lives [lit: felt their trouble-filled lives], I think that's probably the musician's way of life.

An artist's music and lyrics are like pieces of his or her life. They quickly cut away at the body, and are works that consist of a repetition of the artist's own experiences.

It's great that things like this can move people in such a way.

At times, the important thing for me is what I'm trying to convey to the listener, and sometimes I feel like it's like a letter. It's about making things importantly and consistently and searching for my roots. What I always think about is that music should never pressure people to fit a mold. I want to be flexible concerning music.

My music is a page of a book of notes about the lives of the people who have listened to it. I don't care if it's like a little written memo tucked away into a corner. I am glad if that little written memo is a motive for something and becomes a force pushing at people's backs.

No, in a corner of someone's life, my music is only something that was written down. The meaning of our existence is in that place, don't you think?

Section 5, Chapter 3
Mai Ruum wa Shiro no Chikarou
[My Room is a Castle Underground Dungeon]

My house is pretty unusual. Everyone who goes to it for the first time gets really impatient.

Because there are no windows, it is fairly dark. From the ceiling, there isn't even a single fluorescent lamp. There is only indirect lighting set into the floor. It really is quite dark. It feels even darker than it does inside a club.

Also, the partitions from room to room are all glass. I can see pretty well in the dark, but my friends would frequently bump against the walls. So I have placed small flashlights for their use in the front foyer.

But not many people come over. When they do visit, there are always people who say "Gacchan, I'm a little worried for you."

I like dark rooms. When I was renting a house, I would remodel it. I would cover all the windows, and I would change all the fluorescent lights to black lights.

Time stops in my house. Because the outside light doesn't shine in, I never know what time it is. There are no clocks, either. And there are no televisions.

Because I never watched television when I was a child, now I don't watch it either. To me, a television is just a monitor on which you watch videos or DVDs.

In order to maintain such a lifestyle, I can't be bothered with other things. My biological clock always knows what time it is. My activities are irregular, but the moment I wake up, I know what time it is. And usually I go to bed for around two hours.

The thing that concerns me the most is not wanting to make my home comfortable. I want my house to be a place that makes me want to go outside.

My house is a place where people can gather. It is a place where your spirit can gather. I want it to be a place that gathers energy together.

If the inside of a house is always like that, energy accumulates. If that happens, you feel like going outside. If you always stay in a dark room, your spirit becomes heavy. If that happens, I think that you would want to get out.

To rest your soul, you could go to a place like the park. If you are looking for something bright and cheerful, it's all right to go outside, because the sun is out there.

Outside, many ideas and opportunities can come to life. However, if you become comfortable at home, you never go outside and that never happens. That's nonsense.

If you live in a house that makes you want to go outside, you will keep doing it your whole life. Since my house is dark, it builds up an uncomfortable feeling.

Now, if I have to sum up my new concept of a house in a single word, it is "dungeon." I have an image of a castle dungeon. It's not a house. I and the designer made it of stone with a gloomy image, collaborating with each other on it right down to the last minute detail.

I built it even though the designer believed in feng shui, and he would tell me that designing things like this was no good.

My present house has an archive.

There are a lot of things that you haven't seen on TV, like the fact that I have a huge number of books. I don't keep journals. I don't have any handwritten books.

Most of the books that I bought and like are instructional books on languages. They are books like "Learn Spoken Chinese in 3 Seconds" and "Your English is Counterfeit."

3 seconds? No way! But if you think your English is pretty bad, or something like that, you will have fun reading them.

As I read dictionaries and language instruction books on my own, I laugh a lot. They are very funny. But I really like books like that.

About ten years ago, I found a book that even up till now has made me feel emotions very deeply. The name of it is "Smell Otoko."

It's an old story, the contents of which came to me completely one day, a story that I realized very quickly. The plot development was really interesting, and even now, I can read it over and over. But I think that it's already difficult to find this book.

I also built a wine cellar in my house. It houses up to 100 bottles.

I like wine. When I say that, everyone then gives me wine for presents, and then I start noticing that I've accumulated quite a few bottles.

While I say that I like it, if I go by myself to buy wine, I have no idea which kinds of wine are good wine and which kinds are bad. If I don't drink it, I won't know. So I like to taste wine.

So I just started tasting a lot of wine, and because of that, I now know which kinds of wine from different places and which kinds of wine from different time periods are good.

Right now, a kind of wine that I think is very good is "gold." Not white or red, but "gold." It means that the color of the wine is golden.

For the most part, the grapes from one vine can make about one barrel of wine. However, the grapevines that make this "gold" kind of wine can't even make one glass of it. It tastes wonderful, but it's very expensive. It's to the point where I feel bad about buying this wine for myself.

Though I say I like wine, I don't drink when I'm at home by myself. When my friends come over, if they say to me, "let's open a bottle of wine," then I will open it for them and we will drink together. I'll just look at the wine that my friends choose, and then afterwards I'll say "That was great, don't you think?" and "How about drinking this?"

The wine that I have at home is the most expensive wine, about 400,000-500,000 yen a bottle. That doesn't mean that it is also absurdly delicious wine, though. It just means that when I have a party, my friends who also like wine can enjoy good wine.

I can finish about 20 bottles by myself. When I drink with friends, they will drink about 10 bottles. In all, if there are 10 of us, that's all the 100 bottles! It's rather distressing.

Though gathering 10 people together isn't something too out of the ordinary, it somehow happened that I was able to build a wine cellar.

Besides wine, I also have kuusuu (Okinawan wine). It's Awamori (Okinawan liquor). I collect as much of it as I can. I don't like to drink it, but my friends like it, so I feel that I have to have it for them. I like to present it to my friends and say "Here, I got this for you."

"Bar Gackt" ? moreover, there is something like that. I say, "Do you want to try this?", and when they say back to me "that's good!" it makes me really happy.

The time when I last got drunk was probably at the time of my birthday party.

I felt really bad about it to everyone, but I got so drunk because I just couldn't handle the tension I'd built up anymore. Of course, I remember everyone that I met that night, and everyone I shook hands with, and everyone I kissed, butc

That day was actually two days after my birthday. It was the last day of the "Jougen no Tsuki" tour. The live was over, and I felt liberated from everything.

Being tired, being relieved, thinking about the next new thing I had planned, my feelings of thanks towards the members and thanking the staff, my gratefulness to my friends ? so many things were swirling up, and already I couldn't handle it. I've never gotten drunk like that before.

In spite of having drunk a fair amount at our first meeting, when I walked into a club the next time, Lee Hom and Tarou-chan were there (Wang Lee Hom and Yamamoto Tarou). Hyde also walked in, and then we all started to drink. I wondered if I was going to die, but I was also really happy.

The day the live ended, all the actors from Moon Child were on the stage together. Though I'd planned that from the day the tour started, actually, it was really difficult to work around all the schedules of the different actors. It was reported to me many times, "it's impossible." But I kept saying, "If you believe you can do it, then you can definitely do it!"

I struggled to do it with everything I had up till the very last day. I think the staff was really working hard. Thinking that we could really do it, they pressed on, and the end result was that we really did it, and that made me the happiest.

The liquor on that day was really great. I had a wonderful experience, and was engulfed with gentleness.

Section 5, Chapter 4
Naifu to Sabaibaru Geemu
[Knives and the Survival Game]

Since I was young, I've had a hobby of breaking things.

In kindergarten, I would take precision instruments out of my parents' storage whenever I wanted and take things apart. The TV, the radio, the stereo. I would take all the electronic equipment apart. Bikes, carscI would try to take apart absolutely everything. I wanted to know how they were made.

After I took them apart, I would put them back together. Making sure that they all worked normally afterwards was a lot of fun.

When I got good at it, I would take things apart and put them back together over and over again. In doing this over and over, even now when I get new parts or accessories, I will try and test them. Though the parts that I have work, I will think "why is this or that part necessary?" I love doing things like that.

One thing that I failed to disassemble was my Playstation. My first one broke, so I bought a second one. Then the second one broke. Then I bought a third one. However, I still had parts from the first two. I thought, "Can't I do something with these?" So I took the third one apart, but the first, second, and third ones were all completely different inside. "Ah, so that's why the response time of these Playstations is so slowc" I realized.

So then, thinking that all the pieces were still good, I stuck them all back together. I was going to make a SUPER PLAYSTATION!! I put it together a bunch of different ways, but it was still broken. So then I stopped buying Playstations.

When I was 9 or 10 years old, my hobby was writing computer programs. Personal computers had just come out, and using machine language, I wrote a program. I remember that my computers were a 6001 Mac II, a 8001 Mac II, and then a 9801 FRc

Though I wrote a really awesome program, I didn't do much with it. Though I was wondering what I was going to do with it, I still put everything I had into it. Floppy disks hadn't been invented yet. So all my programs were saved on a rectangular 30 cm personal tape recorder, which would go "piiii pirororo ppi" when you saved anything.

What's more, it was really irritating that even though I spent 3 hours working on a program and saved it, it would take up 50-60 minutes on a tape recorder. If I was in the middle of it and the tape was damaged, I would have to start the program all over from scratch. The tape would go "piiii pirororo ppi" and then "ERROR!" would appear. That happened many times, and I would yell, "It's not an error!"

I lost interest because of that. I wrote programs that could give an answer to a numerical formula, but I could calculate the answers faster on my own. I started to think, "Do I gain any meaning out of writing these programs?"

Because that was a time period when the possibilities of the computer were very limited, I think that I got into that hobby too quickly.

When I was about 12 years old, the "in" thing was analog. For example, the construction of a piano. I took apart a piano we had at home to see what I could do with it. Because the piano was tall, in order to properly put it back together, I wrote down the position of the pieces and had to try many times. I couldn't put the keyboard back, so I wondered what I should do. Then, I started taking apart the piano at school. Upright pianos are unexpectedly easier to take apart.

I would take it apart in the music room after school, and many times a teacher would see me. "What are you doing?" they would ask, and I would answer, "I'm repairing it. This hammer is really bad." The teacher wouldn't say anything back. Because they knew that I was good at music, they didn't think I was lying.

From that time on, I grew accustomed to taking things apart, and not only that, but of course I grew able to put them back together too.

The most difficult things to put back together are electronics. The Playstation was like that, and I understood the written warning that says "If you open this the warranty becomes invalid." However, I opened it. Then, the only thing I did was to take it apart.

The next thing I became fanatic about was knives. Collecting knives. It was an opportunity for me to have a knife if I was ever attacked with someone who also had a knife.

When I was 16, I was attacked. I was stabbed in the leg with a blade about 20 centimeters long. Also, I was slashed above my eyelids. Since then, I have always carried a knife with me when I go out, like Rambo.

I just hate using knives in arguments. People who pull out knives during arguments usually end up using them. It's dirty from the start. That's why I want to say, "Don't get in fights to start with!"

You start a fight, you neglect things, and then on top of that you pull a knife?

I also think that the person who pulls out a knife will have huge regrets.

Actually, that's what happens. People who draw their own knives think to make me draw mine also, so they yell "Ora!" and things like that while showing off their knife.

I slowly put my hand to my chest, and while shouting " Look out!" I draw it out. My 25 centimeter-long knife. My opponent is shocked that I actually pulled my knife out. Then, I place it up on a shelf while saying severely, "That was dirty," or "You're a dirty sneak."

"If you stab someone with that, you could kill them," I say.

It's your knife, but if you stab someone, won't they die?!

Limiting these kinds of guys, they will run away and hide while shouting curses at you. It's pathetic.

However, knives are mysterious. While you have one, you will walk around troubled by something. At first a knife was just a tool I used to stab someone, but knives are much deeper things, and there came a time when I get tired of their charm. I only collected short knives, but when I was a teenager, I had about 150 of them.

I continue this hobby today. I once thought they were dangerous and got rid of all of them, but I started again about 5-6 years ago.

Generally, I like small knives. I like to carve wood with them. It is even more meaningful to carve a piece of solid wood with a knife than it is to carve it with a chisel. I have carved a large bird before.

Recently, I received a knife from a player on the K-1 team.

If I say, "There's no reason to have a knive," it would become cheap talk. There are many things to talk about with knives.

"A person who always stabs others will be stabbed by others. So, if you carry a knife, you will definitely meet others who carry knives."

That is just as I say.

When I thought that I couldn't defend myself properly, I carried a knife. Though I was a very small person, when I carried the knife, I was stabbed after all. If I had been in the wrong place, I would have died. I wonder why I was stabbed, but when I carried a knife, it was just as I thought.

Speaking of which, recently, I haven't been carrying my knife that much. I display them all at home.

Now, something that is fun to do is the survival game. When the game starts, there are more than 100 people. It's 50 vs. 50. When youI can get 100 people together, there's nothing else you can play. And you will either win or lose. It doesn't matter if you are male or female. It's really cool.

Inside a mountain, you get 15 minutes, and then 20-30 minutes of break time, and then 15 more minutes. The game advances in this way.

When it's over, we all barbeque. This year, I wanted to have a barbeque with 100 people, but it never happened. It was very strange. Gathering a bunch of different people together was very interesting.

At the same time, I think about many things. In actuality, I try to gather together people who like war and bullets, but that's very prejudiced.

Because it's a game, the more we play the more fun we have, but we understand that real war is meaningless.

Death is a horrible thing. It's over in a split second. Also, there are many instances of people being killed by friendly fire.

The balls in the game are 6 mm BB bullets. Though they are plastic, they really hurt, and the leave a mark. Encountering a small troupe of 8 people, we fight with military tactics. However, even if you win with those military tactics, no one is at peace. Half of them are dead.

It is only playing. When I think that the people of this country might actually be killed in this way, I can't bear it.

I think that all adults should play this survival game once. You can show your true feelings. I think that a country cannot find true meaning if it is at war.

Section 5, Chapter 5
Kenka no Juuyousei
[The Importance of Fights]

To people who enter my family or my staff, I always make them put on gloves and have a sparring match. The studio forms a training ring. Because we always use headgear and protective equipment, no external wound marks are left, but both the people who doing the hitting and the ones who are hit generally have a good time.

It's scary. If you've never gotten into a fight or had training in martial arts, it's scary.

I think that fights are important. A "fight" is something in which your intentions run headlong into the intentions of the other person. I think that young people should definitely have at least one or two arguments that turn into fights. Teenagers especially should have them.

If you have a fight in which you punch each other, there will be other people who have never been in a fight who don't know the extent of it, and will think that you're about to kill your friend.

Because of this imbalance that people who look tough can be easily defeated, and those who don't seem strong are hard to beat, there are even cases where someone has died. I think that fighting without knowing this is a very frightening thing.

My father taught me how to fight. I was taught that because people die, I definitely couldn't do that, and from an early age was taught to hit outside the area of the vital organs. "If you hit here, the person will die. If you hit here, the person will die. If you hit here, the person will die." When I came home from a fight crying, he would say over and over "If you're going to cry, then stop fighting." He taught me, "You fight to win."

When I was young, I pretty much started fighting when I was playing. My siblings and I would play pro-wrestling, and I would play with my own friends and there were many times that the fights would turn serious before we knew it.

The first time I seriously punched someone was when I was 10 years old. My opponent was 12. He was in a higher grade than me.

"You're such a smart-ass," he said, and then he pushed me and punched me.

From then on, I began to fight a lot. Because I was very naughty in those days, when I got into trouble, I would then punch the person. Fighting became an everyday occurance.

When I was in middle school, I would get into fights with people from others schools to confirm who was the strongest one. It was usually people in my same year, the "cool" boys, who I would fight. I didn't quite know if it was because they wanted to test their own strength against me, or if they were just slow on the uptake, but I was 16 years old at the time, and fighting had become like a hobby to me.

I maybe fought for a different reason than most people did. When I felt pain, I felt truly alive.

That's why I never struck first. It was my pattern to let my opponent take the first shot, to punch first, to start the fight.

Basically, fighting was not a part of me. I didn't like to get hurt. The people I fought didn't understand fighting in order to feel alive. There were only people who saw themselves as stronger than me. That was the rule I made inside of me.

I only fought physically. When my intentions clashed with someone else, if it went in the way of the physical, we would have a fist fight.

However, the thing I was most afraid of was being cornered by someone in a debate. For example, bullying.

The scars from a violent fight will heal. But the scars on a heart that is in an emotional fight will continue to remain, in a large lump.

Because of this, I much prefer fist fights. No matter if you win or lose, both of you will have scars, and though you feel mortified if you lose, afterwards, the two of you can talk. You can say to each other, "I was wrong."

In the end, I wonder if violent fights are something that lead us to be able to apologize when that single world "Warukatta" [lit: "It was bad" / "I was wrong"] is hard to say at other times. The two of you punch the lights out of each other, and then to confirm that you were both stupid, you say, "I was wrong" ? "No, I was wrong," and maybe it's an opportunity for you to practice saying this.

However, bullying is different. Bullying is for the sake of cornering people. It's done in order to completely crush someone.

I think that people who say that fighting is unconditionally bad don't understand. Is it a fight that you or your opponent have in order to understand each other, or is it a fight where your opponent bullies you? There is a great difference between the two.

Of course, it's possible that it's true what they say, that violence is not necessary. However, I think this is something said by people who have had the experience of fighting and then become adults. It is different when people, in spite of the fact that they have never had a fight, idealistically say "Fighting is bad. Fist fights are meaningless."

In the midst of fear, there are emotions of restraint with which we weave through that fear, and also emotions that search for freedom. In the process of defending your tiny slice of turf and the small amount of freedom that you confront with all your might, if you say things like "This is such a small matter," "It's a foolish thing," and "It doesn't matter what you do," if you experience it and feel it and then don't feel that fighting has any meaning, then you are just stupid.

However, those who really can't be helped are those people that hear from others "That's bad" and "That's good" and make their decisions based on that; I am really wary of those kinds of people.

So what then? I think. People who cannot fight, people who have never foughtc

I have only lost a fight once.

He was a great guy. We just happened to be playing at something like pro wrestling, and then he suddenly started doing the real thing. I didn't think that I would lose. He was said to be the strongest guy at school, but I didn't think he would be this strong. It was the first time I understood what it meant to not be able to move my hands or feet.

Because we were able to stop in the middle, I thought to myself that it wasn't a true match. From then on, I began to train secretly. It was in order to beat him. My mortification did not disappear.

However, because he was a good guy, there was no reason to fight after that. He never said "come fight me." I trained with the thought that if that day ever did come, I would be ready, but before that happened, I had a chance to face him as partners in the dojo in karate.

At that time, I thought, he's a genius! He was a genius of fighting.

He was smaller than me and weaker. But his power of expression was completely different. His attack was much more than I ever imagined, and I can't even write it down [1]. He was not only a reflection of me; I can't even write about the traps he laid. His power of judgment was also very high. We were on entirely different levels.

That was the greatest lesson I have had in my life.

You won't win simply because you are powerful. It's your way of thinking about everything. I couldn't overcome his way of thinking!

I wonder what that guy is doing now. Even now, I think about it. I would like to fight him one more time.

[1] 全く読めない - I would think this is literally "it can't be read," which I then translated to "I can't write it down." But if this is some kind of colloquialism, please let me know >.>

Section 5, Chapter 6
Oitsuzukeru "Tsuki" e no Omoi
[The Feelings Towards "Moon" that I Continue to Chase]

The story of Moon first came to me at the time of "Another World" (September 2001).

When I am working on something, I always use the term "sudden inspiration." [lit: orite kuru, from oriru ? to start to descend/get off a vehicle]. The whole story can be seen. Then, I think, how am I going to express this story?

The stories itself are always within me from the beginning. I don't worry about making the story, but rather I think about how I should present it.

"Moon" is a magnificent story.

I knew that everyone had seen the video clip "Another World," but while I was making that video clip, I was thinking that it would be perfect as the preview to the movie "Moon Child."

From that time on, I had the plot to the movie. However, if I was going to make one movie out of the entire story that I saw, it would be about a six hour movie. The plot of "Moon Child" is an expression of one part of the story of "Moon." The beginning, end, and middle all still have the story in them.

This time, I express it in the sound, in the album, and the singles. Because the project is just taking off, it's like the cover of a book.

Next, I will express it in artwork. A photo album, a photo exhibition.

Then, a concert. That will be a three-dimensional awakening of the story right before your eyes.

Furthermore, there is the movie, and then a book.

I have decided to make the entire story of "Moon" visible by assembling all of these parts one by one. Just like a puzzle, I want to scatter different pieces around many different locations.

People who come to see this will begin to catch a glimpse of the story little by little as they gather the pieces together. While they do this, they will begin to make the puzzle complete. On this journey to look for it, they will enter the story in the middle.

The concept work of "Moon" is what I have aimed at this time.

From the very beginning, why do you think I am doing all of this?

The world is slowly changing into the information age. However, there are many times I think that the "information" that is flooding the modern age is a plus to all concerned, right?

There are many people who have merely become people who take the information hat is given out.

To us, mere humans, have been given gifts of talents. There are two "powers of creativity." One of them is the power to create and draw images, and the other is the power to create original ideas. [1]

Because of these two things that exist, humankind progresses forward, and we seek for our feelings under our own power and have been made to realize that.

But what's happened now? There's a single clique that has all the information. Though that's the very thing we've been searching for, we didn't have the experience of finding it ourselves, but instead got it through someone else.

That's why all the imagination has gone out of this world. That's why we can no long create.

Before this happened, there were fewer and fewer inventors coming out of our younger generation, making them a group of people who have no imagination. Not being able to focus one's mind in the middle of a job, in the end, means that one has no power to create. You can then only use something that's been given to you by someone else, because you cannot think for yourself.

I also think that this is true.

Throughout history, people have taken things from out of their own thoughts and put them into tangible form. This has happened over and over. It is the first time that human genius does not even come into play, and is thrown aside. If it's only a matter of breaking the gathered information into pieces, then in the future, the processing speed of a computer would be faster.

All of us now live in times like those. In an age where our very existences are lost to sight, we must live.

We cannot stop the acts of imagination and creation. That's what I think. And that is what I want to convey to everyone.

There are a few people among us, standing on a stage in an arena, who are called artists, and I believe that we have an obligation. It is definitely necessary for us to give strength and passion to the people who we see, and that becomes a boost for them.

It is the things that people do not realize that we showcase, and I think our existence should become a starting point for them to grow to adulthood.

Of course, we do not force this on them. However, through our works and our lifestyles, I think that all men and women will grow up, and I want them to grow up like that.

In this present concept of "Moon," my feelings are the same.

It is possible for us to place things in front of ourselves that other people have decided that they don't want to do. Anyone can go up to someone and say "you can do it!" It is in the times that people have said that they've decided not to do something that we should step in and do them.

Everyone then notices what we are chasing after, and in their individual hearts, they will put together the puzzle pieces. That is the most important thing.

So, that is the shape things took. It took a very long time. The publication of my work is therefore related to all of that.

Lastly, there is the question of why I made a story called "Moon."

In Japanese, Moon is "tsuki." The moon is a symbol of the existence of the characters in this story. I wrote about the relationships between people, and I think that the name of the most essential character is not the sun.

The sun can make everything around this person shine brightly. However, this person [the sun] will eventually fade away. People cannot become gods.

Even if there is a person there who is like the sun, isn't that kind of an existence like the internet, where information flows so quickly from one place to the other? Around this person who is like the sun, the people would be able to see everything, and therefore not be able to think for themselves. They would just be able to be fed information and nothing else.

Relationships between people like that are no good.

For example, I will try to think about myself. There were people who guided me in the past. Because of those people, I am who I am today. To me, those people are, without a doubt, a "moon."

I do not mean to say that I illuminate everything around me like the sun does. However, I light up whatever I am looking at in my field of vision. Of course, I didn't know what there was in front of me at the time, but just a little bit, I was shown my way to the direction of the dark places in which I should go.

To me, that is the best guidepost there is.

Aren't the people who are "moons" also people who guide other people to the way they are supposed to go? Isn't that the most important thing in a relationship between people?

In the story of Moon, there are many people who do not know the meaning of their own existences. People appear who illuminate the road in front of them, and they then find the road upon which they are supposed to advance.

That road might lead to their downfall. However, even if it is the path to destruction, they are still living just a little bit with their own power. They are not being revived by someone, but with their own feet, while feeling the life within them, they are struggling to live. I think that this is how all human beings should be living.

I also wish that every one of you will want to be like the moons and the light of the moons in your own lives.

The moon does not only shine during the nighttime. At night, if you do not create something and decide to start walking on your own, you can't be shown the way. This is because you can't see anything around you, and you're afraid of being shown what lies ahead. If you stop, that becomes your safety zone.

Even so, the act of picking up one foot and taking a step forward requires an insane amount of courage. However, if you want to leave this darkness that much, it is possible for your feet to take a step onto the path illuminated by the moon.

In short, the one who advances forward is, in the end, you. It is you!

In the people who watch my concerts and listen to my music, it is all right if even a single person understands that. I will be happy if that person starts walking forward with his or her own courage.

I am the moon. I dimly light the road, and the only thing I can do is point it out to you.

But when you all take that one step forward, I will gently, quietly watch over you.

[1] This chapter expounds on the difference between what I have translated as "creativity" and "imagination," but in order to really understand what Gackt is trying to get at, it is necessary to understand the original Japanese. In Japanese, the word for both is "souzou". However, the kanji are different: 想像 means "imagination" and 創造 means "creativity/creation." So when Gackt rambles on about creativity and imagination, he is just trying to illustrate to his Japanese readers that even though the words are pronounced the same, there are differences between them. As a side note, the title of the entire section five is the "souzou" for "creativity" [創造]

Section 5, Chapter 7
Hatenaki Miraizou
[An Unending Vision of the Future]

When I really look back at my own life, I completely think that the trip to Madagascar was the second great turning point for me.

Madagascar was a very poor country. There is only about 2-3 percent of the country's population which can afford education. But the people there are overflowing with smiles. At that time, I happened to think, "I wonder if I can smile like that."

At the same time, I was keenly feeling my own lack of strength. My existence felt very small. And so, I felt that I couldn't be rescued by the people who were around me.

That feeling hasn't changed even now.

What is the most necessary for people? I think that is the fact that people have to wake up and realize change is inevitable.

For example, because we say Madagascar is a poor country, there are people who give 100,000,000 yen to their cause. One village can probably live affluently on that money for a year. However, after a year, conditions return to what they were previously. And so, there is no meaning in doing that.

No one makes you bring food to your mouth to eat; if food is set before you, then you will pick up chopsticks and eat of your own will. That's the same way I operate.

I dine on my own intentions. The things which are seen to be moved by my intentions and purposes are, to people, the most precious things, the most important things. If that's not the case, nothing will change about people.

I want you to make me act on my intentions. I want you to change. I am not going to make anyone change of my own will.

Though this was something that I had thought about many times before I went to Madagascar, going to Madagascar refined it, and I felt then that the things I was thinking about were definitely not a mistake.

The same thing can be said about lives. At a live, I send my feelings out to everyone there, and is this why they crowd forward? I can't say I know. But, if that's the case, that's not to say that it's ok to stand there and do nothing.

At any rate, me trying to send my feelings out is a very important thing. If I don't, nothing begins, and if I stop doing it, then I will cease to exist.

Even though I perform lives, it's not enough to just say "I want to have a live," and "We'll have a happy live." That is something that I could do if I weren't myself. I wonder, if I wasn't me, what things would I be able to do? I think about that constantly.

In order to send my feelings out, in order to live as myself, I will continue until the end to run towards the possibilities of me being a man who expresses himself. And in order to keep doing that, I will continue to keep doing what I have been doing all along.

As someone who expresses himself, the number one thing that is forbidden me is to stereotype anyone.

In making the movie "Moon Child," I put other actors into my own work, and as time went on, I could not continue to be skeptical about if it would work or not. I had fellow musicians Hyde and Lee Hom collaborating with me, as well as Tarou-san and Toyokawa Etsushi-san and other actors who participated.

There was no dividing line between those of us who were actors and those of us who were musicians. As I had thought, expressing something like that is able to get rid of stereotypes and bring about a feeling of change, and as we became more and more expressive, we started understanding that there was this mountain of things that we needed to study.

We went all over Asia to film. Because of that, I was completely able to place Asia on a field inside of me.

To me, Asia isn't a place for me to promote myself. Asia is my country, the place where I come from, my hometown. I have always wanted to come to the point where I could feel "I am Asian."

Through my music, through my movie, I want to make people conscious of the thought of an Asian brotherhood.

I want to feel that people are not just Japanese, Chinese, Korean, but have a brotherhood among them as all being Asian. I want my life to bring people closer to this realization.

One Asian people. The pivotal point is the people of Asia having this revolution of thought together.

There are more Asians than any other group in the world, more than 20,000,000,000 of us yellow-skinned people. If all of us bonded together like the people in Europe have and made the "Asian Union," wouldn't that be a really great thing?

But even if the country is formed into a single entity and bound together by friendly relations, it means nothing if the people don't feel it. If the people of that country individually could have the walls before their eyes torn down, becoming closer to one another, if they could feel their same customs together, then the country's policies would advance, wouldn't they? I want it to become like this.

Doesn't that sound interesting? One musician, finally tying country by country together, taking them to one place.

I am only a musician. But nevertheless I am a musician. That is the possibility that I have as a person of expression.

Even on movies, I want them not to say "Made in Japan," but instead they should say "Made in Asia." These are movies you can't do in Hollywood. They're not Japanese movies, they're not Hong Kong movies, they're not Taiwan movies. I want to establish that they are all "Asian movies."

Though that is a separate world from Hollywood, we have so many feelings about the things that we carry with us and that we should try to express.

At that time, I will be so happy if circumstances change to the point where I don't say "I'm from Japan" but "I'm from Asia." [trans note: Gackt actually wrote this in katakana, not in Japanese: "'aim furomu japan' de wa naku, 'aim furomu ajia' to ieru joukyouc"] I have talked about many dreams, but my final dream isc.well, if I say it, you will probably laugh, butc

I want to buy an island, and then on it I want to build a huge amusement park.

Everyone, you probably think I'm joking, but I'm completely serious.

I want to build this amusement park on this island, then invite all the world's children to come play in it.

Even if there's only one child that comes, that will be all right. I want people to feel the meaning of why I am calling, and also how that leads to our future. That's what I have always thought.

Even if I call to 1,000 people and only one responds, that's fine. If there is that one child who feels me calling, that child will, with his own strength, change the environment around him.

My dream isn't restricted to just saying big things about giving dreams to children. It's more concrete than that.

The child who wonders, "Why exactly were we called?" has had his future and his possibilities opened. I want to create that opportunity.

To say it straight up, it's just untimely interference. I'm someone who, from the beginning, has interefered in a lot of people's lives.

I don't want people to exist in vain. I want people to live their lives to the fullest. I don't want them to throw away any possibilities they may have.

Isn't that way of thinking because people's lives are so short?

There are many people around me who have died. When I think about them, I often wonder, "Didn't they want to do this or that more?"

You cannot escape death. However, that doesn't mean you can simply say "Well, didn't they die?"

I think that there are many people who only feel the true meaning of their lives at the moment of their deaths.

At that moment, the scenes of your life flash by like a revolving lantern, and for the first time, you know the meaning of your existence. I was like that too.

If that is the case, then you will say, "If only I had done more of this!" "If only I had done that!" "If only I had done it like this!"c.and then die with regret. That is a very lonely existence.

If there are people who continue to chase after my life and the things I do in the future, those people will surely say "he was a really interesting guy" when I die.

I think this because my life has been filled with so many troubles, beyond the imaginations of anyone out there. Through all that, I felt that I can greatly move people. That is the meaning of my existence.

The me of 10 years in the future, 20 years, 30 years...Right now, that future is too dazzling, and I cannot see it.

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