"Do you mind if I burn some sage?"

When Yuna went sit in the chair for the interview, his right hand pulled out up the chair as his left flashed a silver container small enough to be hidden in his palm.

Sage is a plant that from ancient times Native Americans have considered important as a medicinal plant and that was always used at ceremonies. Lighting dried sage and fumigating with the smoke is called smudging. Smudging is a sacred ceremony loved since ancient times by the native people because the sacred smoke cleanses ones energy field and purifies one internally. He pulls a small amount of sage from the date-marked silver can and as soon as he lights it with his lighter, begins calmly to inhale the smoke as if he is taking deep breaths.

"When I do this I calm down."

So saying he holds his hand up in the air and, as if drawing an S in the air, begins to spread the smoke through out the surroundings. In that instant, it seemed, mysteriously, as if time was flowing very peacefully.

The meeting room windows neighbored the railroad tracks.

Gently a clear atmosphere that was separated from the vulgar world filled the air of that small room.

The sage smoke gently wraps around the spirit Yuna reveals as he talks about the passionate feelings hidden in heart that seem to clash with his naiveté. Yuna left his hometown without any particular dream.

But now, with The FLARE he has at last found the dream for which he had been searching for so long and is standing strongly on his own two feet. Yuna has interior far more passionate than can be imagined from his quiet exterior. What kind of path has this person, Yuna, walked to get to where he is now?

- What were you like when you were little?
I was really wild.

- But you seemed like you were a studious child.
Ahaha. Is that what I seem like?

- Yes. That's how you seem. (laughs) You seem very quiet.
Not at all. (laughs) When I was little I was a very wild child. I was an energetic boy who was always covered in cuts and bruises, you know. I was a child who would always play and get cut up and would play outside and not come home until the sun went down. I was really lively. But it certainly does seem that I come off as being really quiet, on first impression. But when someone knows me for a while, they understand that I also have an inner dimension that is wild as far as feelings go. (laughs) Personally, I think that having both sides is what makes me me so I've decided to pay attention to that fact and treasure it.

- How old were you when you decided to move to Tokyo? I assume that you moved in order to make a living as a singer.
Yes, but in truth, I had not thought about anything definite and it wasn't like I had formed a band in my hometown and come to Tokyo thinking, "Yes! I'm moving to Tokyo as a member of this band!" I left for Tokyo shortly after I graduated from middle school (ninth grade) so I guess I was about 15. At the time I had been in a cover band in my hometown. At that time my favorites were Lenny Kravitz and Ozaki Yutaka but bands like LUNA SEA were really popular at that time and we did covers of them as well. Also, even though they were a different time period we did Boowy and Ziggy as well. At that time there was all around a boom of bands that were covering that sort of thing. When I started off I wasn't thinking anything like "I'm going to live by my music!" it's just that everyone was forming bands and rock was cool. That's how I was when I started off.

- Did you start off as a singer?
Yes. I was a vocalist from the beginning. It wasn't because I decided to sing, it just came naturally.

- But, now, I know how the story will end, but it seems that you didn't come to Tokyo fixated on the idea of singing so did you have some other thought in mind when you moved to Tokyo?
I guess at first my only reason was to get away from my house. My parents both worked and they didn't get along that well. At first they were deeply in love and they got married and had me but then my mom had to go out and work as well. And then my mom got unexpectedly involved with work. She was a so-called success. Although a normal housewife will just work part time she gradually became a manager. Her company was listed on the stock market and had branches all over Japan and it was the kind of company that really had hundreds of employees but in the end my mom became like the very highest among those hundreds of employees. My father was a typical father and had worked hard from a young age and little by little had some success but when my mother succeeded with such ease and when work became the center of her life he got lonely. For me as well, now I can talk about how my mom was at the time but when I was little I didn't have much imagination and so could only feel straightforward kindness.

When I think about it from my mother's point of view, both now and back then, I think that her love for me and my father was unchanged but in the past if she didn't say it straight out and hug me tightly, I didn't really feel her love or perhaps I was very unsure whether or not she loved me. But, now that I'm an adult I can feel her love strongly even though we're apart. Once my mother started to work my grandmom started doing the housework and the laundry and I really became my grandmom's child but the pattern of my daily life was very unusual. My dad was a normal salary man so he came home at seven in the evening but my mom would work until 2 or sometimes 3 at night. Because she would leave the house at 10 in the morning she and my father only met in passing. Because my grandmom took care of the housework it was not a stagnant time for things outside the emotional realm. But my father was unhappy and he was always fighting with my mother when she came home in the middle of the night. Because of that I gradually got to that point that I didn't want to be in that house any longer. It wasn't like I became a delinquent but I had a friend in the neighborhood who was in a similar position so his house became the hang out for everyone so I went over there a lot.

- Is that when you were listening to Ozaki Yukata's music?
Yes. Music became a major emotional support for me. For that reason I was captivated by Ozaki's lyrics. There were a lot of things that overlapped with me. There were a lot of those from "15 no yoru" to "Seventies Map" to "Kaiki-sen" and others. Because it seem like Ozaki himself had experienced a lot of pain there were a lot of links. For that reason, his music really helped me out back then.

- I see. So was your desire to escape your house became linked to music?
It was linked. But at that time I didn't think of music as the sustenance of my life, as important as breathing as I do now. In the past I used singing to escape, I suppose. It just seemed as if I was able to release something when I sang.

- But once you moved to Tokyo did you find some situation that allowed you to sing?
Well, there was no guarantee but I suppose as somewhat of an audition I sent a demo tape to my current management and they accepted it. By the way, the song I sang for that demo tape was Ozaki Yutaka's "Seventy map." So then I moved to Tokyo. At the time I just thought that as long as I was able to sing it would be okay. It wasn't that I was passionless but I wasn't really driven either. How to explain it? I guess there hadn't really been anything in my life up until then that had fired me up. I didn't feel like heading off to high school first. Back then I didn't want to do any more studying. I couldn't stand being in a crowd so for the most part I hadn't gone to school in middle school. To say I couldn't stand it, I guess I wasn't able to cooperate with other people. That makes it sound like I didn't have any friends, but that wasn't the case either. I had friends that lived close to me and we played together. As far as school went, I did some bad things and stood out so I guess I was like the boss of a few different groups. (laughs) But there was still a feeling that I couldn't interact with other people. How to describe it? For instance I really can't talk easily to people about popular television shows.

- Did you write lyrics back then?
I did. I don't really remember the lyrics I wrote back then but at first they were, as you might expect, like imitations of Ozaki-san's lyrics. And then I gradually began to write about myself and reality. But I had really gotten bored of days that were always the same. So I decided "I want to go to Tokyo," and set off. That's why at the time music was like, in truth, a reason for me to leave my house.

- I see. So you just went off to try to find something?
Yes. It was something like that. It wasn't that I came to Tokyo with a clear goal of I want to accomplish this and this. It was like if I go I think I'll discover something.

- So when you actually got to Tokyo how was it?
I formed a group with another kid who had been accepted through the same audition. It wasn't a band. It was like a boy band. Because even with something like that I was able to sing I felt like I had arrived. And so I did that for about two and a half years. I am grateful for that because I was able to experience many things. Our skill level was at a point that we didn't really deserve to be making a major debut but due to our youth and the producers and managers who fashioned us we were able to do a lot activities and we had a lot of different experiences.

It certainly was not the rock band or the rock style I wanted to do but to a certain extent I experienced performing live, recording and making an album. But while that was happening I was gradually growing up and as I met professionals in a variety of fields, I learned a lot and it got so there were a lot of people around me that would talk to me about the roots of Lenny Kravitz who I had loved from the start and then I got to the point where I would seek them out. And then I started loving people like Marvin Gaye, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, the so-called sixties musicians. I then I got really seriously into people like The Doors, Jim Morrison and Jimmy Hendrix. But in reality I was in a boy band.

- You felt like there was a gap within you?
Yeah. I felt it very strongly. I suppose I no longer knew what I should do. Now I can look back on it and talk about it but at the time I was not able to talk about those feelings rising inside of me. When those feelings peaked, one answer occurred to me and I began writing songs and lyrics by myself and began to think that I wanted to get out that situation. That is when I decided to start over as a solo artist. I guess I was about 18. But perhaps because I had experienced that internal sense of frustration I became very interested in emotional and spiritual things.

- Is the sage you are burning now part of that?
Yes. The truth is I have am very sensitive to spirits. But it's not that scary or unpleasant. I think that people are very spiritual so I don't think that spirits are frightening. I think that there is the body and the soul fills the body. I think that in the past people were about the converse with the earth and could even converse with the wind.

- During the photo shoot for this issue said, "If one goes to a quiet spot, one can hear the sound of the tree roots absorbing the water," and put your ear against the trunk of a tree.
Yes. Native Americans can even not converse with all living things. That is to say that even though in the current era civilization and technology are said to be progressing but we're degenerating spiritually and in the most important places. That's why when I say something like, "I’m very sensitive to spirits," people are like "What?" but I think it's normal for humans. The truth is Sugizo-san is also someone who notices things like that. When I talk with him we say things like, "We're translators."

- You mean like you are tools for communicating things that need to be said?
Exactly. Exactly.

- I really understand what you're saying. (laughs)
Yeah. Sugizo-san would say the same thing. (laughs)

- He would wouldn't he? (laughs) So how did you meet Sugizo-san?
A stylist whom we both knew introduced us. It was when I was about 17 or 18. It was when I was particularly troubled. At that age people get particularly angry with adults. It's a time when you go out in society and experience society's morals and method and ideals and stuff like that, isn't it? Well I was a little earlier than others since I got into music in the music industry at 15. I was often called, "Philosophic and sensible." But inside I was nothing like that and at that time I really hated myself for pushing that down and putting on a show. How to explain it? I guess it felt like I was dirtying myself. It was like I got the point where I could put on a smiling face. I was able to smile even if I wasn't particularly happy and there were times when I could say things I didn't truly think. And right at that point when I hated myself for acquiring feelings I never wanted to have I met Sugizo-san. It was right at the end of the time when Sugizo-san had halted activities with LUNA SEA and had gone solo I guess.

- You met that long ago? I thought that you had met when you decided to do this group.
No. I was actually a long time ago. I guess about 7 years. For that reason he was really like a good older brother to me all along. But now that we are doing The FLARE together I've felt something very similar from Sugizo-san. This thing called rock-n-roll can be passionate and destructive and violent and negative and it can be fashionable. Of course I strongly feel that rock = music = something fashionable and that's something I love about it but all along I was thinking that I wanted something more spirited, or perhaps, I wanted to feel that I was creating music. And Sugizo-san was someone who felt the same way. It's rather abstract but we often talk about how we want to use our music to purify the darkness and flood the world with light. I guess if one heard something like that out of no where it would be like "What are you talking about? What with this?" but we aren't joking, that is truly what we think.

The idea of wanting to bring a prayer or at least more spiritual and peaceful emotions to heavy rock and roll. That is precisely what The FLARE's sound is. In the sun's black spots, energy gathers until it reaches a certain threshold and explodes. That's a sun FLARE. But that flare is very harmful to humans. You can die from that flare. But being that the sun as a living being those explosions are essential. The high energy particles given off by that explosion slip through the earth's magnetic field and invade the earth. The atmosphere tries to stop them and they collide. From there comes the aurora.

It's that rather miraculous? Although it's very harmful for humans, if you look at it from another direction it's something that humans feel is very beautiful.

That's really incredible.

I think that if you look at it from a wide perspective music is the same way. Perhaps it's like just by expressing something nothing is accomplished. Or rather, I think that it is only when there is someone expressing something and someone listening that it begins to get big and begins to shine.

As far as the specifics go, with The FLARE, I am trying to communicate those incredibly important emotions while, as far as reality goes, I am a rock musician so I want to set my sights on getting big. I no longer feel like I'll be happy just as long as I can sing.

I want to sing something with meaning. And if I'm going to sing I want a lot of people to hear me. And with that I want continue such that there are deep emotions at the base of the music. Spirituality is something that can't be seen with the eyes and so one can become like a hermit.

That's why I think that The FLARE is a great challenge. But, as expected, because I have been born into this current world and am able to make music I want right now to hold on to the biggest dream, together with Sugizo-san.