Fish Action Gets Your Body Movin’ [Saturday Timewaster]

by 23 Comments

Sakanaction (サカナクション) is a Japanese rock band hailing from Sapporo, Japan. Formed in 2005, their music is a mix of alt rock, electro pop, and sometimes – a little bit of everything. I actually just discovered these guys recently, and instantly fell in love. Their music is pretty unique and some of their music videos are really cool. I hope you enjoy them too.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1awua0YrSRs&feature=fvst']

The band consists of five members: Ichiro Yamaguchi (vocals & guitar), Motoharu Iwadera (guitar), Ami Kusakari (bass), Emi Okazaki (keyboard), and Keiichi Ejima (drums). Sakanaction is a combination of the Japanese word for fish, sakana, and the English word, action. Together we have Sakanaction. Or just Fish Action, but no not really – no one calls them that – that’s just silly name. Fish Action, psh.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZZk2Mq_yjA']

The band claims the fish symbolism in their name reflects their wish to act quickly and lightly, like a fearless fish in the sea not fearing changes in the music industry. Sakanaction has been enjoying increased popularity lately, and has even achieved some mainstream success by appearing on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 charts.

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Ichiro Yamaguchi, Sakanaction’s creator, was originally from a band by the name of Dutchman, which he started in 1998 with a few of his friends from high school including Motoharu Iwadera (the guitarist of Sakanaction). From 2000 to 2003, they released one maxi single titled Fly, one album titled Demonstration, and a single titled Mikazuki Sunset that was only sold at their live performances.

Unfortunately however, the band did not gain much recognition. In 2004, the members of Dutchman disbanded, leaving Yamaguchi to continue on alone with the project. Wanting to try his hand at something different, Yamaguchi then began performing as a live DJ at night clubs.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6wzjpCvec']

One year later, Sakanaction was born in 2005. When Yamaguchi was working at a record store, he heard the song Owari no Kisetsu by Rei Harakami and it inspired him to create a new, totally awesome band. Enter Sakanaction. Yamaguchi founded Sakanaction together with Iwadera, while Kusakari left another band to join the ranks of Sakanaction. Ejima was introduced by a mutual friend, and Okazaki was one of the other people working at the record store with Yamaguchi.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo4JPwCdXTU']

We made a new band together and named it “Sakanaction”. When I first suggested “What do you think of the name Sakanaction?”, he said “I hate it”, but I forced.
-Yamaguchi

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Sakanaction first started to gain mass appeal during the 2006 Rising Sun Rock Festival and the band’s first physical release was Go to the Future in 2007. Three songs originally from Dutchman were also rereleased as Sakanaction releases. Mikazuki Sunset and Inner World were included in Go to the Future while Word was part of a digital download release, and later made it to the NIGHT FISHING album.

On August 9, 2008, Sakanaction performed as one of the main acts on one of Japan’s top music stations, “Music On!” in an event called Summer Sonic ’08. Sakanaction performed alongside Paul Weller, The Fratellis, Death Cab for Cutie, Cajun Dance Party, Band of Horses, Blood Red Shoes, and These New Puritans. Not too bad.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdWX0IDhbCU&feature=related']

On December 26, 2008, Sakanaction made it to #9 on Billboard’s Japan Hot 100 list with their single Sentorei. The song moved from #91 to #9 in just four weeks. This was a big accomplishment for Sakanaction.

In December of 2008 the band announced their third album, Shinshiro, which ended up being released in January of 2009. The album debuted at #8 on the Oricon weekly charts. Sakanaction held a national promotional tour, Sakanquarium2009, in February and March of 2009. On January 13, 2010, the band released the single Aruku Around, which hit #3 on the Oricon weekly charts.

On August 8, 2010 they made appearances at both the Summer Sonic and the World Happiness 2010 rock festivals in Tokyo. I don’t know about you, but any rock festival by the name of World Happiness sounds like a pretty good time to me.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZbXHt3xPr8']

So far they have 5 full length albums and 3 EPs. I for one am very much looking forward to hearing whatever they have to offer in the future. I think my favorite song and video is the last one included on this page (I really like that one man dance line). What’s your favorite?

P.S. Did you know that Sakanaction has a Twitter? Well so does Tofugu.
P.P.S. Want to share some other lesser known bands? Leave us a comment on Facebook or Google+.

All band information obtained from Sakanaction’s Wikipedia and Last.fm pages.

  • Hijack5

    Sakanaction <3
    Bach no Senritsu wo Yoru ni Kiita Sei desu is my favourite song. The one man line dance <3 Everytime I watch that
    video it makes me want to copy that dance move.

    I also like Aruku Around which is the first song I heard of theirs and the video is
    simply amazing. It's well choregraphed and the timing is spot on. One of my favourite music video!
    Native Dancer video is pretty cool and it makes me want to buy trainers (sneakers) xD

  • Hijack5

    Oh, when I first heard about them, I thought it was read as Sakana kushon (Fish Cushion?) xD

  • threadbrains

    Geeeez. Enough with the pop already. Bands like Acid Others Temple, Corrupted, Birushannah, Toru Takemitsu, Cavo, Ametsub, Filfla, Envy, Boredoms, Yann Tomita seem like the more significant musical export and perhaps more worthy of props in front such an earnest audience. I mean, for posterity’s sake; these are some of the artists that will actually affect future music. Why not help them along that path, rather than promoting these inessential  and ubiquitous radio-friendly groups?

    On second thoughts, I’d be kind of confused seeing that sort of content here.
    Bah. I guess this is why I read Tokyo Damage Report.

  • John

    Sorry to hear you haven’t been enjoying our music posts lately. While some of the bands you mentioned might be more musically significant, not many of them have PVs (at least not that I could find) and the ones that did only had a few and/or weren’t very interesting. I like to share music that is both enjoyable and has some cool music videos to go along with it. I actually really enjoy Ametsub but their music/image videos (while appropriate for the music) just aren’t that entertaining on their own, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of times I’ll run across a really cool non-pop, underground/indie/whatever band, but they just don’t have enough content out to make for a full post :(

  • John

    Yeah I was really impressed with Aruku Around the first time I saw it. One-take videos are always pretty interesting – I also really liked what they did with the characters lining up for the lyrics. Very cool.

  • Lillian

    Everyone who cares about Boredoms/V∞redoms already knows about them — they’ve been around since what, 86?  (Hell, I first heard them on a US college radio station in the deep south more than 12 years ago.) Why do people trying to show off their Japanese music street cred still name-drop them?
    Some of these pop groups may last longer than you’d think. And yes, actually, this IS why there is more than one blog that posts about music on the internet!  That whole “there’s a wide variety of music out there” thing.

    Music snobbery sucks.

  • Anonymous

    Wow, these guys are great. Thanks for the post *_*

  • Tilly

    My favorite band! Thank you for posting <3

    Let's see, my favorite songs are Antaresu to Hari and Omotesandō 26-ji. But Aruku Around was the first song I liked of theirs, and definitely has a cool music video.

  • John

    You’re welcome! Glad you like them.

  • kitsuki

    nice, i feel like i’ve heard a couple their songs before, i liked the songs you included.
    I really like Rintoshiteshigure　「凛として時雨」, they aren’t that well known to audiences outside Japan。

  • Anonymous

    Loving them! I need to expand my fields of Jmusic from Johnny’s and the like…though I DO love Johnny’s ….I got really into Cocoa Otoko, but now they’re gonna disband…

  • Anonymous

    omg how DARE they post about bands they like and want to share with other people? What is this, the internet?

  • p_ó

    Seriously, the bands I enjoy are FAR better than the bands others enjoy.

    *monocle*

  • http://www.japaneseruleof7.com/ Ken Seeroi

    That’s a much better name!  Like Fish Pillow.  Great image.

    Reminds me of the band Glay, who meant to spell their name Gray, but  screwed up the spelling.  Guess it pays to stay awake in English class.

  • Sarahcfgirl

    Haha wow. I ended up downloading 5 out of these 8 songs right on the spot.

    My personal favorite is the Aruku Around video. The catchy music, plus all of the different ways they “display” the lyrics were just awesome and actually hypnotizing. (Somehow, I unintentionally watched the video 4 times tonight already.) And of course–the fact that it ends right where it began, like the video is on loop–that was a pretty neat way to end a music video.

  • http://twitter.com/eennnnuuhh inna dizon

    The song isn’t on here, but Ame wa Kimagure is probably one of my favorite songs form Sakanaction. 

    Great post, btw! :D 

    You should check out ONE OK ROCK too, if you like gritty, almost grunge music as well. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBqXV3fAMNo

  • John

    Yeah, I’ve been listening to One Ok Rock for a while now – they’re pretty good!

  • John

    Yeah I really like everything about that video too. Glad you enjoyed it!

  • http://twitter.com/eennnnuuhh inna dizon

    They’re probably one of my favorite groups out there atm. What’s your favorite song of theirs? 

    I hope you don’t get annoyed by constant suggestions for other groups to listen to (haha!), but you should also check out Applicat Spectra as well, a rookie group from the same record company as ONE OK ROCK. :)

  • John

    I think this was one of the first songs I heard from them and it’s still one of my favorites, haha. But yeah, thanks for the suggestion – I’ll give Applicat Spectra a listen.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shBEnmvIppo 

  • John

    And I just listened to セントエルモ, and that was NOT the voice I was expecting out of that singer, hahaha – I like it though.

  • Lana

    Have you guys heard DOES?

  • Aiyah

    This article follows the wikipedia version so closely……