X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 2
3. Kinjirareta Asobi
[Forbidden Plaything]

All musicians have limitless imaginations, but in the middle of ordinary days surrounded by music, I think there is one main cause that makes our many musical talents start to bloom.

That was the case with me. We had a guitar in my house and my father used to play it. My family wasn't one that would give us education in things we enjoyed, so whenever my father played the guitar, I would sit next to him and watch, and for some reason, I remembered it.

The first time I copied his playing, the guitar was a "forbidden plaything." I was in second grade. It was the first time I held a guitar, and after I challenged the idea of a "forbidden plaything," 3 months passed, and I could play it. At the same time, I got on stage at our second grade school assembly for the first time.

That was an opportunity for me, and more and more I became a prisoner of the guitar and then music.

The genre of music was expanding for me, and when I heard the Beatles and Queen for the first time, I definitely received a shock.

I wanted to be like that someday. Just like people who have found an interest in music for the first time, I wanted to make music like the music which was able to influence me.

As an aside, out of all the songs of Queen that I heard, the one that really struck me was "We are the Champions" [trans note: Taiji spells it as "We are The CHAMPION"]. But I couldn't accept that vocalist Freddie Mercury's homosexuality was the cause of him passing away, and it was a great shock to me.