Oshi-Katsu Chronicle 1995: "Ganbaro KOBE" and Quake Relief, Evangelion Goes on Air, and Windows 95 Lands

On January 17, 1995, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck, causing severe damage in Kobe and surrounding areas. Concerts and fundraisers were held across Japan to support the affected region, and Kobe’s baseball team fought the season under the banner “Ganbaro KOBE” (“Hang in there, KOBE”).

In arcades, “Print Club” (Purikura) booths arrived, printing out sheets of small photo stickers to take home and trade with friends. In the fall, the TV anime Neon Genesis Evangelion began, and the Japanese version of the PC operating system Windows 95 went on sale.

“Ganbaro KOBE”: Cheering the Team of a Stricken City

The earthquake hit the Orix BlueWave, Kobe’s professional baseball team, as well. Wearing a “Ganbaro KOBE” patch on the right sleeve of their uniforms, the club opened the season at Green Stadium Kobe in April. Orix Buffaloes look back (in Japanese)

Led by manager Akira Ogi, the team surged ahead and clinched its first Pacific League pennant against Seibu on September 19, finishing 82-47 with one tie. Ichiro recorded a .342 batting average, 25 home runs, 80 RBIs and 49 stolen bases, earning Pacific League MVP honors for the second straight year. Nippon Professional Baseball (in Japanese)

82-47-1

Wins, losses and one tie

.342

Ichiro's batting average

2nd

Straight MVP award

Source: Nippon Professional Baseball

Although Orix lost the Japan Series 4 games to 1 to Katsuya Nomura’s Yakult Swallows, crowds packed the stadium in Kobe throughout the autumn. Across the Pacific, Hideo Nomo joined the Los Angeles Dodgers and notched 13 wins and 236 strikeouts with his “Tornado” windup, turning his back to the batter. He started the MLB All-Star Game in July and won National League Rookie of the Year. MLB / Number Web (in Japanese)

At the November Grand Sumo Tournament, older brother Wakanohana and younger brother Takanohana both finished at 12-3, meeting in the first championship playoff between brothers in sumo history. After a default in their regulation bout, Wakanohana won the title playoff by hikiotoshi (hand pull-down). Nippon.com (in Japanese)

Charity Concerts and Fundraisers: Artists and Fans Join the Relief Effort

In the music world too, efforts to support the disaster zone spread immediately after the quake. On the January 22 broadcast of Music Station, Keisuke Kuwata and Mr.Children performed their charity single “Kiseki no Chikyu” (“Miracle Earth”) to send encouragement to the region. On March 7, a Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake charity concert took place at Nippon Budokan, featuring Kyosuke Himuro, Tomoyasu Hotei, Fumiya Fujii and others. Kyosuke Himuro official site (in Japanese)

From the end of January into early February, Johnny & Associates (now SMILE-UP.) called on fans at concert venues to donate relief supplies. Members of Hikaru GENJI SUPER 5, TOKIO and KinKi Kids sorted donated blankets and clothing and stood outside JR Osaka Station to collect street donations. SMILE-UP. activity record (in Japanese)

Appeals at venues

Asked fans coming to concerts to donate relief supplies.

Sorting supplies and fundraising

Idol groups also took part in sorting supplies and collecting donations on the street.

Charity concerts

Concerts were held to support the affected area.

The agency’s relief work continued afterward, and in December 1997 TOKIO, V6 and KinKi Kids formed the recovery project “J-FRIENDS.” Active until March 2003—when children who were first-graders at the time of the quake finished compulsory education—J-FRIENDS donated a total of ¥918,226,449. SMILE-UP. activity record (in Japanese)

GLAY’s Tour Sells Out All 10 Shows, and L’Arc-en-Ciel Heads to Budokan

It was also a year when visual kei and rock bands expanded from live houses into concert halls and Nippon Budokan. GLAY released their first major-label album, SPEED POP, on March 1, peaking at No. 8 on Oricon’s weekly chart. All 10 shows of their national tour “SPEED POP STANDING GIG,” starting April 22, sold out on the day tickets went on sale, wrapping up at Shibuya Public Hall on June 12. GLAY official site (in Japanese)

The album included earlier singles such as “RAIN,” “Manatsu no Tobira,” “Kanojo no ‘Modern…’” and “Freeze My Love.” In April the band launched their first regular radio program in the Kanto region, followed by the hit single “Yes, Summerdays” in August. GLAY official site (in Japanese)

In May of the same year, Kuroyume won their first Oricon weekly No. 1 with their third album feminism. L’Arc-en-Ciel released their album heavenly on September 1 and held their first Nippon Budokan concert, “Asialive ‘95,” on December 27, selling out tickets in 28 minutes. Yamaha Music Communications (in Japanese) / L’Arc-en-Ciel official site (in Japanese)

DREAMS COME TRUE, H Jungle with t and Namie Amuro: TV and Drama Hits

On July 24, DREAMS COME TRUE released “LOVE LOVE LOVE / Arashi ga Kuru,” the theme and insert song for the TBS drama Aishite Iru to Itte Kure (Tell Me That You Love Me), starring Etsushi Toyokawa and Takako Tokiwa. Telling the story of a deaf painter and an aspiring actress communicating through sign language, the drama sparked interest in sign language while the single sold 2.489 million copies to top Oricon’s annual chart. DREAMS COME TRUE official site (in Japanese) / ORICON NEWS (in Japanese)

On March 15, H Jungle with t—the unit of Downtown comedian Masatoshi Hamada and producer Tetsuya Komuro—released “WOW WAR TONIGHT: Toki ni wa Okose yo Movement.” Born from banter on the music variety show HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP, it sold over 2.13 million copies. At the 37th Japan Record Awards at year’s end, trf’s “Overnight Sensation: Jidai wa Anata ni Yudanetteru,” also produced by Komuro, won the grand prize. Avex corporate history (in Japanese) / Japan Composers Association (in Japanese)

Million sellers arrived one after another, including Spitz’s “Robinson,” Mr.Children’s “Tomorrow never knows” and “Seesaw Game: Yuukan na Koi no Uta,” and MY LITTLE LOVER’s “Hello, Again: Mukashi kara Aru Basho.” On television, Shinji Nojima’s youth drama Miseinen (Underage), starring Issei Ishida, Shingo Katori and Takashi Sorimachi, also drew strong viewership. Japan Composers Association (in Japanese)

Namie Amuro teamed up with producer Tetsuya Komuro starting with October’s “Body Feels EXIT” and achieved her first million seller with December’s “Chase the Chance.” Fans began adopting her dyed brown hair, thin eyebrows, miniskirts and platform boots, a look that entered the Buzzword of the Year top ten as “Amuraa” in 1996. ORICON NEWS (in Japanese) / Jiyu Kokuminsha: 1996 (in Japanese)

Print Club (Purikura) and Air Max 95: Arcade Booths and Street Footwear Crazes

In July, “Print Club” (Purikura), a photo-sticker booth jointly developed by Atlus and Sega, arrived in game arcades. For ¥300 a play, users chose a decorative frame on screen, posed for the camera, and received a sheet of 16 tiny peel-off photo stickers. Sega product history (in Japanese) / Atlus corporate history (in Japanese)

Game arcades had previously been dominated by male players, but Purikura brought long lines of junior high and high school girls. Cutting apart sticker sheets to swap with friends and filling notebook pages (puri-cho) became a daily ritual, and fans toured different arcades to find limited-edition celebrity and character frames. Sega product history (in Japanese)

In street fashion, Nike’s “Air Max 95” running shoe sparked a nationwide craze. Featured heavily in street magazines like Boon for its gray-to-neon-yellow gradient and visible air soles, pairs commanded huge markups at parallel-import shops, and muggings for the shoes (“Air Max hunting”) made national news.

On November 1, the “Yurikamome” automated transit line opened between Shinbashi and Ariake on Tokyo’s waterfront. Crossing the Rainbow Bridge along the bay, it became the main transit link to Tokyo Big Sight, which would host Comic Market and major concerts starting the following year. Yurikamome corporate profile (in Japanese)

Windows 95 and Telehodai: Looking Up Information and Writing Impressions From Home

On November 23, Microsoft released the Japanese edition of Windows 95. Long lines formed in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district for the midnight launch, with television crews broadcasting the countdown live. UPI report from the time

That year brought three major shifts in how households connected to networks and what it cost.

1. July

   PHS service begins

   A portable phone system separate from mobile phones appears.

2. August

   Telehodai begins

   A service that makes calls to designated phone numbers a flat rate late at night and early in the morning.

3. November

   Windows 95 Japanese version released

   Interest in PCs grows, and more people start using the internet from home.

Because home PCs connected to the internet and computer networks via dial-up modems over standard phone lines, telephone charges climbed with every minute online. NTT’s “Telehodai” service, launched in August, made calls to designated access numbers a flat monthly rate between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m., giving rise to “Teleho Time” as fans logged on right after 11 p.m. JPNIC (in Japanese)

Membership in commercial computer networks (pasokon tsushin) more than tripled from 1.15 million in 1991 to 3.69 million in 1995. Late-night exchanges of concert setlists, tour dates and anime episode reviews began spreading from network forums to personal websites. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (in Japanese)

Evangelion and Whisper of the Heart: Anime and Games Expand

On October 4, director Hideaki Anno’s TV anime Neon Genesis Evangelion began airing on the TV Tokyo network every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., following 14-year-old Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley Soryu as pilots of the multipurpose humanoid decisive weapon Evangelion battling mysterious beings called Angels. TV Tokyo (in Japanese)

Its rapid-cut typography, psychological direction and the mysteries woven through the story—along with Yoko Takahashi’s opening theme “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” (“Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis”)—sparked intense debate in anime magazines and late-night computer-network forums, building toward the television finale in March 1996.

In theaters, Studio Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba), directed by Yoshifumi Kondo with screenplay and storyboards by Hayao Miyazaki, opened on July 15. Depicting the encounter between book-loving junior high student Shizuku Tsukishima and aspiring violin maker Seiji Amasawa to Yoko Honna’s theme song “Country Road,” it ranked No. 1 among domestic films in 1995 with ¥1.85 billion in distribution revenue, and fans began visiting the real-world hillside streets and round rotary around Seiseki-Sakuragaoka Station on the Keio Line. Studio Ghibli (in Japanese) / Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (in Japanese)

In home video games, Square released the Super Famicom RPG Chrono Trigger on March 11, bringing together Yuji Horii, Akira Toriyama and Hironobu Sakaguchi for a time-traveling story with multiple endings and a “New Game+” replay system. On October 13, Konami released the PlayStation version of Tokimeki Memorial: forever with you, expanding the boom in high-school romance simulation games. Square Enix (in Japanese) / Konami Digital Entertainment (in Japanese)

Summer’s Comic Market 48 ran for three days for the first time to mark its 20th anniversary, drawing 250,000 attendees. Winter’s Comic Market 49 drew 220,000 over two days, closing out the Harumi exhibition grounds used since 1981 before moving to Tokyo Big Sight in 1996. Comic Market Preparation Committee (in Japanese)

250,000

Comic Market 48 attendance

220,000

Comic Market 49 attendance

Source: Comic Market Preparation Committee

Key Events of the Year

1. Jan. 17The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake strikesSociety
2. Jan. 22Takanohana wins his first tournament as yokozunaSports
3. Mar. 1GLAY releases "SPEED POP" (peaks at No. 8 on Oricon)Music
4. Mar. 7A charity concert for the earthquake is held at the Nippon BudokanMusic
5. Mar. 15H Jungle with t releases "WOW WAR TONIGHT"Music
6. Mar. 20The Tokyo subway sarin attack occursSociety
7. Apr. 22GLAY's national tour begins; all 10 shows sell out immediatelyMusic
8. MayKuroyume's "feminism" debuts at No. 1 on OriconMusic
9. July 1PHS service beginsTechnology
10. July 24Dreams Come True releases "LOVE LOVE LOVE / Arashi ga kuru"Music
11. Aug. 18–20Comic Market 48 (first 3-day run; 250,000 total visits)Fan works
12. Aug."Tele-Hodai" begins, a flat rate for late-night phone callsTelecom
13. Sept.The Orix BlueWave win the league pennantSports
14. Oct. 4Neon Genesis Evangelion begins broadcasting (TV Tokyo network)Anime
15. Nov. 23Windows 95 Japanese edition goes on sale; crowds line up in AkihabaraTechnology
16. Nov. 26Wakanohana and Takanohana meet in the first-ever brothers' title playoffSports
17. Dec. 4Namie Amuro releases "Chase the Chance"Music
18. Dec. 31The 37th Japan Record Awards; trf wins the Grand PrixMusic

1. Jan 17Great Hanshin-Awaji EarthquakeSevere damage in Kobe
2. Mar 7Charity concertHeld at Nippon Budokan
3. JulPrint Club (Purikura)Photo-sticker booths launch
4. Oct 4Evangelion beginsOn the TV Tokyo network
5. Nov 23Windows 95 in JapanMidnight lines in Akihabara
6. DecChase the ChanceNamie Amuro's first million-seller

Even in a hard year, support kept finding new places to happen.

The Year’s Buzzword Awards

Grand PrizeMutoha ("the unaffiliated," voters with no party loyalty)

Yukio Aoshima

Grand PrizeNOMO

Hideo Nomo

Grand PrizeGanbarou KOBE ("Hang in there, Kobe")

Akira Ogi

Top 10Lifeline (essential services such as convenience stores after the earthquake)

Hiroo Kurita

Top 10Anzen shinwa (the "myth of safety")

Atsuyuki Sassa

Top 10Da-yo-ne (DA-YO-NE) / Ma, ikka (MA-I-C-CA) (song by EAST END x YURI)

EAST END x YURI

Top 10Kawaranakya ("We have to change," a Nissan slogan)

Yoshifumi Tsuji

Top 10Kankan settai (wining and dining of officials by officials)

Yoshio Inoue

Top 10Mitame de erande nani ga warui no! ("What's wrong with choosing by looks!")

Asaka Seto

Top 10Internet

Jun Murai

The grand prizes at the Buzzword of the Year awards were “Muto-ha” (“nonpartisan voters”), “NOMO” and “Ganbaro KOBE.” “Internet” also made the top ten. The awards went to Tokyo Governor Yukio Aoshima, Dodgers pitcher Hideo Nomo and Orix manager Akira Ogi. Jiyu Kokuminsha (in Japanese)

In 1996, Pocket Monsters Red and Green and Tamagotchi appear, while the Monday-night drama Long Vacation and the “Amuraa” phenomenon sweep the streets.