Friday, November 23, 2007

   Kami

Kami was the drummer for the Japanese band Malice Mizer. He was born in the city of Ibaraki, Japan on February 1. Little is known about his personal life. However, he had a pleasant demeanor and was always smiling. He had a large collection of perfume bottles. He was called "Monkey Man" and said to be cheerful. Fans referred to him as the "cute member" of the group. Kami was extremely nervous though in interviews. He did not speak much because he was timid. However, many described him as kind hearted. He died in 1999 in his sleep of a subarachnoid hemorrhage. He was only 26 years old. Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Project History 3 Death 4 Personal life 5 Trivia 6 External links 7 See also [edit] Early life Ukyou Kamimura was born on February 1 in Japan. As a child in elementary school, Kami was very much interested in traditional Japanese brush writing and using an abacus (Soroban), therefore studying these fondly. However his affection for tennis was also present and a love for music began to develop within him, often sitting alone in the music room after school and listening to records for hours on end. His first interest in playing his own tunes was in his fifth year at school when he began to practice on a drum kit. Although he was unusually talented at this, Kami left and didn't return to drumming until early high school. Early influences of Kami included many of the british New Wave bands, including Culture Club and Duran Duran. Between this time, Kami devoted his afterschool hours to practicing his favourite hobby, tennis. [edit] Project History At the beginning of his high school years, Kami was invited into a friend's band, initially, his interest was in being a guitarist. After practicing for a short time, he decided that his talent for this was surpassed greatly by his drumming skills, returning to this shortly thereafter. Kami's fondness for drumming began to evolve and therefore a personal drum kit was a necessity, so he took up a part time job and subsequently saved up the necessary money. Due to his newly found adoration for his instrument, Kami practiced approximately 5 hours a day on weekdays and all day on Sundays, hastily developing his technique. As a result of this practice, he made a decision to go professional. Realizing that he could not achieve a large amount of success in his current high school band after graduation, Kami came to the conclusion that this success he sought could only come in the nation capital, Tokyo. Upon leaving his previous group and moving, Kami spent a brief time in a punk band before taking a liking to the visual kei style and as a result, joined an up and coming musical group called Kneuklid Romance. Playing mainly live shows, Kami soon attracted the attention of Yu~ki, a bassist from a fellow visual kei band, Malice Mizer. Due to Malice Mizer's previous drummer, Gaz, leaving (who would ironically shortly thereafter join Kneuklid Romace), the band was very keen on introducing Kami to their style of music. He was reluctant at first, although a phone call from one of their guitarists, Mana, persuaded him. Therefore, Kami began to play unofficially for six months as a support player. However, soon after, the other members of Malice Mizer agreed upon recruiting him as a whole new member of the group. Upon Kami's recruitment into the group, Malice Mizer released their debut album, Memoire, his first inclusion in a publicly released album. This album proved to be a mild success and shortly thereafter, their lead singer, Tetsu, abandoned the group. After a year of inactivity, the group recruited a new vocalist, Gackt. They performed numerous live shows and released two albums. This was a very exciting period for the band and they developed a very flamboyant and colourful fashion sense with a heavy usage of capes, exuberant hair colours, latex and costumes. However, in mid 1999, Gackt announced his departure from the group to begin his own solo career. The remainder of the group began a dark period with a heavy usage of contrasting whites and blacks in their clothing, although, Kami would never see this. [edit] Death On June 21, 1999, a subarachnoid hemorrhage killed Kami in his sleep at the age of just 26 years old. His body was discovered four days later. Unusually, his funeral was held the same day, with only his band members, Mana, Közi and Yu~ki attending, as well as his parents and a few close friends. Gackt, who had just launched his solo career, was on tour at the time and did not hear about the death of his close friend until about a week later. He was reportedly very devastated. In the months before his death, Kami had taken to composing music, writing two complete songs, 'Unmei no Deai' and 'Mori no naka no tenshi'. These would later be released on the memorial album 'Shinwa'. [edit] Personal life Kami was often regarded as the silly and over the top person of the group, nick named 'Monkey Man' by Közi due to him constantly jumping around and being childish. Despite this, often in interviews he acted very timid and never talked much and he has stated to be very quiet and trusting, joking that it made it easy to cheat him. Kami was a person of many hobbies and interests, his main being tennis, which he had played since his early childhood, as well as buying lottery tickets when bored. He also was fond of collecting many perfumes and shampoos, one hobby that was shared by fellow group member Yu~ki which often led to them trading and recommending various products to each other. Kami also had an interest in the Sengoku era army general, Shingen Takeda. He was known to attend the Shingen Takeda festival every year, stating that he was glum he could not spare any time from Malice Mizer as he wanted to be a part of the celebration. Alongside this love of the army general, was his interest in the ritualistic suicide, seppuku. Often, Kami would have photos taken of himself mimicking the act in costume. [edit] Trivia His colors were pink and purple in Malice Mizer He was very obsessed with the imagery and symbolism of the butterfly and he had at least three tattoos on his arm, all of butterflies. He was also known to have bought anything he saw that had to do with butterflies One of his favorite anime/manga series was Leji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 and he even cosplayed the lead role Maetel (in both traditional wear and a special pink leopard print edition) He claimed that the first thing in the morning he did was smoke a cigarette He was fond of working out Enjoyed the music of Duran Duran and Culture Club in his youth Kami was fond of historic Japanese military and seppuku One of his favorite foods was meat and onion curry He enjoyed playing tennis Kami loved to "flirt" with Gackt as well as annoy and "bother" Yu~ki Gackt wrote two songs in memory of Kami that were both released on his Mars album - "Emu~for my dear~" and "U+K" KAMI TRIBUTE ~Kyoko~