with reports from Apa Agbayani
“We made it this far!”
Hikaru Utada knew very well what it took for a lot of us there at Hong Kong’s AsiaWorld-Arena to get to see them play a show.
For some, it was the long wait. The Japanese-American singer-songwriter had rarely gone on global tours (Utada: In the Flesh 2010 being the notable exception as they circuited the United States plus London, which they now call home).
For some, it was the distance. Many in the crowd had travelled from across the region, perhaps even the world, to see the show. (Personally, I had to book a two-hour flight out of Manila.)
The SCIENCE FICTION Tour 2024 marks 25 years since Utada’s major debut with twin blockbusters ‘time will tell’ and ‘Automatic’, which also poetically bookend their setlist. This tour and the eponymous “best of” album have been put on to commemorate this milestone.
Someone from the crowd bellowed, ｢おめでとう｣ (omedetou) – congratulations in Japanese, and like clockwork, people from different corners of the colossal room followed suit.
｢ありがとう｣ (arigatou), Utada sheepishly said their thanks.
A few months ago, I spoke with Utada prior to the release of SCIENCE FICTION, the album. I asked what it was like to prepare for something like this and go back to the live stage after a long time (without counting their Coachella 2022 stint).
“I'm not great at taking things in as they're happening because there's so much to take in. I guess that's why I write songs about stuff later on, so it might take a little time.”
“You just have to see what happens,” they said about their experience leading up to the concert tour. “There's planning that can be done, and then some parts just can't be planned. It just kind of unravels on the stage.”
For a part of their career, Utada had been saying how they shied away from crowds, often bristling at the thought of huge gatherings or tours like this, much more if they had to be under the spotlight themself.
“Part of the reason is because I’ve never been comfortable around lots of people,” they told the crowd on the second night (18 August) of the two-day stop. “Parties and celebrations were not really my thing, especially when it was for me.”
Lately though, they insisted that they’ve done some maturing, in the words of ｢BADモード｣ (BAD Mode). “I’ve grown up a little bit, and I trust people and everyone way more than I used to," they said.
Going to this corner of the planet, Utada said that they didn’t quite know what to expect, in between spiels in Cantonese they had diligently practised, admittedly just to “show off” (while also acknowledging that citizens of the former British colony can, in fact, perfectly understand English). A typhoon was passing through their other home, Japan, so they got an extra day for themself (a few art gallery visits were on the agenda, as they later shared on Instagram Stories).
Everyone, themself included, had waited for all of this to fall into place. They were going to make that trip count.
“I wanted to celebrate not just my 25 years, but I wanted to come and celebrate everyone’s 25 years. おめでとう (Congratulations) to everyone, too!”
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I’d like to think that there’s a Hikaru Utada song for every moment of my life.
Music tends to be tangled with memories, for better or worse. Songs get tethered to milestones, as if they were needle drops in this cruel and tragic (sometimes melodramatic) movie called life.
So, indulge me and my main character syndrome.
For me (and perhaps dozens more of our dear readers, too), it just so happens that it’s Utada whose resonant, transportive voice I hear in the background of it all.
I had just turned 8 years old a day before Utada debuted with Automatic/time will tell (9 December 1998). But it wasn’t later, as an 11-year-old kid, when I first saw Hikki as a cyborg in the ‘Can You Keep A Secret?’ video. MTV was switched on, on one sleepless school night at a godforsaken time. In the bigger scheme of things though, I can shrug it off as an inconsequential, mundane moment. But it certainly flung gateways open.
In my freshman year of high school, I got my hands on a copy of their first singles collection, mouthing along to romanised lyric sheets, way before I took up Japanese seriously and understood its nuances (to think in that language, any mentor would say). For the longest time, images from the epic, ahead-of-its time spectacle that was 2006’s United tour (not to mention its transcendent rendition of ｢光｣ (Hikari) and mind-blowing take on ‘traveling’) had long been ingrained in the deep recesses of my brain.
Many years later, however, encounters with Utada’s music wouldn’t be as ephemeral nor trivial.
Interview: Hikaru Utada opens portals through time in SCIENCE FICTION
Hikaru Utada goes in depth discussing all things ‘SCIENCE FICTION’ and the last 25 years as an artist https://t.co/AT2Vtb8bpC #HikaruUtada #HikaruUtada25 pic.twitter.com/8K7cuJzC8W
— Bandwagon (@BandwagonAsia) April 15, 2024
I fell in love for the first time – the idealistic naïf that I am – with the person I thought I’d follow until the end of the world, quite fittingly, to the tune of ‘Beautiful World’ (plus Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Futile Devices’, not that you asked). “I only have eyes for you, no question / Beautiful boy, yet unaware of his own beauty” (迷わず君だけを見つめている / Beautiful boy､ 自分の美しさまだ知らないの); I lived it all.
We used to bond over JRPGs: Final Fantasy, Persona, and a few more of those formative titles from the canon. Naturally, his first gift to me was a remastered collection of the earlier Kingdom Hearts games, whose ubiquitous theme tunes ｢光｣ (elsewhere called ‘Simple and Clean’) and ‘Passion’ (a.k.a. ‘Sanctuary’, not on this set list) form core memories for many of us who grew up playing them. We both even knew all their Japanese and English words by heart, singing it on car rides.
I was already approaching my 30s, and I had just been starting to embrace my queer asexual self. To be honest, I never thought I would fall in love, much less commit to a relationship.
Yet there I was.
In many ways, Utada had been singing about alienation way before the lexicon offered them clarity about their nonbinary identity, as if it had lifted a burden. While calling them a queer prophet would be glib, despite the “high gay count of [their] fan populace,” their music equipped me with the language (albeit one totally foreign to me back then) to channel the tumult within. Or maybe, as Bradley Stern put it with Exodus, it was all less “about conveying an emotion” than “an exercise in letting go.”
We started dating a month or two after my blip of an autumn trip to Tokyo, when I bought myself a copy of – I swear I’m not making this up – 2018’s 『初恋』 (Hatsu Koi), literally “first love,” at the Shibuya Scramble Tsutaya.
Fast forward six years later. A few weeks after my call with Utada (which I would forever treasure), all of it crumbled.
In the epilogue, I felt like a stranger in my own city, Manila, as if it had turned indifferent and purgatorial overnight. My stomping grounds, otherwise teeming with life, turned into uncanny liminal spaces. But I found refuge and catharsis in the anguished words of ‘Letters’: “Even in my dreams or just over the phone / I want to hear your voice / You were bad at exchanging words / So you always left letters behind.” (夢の中でも、電話越しでも / 声を聞きたいよ / 言葉交わすのが苦手な君は / いつも置き手紙)
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過ぎ去りし days, 優しい歌を聴かせて。
Days long past, let me hear a comforting song.出会った頃の気持ちを今でも覚えてますか？
Do you still remember how you felt in the early days, when we met?So goodbye innocence, 何も知らずにはしゃいでたあの頃へはもう戻れないね。
So goodbye innocence, we can’t return to those days we frolicked unaware.— ‘Goodbye Happiness’
At the concert, surrounded by strangers (save for my best friend Apa beside me), I found myself tearing up. And I’m not ashamed to confess it. The moment I heard the opening notes of ‘Letters,’ I was already expecting it. Then it happened again – maybe four times more (but I had sworn that was already the maximum).
In spite of my predilection for being nosy, I didn’t even think of checking the surroundings out for who else was a sobbing mess. Even when the perennial tearjerker, ‘First Love’ – where every turn of phrase would be enough to send you into an emotional spiral – was up next. “If one day, I fall in love with someone again (いつか誰かとまた恋に落ちても) / I’ll remember to love, you taught me how.”
But ‘Beautiful World’ was queued up right after the quintessential Utada ballad. Buoyant as it may sound, my history with the song is intensely personal, so I snickered at the irony. I was convinced this juxtaposition was targeted at me, to induce tears – even though this was certainly impossible.
There was something about the way Utada had stringed their setlist, like it was their own treatise on time itself (maybe their own little footnote on the grand Theory of Everything). Like the eponymous album, it wasn’t just chronological, the way many “greatest hits” collections were designed to be retrospectives just to evoke nostalgia. This was no trip down memory lane. We were taken on an interstellar odyssey, deliberately going backward and forward, fast(er than the speed of light) and slow, even piercing through the fabric of spacetime itself so we could discover the alternate possibilities – maybe even the future – on the other side.
If you think about it, that’s also the way memory works: everything coexists simultaneously in a continuum. There is resonance across all of those scenes and episodes, and often in unexpected ways.
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Utada had always prized genuineness and honesty, which shows a lot in their songcraft. I, for one, gravitate toward that sort of earnestness and plainspokenness – no matter how off-kilter or unexpected the approach may be (The ｢光」music video is my favourite example – special mention to the art it has inspired).
Much has been said about the Kingdom Hearts and Evangelion songs, too, and how millions of kids practically grew up hearing them all their lives, even if they didn’t end up devoted to Utada’s entire discography.
I asked Utada about what they thought of strangers like us who had embraced and found solace through their songs throughout our own lives.
“For me to hear one person saying things like that to me, when someone meets me, and they get emotional and share things they were going through at the time – when they listen to some of their favourite songs of mine, or [share] how it's meant to them over the years – it makes me want to cry as well, and I have to try to stay a bit cool and calm,” they said, calling the experience all “very affirming.”
“Not in the way of, like, ‘Aha! I made these songs,’ or like, ‘I'm proud of myself’,” they intercepted themself with a disclaimer. “Because for me, painting, art, music, literature... for as long as I've been living, those things have been such a big part of my life. They were like my safe space, when I felt there were things that I needed but I didn't have access to other things.”
“Feeling like someone else has experienced these things, or feelings that I was feeling – that I couldn't share even with myself, or maybe people who were near me at the time – that has meant so much to me. To think, things I put out into the world have maybe served that purpose for other people is just really incredible.”
Speaking of the immense legacy of their songs, there was something Utada once told NPR Music’s Michelle Hyun Kim in 2022 that stuck with me: “I think it's so cool that there's something you can share with people as you share time with them.”
“Time progresses differently for each individual, but generally just knowing that I've shared this time with people, I find it very amazing,” they added. “It's the one thing that you can't just make happen – it literally takes time.”
The general theory of relativity posits something called time dilation, but as I’m no theoretical physicist, allow me to crudely oversimplify it: time passes at “different rates for different observers.” A clock might run slower than another, influenced by gravity and relative motion. If you recall, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar even profoundly engages with this phenomenon, and as a plot device, it’s emotionally devastating for the characters.
We are all cosmic bodies in our own orbits, yet somehow, we gravitate toward each other. In the face of entropy, we still get to connect with those we are meant to connect with.
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君を乗せて、アスファルトを照らすよ。
Got you in my ride, we’re illuminating the asphaltどこへ行くの？
Where are we going?遠くなら何処へでも
Anywhere as long as it’s far away— ‘traveling’
I hadn’t set foot in Hong Kong since 2015.
My last trip abroad was that Japan trip, the one before I had met my first love. Somewhere in between that and this one, however, there was a global catastrophe. The mere thought of planning for and going on overseas travel again was enough to send my anxiety through the roof.
But the opportunity presented itself, irresistibly flitting in front of me. Glistening (It’s just a 2-hour flight). Tempting (A Hikaru Utada show had been on my bucket list since forever).
After my SCIENCE FICTION interview and the upheaval of heartbreak, I felt it was going to be a full circle moment to see Utada for the first time live and get to write about the show. I just had to muster the audacity (plus my editor’s cold e-mail to publicity) and convince my best friend to come for the ride and help me with this story.
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僕の世界消えるまで会えぬなら
If I can’t meet you before my world disappears君の側で眠らせて、どんな場所でも結構
Let me fall asleep by your side, anywhere will do.— ‘Beautiful World’
I have Wong Kar Wai to thank for this peculiar sentimentality I have for Hong Kong, despite having been there only once before.
His neon-washed, frenetic images were alluring and idyllic to me. Pretending all of this was his seminal 1994 opus, Chungking Express, I fantasised stepping into the shoes of the cops played by Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro who were also dealing with fresh heartbreak and deep yearning (I don’t claim to be as hunky as they were though). Or Faye Wong, perpetually lost in daydreaming as ‘California Dreamin'’ by The Mamas & The Papas played on repeat. (I later found out that the prolific Wing Shya, who once shot stills for other Wong Kar Wai classics Happy Together and In the Mood for Love, was also at the concert capturing some very cinematic snaps.)
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I was stationed at a Tsim Sha Tsui hotel just a few blocks away from Chungking Mansions, one of the film’s iconic locations. Without the hypnotising camerawork of cinematographer Christopher Doyle though, it was just drab and underwhelming. Brigitte Lin wasn’t going to pop out; no blurry, dreamlike chase sequence would take place.
Nonetheless, the city was still the proverbial concrete labyrinth of my dreams. I could be Hikari Mitsushima in the music video for Mondo Grosso’s ‘Labyrinth’, twirling and prancing from Quarry Bay to Sham Shui Po, and the walls would forget what they saw or heard.
There I was, adrift in the rabble – ambling through subway crowds, a cacophony of exchanges in Cantonese (sometimes Tagalog within earshot, too), and the occasional wafting incense smoke from curbside altars. Except for the stifling 30-degree summer heat barely quenched by the rain (I despised how it was literally too close to home), the terrain was largely unfamiliar. This meant there were no unbidden thoughts stealthily hiding in the corners. No revenants. Zero remnants of an “old life” to mourn. I wouldn’t be “at the mercy of... memories of a lost love,” to borrow a pithy passage from the related literature my dear friends had “assigned” me (Erwin Romulo’s long-form account with the Eraserheads in the UK, ‘Looking for Ligaya in London’ from Esquire Philippines September 2014 – thanks, Apa and Don).
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思い出たちがふいに私を
Memories grab me without warning,乱暴に掴んで離さない
violently, and won’t let me go愛してます、尚も深く
I love you, deeper still降り止まぬ真夏の通り雨
A midsummer shower that never ends— ｢真夏の通り雨」(Manatsu no Tooriame)
Sand was spread across the stage floor, in a glinting ochre like the dunes of Arrakis. Towering monoliths, pulsing with light and images, jutted out of it. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, those black slabs were enigmatic instruments, harbingers of advancement, but here, they looked like doors that can access different worlds or points of time. I imagined we were looking at the ruins of a civilisation millions of light years away, or even the higher dimension enveloping all of spacetime (cosmology calls this the “bulk” where our “brane” exists), where we could do just that.
Utada told me about how they likened their creative process to a wormhole. “The whole process of making something takes you from one place to another place,” they said. “When you listen to a song that you listened to – or wrote – many years ago, immediately, a part of you from that time pops up. It's like a portal opens to that time.”
They even tapped artist YOSHIROTTEN to depict this in the artwork for SCIENCE FICTION: an unmistakable hourglass-shaped wormhole. (Maybe the sand onstage was meant to allude to that “hourglass,” and it had just shattered and its contents tipped over?)
In a way, their songs were pictures of their past selves. There was the songwriter who debuted as a singer at the age of 15 – which, in hindsight, they said they had resented, having to deal with that “strange” thing called fame. At 27, they announced they were taking a break, what they call a “suspended time in [their] life,” during which they also went through major life events. Then, their “reintroduction” – putting themself and their music out there again after a long time.
“I don't really remember a lot about my own life,” they said about their first decade in the industry. “I just have these songs. I barely have any photos of myself, aside from stuff that were taken for work or music videos. And my music. That's kind of all I have. They're like artefacts from that time.”
“In going back to these songs, I felt like an archaeologist, digging up these artefacts and trying to connect and look at the evidence that's been left. And meet – like, find me – during that time,” they added.
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君がいなくても太陽が昇ると
Even without you, the sun will rise新しい一日の始まり
And a new day will begin— ‘Letters’
A Capricorn born on the same date as Edgar Allan Poe (a factoid they habitually share), Utada mused that the 19th of August, the day right after the two Hong Kong shows, was an auspicious time. That night’s full moon in Aquarius was a rare super blue moon.
“The blue full moon in Aquarius brings a dynamic, almost electric energy into our lives, motivating us to revolutionise our reality,” astrologers explained to Vogue. “At this time, we will have the opportunity to see ourselves and our lives in a new light, and many of us will be able to access a new level of consciousness and awaken the dormant potential within.”
Utada told the Hong Kong crowd, “There’s something definitely special and crazy going on.”
They were right.
I felt something was different from the crowd that night, from the time we stood up from our seats as ‘traveling’ played. The night’s set was mostly made up of Utada’s Japanese-language fare, but you could actually hear people sing along out loud. Although I wouldn’t dare argue that we were any more special than any of the tour stops, it was all just sublime, that it defied any obligatory hackneyed descriptions.
I thought it was serendipity that we weren’t allowed to take videos or pictures for most of the show (except the encore). A cursory scan: the crowd were made up of millennials – digital natives preoccupied with documenting everything on their smartphones. But in the words of ｢光｣, with my own tiny update: “Let’s talk more about the imminent future. Turn [that smartphone] off and just look at me” (もっと話そうよ、目前の明日の事も / [スマホ]消して、 私の事だけを見ていてよ).
My best friend, seated beside me, could only describe the show as “one of the most effluvient, luminous experiences” of his life. Utada themself had a word for it – it’s literally the title of their SCIENCE FICTION song: ‘Electricity.’
“Electricity,” the syllables stuttered like small jolts – eh-eh-eh-eh-leh-eh-eh-ec-tri-i-city – “between us.”
Then it swells into a rousing saxophone coda, as if it was effusing seismic, boundless energy.
A hopeful declaration: “Stories etched onto our details / Won’t end even if letters disappear from this planet” (私たちの細部に刻まれた物語 / この星から文字が消えても終わんない).
“I just wanna celebrate with you,” Utada repeated at the song’s close – ever so gently, like a heavenward whisper – as if the words were less of an exhortation than a prayer for the future.
Hikaru Utada SCIENCE FICTION Tour 2024 Setlist
time will tell
Letters
Wait & See 〜リスク〜 (Risk)
In My Room
光 (Hikari)
For You
DISTANCE
traveling
First Love
Beautiful World
COLORS
ぼくはくま (Boku wa Kuma)
Keep Tryin’
Kiss & Cry
誰かの願いが叶うころ (Dareka no Negai ga Kanau Koro)
BADモード (BAD Mode)
あなた (Anata)
花束を君に (Hanataba wo Kimi ni)
何色でもない花 (Naniirodemonai Hana)
One Last Kiss
君に夢中 (Kimi ni Muchuu)
ENCORE
Electricity
Automatic
Special thanks to Sony Music Japan, Camille Castillo, and Don Jaucian
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