Ozawa Kenji
J-pop superstar brings about claustrophobic crowds
I’ve never seen the back wall of the White Stage break before, but I suppose there is a first for everything. J-pop heavyweight Ozawa Kenji’s Saturday night set at said spot ended up being the weekend’s most claustrophobic, attracting a massive overflow of punters to the area. As noted, the back part of the wall gave way (or was removed) as many folks went to formerly off-limits areas to listen to the former Flipper’s Guitar members sunny solo work. Others scaled to the top of the trash bins. After five years of coming to this festival, it was the most crowded I’ve ever felt one single stage has gotten, in proportion to its size.
The music sounded perfectly fine, even if actually seeing what was happening on stage proved to be near impossible. Rap outfit Schadaraparr jumped out of the sides for big-time opener “Konya Ha Boogie Back,” the biggest pop of a night full of them. Ozawa brought out a small brass section alongside a more traditional band, and they looked a bit more colorful than most, at least based on a few far-back glances. He ran through most of his biggest, most easy-going ’90s super hits, songs centered around horns and zippy melodies. Unlike former bandmate Keigo Oyamada, whose set as Cornelius just before leaned heavily on visuals, Ozawa focused on the music, to the point of not even showing video of himself. Instead, the White Stage video board showed the lyrics to whatever song he was performing, sorta like karaoke. And tons of people sang along.
It all sounded fine, but oh boy was it hyper crowded, to the point I feel kinda confident in saying it was the single biggest placement blunder in Fuji Rock history. Ozawa Kenji is one of the 1990s biggest J-pop stars…he should be playing the Green Stage, and while I’m sure all sorts of finer details happened in the negotiating process, having him on the White Stage was just dumb. Parts of the wall broke! At one point the only way to get out from the stage was to climb over bags of trash. My main memory of this was failing to see the stage for longer than a few seconds at a time, and then spending 15 minutes trying to find an escape route. At least the soundtrack was pleasant.
