TOKYO —

Popular rock group X JAPAN held its first live concert in 10 years at Tokyo Dome on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Some 50,000 fans came to hear the charismatic rock band which disbanded in 1997. During the concert, vocalist YOSHIKI sung several popular titles and new songs. On Friday, he fainted after he finished the last song at the end of the concert.

Since X JAPAN fans were famous for getting extremely excited during their concerts, about 5,000 staff and 6,000 security personnel as well as several ambulances were deployed for the three-day event. The organizer said the total cost for the three-day event was 2.5 billion yen. 

Latest 15 of 23 Total Comments Show All

• 

  conqueror_of_Uranus at 07:26 PM JST - 31st March

  And name some rock stars from the "hair band" era who weren't "faggy cvnts".

• 

  VoXman at 07:42 PM JST - 31st March

  I can't believe that many showed up in support of that group and Hide!!!! Yet we could hardly get anyone outside of Yokosuka to help prevent the Yokosuka city gov from closing down the Hide Museum, though it made money and was popular. The city wanted to use the land to build a home demonstrator facility (?)

• 

  lunach1ck at 08:36 PM JST - 31st March

  Is that a stuffed Hide doll? And VoXman, I remember seeing a Hide themed bus when I was there :-)

• 

  usaexpat at 12:09 AM JST - 1st April

  The first time I was in Japan Hide had died and it was about the equivalent of the teen angst outpouring for Kurt Cobain. X Japan was pretty cool but reunions without all the band members don't cut it.

• 

  conqueror_of_Uranus at 12:14 AM JST - 1st April

  usaexpat

  I agree. Just like Queen's reunion tour is not gonna be the same without Freddy.

• 

  Honne at 06:39 AM JST - 1st April

  You know what's really sad? That there is a whole new legion of fans out there who eat up Yoshiki's whole overdramatized bull as if it were reality. That whole first day was so staged. Of course we have these "confirmed" reports that there were "technical" problems and that Tokyo Dome did not want to supply the needed electricity for hide's hologram. That part takes the cake because such logistics are addressed during the earlier planning stages. Yoshiki's cronies will feed whatever they need to feed to everyone else (like the folks at Jrock Revolution for example) in order to give the drama more effect. Yoshiki has been nothing but an attention whore with his stage antics and it is sad that there are many out there who think it is real.

  And you had all those cameras on him as he fainted and went down. Uh, this is Japan where even for lesser things, you have members of the entourage who will quickly put up their hands in front of the cameras and ask them to stop taping. If this were for real, staff would have immediately blocked the view around the drum riser and medical personnel would have been out to check him out just to be sure it was safe to move him. What did we see? Tour staff lifting and carrying him off stage with the videocams running. Obviously all part of the plan.

  Then to no ones surprise, they finish off ART OF LIFE on the final day to complete the scene from the ending of the first concert. There are those out there who think Yoshiki wouldn't fake it and leave 50,000 fans in the lurch that first day. I have to laugh at that as they don't understand what a self-centered narcissist he can be. To him, the end justifies the mean.

  I will say this though. Toshi gave it his all. It's too bad he kept his mouth shut for too long (nearly a decade) about all the lying that went on about him after he left the band. I was one of those who fell for it too (thinking he was a brainwashed zombie). But then his actions spoke louder than words with how he went on with his solo stuff and how he actually treated people that he met. I just hope he isn't taken advantage of by Yoshiki in this whole thing.

  P.S. This article has one error, Yoshiki is the drummer and not the vocalist.

• 

  NagoyaOya at 04:16 PM JST - 1st April

  Honne, spot on. Yoshiki is a textbook prima donna but also a talented musician. The main reasons I bothered going to see a band whose music I barely knew was that I was expecting something spectacular (a bit disappointing in that respect - does anyone really get excited by a demolished drum kit anymore?), and the fact that Toshi has an excellent and distinctive rock voice (which I finally realized when I saw a video of their live rooftop performance last year).

  It was true that there were a lot of spare tickets floating around, which is not good for X's legendary status. I met several people who were trying to offload spares. There were also several large empty blocks of seats.

• 

  NagoyaOya at 04:20 PM JST - 1st April

  Oh, so that's what adding a chevron does to your comment (which I can't edit)

• 

  mayuko at 06:25 PM JST - 1st April

  This article is wrong. TOSHI is the vocalist for this band, and YOSHIKI is the drummer & pianist.

  I think large empty parts were for emergency.

• 

  borscht at 08:20 PM JST - 1st April

  I think large empty parts were for emergency. I doubt it. Other concerts and sold out baseball games pack the place solid. I think large empty parts were because they didn't sell enough tickets.

• 

  FishScratchFever at 03:05 PM JST - 2nd April

  I attended the final show and it was amazing. But there are some mistakes with this article. As someone pointed out, the vocalist is TOSHI, not YOSHIKI.

  Also, it was 50,000 fans per day. All 3 days sold out on the presale. So that's 150,000 tickets (not necessarily 150,000 people though because some people attended 2 or 3 of the shows).

  2.5 billion yen...I'm not sure if the band could make much money off of the event but I don't think that matters that much in comparison to the attention they received from the event, which will benefit them a lot more in the future than the quick cash would. But I still think they banked off of merchandise sales alone. All of the goods except for the tour programs were sold out hours before the show even started.

  About hide...he wasn't replaced on stage by a giant stuffed charicature (they brought that out only at the very end). They actually had a kind of 3D screen that his image was projected on at first, and then towards the end of the show, did some kind of effect with a clear screen, smoke, and projected image that looked eerily realistic...it was like a ghost was on stage playing with them! Definitely an amazing visual effect.

  The hide museum in Yokosuka closed down mainly because the lease on the building expired and I think the actual property owner had different plans. Many people were upset and disappointed that it closed, partially because it also may have brought quite a bit of outside business to an area where people who don't live there really wouldn't have much of a reason to visit otherwise. It was a really interesting and well-designed museum, glad to have had the chance to see it before it closed.

  By the way, does anyone know the title of the Violet UK song that was played at the shows? On mixi the listing says "Sex and Religion" but it sounded a lot different to me that what I remember "Sex and Religion" sounding like.

• 

  FishScratchFever at 03:15 PM JST - 2nd April

  And yeah the large empty blocks were places that tickets weren't even sold for...emergency space and plus the view from there would have been straight-up craptacular.

  About the tickets, I think they purposely delayed sending us our tickets in a timely manner to prevent scalpers and auctioners from trying to sell them for a higher price. Cuz after the first presale when the 28th and 30th sold out, some people were already putting up online auctions for their tickets which didn't even come in the mail yet and the bids were going up to like 40,000yen I think...kinda messed up. I ended up with a pair of extra tickets (ones I originally bought) when my friend got me a pair of 関係者席 and it was only a few days before the show. I put up a post on mixi that I had 2 tickets available (admittedly, they were in a really good location) and within 5 minutes, my inbox was flooded with responses and offers of pretty good prices for those tickets. Some people with crappy seats though ended up selling theirs for sometimes as low as 5000yen a ticket.

• 

  mayuko at 09:54 PM JST - 2nd April

  FishScratchFever

  That Violet UK's song is "City of Devils."

• 

  FishScratchFever at 02:59 AM JST - 4th April

  Mayuko, Thank you very much!

• 

  2008merry at 04:08 PM JST - 4th April

  City of Devils was beautiful; enjoyed it very much

Register or login to add a comment!