Master craftsman Haruomi Hosono has a message from the heart

Lead photo by Masahiro Handa Over half a century into an iconoclastic career, Haruomi Hosono has nothing left to prove. But that doesn’t mean there are no new roads to travel down. He was still a sociology undergrad at Rikkyo University when his early band Happy End’s masterful second album Kazemachi Roman seismically shifted nationwide attitudes towards the viability and seriousness of Japanese-language rock music – but that was only the very beginning of a lifelong voyage into the unknown for Haruomi Hosono. His luminary work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra, alongside co-founders Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi, was crucial in propelling electronic music from a chin-stroker’s outsider interest to a worldwide phenomenon, while 53 years on from his solo debut Hosono House, the fire of his boundary-pushing solo career continues to burn.His genre-fluid work has touched multiple generations, from all walks of life, across the whole world. But, as the sun rises on a fresh project, what kind of artist is Haruomi Hosono now? Sign up to Best Fit's Substack for regular dispatches from the world of pop culture In the past – of course – he has been a starry-eyed folk singer, a city-p...