In the mid-1960s, a young Mike Nogami picked up a camera and started taking pictures of things around him — dogs, his neighborhood, friends playing guitar. Some of those friends were in a band called Happy End, the group that Haruomi Hosono played bass in before starting Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Fans who know their rock lore, however, will know that Happy End wasn't just a stopping point on Hosono's way to international recognition as part of YMO — the band was a milestone in the course of Japanese pop music history.
In the early 1970s, Happy End was a particularly unusual group. The band leaned heavily on overseas artists such as Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape for its psychedelic sound, but its content was specifically focused on the members' own lives in Tokyo. The lyrics of the 1971 album "Kazemachi Roman" are detached, yet nostalgic for a city that was being blown away by the winds of change.