The song "The Sun is My Enemy," released 20 years ago on Sept. 1, 1993, may have only reached No. 15 on the Japanese singles charts, but its importance lingers.
This was the first single released by musician Keigo Oyamada under his nom de rock Cornelius, and it's a key track in the development of the musical movement known as Shibuya-kei, one of the most significant flowerings of creativity Japanese music has ever experienced.
Shibuya-kei didn't begin with "The Sun is My Enemy." Oyamada had been running his own Trattoria label — which became one of the foundation stones of the scene — for about a year by this point. Along with singer Kenji Ozawa, he had also formed the band Flipper's Guitar and made three studio albums between 1989 and 1991, with a post-breakup live release the following year. Shibuya-kei had, in one form or another, been feeling its way into existence for some time.