This weekend, party people across the Kanto region will be loading up their cars or dragging tents onto shinkansen headed to the Izu Peninsula for one of Japan’s biggest electronic music festivals, Rainbow Disco Club.

One year ago, before the borders had reopened to tourists, the event was pared down compared to previous years, but perhaps no less intense: A throng of festival-goers pressed and thrashed against metal barricades at the foot of a formidable black pyramid. Curtains of lasers beamed down from drones, slicing across the night like an intergalactic search party come to check up on the fun. After two years of being trapped inside, the crowd’s joy and desperation were indistinguishable — people were cutting loose like it was a civilization-level stag party.

Up in the opening of the pyramid, DJ Nobu, a trapezoid of black hair atop a white square of T-shirt framed by suspenders, bopped furiously, occasionally punctuating the air with fist pumps. The DJ seemed to be sculpting the party in real time using that very energy. Perhaps it was his unique acuity in riding the wave of a crowd’s emotions; perhaps it was his own inner restlessness.

Governments across the world had specific and shared responses to the pandemic. But in Japan, two strategies influenced the distinct nightlife that sprang up under COVID-19: curtailed alcohol sales and tight border restrictions that would last until October 2022.

Nobu was there through it all. While international artists were locked out, domestic event organizers turned to the reigning king of Japan’s techno scene to get the party flickering back to life. Week after week, it was Nobu’s signature mustache that could be seen splashed across social media, and, in 2021, he ended up playing 33 gigs across Japan. But all the while he, too, was eyeing the outside world.

Mixing influences

Nobu and I meet in a small gallery and event space on a gray and unimaginative street in Hatsudai, a neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. The DJ is compact, just a bit taller than my rather small stature, but he makes up for it in hair, with waves down to his shoulders, ample eyebrows and, of course, that broad mustache. His neat four-button vest and white long-sleeved button-down make him look more like a train conductor from a bygone era than a fixture of the world’s biggest techno clubs. But the V made by his open collar offers a tiny window into the heart of the musician: peeking out are ridges of a sperm whale, a blackwork tattoo that stretches across his upper chest.

Nobu, who for privacy reasons asks not to use his full name, was born in the mid-1970s in Kamogawa, Chiba Prefecture. Chiba was known for its hardcore rock and punk, and Nobu started playing guitar and singing vocals in local bands around age 15.

When he was 21, he went to the Love Parade in Berlin and was shocked at the sight of 1 million people of all ages partying together in the streets. He was also impressed by the dark concrete sound of electronic music in Germany’s capital, in contrast to the techno idols from back home, which he describes as “not serious.” When it comes to '90s DJs, Nobu says he preferred the harder styles of Fumiya Tanaka and DJ Shufflemaster.

From the wide breadth of genres that Nobu’s career has touched, including hardcore, hip-hop, dub reggae, disco, house, ambient and soul, one might guess he came from musical roots. But his father, who sold alcohol, and his mother, who worked in makeup sales, ran what he describes as a typically conservative Japanese household.

“My parents didn’t support my music interests at all,” he says. “‘Get a real job!’” he mimics.

Nobu instead opted out of college and worked part-time jobs. In his late 20s, a girlfriend introduced him to house music and, bored with Tokyo, he started throwing parties in Chiba. In 2001, he founded the seminal event called Future Terror, which would become a mainstay of the Kanto music scene.

“At that time, techno was associated with otaku culture, people wearing black clothes,” says Nobu, using the term for obsessive nerd culture in Japan. “But for me at that time it was related to street culture, like skaters, punk, graffiti.”

As a result, Nobu and his friends built their vision for alternative electronic music: intense, unexpected and not confined to one style.

This versatility across genres is something Nobu is known for: His techno sets are energetic and dungeon-y, metallic and spooky, but he’s equally comfortable mixing smooth, almost balmy and tropical soul, as he is playing bopping, deep-groin-stirring disco.

On the limits of style, he says, “ideally the DJ would become their own genre.”

Set stamina

Nobu is also known for his incredibly long sets, like the 12-hour gig he played in 2017 at Berlin’s Berghain, the mecca of techno clubs.

There are all-night sets where Nobu improvises completely. Such events demand stamina and a thorough understanding of the progression and structure of each track. In Nobu’s view, DJ-ing is like being a chef preparing a meal in which the combination of ingredients is greater than any of its individual parts.

“One plus one equals two,” he says. “But this is one plus one equals four.”

The general arc is to start with a teaser — a musical amuse bouche — then build to the hard stuff, so people don’t get worn out too quickly. When people are exhausted, he plays tracks that don’t require too much thinking, then follows with feel-good music.

“It’s storytelling,” Nobu says. Like a hero on a journey, who falls in love along the way?

“Not love!” he says, flashing his toothy, mischievous grin and laughing. But then he seems to search his memory.

“Actually, if there was someone I liked, maybe it got into the music. Dance music, house, disco — maybe there were some love moments in there,” he says.

“Techno, not so much,” he adds, cracking up. “In a word, my No. 1 goal — my obligation — is to blow minds.”

Now, as Nobu approaches 50, he’s looking abroad geographically, as well as creatively. Last year, for the 20th anniversary of Future Terror, he took the party outside Japan for the first time to London, and later to Tbilisi, Melbourne and Sydney.

As one of the scene’s most visible figures, Nobu says he often feels pressure to act like a grown-up in public and support less-established musicians. But heavy is the head that wears the crown, it seems, and Nobu is growing restless within his confines.

“I don’t want to think of myself as Japan’s Nobu,” he says. “I want to be an individual.”

Lately he has been hunkered down in his studio in Chiba, working on new skills and projects. He’s working on his first full-length album, with a release aimed for next year. It won’t be strictly techno, but will include elements of drum and bass as well as chillout music, among others.

“I’ve always been ‘Nobu: techno DJ,’” he says, “But I don’t want to do things just because I have to. I want to think freely and make music.”

Fresh views

For all his influence in elevating Japanese techno on the global stage, Nobu is not shy about his criticisms of his home country. When asked why Japan’s electronic music scene is so highly regarded, he closes his eyes tight and makes a face.

“Isn’t it related to Orientalism?” he says. “Japan is so hard to get to, it’s so far and expensive. People are just over-idealizing.”

(Although Nobu still lives in Chiba, now with his girlfriend and cat, he’s keen to move abroad. “Lisbon or Amsterdam could be good,” he says.)

Japan’s techno world also has a glaring lack of diversity. In 2017, Future Terror drew criticism after it announced a lineup with no female artists. Last year, a spin-off of another beloved electronic music event was also criticized for featuring no female artists, especially given its name: Balance. Despite the fact that techno’s roots are in Black American DJs from Detroit, lineups in Japan tend to be majority white and Japanese DJs, and overwhelmingly male.

Nobu is critical of men in Japan, especially of his generation, who refuse to check their privilege and believe feminism has nothing to do with them.

“It’s ...,” he says, uttering a word I don’t catch, then types it into his phone’s dictionary to show me. “Patriarchy,” I read off. Nobu blames the Galapagos effect, a term used to refer to Japan’s tendency to develop independently due to its relative isolation, named after the difficult-to-access Galapagos Islands.

DJ Nobu is known for incredibly long sets, such as the 12½-hour gig he played in 2017 at Berlin’s Berghain, and all-night sets where he improvises completely. | ELLE HARRIS
DJ Nobu is known for incredibly long sets, such as the 12-hour gig he played in 2017 at Berlin’s Berghain, and all-night sets where he improvises completely. | ELLE HARRIS

Nobu says that the 2017 incident was an important lesson for him, not only on the inequalities in the industry but the role he himself plays in it. Until then, he says, he had striven for an optimal flow of music and storytelling in putting together his lineups; now he believes that fairness with respect to gender is one more factor he has to consider in an event’s overall balance. (Indeed, an all-male Future Terror lineup has yet to appear in the years since.)

On the positive aspects of techno in Japan, Nobu concedes that the country’s clubs have the best sound quality in the world, especially his favorite domestic venue, Precious Hall in Sapporo. A great club, he says, has a warm, round and clear audio quality, not heavy. “It’s like you can see the shape of the sound.”

But overall he seems down on what he characterizes as a narrow-mindedness in the crowds, describing them as unforgiving and judgmental.

“The best is playing for an open-hearted, pure music lover,” he says, “I feel super motivated. I love that.”

He mentions the crowds he has played before in Europe, the United States, South America, Taiwan, India — all of which he prefers. The place Nobu is most excited about, though, is Tbilisi.

“The energy is incredible,” he says.

“Maybe it’s related to Georgia’s history of oppression — that the country didn’t have freedom,” he speculates. “Dance music came out, and everyone was like, ‘Oh damn!’ It’s like Japan in the 1990s.”