Why Underground Subculture Matters by Murasaki Hyakuro

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–Article by Murasaki Hyakuro. Originally published in STUDIO VOICE (2006) by INFAS Publications.

Why Underground Subculture Matters by Murasaki Hyakuro

Now is the time to become "kichiku"!

Why underground subculture? Listen up, you spineless pigs!

Whether one desires elements of underground subculture or not is a personal matter, not related to age or generation. Do you seek it or not? That’s where the line is drawn. Those who don’t seek it are fundamentally weak people with a critical spirit towards everything, content to be satisfied by the entertainment and culture they passively receive from mass media. They’re happy watching variety shows with shitty comedians. I was surprised back in the day when people said they got into this world through The Tunnels (lol).

The Tunnels are an owarai duo. They originated not as a manzai duo, so much as an ippatsu gag and monomane act. During the early 1980s, they became immensely popular with young Japanese audiences, appearing in several television shows.

In short, subculture is born out of people dissatisfied with the status quo. Since the very orientation towards the underground is an act of protest against everyday reality, such people inevitably develop a rebellious nature that’s anti-social and anti-establishment. You can clearly see that in the underground culture of the 60s and 70s.

But nowadays, everyone’s domesticated. In the end, it seems we’ve entered a world where people can come into contact with underground subculture without actually rebelling. Anyone with curiosity and a decent thirst for knowledge absolutely cannot be satisfied with the status quo. The decline of underground subculture (including the current state of blurred lines between subculture and the mainstream) means there are more useless, spineless pigs out there content with the status quo. Such a state of affairs perfectly suits the establishment, no?

Has Underground Subculture Disappeared? Perhaps Subculture Magazines were a Catalyst

Any catalyst will do. The medieval German mystic Jakob Bohme first became aware of the world’s mysteries at age twenty-five when he saw light reflecting off pewterware. From then on, he worked as a shoemaker by day while studying the mysteries of the Kabbalah by night, drawing closer to the truth at the edge of the cosmos. But back in the day, underground subculture and subculture magazines served as the gateway for such discoveries. There are times when reading magazines is more than just a pastime. Of course, there were fantasy literature magazines like Blood and Roses, Faun, Under the Moon, Paidia, Fantasy and the Macabre, Labyrinth, Thoughts, Rev, and Fantasy Literature, but the influence of Yu in the 70s and 80s was also huge. It laid the infrastructure for the New Academic boom of the 1980s. The same goes for Nocturne from the late 70s and 80s (currently being reprinted), Meditation, Modern Poetry Notebook, Eureka, Gendai Shiso, Imago and many others. There were also NWISF Quarterly, Papier Colle, and Professor Takemura’s Decode. Magazines like Talking Heads are still going strong and improving with each issue… The spark was always there if you looked for it. Whether it is noticed or pursued is up to the individual. Nowadays, even though the total number of publications should have increased, the near-absence of underground subculture magazines is notable.

So, does that mean the age of the internet has wiped out underground subculture? Not necessarily. It’s just been buried in a sea of information. The proportion of people who open their eyes and seek out the underground hasn’t changed much. In many ways, we’re probably in a transitional period. Even though we’ve reached an age where anyone can easily access the internet, we still haven’t seen any sign of evolution in humanity itself. The only image that comes to mind is a bunch of monkeys, bewildered by and not knowing what to do with this sudden influx of information (laughs). Even though there’s enough information on the internet to keep you holed up in your room for a lifetime, without a single book or magazine, nothing truly eye-opening or new has emerged from it. Everyone’s just barely managing to cling to the information itself.

The Internet, Hikikomori and the “Language Virus”

As times grow less turbulent, feelings of isolation and existential anxiety fester. “Am I okay with this? What about everyone else…?” That’s why people flock to places like 2channel. For people with anxiety and lacking self-confidence, it’s a safe space. It’s the perfect place for idle people with no purpose or goals in life to kill time.

That’s why I believe platforms like 2channel are precisely the strongholds where Burroughs’ “language virus” malignantly spreads. All it wants is for language to be consumed endlessly and uncritically. All it leads to is wasted energy. That’s why I can’t really get into it. It feels like it’s eating away at my life, you know? If idiots use it, they just end up being chewed up and spit out by the net. The net is only a useful tool for news or research. For me personally, even now, the time I spend online is less than the time I spend reading. Surfing the net is like dumpster diving, but for someone like me who actually likes dumpster diving, virtual garbage just doesn’t cut it (laughs). I prefer wandering the streets at night in search of tangible garbage.

Compared to the past, gathering information is way faster thanks to the internet. So it seems like today’s youth should be smarter and more capable than the youth of the past. But that’s not what I’m seeing. I keep hoping things will change, but they haven’t yet, and that’s disappointing. Honestly, the “hikikomori” people talk about these days aren’t really shut-ins at all. If you’re going to isolate yourself, you should completely cut ties with all information and just keep thinking. That kind of isolation could lead to maturity of sorts. But because they’re connected to the internet, they get this illusion that they’re still half-tethered to society. Nothing will come of that.

How Did Kichiku-kei Emerge? A.K.A. The Turbulent 90s

It’s difficult to draw a clear line between the culture of the 2000s and that of the 90s, isn’t it? It’s not like the apocalyptic, end-of-the-century vibe just vanished into thin air. However, it’s true that more and more young people are maturing. Underground subculture artifacts from the past are piling up, and the order in which you experience them will completely change your perspective and critical analysis of it. For example, you’ll start seeing situations where high school girls notice Led Zeppelin playing at a family restaurant and exclaim, “What the hell! This is a total rip-off of B’z!”

B'z is a 1988 Japanese rock duo known for their energetic hard rock tracks and pop rock ballads. Led Zeppelin was active from 1968.

“Man, the nerve of some people! Haha.” That’s just how it is with kids. What they heard first is what they deem to be the original. The timeline is all jumbled up.

Even 60s underground stuff might not seem underground anymore. Too much information is tantamount to having none at all.

Fundamentally, as humans age, their mental states change, and as a result, their perception of the world changes, too. This means there must be a certain “truth” that’s specific to each age. That’s why I personally don’t think in terms of generations. Cultural movements shouldn’t be defined by era; they should be defined by individual consciousness. But looking back, the Showa era ended in ‘89, yet everyone only really felt it after the 90s began. We all experienced major upheavals like the economic bubble bursting, the Aum Shinrikyo incident, and the Great Hanshin Earthquake. That was reflected in the underground scene and fueled it for another ten years (laughs).

After quitting Peyotl Workshop, I was just drifting around when Aoyama Masaaki approached me and said, “We’re starting a new magazine.” He was working on this refreshing, drug-themed magazine with a feel-good and happy vibe in mind, but I forced my sleazy, vulgar darkness into it. Before I knew it, I’d turned it into an uncomfortable read (laughs). In the end, everyone slapped the “kichiku” [devilish] label on it and it was released as Dangerous Issue No. 1. I was churning out tons of anonymous articles too–like, a third of the kichiku pieces in Issue 2 were mine. Also, there was the Sakakibara Seito case. Sakakibara read the first issue of Dangerous Issue No. 1. He read my article about eating dog meat. The illustration on the New Year’s card Sakakibara sent out had a reproduction of the LSD paper packet illustration used on the back cover of Dangerous Issue No. 1.

Opinions were mixed, but Dangerous Issue No. 1 was somewhat successful. The magazine sold well, and protests flooded in. Because of this, Aoyama got branded as a “kichiku” editor, got depressed, and the whole thing spiraled outta control and became a major factor that hastened his suicide. People close to Aoyama resented me a lot for that. It’s not the kinda thing you can apologize or be forgiven for, so I won’t apologize. But I still think it was wrong. For Aoyama’s sake, I’ll say this: Aoyama was the complete opposite of a devil–he was a genuinely kind, gentle and good person. Twisting his magazine into kichiku-kei was entirely my fault. No one else’s.

Come to think of it, back in the early 80s, around the time Fujiwara Shinya’s Tokyo Drift and Memento Mori came out, there was this whole corpse boom. It was like a protest to cities becoming too clean, making death–and subsequently, dead bodies–invisible. Then, corpse photo books like SCENE and corpse photo features in Yaso appeared almost simultaneously. Dangerous Issue No. 1 probably followed that lineage.

What is Kichiku? A.K.A., “Towards a Better World!”

I’ll admit, during the advertising boom of the 80s, I took a course at Senden Kaigi to become a copywriter (lol). While crafting various ads there, I realized I was uniquely skilled at creating catchy slogans and phrases. The term “kichiku-kei” came instantly to me, as a catchall for dark culture. I never imagined it would circulate this widely, but since I’m responsible for its inception, I’ll keep calling myself a “kichiku writer” until I die. I was the only one calling myself that, after all (laughs).

Anyway, my definition of “kichiku” doesn’t refer solely to inhuman acts. At its core, it means “doing whatever you want without a shred of consideration for others.” That’s the essence of devilishness, and whether society deems it good or bad is none of my damn business. There exists only two types of people in this world: those who pass things down to the next generation, and those who leap ahead to innovate or cause major events. The ones who push forward are invariably the ones who did whatever they wanted without consideration for others. In that sense, I want to remain kichiku until I die. Those that are anti-kichiku are those who worry what people think and follow everyone else. Joining a massive messageboard full of people hurling insults at each other, for example, doesn’t make you kichiku. What I always keep in mind is that I don’t want to live for the sake of others. Our time on this planet is limited, after all. I think if everyone just aimed straight for what they truly want most, we’d live in a much better world than we do now. Even if what you want to do is become a murderer or some shit.

That’s why even now–or rather, especially now–being kichiku is necessary. If there’s one thing you take away from this article, let it be this: Don’t dutifully cater to those around you. Pursue only what you love. After all, we have such easy access to information now.

Takeaways: A Blurb by Denpa Archivist

Murasaki's article presents underground subculture not merely as a collection of obscure cultural products, but as a mode of engagement defined by intellectual and existential autonomy. The distinction between mainstream and underground lies in one’s orientation toward cultural experience. Mainstream audiences are characterized by passive consumption: they accept the narratives, entertainment, and values delivered by mass media without engaging in critical thought. By contrast, participants in underground subculture deliberately seek out alternatives, motivated by dissatisfaction with dominant cultural forms and by a desire for deeper or more unconventional modes of expression. Historically, this pursuit was mediated by small magazines and niche publishing networks, which cultivated a sense of discovery and offered pathways into marginal cultural spaces. The arrival of the internet, however, dramatically altered this terrain. While it democratized access to information, it also encouraged rapid, surface-level engagement, diminishing the reflective depth that previously defined underground exploration. This theory mirrors that of the "slop economy" of the 2020s.

Within this conceptual frame, Murasaki introduces the notion of kichiku-kei, a term he coined to describe a particular sensibility that emerged in 1990s Japan. This period, marked by economic stagnation (the economic bubble bursting), natural disaster (the Hanshin Earthquake), and political trauma (the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks), generated widespread disaffection and psychological uncertainty. Kichiku-kei, as Murasaki defines it, represents an intensified expression of individualism: a willingness to pursue one’s desires irrespective of social norms or communal expectations. Although the terminology invokes extremity and transgression, Murasaki uses such rhetoric primarily to underscore the radical autonomy he associates with this disposition. Kichiku-kei is thus positioned not as a celebration of immoral behavior, but as a critique of conformity—an assertion that the fear of social disapproval stifles creativity and authentic self-direction.

Ultimately, the article advances a normative claim about cultural agency. Underground subculture is valuable not because it is obscure or sensational, but because it embodies a refusal to be shaped passively by hegemonic cultural forces. In urging readers to “pursue what they truly want,” Murasaki frames underground engagement as a form of resistance to cultural homogenization and as a pathway to personal and artistic authenticity.

Also, I'd like to note that Aoyama Masaaki was inherently a bad person. He was an exploitative pedophile that regularly traveled to Thailand to prostitute young girls. He undoubtedly played a role in shaping 90s Japanese subculture, but Murasaki's claim that he was a "kind...[and] good person" is utterly false. May he rest in shit.