If you’re new to this blog, let me give you a quick intro. My name is Nostalgia, and I picked up guitar to bring my childhood band dream to life. I tried to make a band a couple times but it never got anywhere. So for my 3rd band attempt, I decided to work with other rookie or inexperienced musicians, people who aren’t caught up with other bands and projects and were quite desperate for that experience and called the band “Chromatic Dreamers”.
I chose the word “Chromatic” as the word means “colour” and the “chromatic music scale” (all 12 notes). The word “Dreamers” is quite obvious as we had a shared dream of the stage, but it was also inspired by the Jpop and Anime songs we were covering, like Kanzen Kankoku Dreamer by One Ok Rock, my fav band at the time, and Fighting Dreamers from Naruto.
I’ve since returned to my faith more seriously and stopped listening to any kind of secular music. I even told God that I don’t plan to play guitar again unless for Him, and since January 2024, I’ve been recruited to play at a church plant each week. Not knowing what to do with this blog, I gave it to Him, but He has allowed me to keep it, so I’ve been written a few Christian articles and I’ve published a few Jpop-Inspired Christian BGM here. But now that I’m thinking about doing covers again, I would love to promote Japanese Christian artists and bands that are quite unknown, and figured the best way to do that is through another band project.
“Chromatic” still applies this time around, but I’d like to focus more on the “Chrome” side of it, being silver, like a sword.
“Saints” came to mind first for a couple reasons. For one, all Christians/born again believers are called Saints in the bible (Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2, Ephesians 1:1, Philippians 1:1, Colossians 1:2, Revelation 14:12).
Secondly, my high school, C.W. Jefferys C.I. had “Saints” as their mascot since their conception. My sister, who is 10 years younger, informed me that they changed their mascot from “Saints” to “Yellow Jacket (wasp)” since religious concepts are offensive now. Many places in my city Toronto have been renamed due to wokeness, but this one is ridiculous.
I just find it ironic that people love to dress like the devil and demons, even portraying Lucifer positively in shows and making hell seem like a party in music videos…you don’t see people dressing like angels anywhere.
It’s ‘good’ and ‘cool’ to be bad in this day and age. People flaunt their sins and attack those who stand up for God’s word and standard. Persecution is coming to the West slowly but surely, starting with our rights to free speech to share the gospel, but that’s an even more vital reason to shine brightly and be bold for Christ.
So, I think “Saints” is as bold as you can get!
Inspiration For This Project
Japan has the 2nd biggest music industry in the world and anime has gone mainstream! The world may have opened up their ears to their pop, rock, anime, electronic, funk, and other various genres, but beneath all this noise is a smaller group of Japanese Christians making Christian music for a country that doesn’t really know the gospel.
Japanese Christians have faced persecution in the 1600’s which prevented the faith’s growth on the island. Christianity was seen as an attack against their emperor who they considered a deity, and thus they made it their mission to persecute and kill Christians, reject immigrants, and keep the country ‘pure’. But even after opening their gates and incorporating more Western influence, Japanese culture is still deeply rooted in Shinto and Buddhist traditions and beliefs. With Japan’s conformist society, sticking out in anyway often causes one to become an outcast, thus Christians have often been isolated and/or had to practice their faith in secret. Foreign religions have also gained a bad rep due to cults and extremists doing illegals things in the country. Many Japanese people insist on calling themselves ‘non-religious’ even though they visit shrines, believe in spirits (kami), pray to ancestors, and look to good luck charms for help.
The current Christian population in Japan is still less than 2% of the population. As a minority in a country where all their traditions are built on pagan beliefs, these individuals face a lot of isolation, bullying, and misunderstanding. But it’s good to know that the number of believers are growing! That small percentage is still over 1 million Japanese Christians, and who knows how many there are worldwide! It’s this remnant of Christians who created the original Superbook anime in 1981! The number continues to grow via missionaries, children of Japanese Christians, and international students bringing home the gospel, and then going on to create communities and churches.
It’s also these remnant of people who are making new Japanese Christian songs to help minister to those around them, encouraging believers and helping to spread the gospel to non-believers. The only thing is, if 98%+ of natives aren’t listening to these songs, and foreign Christians don’t even know this genre or these artists exist….who is going to help promote and spread these hymns and spiritual songs so they can reach those who can benefit most from it?
Thus the mission of this project!
Praise Him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise Him with the harp and lyre, praise Him with timbrel and dancing, praise Him with the strings and pipe, praise Him with the clash of cymbals, praise Him with resounding cymbals.
Mission For THis Project
I, Nostalgia, have been a Japanese music fan since I was 12, but it took ages to build my library collection since Japanese music wasn’t very popular world wide. Japan has focused more on physical sales and promoting to their own, and even using their own platforms to release music on, so you had to be very lucky to discover songs outside of anime, vocaloid, idol groups, and video games.
Times have certainly changed, and more Japanese artists are on Youtube and Spotify, but….if people have to work so hard to find general Jpop music, imagine how much harder it is to find Japanese Christian music when no one is writing about it nor interviewing these artists. When I started working on my Japanese Christian Artist List, I only found 3 artists years back, so I was surprised when I found 10 more via recommended lists on Youtube and Spotify. And with my own digging, reddit threads, and input from Facebook groups, I managed to find over 85!
It took a lot of work to find their websites, Spotify profiles, and social medias since they sometimes use their Japanese kanji name and other times use a translated name. Sometimes, there’s a more popular Japanese artists with the same name as well. I knew the list would be an amazing resource for everyone, but I wasn’t expecting over 500 views in the first 48 hours! But that’s still a minority of the people who could benefit most from this. It doesn’t make much of a difference if people don’t even know this genre of music exists because they assume Japan doesn’t really have a Christian population.
As I was digging, I came across 4.5Music who recently put out a video asking for assistance and funds to keep making music, and it was an honour to interview them on my blog with the hopes that they would get more attention. Imari Tones, the first Japanese Christian metal band, also uploaded a video over a decade ago to promote their fundraiser while doing an American Christian band tour. They mention in the video that their church back home is small and they don’t have much of a connection to the Japanese Christian community. They are one of the first of their kind yet they were doing everything independently. It’s stories like these that really touch my heart cause I know general Jpop bands could always find a local audience, but that’s not really the case when making Christian songs in a non-Christian country.
As a Christian community, we should want to help each other in whatever way we can, and this is something I can do.
So my goal for this project is to help bring more awareness to the genre, and to help promote these small artists so those who need to hear these beautiful songs can be touched by them. The language barrier is certainly something that prevents them from promoting themselves, but this project can certainly assist! It would also help artists gain support and raise funds for recording, translating, and filming so they can continue to release songs and promote in their own country.
It would be an honor for this band to cover at least 1 song from as many artists as possible!
They have hymns, gospel, CCM songs along with rock, metal, hip hop, funk, jazz, and other genres of Christian music.
If you live in or around Toronto, Canada, and you’re a Christian musician and are interested in joining this project,
feel free to send me an email (chromaticdreamers@gmail.com) and I’ll let you know about future recordings!