As a junior high student, Kami was fond of a best hits type show from the USA. He really liked American bands, two examples he gave were Duran Duran and the Culture Club. He was more a fan of music from England, but those bands were aired on US television. Around the time he was in high school, he and his friends decided to start a band. Kami played percussion briefly for the band, but worked part time, saving money to purchase his own drum set. He said that it was basic, but it was his.

 
 As he became more hardcore into percussion, he practiced more and harder. He said he practiced 4 hours a day on weekdays, due to tennis, but all day on Sundays. At age 17, he was determined to be a pro percussionist. He said his band encountered much hardship, as Malice Mizer did at first, but they were determined to be great, making it to final competitions and whatnot, and felt the hardship that real pros did. When he moved to Tokyo, not all the members of the band wished to follow, so he joined a punk-rock band in Tokyo. He says that he didn't care much for the genre itself, but it helped him along on his quest to be a pro. He did like one band particularly, the Sex Pistols, and could relate to punk music in the sense that his life wasn't all that great. He didn't want to go the route of punk-rock, and found visual-kei. He joined a visual-kei band called Kneuklid Romance. Later, while playing in live houses, he found Malice Mizer. Yu~Ki was the first to approach him to ask him to join, but none of the others spoke with him. He says he first declined the offer. Shortly after Yu~Ki spoke with him, Mana called his home, and Kami came aboard as a temporary member for half a year, and then became their official drummer, replacing Gaz. 

When speaking to interviewers, Kami said that he was turned on to Malice Mizer's music by the original and painfully long "Baroque" that was written in a hurry and didn't really have much of a consistent rhythm. He said one thing he liked the most was the difficult and unique music that the group played.
He thought of himself as a percussion vocalist. He says as a general rule, percussion doesn't have melody, but he played his drums to have melody and music to them. He used Malice Mizer as his opportunity to use his own style and drumming abilities to his desire.

Before Gackt came along, Kami only played on three splash cymbals, but he said that those cymbals were to the music like falsetto (not sure what that is, forgive me, I'm music ignorant) is to vocals. He usually played his sets low, because it was easier to handle the drums that way, but in the live at Budokan performance, he changed his setup around. He gave up low tum for deep tum, and he said that Mana teased him, "Why don't you play the square bass drum?" 

Kami said that he has an honest personality, and due to that, he is easily manipulated, but when he played his drums, he didn't care. He really loved playing hard scores. He didn't know why, but he did.

Kami said he was interested in seppuku (ritualistic suicide performed for example by a samurai who has failed or betrayed his master), which he believes led partially to his romantic interest in conquering Japan (?)
He really wanted to visit Japanese Fortresses, but I do not believe he had the chance to visit many due to his unfortunate passing. Before his passing, he said that the closest he came to death was when he was coming off of an expressway going to the next stop on a tour, when his tires went flat and his engine broke down. They veered the car into a police parking lot, and someone named Mr. Roddy went to buy a new tire (no clue who Mr. Roddy is), and he started to exercise, and a police officer came out, asking if Kami had any morals (I believe this is because he was exercising in public (?)) and at that point, Kami felt as though death was near.

Kami said that his brightest points were brightness, positive ness, and cheerfulness. He spent 90,000 yen one year on 300 lottery tickets, and only gained 10,000 of it back. Kami loved perfume, and loved childrens' music. His favorite shampoo was actually a perfume that dyed your hair the same color as the bottle it came out of, called Ma Cherie (which is also a MM song from the Merveillis album), and out of the 80 bottles he owned, he only used about 3 or 4 of them.

 R.I.P
Kami

June 21, 1999

Forever will his drums be heard, and will the butterflies live on.

END

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