Atsushi Sakurai

Atsushi Sakurai (櫻井 敦司) was a Japanese musician and singer-songwriter.

Atsushi Sakurai was born in Fujioka, Gunma on March 7, 1966, as the youngest of two sons.

He shared a birthday and blood type with his father, whom Sakurai described as an alcoholic that he also physically resembled.

After buying a large stereo in his fifth year of elementary school, the first record Sakurai ever bought was Shinji Harada's Feel Happy.

He was impressed by Kiss' makeup and the Bay City Rollers' melodies and clothing, but preferred Harada, Twist, and Char.

Although he received an acoustic guitar at the same time, he gave the instrument up after about a week.

Despite really enjoying listening to music, he did not consider becoming a musician at the time.

By the time Sakurai entered Gunma Kenritsu Fujioka High School, he was a loner who hung out with the bad-kid yankī crowd and whose friends were mainly from outside the school.

This changed in his third year of high school, when he became friends with his classmate Hisashi Imai, who introduced him to punk rock.

While listening to records together, they would often talk about starting a band and selected their respective instruments, despite none of them being able to play at the time.

Sakurai chose drums because he thought it would be cool.

He later said that seeing fellow Gunma band Boøwy served as an initial inspiration for starting a band, followed soon after by Bauhaus and David Bowie.

Initially joining as their drummer in 1983, Sakurai fronted the band for 38 years and 23 studio albums, nearly all of which reached the top ten on Japan's Oricon chart.

They are commonly credited as one of the founders of the visual kei movement.

After graduating in 1984, Sakurai got a job and continued to play in the band, soon after re-named Buck-Tick.

However, he said being in the band was simply because he had nothing else to do.

He described this as the worst period of his life and began to drink a lot like his father.

When the other members of Buck-Tick graduated high school and moved to Tokyo, Sakurai was the only one left in Gunma Prefecture because his father was against his band activities and Sakurai was worried about his mother.

Sakurai then set his mind on becoming a singer.

He asked Toll Yagami if he could be the vocalist of his band SP, but was declined.

When his father died in October 1984, Sakurai moved to Tokyo a year later.

He was the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band Buck-Tick from 1985 until his death in 2023.

When the singer of Buck-Tick left, Sakurai sternly and successfully lobbied to become the band's new frontman in December 1985.

Buck-Tick released their major label debut album Sexual XXXXX! through Victor Entertainment in 1987.

Their 1988 single "Just One More Kiss" marked their breakthrough when it reached number six on the Oricon Singles Chart.

The following year, their fourth studio album Taboo reached number one and they performed at the Tokyo Dome for the first time.

In 1990, the single "Aku no Hana" and the album of the same name each reached number one on their respective charts.

Buck-Tick continued their success for more than 30 years, as nearly all of their subsequent albums have reached the top ten on the Oricon chart.

This includes 2023's Izora, their twenty-third studio album and last with Sakurai.

Sakurai's last name was originally written with the first kanji as "桜" ("sakura"), but when his mother died in 1990 he changed it to "櫻", the older version.

He also wrote "Jupiter" and "Sakura" about his mother's death.

Sakurai married Buck-Tick's stylist in 1991.

They had one son, Akutagawa Prize-winning author Haruka Tono, before divorcing a year later.

Buck-Tick's Chaos After Dark Tour was scheduled to begin in December 1996.

However, it was postponed after Sakurai fell seriously ill with acute peritonitis while at a photo shoot in Nepal.

With his life at risk, he was flown back to Japan, where he was hospitalized for about a month.

Sakurai released the solo album Ai no Wakusei in 2004, and was a member of Schwein alongside his Buck-Tick bandmate Hisashi Imai, Sascha Konietzko and Raymond Watts.

He married again in June 2004.

In 2015, he formed a solo project called the Mortal.

After falling ill during a Buck-Tick concert, Sakurai died from a brainstem hemorrhage in a Yokohama hospital on October 19, 2023.