Fans of a certain era of Japanese music may be familiar with Glay, one of Asia’s biggest rock bands. I discovered them 20 years ago and still listen to them to this day, and despite being a long-time Mazda owner and enthusiast, I had no idea that their lead guitarist Hisashi is a huge Mazdafarian himself. That is, until last week when he posted a video of himself driving around in his FC Mazda RX-7.
Back in 2005 or 2006, before a young me hung around with three neighborhood friends who were deep into AE86s. Drifting was getting a toehold in the US, and it was de rigueur to run Apex’i N1 exhausts, Domo-kun stickers and drift charms on the back of your car. It was a simpler time, before social media influencers were broadcasting dispatches from Japan straight into your phone 24/7.
It was hard to find any kind of information from Japan, but desperate to learn more about the cultured that birthed our beloved cars, we absorbed whatever we could find. We’d go to Suncoast Video and Fry’s to check out Japanese DVDs, sit on the floor at Barnes and Noble to read manga, or watch Rurouni Kenshin and Inuyasha to get our fix. When retiring to the basement to play electric guitar, the songs of choice hailed from bands such as X-Japan, B’z, or Luna Sea. They were legends of the visual kei era, a 90s movement defined by crazy costumes with dramatic makeup, towering hair, and theatrical stage antics during concerts. And we were weebs before weebs was a thing.
That’s when I was introduced to Glay, a band I’ve been listening to for two decades. They’ve since abandoned their visual kei roots and transitioned into more mainstream stadium rock, filling arenas across Japan. Yet all this time, I had no idea that the axeman Hisashi was a big car enthusiast with a wide range of tastes.
Hisashi has likened car enthusiasm to an adult version of Tamiya RC cars and Mini 4WDs. However he’s always had a soft spot for rotary-engined Mazdas. His black FD RX was massaged by legendary tuner RE Amemiya, and in 2020 he purchased his white FC.
This discovery led me down a rabbit hole in which I learned that Hisashi has also owned a Lancia Delta Integrale, Peugeot 306, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII and, in his youth, a Daihatsu Charade. I also found out that he stars in a completely separate spin-off show called RX-72, a title inspired by his love for the Mazda rotary engine and his birth year of 1972 (or perhaps a Gundam?). The show has nothing to do with music or cars, but involves road trips and driving adventures.
In the FC video, which isn’t part of RX-72, Hisashi drives around with Glay’s bassist Jiro and chats about many topics, most having nothing to do with cars. They do briefly touch upon cars the latter has owned, including a Mini Cooper that band leader Takuro crashed into just two days after he bought it. Hisashi expresses shock at how bad the roads were in international cities like New York and gains appreciation for Tokyo’s mirror-smooth asphalt. He also mentions that tourists have flocked to Shibuya to carspot JDM cars, and he’s even been approached at Autobacs by gaijin to ask where they can find tuned cars.
In retrospect, I should have guessed that there was a car connection with Glay. Their song “Highway No.5” refers to the open road, “Tomadoi (Jet the Phantom)” is filled with speed imagery, and their 2000 greatest hits album was called Drive. But now I have an even deeper appreciation for Glay and Hisashi’s impeccable taste in cars.
