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Concert Memories: The Yellow Line

In the next few posts, we’d like to share some memories from the concerts we attended this autumn. Please bear with me as we set aside our usual news-style updates for a little while.

The venue for these concerts was located in the only "village" in Chiba Prefecture, a sparsely populated area with fewer than 16,000 residents. It made headlines when 18,000 people descended upon it in a single day.

Since the venue, Amagadai General Park, is quite a distance from the nearest train station, the organizers provided shuttle buses and also offered the option of parking in temporary lots near the station and walking the rest of the way.

We chose to use the official parking, about a 40-minute walk from the venue, and enjoyed the village scenery along the route.

A long, colorful procession of Mononofu, decked out in their concert merchandise, made its way across the flat, expansive rice fields. We stopped to take photos in a beautiful field of cosmos in full bloom, and were even greeted by local residents from the porches of their homes. Thanks to the wonderful hospitality of the villagers, the long trek to the venue was anything but dull.

On the way back, the path is normally pitch-black at night, with almost no streetlights. Fortunately, as Mononofu, we all carry glow sticks (penlights).

The result was a stunning, unbroken line of light cutting through the village night, a sight surely never seen there before. You can find a few examples of this shared on X below.

On the way back after Day 1, the lights were a mix of the members' four colors. But during the final message on Day 2, Shiori, whose member color is yellow, remarked, "Apparently, yellow is the most visible and the safest color!" Ayaka, whose member color is pink, agreed, adding, "Usually we'd want you to use pink, but let's all go with yellow today!" As a result, the journey back after Day 2 turned into a procession about 2.5 kilometers long, with nearly every pedestrian carrying a glowing yellow light.

In several social media posts, this scene was likened to "Hyakki Yako," the "night parade of a hundred demons."

In Japanese folklore, Hyakki Yako refers to a procession of oni (demons) and yokai (supernatural creatures) roaming the night. Traditionally, it was considered an ill omen.

However, the theme of this particular concert, by coincidence, centered on a story in which the "Peach God" (Tojin-sama) had been transformed into a demon. The story involved dispelling this malevolent energy and enshrining the figure once again as a restored Peach God.

In this light, the long, continuous line of yellow lights winding through the village that night took on the appearance of a ceremonial procession honoring this revived deity.



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