Fatima was:
Vocal: Kanoma (歌の目) / Sanaka (最中) / Hitomi (人見)
Guitar: Mizuha (水葉)
Guitar: 4ge (４、茂, shige)
Bass, programming, theramin, kinky voice: Lay (霊、レイ、霊玉、霊ﾀﾏ)
Drums: Towa (永久）
Fatima. Fatima. ファティマ. Where do I even begin? I guess at the beginning.
Fatima started in 1998.
But let's go a bit further back first.
Before
Fatima, there was Le:chéri. The band hadn't really been together long
and had already gone through 2 different vocalists (Rio and Kousei, who
would go on to GHOST much later). Hitomi was the final one.
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| Hitomi when he was 17/18 (source: Hitomi's twitter) |
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| (image credit: vk.gy) |
According to one interview, it originally started with Mizuha and Daisuke. Mizuha met Lay at a concert, claiming he noted Lay's blonde hair and assumed he must be a bassist (good guess!)
Hitomi auditioned for the band, and after listening to his taped try-out, Lay decided he really liked his voice and is the one who picked him.
It seemed as though Le:chéri was going to break up, Lay assuming Mizuha and Daisuke were going to leave and they'd all go their own ways. However, it was around that time that Lay wrote "Downer." This song seems to have made the others want to stick around, and this is how Fatima was soon born and why its fans are called Downers.
Fatima officially formed in April of 1998, with an initial line-up of Vo. Hitomi, Gt. Mizuha, Ba. Lay, and Ds. Daisuke.
Their first live was held at Ikebukuro Cyber on June 19th.
"Fatima began in June, so it shall end in June."
Just
a week shy of a year later, on June 12, Daisuke quit the band. It was an amicable withdrawal, I believe Daisuke had decided he just really wanted to be a frontman/singer and quit drumming. A few
months later, Daisuke became the vocalist of 蜉蝣(Kagerou), and much
later: the studs and 大佑と黒の隠者達(Daisuke to kuro no injatachi) (RIP Daisuke💗).
Fatima paused activities for an entire year. In the MGazette interview, Lay told everyone to please wait for them and this certainly was not a disbanding.
While Fatima was paused, it seems Hitomi performed in a session band called 斜頭 (shazu) with guitiarist SHIN, bassist Zen, and Drummer Abe. I don't have information on what other bands these members are from. I can't confirm whether this Zen is the same Zen that joined Fatima later on guitar.
In
July of 2000, Guitarist Zen and Drummer Nao joined the band. Hitomi
also had a name change and became Sanaka, a name he would keep for most
of Fatima's activity.
Yet again, a little over a year later, in 2001, Zen
decided to quit the band and returned to being a vocalist, singing for Vanilla and later other
projects.
Roughly around a month later, 4ge joins!
Surprisingly
for how long Fatima had been active and doing lives, even sponsoring the
first Beautiful Freaks #1 at Takadanobaba AREA, Fatima didn't hold
their first Oneman live until December 22nd, 2001 at Meguro Rockmaykan,
titled "Slut Surge Babylon."
C'mon, that's a fantastic name.
On
October 27th, 2002, Fatima held a threeman live with Blast and GULLET.
At the end of this live, Drummer Nao left the band and later went on to
drum for Alice Nine, the band he's still currently with.
Oddly,
before Alice Nine, Nao went to drum for the band RusH. Why is this
important? Well, 4 days later the former drummer of RusH joined Fatima
in his stead.
On October 31st, Towa joins the band and the final formation of Fatima was complete.
2003
was a very eventful year for Fatima, both in a positive and
unfortunately negative way. The band was playing more lives than ever,
they collabed with Vanilla (Zen's band at the time) on both a two-man
show and a split CD.
On Sanaka's birthday that year, March 30th, they held their wildly successful I ♥ EROS oneman at Takadanobaba AREA.
They
released the single "NOBLE KING SNAKE" that month as well, and 2nd
presses of their singles, including NOBLE KING SNAKE just a month later.
There
was even a free oneman held, and then a twoman tour with Deadman. A one-coin CD
containing the song "Blind" (a song they'd had since before Fatima according to interviews) was
released in various versions throughout August.
Things were
going great for the band. Sanaka had come up with the impressive idea of a 7 Days
War- 7 Days, 7 lives. It was something that took a lot of work to put
together and make happen.
But on what was supposed to be the first day of the live
campaign (November 14th), Sanaka suddenly fell ill.
Starting the day off
fine, after their concert rehearsal, the vocalist found himself
struggling for air and having pain in his lungs and heart that didn't let up hours later. They rushed
him to emergency care while the other band members went out to explain
what was going on and that the lives were going to have to be cancelled.
They were all quite upset, with grim looks on their faces, and Lay did most of the talking, according to
fans posting on 2ch.
The 2ch thread and other online communities basically erupted at the news, with many
fans freaking out (understandably). Some fans worked on cranes, and many
messages, emails, and letters were sent. Sanaka thanked everyone for
them.
Sanaka's Hospital Messages
Sanaka
was diagnosed with Pneumothorax (collapsed lung) and had to undergo
surgery and remain in the hospital for some time. He wasn't released
until December 1st, and wasn't able to show up for any concerts until
December 17th when he appeared at Mana's Last Year Party, singing Malice
Mizer's "Baroque" with Kamijo. He didn't perform a full concert until
Fatima's Christmas concert on the 25th at AREA. Thankfully, he had made a
full recovery.
2004 saw more touring and more releases. The band
released 静む体温 (shizumu taion) on March 14th. Another one-coin cd
紬糸(tsumugi ito) was also released in several variants in November.
Notably, on December 8th they also released a new single, 消せない雨／無知な命へ
(kesenai ame/muchi na inochi e). I recall a lot of fans being upset
about this single, claiming that it didn't sound like Fatima at all.
Especially many of the Japanese fans were upset, and allegedly some even proclaimed to stop following the band. I remember also
thinking the same at the time, that it didn't sound like Fatima at all, but listening to it now, it fits their
discography perfectly. It is very distinctly a mix of Lay and 4ge's composition skills and styles!
They offered a free oneman on December 24th at AREA as their own X-mas present to fans.
On
January 1, 2005, Sanaka underwent another name change and became
Kanoma!
A lot of fans hated the name, myself included. He was Sanaka from 2000 to 2005, so it was hard for fans to adjust. I still call him
Sanaka most of the time, Hitomi the rest. The kanji for it, 歌の目 is neat though!
Things seemed to be
going perfect for the band. They more active than they'd ever been with
lives, releases, and appearances- and they seemed to have a fresh start
to a brand new Fatima with Sanaka's shiny brand new name and their 'new
sound' from Kesenai Ame/Muchi na inochi e.
So with all this apparant forward progress, it came as the biggest shock possible when everything changed.
Shortly after the band
and fans had just so merrily sang Happy Birthday to Kanoma on March
30th... Kanoma announced that Fatima would disband on July 28th at
Shibuya O-East.
I guess he really wanted to go for a flair of drama there, choosing to announce it then on that day. Fans went from joy to screaming in confusion and tears instantly.
Having been a fan at that time, I simply cannot
put into words how shockingly sudden and confusing this announcement
was. It felt like a bullet to the heart of all Downers. Not a single
soul could have expected it. Reading the 2channel thread that day is a
bit heart-wrenching even now. "It's a joke right? This is just an early
April Fool's?" I wish it had been.
They would go on to finally release a mini-album, "Exit", on April 27, 2005.
There
were a flurry of live shows between the announcement and the final
live, including shows at venues picked by each member, produced by and
dedicated to each member.
But then it all eventually, sadly, came to an end on June 28, 2005. At the end of that chaotic 3 hour long concert that started an hour late, Fatima was over.
A 2-disc live DVD of the final concert was released on December 21st. If you love Fatima, I highly recommend finding it secondhand. It's worth it.
A repress of it, containing only the main concert, was released on May 26th 2010.
Where are they now?
Kanoma
played sessions and eventually went on to form Moran, eventually also
changing his name back to Hitomi (his real name). After Moran dissolved,
he created a solo project, ウミユリ(umiyuri), and a partnership project,
雨と雨 (ame to same), with Ookubo Kei. Lay also played support bass for
Umiyuri a few times. He also continued to write for Mabuta for some time
and also released some books of his writings under his real name, 人見晋平
(Hitomi Shinpei).
2 years after the kaisan, Lay and 4ge had a
shortly lived non-visual kei band named Obscure, but it dissolved as
well in 2010. Lay currently is a "representative" for the diner,
Stardust.
4ge's activities are unknown. He sometimes updates his twitter, but not very often.
Mizuha's activities are unknown but he still posts on his twitter sometimes.
Towa changed his name to Soan and went on to join Moran until it dissolved. Then he formed Soan Project.
Fatima
had several one-day limited revivals in 2007, 2010, 2015 and 2017. With
Fatima Online now gone as well, it seems unlikely to expect another...
Conclusion
It's
hard to put into words just how influential and important a band Fatima
was to the indie Visual Kei scene, but that's seemingly a point that's always brought up about them. They really left their mark on the scene at the time, helped lift other bands.
Even now, their autographed
poster still hangs in front of Takadanobaba AREA and will likely remain
there until the building is demolished. Fatima was very important to
AREA and AREA was very important to Fatima, and thus part of why I'm so
sad to see it go.
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| credit to @postcardviking on twitter |
The Beautiful Freaks events were also organised by Fatima and existed because of them.
I
remember and know there's a lot more that they did for the scene, even
touring with some big indies names at the time, but a lot of the details elude
me and aren't archived anywhere I can find.
A lot of the
information about Fatima is now lost to the void of the internet, even
their own official site closing down sometime in 2018 it looks like.
Nakigoe.info
was the most well known English Fatima fansite I knew of, but
unfortunately it is also gone and only archived. Much of the info here
was thanks to their translations (and some my own memory). Here is the last semi-working archive of it.
Even the livejournal community is long gone and only its one single page archived.
It's almost as if Fatima is just an echo of the past, but it's an echo I refuse to let die.
Fatima were one of the craziest, most chaotic, yet emotional and, of course, overly sexual Visual Kei bands I've ever seen. They really left a mark in my heart and the heart of many Downers.
Fun Facts!
Fun fact #1: Many people know about Daisuke having been Fatima's original drummer, but did you also know that Hitomi was in Alicia with Yuana (also in Kagerou)?
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| (Hitomi and Yuana (Ewana at the time) on the right), image credit: vk.gy |
Fun fact #2: Both 4ge and Towa were in LURE+SELENE before Fatima, but joined Fatima at different times as Towa had played for the band RusH for a short while before joining.
Fun fact #3: Fatima had an alter-ego band named Downer that only played randomly at their own lives. It was never announced beforehand so it was something you had to be lucky to see. If Fatima was chaotic, I don't know what I'd call Downer. They played much faster, much more aggressive versions of Fatima's songs and often dressed even crazier and set things on fire. Sadly, there's no video footage beyond a few seconds in the History (The Way We Were) video where Lay and Sanaka are setting something on fire.
Fun fact #4: I don't know who dubbed Hitomi "King of AREA", but in 2017 he released a self-designed shirt on his birthday. It's adorable.
