If punk culture and aesthetics have a poet in Japan, it is Machizo Machida, originally the firebrand voice of pioneering Osaka punk band INU and now better known internationally as the novelist, essayist and Musashino University literature professor Kō Machida. From the time of INU's foundational Meshi Kuuna! (1981), Machida already operated like a writer who happened to front a rock band: razor-sharp wordplay, an ear for vernacular detail, and a willingness to follow language into uncomfortable corners.
Eleven years after Meshi Kuuna!, Machida returned with a new chapter: Harafuri, recorded in 1992 with the band Kitazawagumi. The record finds his uncompromising lyrical voice paired with a modernised, post-punk-inflected band sound, the rhythm section's weight giving room for the words' increasingly literary ambition. Where INU had captured the urgency of first-wave Japanese punk, Harafuri channels that same energy into something denser and more considered: the satire is sharper, the metaphors richer, and the songs take more time to build.
Spittle Made In Japan's edition, the album's first ever official reissue, restores the original artwork and includes meticulously retranslated English lyrics, opening this verbal and musical landmark to non-Japanese readers for the first time. With printed inner sleeve. A chance to share a universal literary and musical achievement with the world.