page_title: Hasu no Hana
section_title: Creation
hierarchical_section_title: Hasu no Hana / Writing and inspiration / Creation
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 芥川龍之介の肖像 English: Portrait of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
context_page_description: "Hasu no Hana" is a song by Japanese band Sakanaction. The song was used as the theme song of the film Close Range Love starring Tomohisa Yamashita and Nana Komatsu. The version used in the film was given an initial release on October 8, 2014 digitally, followed by a single release featuring a different mix of the song on October 29, where it was paired with the song "Sayonara wa Emotion" as a double A-side single.
context_section_description: "Hasu no Hana" was created as the producers of Close Range Love had specifically commissioned a song for their film. This was the second time Sakanaction had been asked to create a film theme song, after "Eureka", the ending theme song of Judge! (2014). The band found creating songs for commercial tie-ups a difficult balancing act, as they wanted to release music that the band personally wanted to create, however it needed to be something that would mach the commercial endeavor, or else this would reflect the band poorly.  Yamaguchi began the writing process by watching Close Range Love without the soundtrack, and considered the perspective of fans of the film's lead actor Tomohisa Yamashita, wondering why he was not asked to create the theme song. He reasoned that the film's creators wanted to elevate the film's status from being merely a star vehicle, and felt that the band's role was to create something that would be well-received critically.
  Yamaguchi saw Close Range Love as a classic-style love film, and wrote the song while considering the film's younger audience, who had no previous listening experience of the band. The first draft of the song followed the film's themes closely, which Yamaguchi found too simplistic, and made him unsure how to properly write a song for a romance film. The band decided to create a song without thinking of its use in the film, instead making a composition that felt natural in terms of their own musical style, and hoped the result would naturally match the film. Yamaguchi found that this technique worked well for the melody, however he found that writing lyrics entirely independent of the song was too difficult. Over time, he grew to be bored of the song's melody, and decided to change it during the late stages of creating the song. After doing this, he found the song's lyrics came easily to him.
  The song's lyrics are a description of a real scene in Yamaguchi's apartment, while he was frustrated about lyrical writer's block. Yamaguchi created the lyrical motif of spiders in the song, as at that time of the year there were many spiders in his Tokyo apartment. He linked the spiders to Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story The Spider's Thread (1918), and developed the song as a modern envisioning of the story. Yamaguchi does not believe that the song directly links to the film's contents or fit its image, however felt that a natural link was made, simply because of how it was contextually linked to the film by playing during the credits.
  
  The band emphasized the "groove" of the song, and found it important that every musical aspect of the song was blended together. They found that this was difficult to balance, and recorded the song while simultaneously using computers and instruments while a Korg Donca Matic rhythm machine kept time. They found that recording with this method meant the music was more sensitive to maintaining the song's groove. Due to the film's young female audience, an early idea by the band was to have bassist Ami Kusakari sing the song, which she did in initial demo takes. Sakanaction decided against this, because they were concerned that the film's production staff would feel misled, having commissioned a Sakanaction song and assuming that Yamaguchi would be the one singing it.
caption: The song's lyrics were written as a modern imagining of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story The Spider's Thread (1918).
exif: {}