KOM_I
Formerly the vocalist for the music group Wednesday Campanella, she is currently involved in a wide range of genres as an artist. In April 2019, she released the EP YAKUSHIMA TREASURE with producer Oorutaichi. In 2024, she gave birth to her first child in the Peruvian Amazon.

Instagram：KOM_I コムアイ (@kom_i_jp)

KOM_I’s first visit to Yakushima was triggered by creating music for the YouTube Originals joint project “Re:SET,” which she joined as part of Wednesday Campanella. She decided on Yakushima as a theme based on director Sojiro Kamatani’s suggestion that she “try taking on something non-human, like a mountain or island.”

KOM_I visited Yakushima with composer Oorutaichi and others and gathered a wide variety of sounds through field recording, including the natural sounds of the forest and the singing of townspeople. Hiking mountains with local nature guides familiar with biology and geology provided her with various discoveries and learning.

“I originally thought of Yakushima as an island of fertile earth, but I learned that it’s actually a surprisingly harsh environment for plants. The ground in Yakushima mostly consists of hard rock with only a shallow soil layer, so it’s difficult for plants to become established. When I was walking along mountain paths, there were lots of places where tree roots had lifted off the ground and were protruding exposed. Seeing them cling desperately to life gave me a sense of tenacious vitality. Also, Yakushima is so rainy that there’s a saying that it ‘rains 35 days a month’ on the island, but because of this, moss grows thickly on the surfaces of the rocks. The moss substitutes for the ground in storing lots of water, creating soil for trees to grow. The abundant rainfall serves as the water of life, nurturing nature on Yakushima. This made me realize that Yakushima is an ‘island of water.’”

KOM_I spent her time on Yakushima hiking mountains, bathing in hot springs, and listening to local songs passed down since long ago.

“Songs that left a strong impression on me were the Yakushima folk song ‘Matsubanda,’ which was performed for me by a singer named Urara Ogata, and a song sung during the island’s traditional tug-of-war event. On the night of the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, the village of Nakama has a custom of playing tug-of-war while singing. We used the interlude ‘Ah yoiyaina’ that the village’s elderly women sing during this event for ‘Yaku no Jitsugetsubushi,’ one of the tracks produced for the project. I also encountered lots of unique sounds like a frog’s pulse, which I heard through a contact microphone placed under the frog’s jaw, and the kalimba-like sound of raindrops bouncing off of tree branches.”

KOM_I says that her original image of a place prior to visiting it plays an important role in her creative work, as she doesn’t want the work to be excessively influenced by her own experiences.

“Oorutaichi produced YAKUSHIMA TREASURE based on my image of Yakushima prior to visiting it, as an island teeming with the cycle of life, while also incorporating our experiences on the ground such as water sounds, the singing of elderly women, and the warmth of the people we met to create a record of the trip. The project only needed one track, but all of our thoughts and inspiration resulted in enough songs that we were able to release a whole EP.”

The project awakened KOM_I to the appeal of art incorporating experiences while traveling, and she began to have more opportunities to visit various places for her creative work.

“Once I started traveling to various places in many different countries, I realized that cities are a really peculiar environment where humans are quiet, but machines are always chattering. In normal life, we become numb to it, but when I go abroad and come back, I feel it more strongly. It’s like we’re so overly reliant on machines that our communication has become unnatural. I want people who are tired of living in the city to understand that it’s because of this peculiar environment. If you’re struggling, I think you should feel free to escape.”

The solo concert held at LIQUIDROOM in Tokyo to commemorate the release was a dynamic performance in which floral artist Yuji Ueno joined by piling several tons of soil on the stage while KOM_I and Oorutaichi performed and arranging moss on top of it.

“The soil rapidly piling up and forming a mountain in the center of the stage seemed to truly represent the island of Yakushima itself. At the same time, in desperately trying to perform and sing under tough conditions, with soil raining down so heavily that it threatened to bury us, Oorutaichi and I mirrored the vitality that we had sensed on Yakushima, bringing to mind the plants that live by clinging to the earth on the island. I feel like we were able to recreate the landscape of Yakushima on the stage.”

Finally, KOM_I offers some advice on how to get the most out of a trip to Yakushima.

“I want people to know that you don’t need to go out of your way to see the Jomonsugi Cedar, because there are lots of other attractions. To get to the Jomonsugi Cedar, you have to climb a tough hiking trail, and it’s inevitably crowded. I visited Yakushima several times without seeing it, and I still managed to have plenty of fun. Yakushima is home to over 600 species of mosses, and it’s exciting just to walk around while examining them with a magnifying glass. There are also lots of places where you can enjoy the beauty of nature, like the Shiratani-Unsuikyo Ravine and Ohko-no-Taki Waterfall. Yakusugi Land in a particular is a place that even people who aren’t confident in their physical strength or stamina can comfortably enjoy. But you can still see very old Yakushima cedar trees and all kinds of species of mosses there. Another thing is to have a reliable guide. Being taught about Yakushima’s natural environment and history made me feel like invisible things were coming into view. Instead of just wrapping your trip up by thinking that ‘being in nature was so refreshing,’ I recommend researching and hiring a guide so that you can enjoy Yakushima from various different perspectives!”

The South Sea Songline (by Hajime Oishi)
This nonfiction work uses interviews with different settlements as clues to explore the mystery of why ancient folk songs using the Ryukyuan scale (a hemitonic pentatonic scale) have been preserved on Yakushima, even though it is not part of the Ryukyuan cultural sphere. “Yakushima is even more interesting when you understand how it’s been influenced by two different cultures, Ryukyu and Satsuma.”

SAUNTER Magazine (published by Kilty BOOKS)
A documentary-style travel magazine from Yakushima. “I was interviewed and featured on the cover several years ago because of YAKUSHIMA TREASURE. In that issue, they shot me frolicking in the natural beauty of Yakushima to my heart’s content.”

Folktales of Yakushima, Red & Green Editions (by Toshimi Shimono)
Records of folktales passed down on the island since long ago. “There are lots of scary stories connected to the mountains, giving a sense of people’s awe toward the magnificence of nature. There are also cautionary tales forbidding women and children from entering the mountains, which is probably because it’s such a harsh environment.”

*This article was written in August 2025.