Japanese Lights

...and the Dimming Soul of the Modern Age

AUG 03, 2025

Somewhere in the neon arteries of Tokyo, beneath the buzz of vending machines and the quiet hum of bullet trains, a middle-aged man walks alone. He’s not lost. Not geographically. He could point to his hotel on a map and get there in five minutes. But spiritually? Existentially? That’s another story. One you know already. One you feel in your chest. The song I wrote, "Japanese Lights," isn’t just about this man wandering Shibuya or getting lost in the side streets of Shinjuku. It’s about all of us trying to find ourselves in a world that stopped resembling home sometime around 2007.

There’s something about Japan—its chaotic precision, its reverence for heritage, its silent wrestling with modernity—that haunts me. And by haunt, I don’t mean ghost story. I mean it follows me, echoes behind me. You can feel the Edo period and the post-war scars bleeding through the circuitry and glass. Japanese Lights, as a metaphor, captures that paradox: tradition glowing through the skin of modernity like a lantern behind rice paper. Not obliterated. Not even hidden. Just... flickering.

But here’s the problem: our lights are going out.

Since the rise of smart phones and the totalitarian grip of social media, our cultural output has gone from firework to flicker. Music doesn’t evolve anymore—it trends. Film doesn’t dare anymore—it replicates. Art no longer aches. It markets. We’re living in a world that has made the tools of creation easier than ever, and yet creativity itself has flatlined. The digital age gave us access. Then it took our souls.

I say that with the weight of someone who remembers the before. Who remembers VHS static, the thrill of a record needle, the shaky clack of a Walkman. Who remembers when you had to wait for things. And in that waiting, you learned to want. You learned to cherish. Now, we binge. We scroll. We swipe. And in doing so, we’ve flattened culture into a never-ending feed of the same seven emotions looped endlessly in 60-second reels.

There was once a dignity in limitation. In analogue. In scarcity. In local scenes and taped-over bootlegs. In shared language and unspoken codes. A football terrace chant that never made it to YouTube but lived in your memory like folklore. That was culture. Rooted, raw, and recognisable. What we have now is algorithmic mimicry. It’s not that young people aren’t talented. It’s that the system has no interest in soul. It wants clicks. It wants metrics. It wants compliance in creativity.

And so I grieve. Not for myself, but for all of us. For what we’ve lost. For what we don’t even remember we had. And I look to places like Japan for solace. Because somehow, they’ve managed to thread the needle. Their temples still stand. Their manners still matter. Their art still whispers, even if the city screams. That, to me, is salvation. Not just for nations, but for individuals.

Japanese Lights, then, is a love letter to this balance. A desperate hymn for cultural coherence. It’s about walking forward without burning the bridge behind you. About honouring where you came from without being paralysed by it. And about knowing that nostalgia isn’t a weakness—it’s a compass. A memory of meaning.

What we need now is cultural courage. The courage to say no to noise. The bravery to make slow things. The audacity to make original things. To remember that not everything has to be seen by millions to matter. That the quiet poem scribbled in a notebook might just save your life. That a band playing to 20 people in a pub might be more important than a platinum record. Because they meant it.

And in that truth lies hope. Maybe, just maybe, we can keep our own lanterns burning. Even if the world goes dark.

Japanese Lights

Spilled ink,Can't think,

One strange fellow,

Eyes blink, Winks pink,

In Tokyo

In an old man shoes but young mans coat.

Sharp blade,Tunes played,

Both feel the flow,

Mists fade,Neon stayed,

kabuki shows,

And Buddha hums in subway shadows low.

You can’t take back whats gone and you can’t predict what comes.

See him

Fallin,

Far beyond the fire and the fight,

Japanese Lights,

Show a man the colour of his nights,

Bright signs,Old shrines,

Still dancing slow,

Fox pines,Ghost lines,

Red lanterns glow,

Between the future and the past he knows

Fast cars,Old scars,

And stolen shows,

Dark stars,Pop bars,

Black blossoms blow,

Like everyone we leave the stage alone,

Ray x