In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory, invited to create Onsen (hot spring) music commemorating the city’s 100th anniversary through sound. Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which weave together vanished eras with the ambient residue of the past, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched near the bay.

Over two weeks, Meitei listened to steam, stone, and history. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the spirit of onsen culture. Like water seeking its path, the music unfolded with natural inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep reverence for place. Equipped with a microphone, he ventured into Beppu’s famed sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou — capturing bubbling earth, hissing vents, wind over bamboo, and the voices of regular visitors. These field recordings became the bones of the composition, an attempt to sonify even the rising mist and subtle temperature shifts felt on the skin.

Sen’nyū unfolds as a single, continuous piece. Meitei’s score moves like fog through sulfur and stone, traversing the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral hum of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the voices and atmosphere of Takegawara Onsen. At its heart is a gesture of quiet reverence — for water’s patience, for the land’s memory, and for the hands that have bathed here across generations.

Meitei has always expressed his own views on things and events that are self-evident to the Japanese people but are now perceived as subtle impressions. On this occasion, however, he does not create music based on his own unique themes of Japan. Instead, he launches music into the world that has been created in actual places of Japan, music that can be felt with the hands.

During the project, Meitei also conceived a two-day public sound installation at Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance on the final day. Bathers immersed themselves in hot spring water while listening to the piece through speakers embedded inside the bathhouse — a ritual fusion of body, place, and sound.

The album marks Meitei’s first work centered entirely on onsen, and also introduces a new phase of his Lost Japan project under the title “失日本百景” (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan) — a series focused on existing places of longing, still breathing within contemporary Japan. Alongside the album, Meitei will release his first-ever photo book, a visual documentation of this journey. A new layer is added to the world he has built through sound alone until now.

Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.

The album will be released on 25 July 2025 on 180g LP and CD, with mastering by Stephan Mathieu.


Sen'nyū - Go-no-yu

By deathly pale light, silent is the night 🪡

Sen'nyū - Go-no-yu

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