(This is part one in a three-part series on how one short conversation between two salarymen led to the creation of the global pop superstars.)

Yoasobi, a two-member unit who creates their works in the concept of "turning novels into music" is now a global sensation.

Their song "Idol" soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Global charts excluding the United States in 2023. It was the first Japanese track to achieve the feat. 

The duo came into being after two employees of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. had a brief conversation by accident in January 2019. 

Yohei Yashiro and Shuya Yamamoto already knew each other before a drinking party in January 2019 with some 20 colleagues. Kind of.

Despite joining Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) the same year, being in different divisions meant opportunities to chat were rare. Seven years went by with Yashiro working directly under the company while Yamamoto handled artists at a Sony-owned label. 

The actual conversation that led to Yoasobi's formation didn’t even happen during the party, but afterward when the two found themselves alone and headed the same way home. 

Both felt the tug of a potential collaboration during the brief exchange and promised to get together soon.

It was this small moment that ignited the series of events building up to Yoasobi’s explosive success with Yashiro and Yamamoto being lauded as “creators” of one of the most recognizable J-pop units in the world. 

Although they were at a point in their careers where they had begun playing leading roles in their projects, Yashiro was struggling. 

Monogatary.com is a public novel submission site he set up in 2017, designed to earn revenue from any resulting books or anime adaptations of selected works. 

Few proved to be major hits, however. 

To break this deadlock, Yashiro toyed with the idea of taking those chosen submissions and crafting music instead of books by drawing on SME’s dominance in the music industry. 

With this in mind, he met Yamamoto not too long after the party at a cafe in the same building as SME in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district. 

“I am thinking of setting up a prize to award an excellent work and create a song and music video based on it,” he told Yamamoto, and implored the other to help him find an artist. 

Yamamoto was immediately in.  

“In general, it is a challenge to get a sufficient amount of money for promotional campaigns when we are marketing upcoming artists and making music videos,” Yamamoto recalled thinking. “However, if there is already a budget set aside for the award, I figured that we may be able to create good music.” 

The new partners decided to put together a two-member unit and began searching for a composer. 

Of all the candidates, they were drawn to Ayase who wrote, composed and arranged songs by himself with Vocaloid singing-synthesizer software and uploaded his creations to his YouTube channel.

His subscriber count was only in the hundreds, but Yamamoto was convinced Ayase was the right choice and an offer was sent. Ayase’s original videos now live alongside Yoasobi’s music videos on the same channel that has just shy of 6.8 million subscribers. 

“His works were rich in variety,” said Yamamoto. “Ayase was obviously deft at creating music of so many different patterns. It seemed he would be the best fit for our project because it is about adapting novels into music.”

Ayase gladly joined, and with a composer locked in, it was time to find a vocalist. 

The three chose ikura, a budding singer-songwriter with a clear and soulful voice who had previously taken part in SME’s program for new artists.

“Her voice quality was so distinctive and unlike any other singers,” Yamamoto said. 

Around nine months after that first conversation, Yoasobi officially came together in October 2019. Their debut track and music video, “Yoru ni Kakeru” (“Into the Night”), went up on YouTube the following month.

Its heavy lyrics set to a devastatingly upbeat melody are based on the short story “Thanatos no Yuwaku” (“An Invitation from Thanatos”) by Mayo Hoshino that was chosen from Monogatary.com submissions.

Yamamoto and Yashiro initially planned to consider paid distribution if the single reached 1 million views. It hit that milestone sooner than anticipated, closing in on the target less than a month after going live. 

While using a major label such as SME was an option, the producers banked on The Orchard.

The U.S. music distribution company is a Sony Group subsidiary and at the time was looking for a track that would appeal to the Japanese market; no one could have predicted how true this would be.