The Spiders | |
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 The Spiders during their 1966 visit to the Netherlands | |
| Background information | |
| Also known as | ザ・スパイダース |
| Origin | Tokyo, Japan |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1961–1970 |
| Labels | Philips |
| Past members |
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The Spiders were a Japanese rock band formed in Tokyo in 1961, as one of the leading groups of the Group Sounds genre.
Band members were Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu (rhythm guitar and backing singer), Jun Inoue (singer), Masaaki Sakai (tambourine and backing singer), Shochi Tanabe (drums), Takayuki Inoue (lead guitar and backing singer), Mitsuru Kato (bass guitar) and Katsuo Ōno (electronic organ and steel guitar). They had many hit singles, made feature films and were popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Japan. They toured Europe in 1966, and the United States, including Hawaii, in 1967. [2] Most of the band members are still active in the music industry, with the exception of Monsieur, who died on 1 March 2017 [3] and Takayuki Inoue, who died on 2 May 2018. [4]
Their biggest selling record was "Yuhiganaiteiru" which sold over 1.2 million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. [2]
Seijun Suzuki, born Seitaro Suzuki, was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his ultimate dismissal for what is now regarded as his magnum opus, Branded to Kill (1967), starring notable collaborator Joe Shishido. Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but he was blacklisted for 10 years after that. As an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his Taishō trilogy, Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991).
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