Let's Get Physically Destructive

When the average Japanese salaryman heads home each evening, the last song he wants to hear on his car radio or television is his corporate anthem, the tune he is compelled to sing at year-end parties or, even worse, while performing morning calisthenics in the factory yard. Pity, therefore, the workers of Yokohama-based Nihon Break Kogyo Co. After a popular midnight variety show, Asahi TV's Tamori Club, played its shaka [anthem], the company was bombarded with feedback from viewers until it finally decided to release the song as a single. It debuted last week at No. 22 on the Oricon weekly top-30 singles list. "We didn't want to handle so many phone calls and Internet inquiries anymore," a spokesman for the 16-employee company told Kyodo News.

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This is hardly the first unorthodox tune to make the charts in Japan, but it is the first company anthem. Few teenyboppers would choose to rock out to, say, the theme of Fujitsu Ltd., which exhorts: "We plan on uniting all our new techniques/ Over all the world."

In contrast, Nihon Break Kogyo's anthem has lyrics nihilistic enough for the most postmodern hipster:

We will destroy houses!
We will destroy bridges!
We will destroy buildings!
To the east! To the west!

Not many Japanese corporations want to project that message, of course. But Nihon Break Kogyo is a demolition company.