Saki (musician)

Saki was born on October 4, 1990, in the suburbs of Tokyo. Although her family lived in Kobe for a time due to her father's work, she was too young to remember it. Saki has a younger brother, three years her junior, who designs some of her merchandise. Her mother died in an accident when she was six years old. Saki started playing piano in elementary school, but hated it because of the strict teachers. However, she continued the lessons for four or five years, learning how to read music, but says she has not touched the instrument since. Her father listened to Western music of the 1970s and 1980s, but she did not fall in love with it herself until junior high, when she started playing classical guitar. Although she had played trumpet as a member of the brass band since third grade, a female friend asked her to join the classical guitar club in the first year of junior high. There she played music by Southern All Stars, Spitz and the Beatles and developed her love of Western rock and pop music. She received her first electric guitar and a small amplifier from the father of one of her brother's classmates. Three of the band's guitarists, O'Hashi, Ace Shimizu and Luke Takamura, had released instructional DVDs, so she bought them all and spent her summer vacation before high school practicing. ==Career==

Mixx and Mary's Blood: 2010–2022 Saki made her professional debut in July 2010 as a member of the all-female rock trio Mixx alongside vocalist Asuka and drummer Jackson. She explained that it was formed by an agency with the concept of featuring girls in maid outfits. Record label Exellex released their first two singles, "Agepoyo Let's Go!" and "Bye 3", on October 13 and the band played their first concert on October 29. Saki participated in the Muon no Yaon charity event hosted by Show-Ya on May 7, 2011. Admission was free but donations were encouraged to aid recovery from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which is the reason the concert used as little electricity as possible. Mixx disbanded in May 2011, Saki later credited intrigue around Vocaloid at the time as being the reason they were able to appear on television and perform in South Korea, the latter marking her first international performance. Re:Maker went on hiatus in June 2013, as the members became busy with other projects. Readers of heavy metal magazine Burrn! voted Mary's Blood second place in its best new artist category. The band switched to Victor Entertainment for their second album, Bloody Palace on October 7, 2015. Mary's Blood switched labels again for their fourth album Revenant, released on April 18, 2018 by Tokuma Japan Communications. Around this time, Saki was involved in an unspecified criminal act and the subsequent trouble related to it took a toll on her mental state. At the same time, disagreements in musical direction appeared in the band, which furthered her mental exhaustion to the point she told their management agency that she could not continue in the summer of 2018. The agency accommodated her, which included talks of a project that would later lead to the formation of Nemophila, and Saki said this alleviated some of her mental stress and allowed her to continue in Mary's Blood. While working on the band's June 12, 2019 album Confessions, Saki experienced a disconnect between what the other members wanted to do and what she felt was best for the band, and considered quitting. This resulted in her composing only three songs for the album. Around the time Mary's Blood were live-streaming concerts without an audience in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, the band members discussed leaving their agency due to a strained-relationship with the company, but, because they did not want to manage everything themselves again, they instead decided to take a break. In her autobiography, Saki wrote that some members wanted to continue, but others did not. Although she personally felt they should disband since there were no plans to resume activities in the near future, she understood the sentiment that it was "important that the band's name lives on", thus they chose to go on hiatus. After touring to support their self-titled sixth studio album, which was released on September 29, 2021, Mary's Blood began the indefinite hiatus on April 9, 2022. In December 2015, Saki began writing the column for Young Guitar Magazine. The first 102 entries were compiled into the book , which was published on October 6, 2025. She also contributed guitar to the song "Frozen Rose" from the 2017 album Astraia by Yashiro, Mary's Blood's live support guitarist. After taking part in a similar performance at Naon no Yaon 2017, Saki organized the World Guitar Girls Collection project which features several female rock guitarists playing famous songs in instrumental medley format. World Guitar Girls Collection Vol. 0 took place on July 17, 2017 and featured a performance by five guitarists, but was mainly a Mary's Blood and Cyntia concert. Another performance took place at that year's Classic Rock Jam on November 25, but the first standalone World Guitar Girls Collection concert was held on August 19, 2018. Nemophila and Amahiru: 2019–2024 At the beginning of 2019, when Saki was questioning her future in Mary's Blood, their management agency offered her the job of producing a band that featured new female vocalist Mayu for an upcoming event. After several meetings, Saki decided it would be easier for her to join as a full member instead. Drummer Tamu Murata said she decided to join once Saki had, Saki called Hazuki out of the blue when it was decided to have a twin guitar lineup, and Mayu recruited her classmate Haraguchi-san as bassist. After supporting Mayu at an August 2019 live session, the five musicians decided to form a real band as they felt the line-up was too good to be a one-off. Because she was originally approached to be the producer, was the oldest member and the one with the most musical experience, Saki said she said felt pressure and a sense of responsibility to speak up on certain things and ended up having to lead the group. This was the complete opposite of the dynamics in Mary's Blood, and she said she struggled with how to act with her juniors as she tried her hardest to make the band a success. . Nemophila played their first concerts on September 14 and 15 as part of Metal Weekend 2019 at Zepp Diver City, where they opened for Loudness and HammerFall, and released their first single "Oiran" on February 29, 2020. Saki's brother designed the band's mon-like logo based on their namesake flower. "Raitei", their second single, was released on August 22, 2020. Third single "Dissension" followed on February 28, 2021. On June 25, 2021, British record label JPU Records released Oiran - Extended Edition, which compiles the band's entire discography up to that point from the singles sold only via Nemophila's official website and a newly recorded English version of "Dissension". Nemophila released their first album Revive on December 14, 2021. After two further studio albums, Seize the Fate (2022) and Evolve (2024), and a Nippon Budokan concert celebrating their fifth anniversary, it was announced that Saki had left Nemophila on March 31, 2024 due to "differences in direction". In her autobiography, Saki wrote that various circumstances had changed after the band returned from their March 2023 American tour and that she was also experiencing unspecified personal troubles at the time. She wrote that she felt like an outsider due to the age gap between her and the other members, but also that they were now able to continue without her. Although Saki had discussions with the agency to explore various options, both parties eventually agreed to her leaving the band in March 2024. In 2020, Saki formed the musical project Amahiru with French musician Frédéric Leclercq, who came up with the name in a dream. Saki performs lead guitar, while Leclercq plays lead, rhythm and bass guitar. The two first met in 2015 when Mary's Blood opened for Leclercq's then-band, DragonForce, in Hong Kong. Saki said they discussed making music that combines western and eastern elements, and when she talked about making a solo album, her record label suggested she ask Leclercq to play on it, "But it was so fun to work with him and we both had a lot of ideas, so we decided to make Amahiru as its own project." Amahiru's self-titled debut album was released worldwide on November 27, 2020, and features British vocalist Archie Wilson, Dutch keyboardist Coen Janssen and American drummer Mike Heller. It also features shakuhachi player Kifu Mitsuhashi, and guest performances by Elize Ryd and Sean Reinert. Saki began an instrumental solo career with the February 10, 2021, release of "Brightness", which features Leclercq on bass, Epica keyboardist Coen Janssen, and drummer Shun Minari from Blindman. She composed the song with fans during the COVID-19 pandemic; while streaming on TwitCasting, they gave her their opinions on Twitter in real time. In 2023, she was one of many guest musicians to contribute to three different albums by Kisaki. Saki made her debut as a guitarist of Like-an-Angel, a L'Arc-en-Ciel cover band that was formed earlier in the year by L'Arc-en-Ciel bassist Tetsuya, at Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall on October 7, 2023. The other members are vocalist Jekyll, Vivid guitarist Reno and Matenrou Opera drummer Hibiki. She was contacted by Tetsuya's office via email after they saw some of her YouTube videos because Reno could not participate in the then-upcoming concert. The Germinans EP was released on the same day as the concert and includes "The Empress" in addition to the two previous singles. Like-an-Angel went on their first tour from September 15 to October 3, 2024, and released the original song "Angel Beside You" on June 4, 2025. Saki's first tour as a solo artist, Autumn Rain, was held between September 6 and 15, with the two-track CD "Redemption / Tempest" sold only at its concerts. "Crash to Rise", Like-an-Angel's second single, which Saki co-composed the music to, was released on December 17. Saki's second tour, Pluvia, ran from February 13, 2026, to March 19. Her autobiography, , was published by Shinko Music Entertainment on February 14. Saki will make her debut on King Records' Nexus label on June 24 with her first solo album, Pluvia. It will be supported by a tour of the same name from July 4, to August 11. ==Songwriting==

When composing, Saki said she has to think about the person who will be singing the song because the vocalists for Mary's Blood, Nemophila and Amahiru are all different. For example, Mayu likes to scream sometimes and Archie is a man. Saki has said the most important thing in Nemophila was to play "hard music like metalcore, but make it 'yurufuwa', to give it more of a personality. A Japanese word, it means... fluffy and smooth." Saki described the music of Amahiru as more hard rock in comparison to Mary's Blood's straight heavy metal, and feels it should therefore be a "little more modern" and have less distortion. She also said that she plays a lot more aggressive than in Mary's Blood. Both Saki and Leclercq wrote songs for the project, but it was Leclercq who felt having the European style from him and the Japanese style from her would "sound really cool" together. Saki then wrote more using Japanese scales and the two put everything together and finished writing when Leclercq visited Japan. ==Equipment==

Saki has been sponsored by Killer Guitars since 2009, She named it and swapped the pickups to Seymour Duncan; a '59 Bridge (SH-1b) in the front, and a Duncan Custom (TB-5) in the back. Saki then had made in 2014 to commemorate the band's major debut. It is a red KG-Fascist Vice model with an EMG 81 pickup in the front, an EMG 85 in the back, and a steampunk pick guard. In 2021, Killer released her signature model, the KG-Fascinator Seven the Empress. After borrowing a prototype seven-string guitar from Killer to record "Angel's Ladder", Saki started writing songs for seven-strings and had them make one using the Stratocaster-like shaped body of the Fascist Vice. With the body made out of alder because she likes the sound, she had the maple neck with ebony fretboard made slightly thinner than most seven-string guitars because of her small hands. It has Seymour Duncan pickups, a SH-10b-7 Full Shred in the front and a SH-8b-7 Invader in the back, and a "galaxy black" paint job with cherry blossom petals added because she wanted it to still be cute and "girlish". Saki named hers . She also has signature guitar picks with Killer. In Like-an-Angel, she uses a red, single-coil Killer guitar that is shaped like a Stratocaster, and which she had modified, including asking for the same pickups that Ken uses. To commemorate her tenth anniversary as a musician, Saki partnered with Young Guitar Magazine to create a line of limited edition guitar straps. The guitarist revealed that manufactured guitar slides are too big for her thin fingers, so she inspected all the bottles in her house until finding that salt bottles fit perfectly and said she planned to bring them on tour with her. Saki's Marshall Custom Shop Tattoo Series amplifiers have become one of her trademarks. It has a CSJVM410T5 head and a CS1960AT5 cabinet, with a Fractal Audio Systems Axe-Fx III. She bought it in 2014 due to its flashy paint job of a skeleton and said it was the only one in Japan at the time because the distributor thought no one would want them. Towards the end of 2023, she bought a Bogner Ecstasy Pandora. In April 2022, Saki's guitar pedalboard consisted of a MIDI foot controller to the Axe-Fx III, a Boss FV-500 volume pedal, and a Morley 20/20 Bad Horsie Wah (MTBH2) wah pedal. ==Discography==

Solo • "Brightness" (February 10, 2021) • "Germinans" (February 18, 2024) • Germinans EP (June 21, 2024), Oricon Singles Chart Peak Position: 40 • "Redemption / Tempest" (September 2025, sold only on the Autumn Rain tour) • Pluvia (June 24, 2026) With Mixx • 111 • 107 With Like-an-Angel • "Angel Beside You" (June 4, 2025) • "Crash to Rise" (December 17, 2025) Other work • Zwei; Neo Masque (2015) – guitar on "H-A-R-D-E-R" and "Star Queen -Action 2-" • Animetal the Second; Blizzard of Animetal the Second (2016) – guitar on "Fallen Angel" and "Kimi ga Suki da to Sakebitai" • Yashiro; Astraia (2017) – guitar on "Frozen Rose" • XTeen; "Eclipse" (2018) – guitar • XTeen; "Romanticist" (2018) – guitar • XTeen; "The New Black" (2019) – guitar • XTeen; "Gloria" (2022) – guitar • XTeen; Smile Punk Rock! Vol. 2 (2023) – guitar on "I Wanna Be Your Dog" • Kisaki; Providence (2023) – guitar on "Sacred Xanadu" • Kisaki; Afterglow (2023) – guitar on "Wingless Wing" ==Notes==