Sakanaction perform “Kaijū” at Music Awards Japan 2026. Fuck “Iranai”, I guess.

Sakanaction performed their 2025 single “Kaijū”, which caught me by complete surprise. I thought they would have performed their latest single “Iranai”.

If Sakanaction had some beef toward performing their latest single, then “Shin Takarajima” is an obvious choice of song to perform at a big awards show. But perhaps TOO obvious of a choice. It was featured in a mashup-ey form as part of last year’s show in “Rydeen Reboot”. And I’d bet that Sakanaction are probably sick to death of the song now. So, we got “Kaijū”. And I dig it. I wasn’t the biggest fan of this song when it first released. But I like when music acts zag and don’t perform obvious choices of songs — it’s how you make them popular and connect. I always think of Beyoncé when it comes to this. Because she has songs which were not hits and many did not like when they were first released as singles. And yet, she kept performing them anyway — to such a point that they became hugely popular, became fixtures in her tours and even had fans mis-remembering them as huge hits. Yes “Diva” and “Run the World (Girls)”, I’m looking at y’all.

This was such a cool performance. Really understated, but with a cool visual twist that makes you go ‘OH, that’s cool’. The whole setup of having the dancers’ hands be displayed over the live video footage of lead singer Ichiro Yamaguchi’s face was a cool nod to the cool shit Sakanaction do during some of their live shows. If you’re yet to watch any of their live shows, do yourself a favour and get on that — especially if you are a Perfume fan. There’s similar levels of cool approaches to staging, tech wizardry and visuals that you’ll definitely appreciate. The same goes for their music videos too. And Sakanaction work with some of the same directors and creative teams that Perfume worked with. So you’ll definitely feel a sense of familiarity. Some homework and suggested viewing for Perfume fans.