ZARD's last concert: Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, July 23, 2004

About the artist

ZARD was a project built around the singer Izumi Sakai, born on February 6, 1967, in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture^[1]. In August 1990 she auditioned to sing backing vocals for B.B. Queens, a group at the Being agency. She was not chosen, but the producer Daiko Nagato noticed her, and the idea for ZARD was born^[1]. Because she said at the audition that she wanted to do rock, Nagato pictured a hard rock band with a female singer, and he took the name from the word "HAZARD" on a Mercedes-Benz lamp. ZARD started out as a band but soon became her solo project^[2][1].

Her debut single, "Good-bye My Loneliness," came out on February 10, 1991, and sold about 250,000 copies^[1]. She wrote her own lyrics from the start, on Nagato's advice that an artist shines brightest in her own words. The notebooks in which she jotted down phrases piled up until she carried them in a travel suitcase^[2]. Rather than writing a lyric from scratch for each song, she picked words from her notes and fitted them to the melody, according to a Yahoo! News Japan feature^[1]. Counting lyrics published after her death, she wrote the words to 155 songs^[3].

"Makenaide" ("don't give up"), written in January 1993, entered the chart at No. 2 and reached No. 1 in its fourth week, ZARD's first chart-topper. It sold more than 1.64 million copies and became her biggest hit. Fourteen of her singles and albums sold over a million copies, total sales passed 37.63 million, and in Oricon's ranking of the Heisei era (1989–2019), published in April 2019, ZARD placed eighth among all artists^[1]. In 1998 "Unmei no Roulette Mawashite" ("spin the roulette of fate") became the opening theme of the anime Detective Conan^[4].

ZARD was also known for staying out of sight. A performance of "Makenaide" on the TV show Music Station in February 1993 turned out to be her last time singing on television. Almost nothing about her, not even her age, was made public, and rumors spread that the band did not exist at all^[2].

Why this was the last show

For years ZARD did not play live. The first full concert came on August 31, 1999, eight and a half years after the debut, aboard the cruise ship Pacific Venus. Fans applied with a postcard packed in the best-of album ZARD BEST The Single Collection ~Kiseki~; more than a million applied, and 600 were invited. The show opened with a computer-generated mermaid swimming through the sea and turning into Sakai^[5].

ZARD took about a year off from February 2001 and returned in May 2002^[2]. According to JaME, on March 27, 2003, she appeared at "SATURDAY LIVE R&B NIGHT," an event at the Osaka club Hills Pan Kōjō, her first live performance since 1999^[6].

Then, in 2004, came the first nationwide tour, What a beautiful moment Tour^[7][8]. It was planned as three shows and expanded to eleven^[2]. It opened in March at Festival Hall in Osaka^[9][6], played two nights at the Tokyo International Forum^[10][11], and ended on July 23 at the Nippon Budokan^[6][9]. The running order was reportedly rewritten about twenty times before the first night^[5].

Sakai kept releasing music after the tour. In 2005 she wrote "Natsu wo Matsu Sail no Yō ni" ("like a sail waiting for summer"), the theme of the film Detective Conan: Strategy Above the Depths; wanting a song children would enjoy, she suggested an arrangement in the style of the nursery song "Mori no Kuma-san"^[2]. Her 42nd single, "Heart ni Hi wo Tsukete" ("light a fire in my heart"), released in May 2006, was the last single of her lifetime^[2]. The 2006 compilation Golden Best ~15th Anniversary~, which sold over a million, was the last release she put out while alive^[12].

Izumi Sakai died on May 27, 2007, at the age of 40^[2][4]. More than 40,000 people came to a public memorial gathering on June 27^[9].

The Budokan show had not been billed as a farewell. The 2004 tour simply became ZARD's first and only nationwide tour^[7][8]; the music site Natalie called it "the first and last tour" in a headline about the cinema screenings^[13], and a 2022 Korean news report on its release there wrote that her death had made it ZARD's last concert^[14].

What is known about the day

The Budokan was the venue of the tour's final show^[9][15]. The tour had begun in Osaka in March, and four months later it came to an end here^[6].

Before the show, the house music was Keith Jarrett's solo piano album The Köln Concert. The CD used for the walk-in music was shown at the 2021 exhibition ZARD LIVE GALLERY, together with a model of the stage and a set list with Sakai's handwritten notes. The exhibition also recreated her dressing room, where, it says, the day's schedule, a keyboard, a CD of the pianist Fuzjko Hemming's album Kiseki no Campanella ("the miraculous Campanella"), flowers and bananas had been laid out^[5].

The stage was decorated with stone columns and roses; the set was rebuilt for the 30th-anniversary stream in 2021^[10][11]. The microphone, chair and table on it were the actual ones used on the 2004 tour, brought back for the 25th-anniversary concerts in 2016^[16]. The black trouser suit Sakai wore on the tour was displayed at the 2021 exhibition^[5].

The show opened with an orchestral version of "Eien" ("forever"). This overture appears as "Eien (What a beautiful moment Tour Opening Ver.)" on the 2004 single "Kakegae no Nai Mono" ("something irreplaceable")^[17]. The first song she sang was "Yureru Omoi" ("swaying feelings"), which had also opened the 1999 cruise-ship concert^[16].

Her band included the guitarist Yoshinobu Ohga, who had played with her since the cruise-ship show, and several musicians who joined for this tour and went on playing ZARD concerts for years: Yuzo Ohkusu on keyboards, Hisatsugu Suzuki on saxophone, Shinichiro Ohta on guitar and backing vocals, Yuki Okazaki on backing vocals, Taku Ohyabu as manipulator, and Keisuke Kurumatani^[16].

Her between-song talk, left off the 2005 DVD, was included in full on the 2020 Blu-ray^[18]. During the tour, a recording was made of her saying that she had always cherished words and lyrics and hoped music would carry them to listeners; it was later played to open the memorial concerts^[19].

What she sang that day at the Budokan, in what order, and which song came last could not be confirmed from official material or contemporary reports. The tour film contains 21 songs, opening with "Yureru Omoi," moving through "Makenaide," "pray" and "Tomatte Ita Tokei ga Ima Ugokidashita" ("the stopped clock has started moving") and closing with "Don't you see!"^[8]. The descriptions of the release do not say which venues the footage comes from^[8][18].

With the Budokan show the tour was over, and ZARD never sang before an audience again^[14]. Three years later, the Tokyo date of the first memorial concert was held at the same hall where the tour had ended^[9][15].

What the show left behind

After the memorial gathering on June 27, 2007, a memorial concert series, What a beautiful memory, was announced for Festival Hall in Osaka and the Nippon Budokan, the first and last venues of the 2004 tour, with the stage of that tour recreated^[9][20]. The organizers said more than 13,000 people filled the Budokan on September 14. Nine giant screens showed footage of earlier ZARD performances, 24 musicians played live, and the encore brought the first performance of a new song, "Glorious Mind"^[21]. According to Music Freak Magazine, it was the first time her recorded voice and images had been synchronized with a live band^[5].

The memorial concerts ran to three shows in two cities in 2007 and fifteen shows in thirteen cities in 2008^[22]. The 2008 tour ended on May 27, the first anniversary of her death, at Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo^[15], and in 2009 there was another Budokan show on the third anniversary^[22]. On May 27, 2011, about 8,000 people attended a 20th-anniversary concert at the Budokan, which opened in darkness with the recording of her voice made during the 2004 tour^[19]. Natalie described that year's shows as the "last live" of the memorial series^[23].

They were not the last. At the 25th-anniversary concerts in 2016, the microphone, chair and table from the 2004 tour stood on stage, and most of the band had played the 1999 or 2004 shows^[16]. On February 10, 2021, the 30th anniversary of the debut, a concert without an audience was streamed live from the Tokyo International Forum, where the tour had played twice, on a replica of the 2004 stage; at the end, Sakai on screen told viewers she hoped to see them again^[10][11]. In June 2025 came the first acoustic shows with an audience, at Billboard Live in Osaka, Yokohama and Tokyo, with the high chair from the 2004 tour placed center stage and footage of the tour's encore on screen^[24]. The 35th-anniversary concerts in February 2026 were held at Festival Hall and the Tokyo International Forum, two venues she had visited on the 2004 tour; they drew 7,700 people over two nights and ran to 39 songs^[25]. All of these concerts set her recorded voice and images against a live band; she does not sing in front of the audience^[7][25].

The tour footage itself has been watched again and again. It was released on DVD in 2005 and on Blu-ray in 2020^[4][8]. In 2020 a full-HD version was booked into cinemas in all 47 prefectures^[26][27]; some screenings were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and were rescheduled from June 27^[13]. In 2022 it played at 90 locations across Japan, including four drive-in screenings on May 27^[28], and that September it opened at ten CGV cinemas in South Korea^[14]. It was shown in 19 cinemas on the anniversary in 2024, its fourth encore run^[29], and in 27 in 2026^[4]. On the anniversary, Being's offices in Tokyo and Osaka set up places to lay flowers, and many fans visit^[1].

New songs have also come from what she left behind. In 2008 her own recording of "Tsubasa wo Hirogete" ("spread your wings"), recorded in her lifetime but never released, became the theme of the film Detective Conan: Full Score of Fear^[4]. On the third anniversary in 2009, her 1991 song "Sunao ni Ienakute" ("I couldn't say it honestly") came out as a single, following her wish to rearrange it and release it again^[22]. In 2020 the tribute band SARD UNDERGROUND released "Sukoshi Zutsu Sukoshi Zutsu" ("little by little"), set to lyrics of hers that had never been published^[7].

"Makenaide" plays almost every year during the marathon segment of Nippon TV's charity telethon 24-Hour Television, and its lyrics have appeared in a high-school English textbook^[1]. In 2021 the Machida City Museum of Literature held an exhibition of her lyrics, supervised by Being^[3].

The tour that ended at the Budokan in the summer of 2004 remains the only time Izumi Sakai sang for audiences across Japan, preserved on film and on the stages that keep recreating it.