Japan Visit (draft)

Following the release of The Kick Inside, Kate Bush undertook an astonishingly busy 6-month promotional campaign. In addition to topping charts and appearing on what seemed like every TV program in the UK, Bush did an extensive amount of traveling, visiting West Germany, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, France, the United States, Canada, and Japan. One could unpack any one of these tips individually, but they mostly consist of Bush performing songs from The Kick Inside. As Dreams of Orgonon is a song-by-song blog, we analyze episodes in Kate Bush’s career through the lenses of new songs as they come. Bush’s promotional visit to Japan not only offers a couple songs we haven’t heard her sing before, even if they are covers, but it gives a chance to see what Kate Bush does when she’s not allowed to be Kate Bush.

You see, Kate Bush wasn’t not in control of her environment in the slightest. She didn’t have her own band, gigs she planned, and she was undertaking activities she wouldn’t do again until the Eighties and Nineties (we will cover Let It Be on this blog again). But even more paramount to the uniqueness of Bush’s Japan trip is the firsts it uncovers: it is the first time Bush performs to a major audience. 

On the 18th of June, 1978, Kate Bush performed “Moving” to an audience of 11,000 people at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. This is just the number of people watching who were present, however. About 33 million people watched Bush on TV, a staggeringly large number. Japan and its huge physical music market had its eyes on Bush, and she was, of course, terrifying. For all that the lead track status of “Moving” makes it a fitting opening number for a performance, Bush was visibly terrified while singing this song, her voice wavering as a band she’d never met before coming to Japan played her music.