The Gerogerigegege (ザ・ゲロゲリゲゲゲ) is a Japanese experimental music project founded in 1985 by Juntaro Yamanouchi (山ノ内純太郎). The name mixes Japanese words for vomiting and diarrhea with an onomatopoeia of disgust. The pronunciation is roughly za gero geri gegege. The project is often filed with harsh Japanese noise acts such as Merzbow and Masonna, and it also put out straight punk, ambient music, and seven-inches that mix found recordings with noise. For adult listeners who know BDSM and fetish culture, the point is the start in SM clubs, onstage masturbation set at the center of the live show, and bodily excess treated as both musical material and concept art.
From SM clubs to the Waseda auditorium
In 1985 The Gerogerigegege played early shows in S&M clubs. In October 1986 they played the Waseda University auditorium, the first show outside that circuit. Membership shifted, but Yamanouchi stayed. The other steady, conspicuous member was the exhibitionist Gero 30 (real name Tetsuya Endoh, also called Gero 56). He was known for masturbating onstage. In Japanese that act is senzuri (千擦り, “a thousand rubs”). It was not a side joke. It was public autoerotic display as performance art. Other members included drummer Toshinori Fukuda (Dynamite Gero), guitarist Hironao Komaki (Dee Dee Gero), live manager Junko Katoh (Gero Grace Seijoh), and driver Masatoshi Katsuya (Gero Route 66).
When the record is an object
The releases are often conceptual. The prose account dates the album Showa (昭和) to 1989 and says it came out after Emperor Hirohito’s death, bookending a recording of people having sex with Kimigayo, the Japanese national anthem. The discography list in the same source marks Showa (1988). Those are two years attached to one record, not two albums. A special edition disguised itself as a Ramones bootleg called Britzkrieg ’75 (Demo Tracks), with no mention of Gerogerigegege or Showa on the cover. The seven-inch The Night, after the usual count-in, is a recording of a man defecating into a toilet.
The compilation Recollections of Primary Masturbation contains 338 songs, and the whole of Tokyo Anal Dynamite is folded into one track. They also issued non-musical objects: Shaking Box Music: You Are the Noise Maker (a large metal box holding 100 blank cassettes), This Is Shaking Box Music Part 2 (a destroyed copy of the Mother Fellatio EP inside a cassette case), and Art Is Over (a single octopus tentacle in a cassette box). Those non-music editions were usually runs of fifty or fewer. Collectors chase the ridiculous themes and packaging, and some records go for hundreds of dollars. Sex and scat are the conceptual spine, not seasoning.
Disappearance, return, and the catalogue
After Saturday Night Big Cock Salaryman in 2001, the project stalled. Yamanouchi seemed to vanish, and people who had worked with him could not reliably reach him. Rumors about where he had gone spread outward from how extreme the catalogue was. On 27 August 2013 a Twitter post from Gidayū Kaitai said Yamanouchi had made contact. The first record after the stall, about fifteen years on, was Moenai Hai (燃えない灰), released 20 April 2016 by Eskimo Records in Japan. Uguisudani Apocalypse followed in 2019. Later titles kept mixing archive, reissue, and new conceptual noise into the 2020s.
Studio and live albums in this account start with early work as The Gero-P and self-titled material (1985), then Senzuri Champion (1987), Tokyo Anal Dynamite (1990), Live Greatest Hits (1991), 45RPM Performance (1992), Hotel Ultra (1993), Endless Humiliation (1994), Piano River (1995), Mort Douce Live (1996), Hell Driver (1999), None Friendly (1999), and Saturday Night Big Cock Salaryman (2001). After the return: Moenai Hai (2016), Uguisudani Apocalypse (2019), the Blackout Archive volumes and related 2019 titles, Piss Shower Girlfriend (2020), >(decrescendo) (2020) and its Final Chapter (2022), the reissue 直美のオナニーと若草寮案内 (2021), and Hand Made Broken Orgel (2022). Singles and EPs run from Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1988) through Mother Fellatio, Senzuri Monkey Metal Action, Yasukuni Jinja, the split Gay Sex Can Be Aids with Origami Erotika, and a 2017 self-titled single. Compilations include Singles 1985–1993 (1994), Recollections of Primary Masturbation (1998), and All You Need Is an Audio Shock by Japanese Ultra Shit Band (2012). Discogs, MusicBrainz, and Rate Your Music are where collectors check editions and fakes.
Why it sits near a BDSM music map
The Gerogerigegege is not a set of flogger anthems or a dungeon playlist. It sits near BDSM on a music map because of the SM-club origin, onstage senzuri as sexual spectacle, found sound of sex and excretion, and a collector culture that treats extreme packaging the way people treat limited fetish editions. Tokyo Anal Dynamite is still the door in for noise listeners. Showa is the door in for anyone interested in a national symbol, the look of a sex tape, and a conceptual prank sharing one sleeve. The blank cassettes and the octopus tentacle are the plainest statement: sometimes the “release” is a joke about desire and disgust, and the audio is not the point.
