The Gerogerigegege (ザ・ゲロゲリゲゲゲ; Japanese pronunciation roughly za gero geri gegege) is a Japanese experimental music project founded in 1985 by Juntaro Yamanouchi (山ノ内純太郎). The name derives from Japanese terms for vomiting and diarrhea plus an onomatopoeia of disgust. Often filed with Japanese harsh-noise acts such as Merzbow and Masonna, the project has also released straightforward punk (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male), noise (45 RPM Performance), and ambient work (None Friendly, Endless Humiliation), plus seven-inch records that mix those styles with found recordings. The group is best known for the 1990 album Tokyo Anal Dynamite—a seventy-five-track live set drawing on noisecore, noise, and hardcore punk. Limited coverage during the initial run (extreme sound and vulgar subject matter) later became cult following. Yamanouchi also ran the Vis a Vis record label. For BDSM-adjacent and transgressive-erotic culture, Gerogerigegege matters because the project began in SM clubs, put onstage masturbation at the center of live myth, and treated bodily excess as both music and concept art.
History: From SM Clubs to Waseda and a Shifting Lineup
Yamanouchi founded The Gerogerigegege in 1985; early performances took place in S&M clubs. The first show outside that circuit was at the Waseda University auditorium in October 1986. Over the years many members passed through; the most notable and consistent besides Yamanouchi was Gero 30 (also Gero 56; real name Tetsuya Endoh), an exhibitionist known for masturbating onstage during live sets. Male masturbation is called senzuri (千擦り, “a thousand rubs”) in Japanese, and that act was Gero 30’s trademark—performance art as public autoerotic display, not a side gag. Other members included Toshinori Fukuda (Dynamite Gero) on drums, Hironao Komaki (Dee Dee Gero) on guitar, Junko Katoh (Gero Grace Seijoh) as live manager, and Masatoshi Katsuya (Gero Route 66) as driver. The SM-club origin and senzuri stage practice are why the project keeps appearing on lists that cross harsh noise with sexual transgression rather than pure abstract electronics.
Conceptual Releases: Anthem Sex, Blank Cassettes, Octopus Tentacles
The band is famous for releases with extreme conceptual packaging. Showa (昭和, 1989), issued after Emperor Hirohito’s death, bookended a recording of people having sex with “Kimigayo,” the Japanese national anthem. A special edition of Showa falsely presented itself as a Ramones bootleg called Britzkrieg ’75 (Demo Tracks), with no mention of Gerogerigegege or Showa anywhere on the package. The Night 7″ features a recording of a man defecating into a toilet after the usual “one, two, three, four” count. The compilation Recollections of Primary Masturbation contains 338 songs, including the entirety of Tokyo Anal Dynamite as one track. Non-musical conceptual objects include Shaking Box Music: You Are the Noise Maker (100 blank cassettes in a large metal box); This Is Shaking Box Music Part 2 (a destroyed copy of the Mother Fellatio EP in a cassette case); and Art Is Over (a single octopus tentacle housed in a cassette box). Those non-music editions typically appeared in runs of fifty or fewer. Across the catalogue, the more ridiculous the theme or packaging, the more collectors chase it; some Gerogerigegege records sell for hundreds of U.S. dollars. The sexual and scatological content is not accidental seasoning—it is the brand’s conceptual spine.
Disappearance, Return, and Later Albums
After Saturday Night Big Cock Salaryman (2001), the project went inactive. Yamanouchi seemed to vanish; people who had worked with the group had no reliable contact. Rumors about his fate multiplied, often extrapolated from the extremity of the discography. On 27 August 2013, a Twitter post from Gidayū Kaitai stated that Yamanouchi had made contact. The first Gerogerigegege release in fifteen years, Moenai Hai (燃えない灰), appeared on 20 April 2016 via Eskimo Records in Japan, followed in 2019 by Uguisudani Apocalypse. Later titles continued the mix of archive, reissue, and new conceptual noise into the 2020s—proving the cult had outlived the silence.
Discography Snapshot (Albums, Singles, Compilations)
Studio and live albums in the source record include early work as The Gero-P and self-titled material (1985); Senzuri Champion (1987); Showa (1988); Tokyo Anal Dynamite (1990); Live Greatest Hits (1991); Senzuri Power Up (1991); 45RPM Performance (1992); Hotel Ultra (1993); Nothing to Hear, Nothing to… 1985 (1993); Endless Humiliation (1994); Instruments Disorder (1994); Piano River (1995, and a 2019 listing); Mort Douce Live (1996); Hell Driver (1999); None Friendly (1999); RRRecycled Music (~1999); Saturday Night Big Cock Salaryman (2001); Moenai Hai (2016); Uguisudani Apocalypse (2019); Blackout Archive volumes and related 2019 titles; Piss Shower Girlfriend (2020); >(decrescendo) (2020) and its Final Chapter (2022); reissues such as 直美のオナニーと若草寮案内 (2021); Hand Made Broken Orgel (2022); and further 2022 Japanese-titled work. Singles and EPs run from Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1988) through titles including Mother Fellatio, Senzuri Monkey Metal Action, Yasukuni Jinja, Gay Sex Can Be Aids (split with Origami Erotika), and many others into the late 1990s and early 2000s, with 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 remain the practical maps for collectors navigating editions and fakes.
What keeps the project on a BDSM-adjacent music map is not a set of flogger anthems or dungeon playlists. It is the origin story in SM clubs, the onstage senzuri ritual as sexual spectacle, the sexual and scatological found-sound content, and a collector culture that treats extreme packaging the way some people treat limited fetish editions. Tokyo Anal Dynamite remains the best entry point for noise fans; Showa remains the best entry point for people interested in how national symbols, sex tape aesthetics, and conceptual pranks can share one sleeve. The blank cassettes and octopus tentacle are the purest statement that the “release” is sometimes the joke about desire and disgust rather than the audio itself.
For bdsmwild readers, The Gerogerigegege is Japanese extreme noise born in SM clubs: Yamanouchi’s project, Gero 30’s onstage senzuri, Tokyo Anal Dynamite, sex-under-anthem Showa, blank-box and tentacle art objects, and a cult that paid hundreds of dollars for filth packaged as concept. It is not “BDSM music” in the playlist sense so much as transgressive erotic performance fused to harsh sound—the place where club SM origins, public masturbation, and collector fetish for packaging meet under one unpronounceable name. If you collect Japanese noise for its body politics rather than only its frequencies, this is still one of the essential catalogs.
