Reading MC TYSON’s “SANAE TAKAICHI”: One Hook, Three Personal Histories
The night of September 30, 2026. MC TYSON put out the music video for “SANAE TAKAICHI,” with SIMON and Reichi as guests. The title is simply the name of Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.
After the video dropped, the arguments started on X. Some people went after the view of history in the lyrics. Others stood up for the three rappers. Both sides shared the same timeline.
So I started with the lyrics. MC TYSON had posted the whole thing in the YouTube description, and every lyric quoted below comes from there. Having read it all, the uproar and the song itself overlap less than I expected.
Audio in July, video in September
The song is track 11 on the album “THE MESSAGE 7,” released July 7. Eleven tracks in all, including “NISSAN” with French Montana. In other words, the song had been out for three months. The arguments on X only took off after the video.
The video runs 4 minutes 32 seconds and was directed by Kai Yoshihara. As of October 15 it has passed 90,000 views. The first thing in the description is the announcement for his solo show “BAYSIDE STORY” at Yokohama Arena on December 7. The lyrics come after that.
On October 4 he posted a statement on his X account (@MCTYSONOFFICIAL). In Japanese, he wrote that he has seen the range of opinions on “SANAE TAKAICHI” and that “it’s fine to have people for it and people against it.” He went on: “I don’t make music to push my political views on anyone. I looked at Japan today and expressed what I felt, my own kind of patriotism, as hip-hop. That’s all.” Then: “Hip-hop can’t say this, hip-hop can’t sing that. That’s what feels off to me.” He closed with “Music is free. I’m free. You’re free.” The quotations are HIPHOPCs translations of the original Japanese.
The hook says “Japan is number one.” Verse one opens with “Give me chocolate”
The hook comes in two eight-line versions, alternated through the song. Both open with two lines that rhyme the prime minister’s name, Takaichi, with “takai ichi,” meaning a high position, and both close with four lines in English addressed to Japan. The only difference is lines three and four. One version goes from “red blood” to “Japan is number one.” In the other, those two lines turn into something he tells himself. The gaze that was pointed at the country swings back, briefly, to the self.
Verse one is MC TYSON. It opens with a memory: the first English his grandfather ever learned was “give me chocolate.” From there come the number 80, for years since the war, a postwar image of the Hinomaru raised over a white flag, and language that evokes Japan’s national soccer team. The last stretch runs through a one-way ticket, kamikaze, and getting up again and again until you win. (The description spells “one-way ticket” with a different first character than the standard one.) For the record, the lyric says “80 years,” and 2026 is 81 years since the end of the war.
The critics are reading this part. Kiyotaka Ayase (@Kiyotaka_Ayase, October 3) wrote that the lyrics were “just awful” and that the song “sounds like a military anthem that even glorifies suicide attacks and aims to be number one through war.” That post has 666 likes. The editor Seira Fujii (@cobta, October 4) wrote that the historical view running through “that patriotic rap” was “starting from the burnt ruins, which puts victimhood up front and makes one’s own aggression invisible,” and “‘give me chocolate,’ which erases the harm America caused and admires America uncritically” (621 likes). Polytas TV, a web program she appears on, also discussed the song’s view of history in its October 4 broadcast.
In the supportive posts quoted here, the focus falls less on the lyrics themselves than on the three rappers and the backlash. Hideaki Konno (@RtKongchang, October 7) wrote: “In the music industry, ‘anti-LDP’ and ‘anti-Takaichi’ are the default, the establishment. So MC TYSON and the others who put out a song called ‘SANAE TAKAICHI’ are getting piled on.” At 1,538 likes, it is the most liked post in this article. ano_ano (@ano_ano_ano, October 4) wrote that “three rappers with roots outside Japan praising Japan and Takaichi smashes the cramped frame that says rock and hip-hop must be anti-power and anti-establishment, and that is the original spirit of rock and hip-hop” (1,023 likes).
Verse two: SIMON says “not right, not left”
Verse two is SIMON. Born in Bolivia, raised in Tokyo. The official text for his album “IDENTIDAD,” released November 26, 2025, puts that background at the center of the record too.
It shows up from the first lines of his verse: “riding the Andean wind, to an island nation in the Far East,” then “what it means when two bloodlines become one.” Two specific places in Tokyo follow: Gokokuji, and the Udagawa area of Shibuya. The verse is pinned to real ground.
Then, near the end, the line that snagged me most in the whole song: “Not right, not left. I punch straight through the dead center.”
The title is a prime minister’s name and the hook says “Japan is number one,” yet the guest on verse two refuses the left-right split itself. I would not call it a contradiction. But two different kinds of language are sharing one song, and to my ear there is a little distance between them.
Verse three: Reichi says “Mama crossed the sea and is fighting on this island”
Verse three is Reichi. An Osaka rapper, she started rapping in 2016, entered the Kōkōsei Rap Senshuken high-school rap battle about three months later, and debuted with the mini album “JK wa Brand” in February 2018. A Real Sound interview published September 18, 2020 says she was 20 at the time and would turn 21 on January 18 the following year. That makes her 26 now. She also raps about a first cry on the night of 26. That age lines up with her own.
The verse opens by rejecting the male-female divide and telling herself to act like a boss. Early on: “Mama crossed the sea and is fighting on this island. I’ll get stronger too.” A mother who came across the ocean. Then comes “if you can’t even help the people around you, how are you going to protect this country’s future?” which ties the friends in front of her to where the country is headed. Later: “I won’t use my gender as an excuse. This is the era when the women who’ve got it rise to the top.” The theme from the opening comes back.
Neither the prime minister’s name nor any policy appears in this verse. The references to the country are the ones above, and that is all. On X, a user posting as Gyaru-In 2 (@oknkdi, October 4) put it this way: “She doesn’t mention Takaichi’s politics at all. She’s just singing about breaking the era where men on top is the norm and putting herself, a woman, at number one. Calling that ‘a Takaichi-worship rap’ from the title alone is ridiculous” (443 likes). Among the posts gathered here, it was the only one that engaged with what verse three actually says.
Three backgrounds, and the gap to the title
MC TYSON was born in 1991 in Suminoe Ward, Osaka. His label’s official profile says only that he had “a tough childhood that could hardly be called privileged.” That his father is Egyptian and his mother Japanese is reported by rapper profile sites such as PUCHO HENZA.
The writer Yuichiro Kurihara (@y_kurihara, October 3) wrote: “A problem song that is causing frenzy everywhere. I don’t think the track is interesting, but it is intriguing that all three rappers have roots overseas.” He lists MC TYSON as Egyptian, SIMON as Bolivian and Reichi as Filipino. For Reichi, we could not confirm this from anything she has made public, so this article stops at what the lyric says: a mother who crossed the sea.
With that said, put the three verses side by side and each one is about why the speaker is on this island. Verse one from a grandfather’s postwar years. Verse two from the Andes. Verse three from a mother’s sea. The title and the hook push the prime minister’s name to the front, but none of the three verses argues any specific policy. “Japan is number one” sits on top of three private stories.
What the critical posts were aiming at was the military imagery in the lyrics and the way the postwar story is told. It was the statement and the defenders who brought up “freedom of expression.” At least among the critical posts quoted here, the problem was the content of the lyrics, not whether the song should exist. Better not to mix those two up.
The same week, Yuki Chiba’s ending theme for the anime “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” was also stirring up a debate about what Japanese rap should be. The issue there was whether the song fit the anime. The issue here is a view of history. Two songs, in one week, reopened the question of what hip-hop is, for two different reasons.
The title, and three personal stories
The hook speaks of Japan. But what the three verses set down are a single boombox, a folded passport, and a sea that a mother crossed.
There are critics of the history in the lyrics, and there are people saying he has every right to sing it. What stayed with me after reading the whole thing was how private the three verses are, compared with the force of the title and the hook. The prime minister’s name looked like a label stuck onto those private stories.
MC TYSON plays Yokohama Arena on December 7. When he appeared at BATTLE SUMMIT III in August, he wrote on Instagram that it was “the first rap battle of my life.” When this song comes up in the arena, will the crowd sing the hook back? Or will verse two’s “not right, not left” get the biggest roar? That is what I want to go and see.
Related (in Japanese)
- Hip-Hop News, First Week of October 2026: Yuki Chiba’s JoJo Ending
- BATTLE SUMMIT III On-Site Report
- Third Week of August 2026: The Week Rap Was Entered as Evidence
Image: MC TYSON, “THE MESSAGE 7” cover art (Spotify)
Note: Every X post quoted here links to the original, with dates in Japan Standard Time. Like counts are as of October 15, 2026, and do not represent the overall balance of opinion on X. Quotations from Japanese posts and lyrics are HIPHOPCs translations.
