Yen Town Band

Yen Town Band was originally a fictional band made by Takeshi Kobayashi for the movie "Swallowtail Butterfly" (スワロウテイル; Swallowtail) by Shunji Iwai. Kobayashi was in charge of the music for the film, and Iwai suggested making a band that released albums instead of releasing a soundtrack for the movie itself, so Kobayashi started "Yen Town Band" in 1996 and released music used in the film under that band, including a single that would become a huge hit, topping the Oricon Charts.

Eventually, the band began to grow popular because of their single, [r8166003], which sold an approximate 850,000 copies. From here, their activity was sparse. In 2003, Yen Town Band appeared at a live show. Their next activities would only resume in 2015, when they began to pick up on activity again. They played live shows and were able to release the single [r10579431], which was their newest song in a while.

Activity once again stopped in 2017 after being active for more than two years. They had a brief period of activity in 2021 during the 25th anniversary of the film that originally started it all.

Members of the band have changed over time, but Chara (the singer and actor of the main character of the movie) and Takeshi Kobayashi are some of the few original members of the band still active in it in 2021.