''Message'' (stylized all caps) is the second album released on September 16, 2001 by the

Okinawa most commonly refers to: * Okinawa Prefecture, Japan's southernmost prefecture * Okinawa Island, the largest island of Okinawa Prefecture * Okinawa Islands, an island group including Okinawa itself * Okinawa (city), the second largest city in th ...

band

Mongol800 is a Japanese three-piece punk rock band from Urasoe, Okinawa, Japan, formed in 1998. The band released their first album when the members were 19. In 2001, despite low media attention, they produced a commercially-prominent second album ''Messa ...

via High Wave and Tissue Freak Records. At the beginning, the album received only regional attention. After the song ''Anata ni'' was used in an advertisement the album became a national success, selling approximately 3 million copies and reaching first place in the Japanese albums charts by

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that ...

. The album received no promotion like single releases or media coverage. Message contains 14 tracks with a running time of 67 minutes and 45 seconds.

Background and release

''Message'' is the second album of the Okinawan band

after making their debut in December 1999 with the album ''Go On As You Are''. The album was released on September 16, 2001.

Track listing

Lyrical content

The lyrics of the songs featured on the album are mainly about

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

and

peace Peace is a state of harmony in the absence of hostility and violence, and everything that discusses achieving human welfare through justice and peaceful conditions. In a societal sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (suc ...

. These lyrics were written like if the words could have come out of the mouths from Okinawian people. The song "Ryūkyū Aika" for example is about loving nature without using violence while in "Mujun no Ue ni Saku Hana" the lyrics metaphorically tells the listeners to overcome war through using words of kindness. In an article published in the Japanese regional daily newspaper ''

Ryūkyū Shimpō The is a Japanese newspaper published in Okinawa Prefecture. It was founded in 1893 by Shō Jun, a former prince of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, and was the first newspaper to be published in the prefecture."Ryūkyū Shimpō." ''Okinawa konpakuto jit ...

'' in January 2018 the writer stated that it was weird and creepy that the album had been released only a few days after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

Commercial performance

When the album was released it only received regional attention. After the song ' was used in a TV commercial the album became a national success through mouth propaganda. When the album was initially released it peaked seventh in the Oricon Albums charts before jumping to the top-spot in following year. ''Message'' became the first album released by an indie label to sell more than one million copies and peaking at no. 1 in the official music charts. In the year-end charts of 2002, the album ranked at third place with more than 2.1 million copies sold. The following year, ''Message'' ranked at no. 56 selling 230.000 copies. In the meantime, the album sold more than 2.8 million copies in Japan.

Chart performance

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Chiisana Koi no Uta

"A Small Love Song" became popular and has seen various cover applications in multimedia. It is used as an insert song of '' Operation Love'', and also for the soundtrack of ''

Teasing Master Takagi-san is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Sōichirō Yamamoto. It started in Shogakukan's manga magazine supplement ''Monthly Shōnen Sunday Mini'' in June 2013, and later moved to the main magazine, ''Monthly Shōnen ...

''. It has been used various animes, for example, a cover sung by

Manaka Iwami is a Japanese voice actress. She won the Seiyu Award for Best Rookie Actress at the 13th Seiyu Awards and the Best Supporting Actor award at the 18th Seiyu Awards The 18th Seiyu Awards was held on March 9, 2024, at the JOQR Media Plus Hall ...

acts as the ending of ''

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten ''The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten'' is a Japanese light novel series written by Saekisan and illustrated by Hanekoto. Originally published online on Shōsetsuka ni Narō, SB Creative has released eleven volumes of the series under thei ...

''. "Chiisana Koi no Uta" has become a very popular

karaoke is a type of interactive entertainment system usually offered in nightclubs and bars, where people sing along to pre-recorded accompaniment using a microphone. Its musical content is an instrumental rendition of a well-known popular song. I ...

song in Japan. It has been covered by more than 60 artists.

Notes

References

2001 albums {{Japan-album-stub