Southern All Stars Shake Up Stadiums

The quintet topped off the late summer jaunt with two days of concerts in their hometown of Chigasaki, a beach community about 90 minutes south of Tokyo, where they played Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 for 20,000 fans each day in the baseball field of a local park.

The band also released a new song to commemorate their reunion, “Peace and Hi-Lite,” which debuted at No. 1, selling 207,000 copies its first week.

However, the song, whose title is a play on words involving two old cigarette brands, has made news for more than just sales. In the song, Kuwata sings, “I saw on the news that our neighbors were irritated/No matter how much dialogue we have/It seems the argument doesn’t change.”

The lyrics have been interpreted as a reference to Japan’s ongoing friction with China and South Korea over various territorial disputes. Kuwata also sings that “people tend to forget the tragic past and their foolish acts,” leading some to believe he is being critical of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his revisionist view of history.

The chorus references the need to “grow the seed of hope and cultivate love on the planet.”

The music video for the song makes most of these references clear by including actors wearing masks of U.S President Barack Obama, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Both the Japan Communist Party and the Chinese media hailed the song as an effort to improve bilateral ties, while conservative forces in Japan, and even some of the band’s fans, condemned it as being “anti-Japan” and espousing a trite peace-and-love sentimentality that ignores political realities.

The group has never delved into politics before in its music.