japan may have one the most developed muzak soundscapes in the world. its best vistas, yamanote departure melodies and muji, depend mostly on a casiopea or YMO touch. for anything else, you can mostly expect sickly sweet MIDI synths that are a hybrid combination of hold music and commercial jingles. you can’t, however, hang up on the don quijote loop while you find yourself shopping for tube socks and underwear at 2 AM. outside of unfortunate contexts like this, it’s also a gut-busting choice for a middle school lunchtime broadcast or conveying realism in yakuza.

theme songs are such an assumed part of the corporate identity for big box and discount stores in japan, like mosquito buzzing and parking lot tattlers are stateside, that I’m not convinced they aren’t also an employee retention repellent. one hopes there are studies rotting on company intranets that say cheap-sounding songs like this are a good grounding for equally cheap crap, which justifies keeping them on a constant rotation. coming up empty on anything real to cite here, I still have to presume they have a bigger psychological footprint than logo snobs already assume when dissecting serifs and color theory, given how many regional varieties and defunct examples exist that quickly expand a potential tier list of store melodies. yamada denki is, obviously, best girl. you have your nostalgia goggles strapped on too tight for bic camera. they don’t make them like dospara used to. you seriously like lopia’s amateur attempt at brainwashing? have some respect for yourself, terry. should you ever find yourself at this stage in discerning the low-brow, you may already be the incontrovertible snob susceptible to grading broadcast bumpers and sandwich porn.

lamu, sort of a dented can store crossed with costco attitudes about passing savings to the customer, is an arrow shot at a mid-aughts eroge opening. I had some awareness of this heading in to my encounter with one, but eating chewy 100 yen takoyaki and drinking canned coffee that tasted like dirt while bumming it in nagoya was enough to confirm to me that it is the best store music ambience of all time. see-saw’s jusco, with the kajiura yuki touch, might have come close in this respect if I ever got the chance to pair it with near-expired food. respected ranking science following energy drinks and fighting games, however, is not controlled for in a lab with a youtube video. lamu’s theme is, so far, the only thing that I believe is qualified for sweeping blue sky camera pans and lens flares. daikokuten, the parent company to lamu, does seem to acknowledge they know what they have when advertising it as a free download directly on their homepage.

♫ mizna - ラ・ムーテーマソング Source

premium quality, hidden in an aisle of discounts, really is what getting a good deal is all about. it also begs question when a deal appears way too good to be true. most supermarket songs are never worth elevating to an idol pop hit, but I can see why daikokuten would have it performed at a suit and tie meeting of managers the same way aiscream was irresistible to the tiktok awards. mizna, the signer, blogged about stumbling over the lyrics and how exciting the experience was. supposedly, it was a rather big deal that she made a public appearance here for the first time, as I would learn there may be good reason for the shroud: scratching a little deeper reveals mizna is the stage name for tamura shoko, credited almost entirely on happy science projects under their new star production talent agency.

japanese businesses, or really any business anywhere, being connected to death cults isn’t tremendously groundbreaking. APA doesn’t exactly conceal that they are connected to the fundamentalist right when they furnish propaganda in every room. daikokuten doesn’t appear to be as overt, but their recently departed president wasn’t entirely shy to say he sipped from happy science as well. according to okawa ryuho’s disowned son, they are directly responsible for billions of yen in incoming donations. ramu, I’ve now learned, is the name of one of the branch spirits preaching the miracle of happy science. plenty of career prospectives praising lamu’s logistics and mission can be found from the happy science academy. their stores initially being branded as happy shops (幸福の商店) and happy markets (生鮮市場ハッピィ), before they would adopt lamu as a front, might have answered the question of any connection too directly for comfort.

viewing the metadata on the theme’s download earlier could have saved me a lot of trouble from having to assemble the details myself if I noticed the composition was attributed to mizusawa yuichi, the main point man composing for happy science’s infamous anime films. a lot of questions about a cult brand, it turns out, are answered directly by its cult members. when it is already a sprawling media empire, one making it to the top of japan’s box office charts, I can’t feign any surprise that they are also fully integrated as a sprawling supermarket chain. the patterns in dianetics and free personality tests aren’t exactly a very localized phenomenon for anyone that has observed new religious movements with any suspicion, or mocking, as they gain foothold with famous celebrities. supermarkets are, of course, only just a different kind of celebrity.

I’m not mistaken about the impact of consumer boycotts or how difficult collective action is. I’m also, in general, not willing to wash my hands of consumption not being a very real material support. when I can avoid it, I don’t like giving money to jeff bezos or the walton family, or knowing that my money will flow upwards to drone manufacturing. to be perfectly clear, lamu speaking in happy science symbols is enough for it to be a disqualifying choice to me when substitutes exist, but I also know exploit is likely to follow the facade of every brand when they all consolidate under a few umbrellla companies.

this never means dismissing their unique harms when we do decide to scratch at the underbelly. happy science was the only group to oppose recent revisions restricting religious donations from people in a “state of confusion”, which I think alone is enough to color its character, but there are plenty of second and third generation accounts that do itemize the kind of damage they have inflicted on japan’s families and social fabric. supermarket jingles are, probably, a reasonably divorced curiosity that we can remove from having to address such heavy concerns. even if I have arrived to them this time by ranking store background music, reserving an empathy when probing what appears to be a pithy curiosity is still not something I would ever choose to forfeit to a mindless consumption. the critiques end up more entertaining themselves, and ingesting them is a valuable fiber.

discovering that lamu’s theme is more of a soft gospel does perfectly color my own encounter with happy science, which admittedly sort of makes me it love it even more approaching the sardonic. it is already fairly likely you will be approached with a flyer of mount fuji if you are a white person traveling in japan. happy scientists, having optimized for idol worship, at some point figured out they can bum around concert halls by feigning an interest in the performing groups, so I have also found myself unwittingly chummy to the charm before being pitched on heading to a famiresu retreat and ejecting. there is, unsurprisingly, strength in the number of idol fans you can find that share this experience.

there is no ethical consumption of eroge songs under supermarket capitalism. my light brush with lamu and the dissections of happy science I’ve performed from a safe distance, but mainly the children that have had their hearts broken by parents getting lost in the sauce, are enough for me to conclude that I’ll probably try to stick with nobikomi-kun when shopping for produce in the future. suffering alone with my spirituality, I have learned with these enlightments, provides enough nourishment on its own. still, I pray everyone receives the discounts and bargains that we all rightly deserve.

“The empty pleasures of this world
The unhidden obsession of a dignified young man
[...]
All the workings of this world are evil deeds!”