After records and cassettes, it's time for the "short CD"! A collector explains the ever-rediscovering 8cm CD

The 8cm CD debuted on February 21, 1988. That was the day 68 titles were released in Japan at once. Before that, singles were bought on 7-inch vinyl, and CDs were only albums. I discovered them in real time when I was a university student, but they cost 1,000 yen each, so I don't think I could buy many.

My heyday was when I was in elementary and junior high school, so I thought I might as well buy an album with my limited pocket money.

The first thing I bought wasn't a Japanese tanzaku, but a Western Prince record. In the early days, I listened to CDs with an adapter, but then players with trays compatible with 8cm CDs became popular.

I got into 8cm CDs about 7 or 8 years ago, so it's actually quite recent. I ended up DJing at a J-POP event, and while I was searching for and buying music, I started to find them interesting, and from there I was hooked... It's a swamp.

The history of 8cm CDs pretty much ends in about 12 years. So after 2000, they were being sold at second-hand stores for 10 yen each. That's when I started collecting them. They were cheap, so I thought I'd buy them, and as I found and bought strange ones here and there, I got really happy.

I still buy about 1,000 pieces a year, so I have over 10,000 pieces, but my collection is mainly from the 8cm era when I was in the winter, so the amount I've invested is probably quite different from Yurion's.

Young people of the digital generation are starting to take notice of them as something they want to have physically, and prices are gradually rising. I think I have about 2,000 in total. I think the change of era is a big part of the reason behind this so-called boom. Items that symbolize the Heisei era have become Heisei retro with the transition to the Reiwa era.

Sakanaction's release of a single on 8cm in 2019 was one of the reasons for the rise in interest. Another catalyst was the simultaneous release of 61 titles, both new and old, on 8cm, starting with Eiichi Ohtaki's "Shiawase ni Ketsumei," on July 7th last year as "Tanzaku CD Day."

I also released an 8cm on the day of the Tanzaku CD. Until now, the hurdles to making one were high, but now pressing companies that make it easy to do so have appeared, and the number of works by indie and underground idols has increased. I feel like more and more people are looking for music sources with 8cm in mind.

These days, they come with a download code so you can listen to them without a player.

This shape of a strip of paper is unique to Japan. Two 8cm strips placed side by side are roughly the size of a single record, and I was told that this format was adopted in the record shop days to prevent packages that were too small from being hidden on existing shelves.

The world's first was Frank Zappa's 8cm (3 inch) album, released in the US in 1987, a year earlier than in Japan. The 8cm square paper jacket was too small overseas, so it was bulked up with plastic cases or other materials.

For the first year or two, Japanese tanzaku cards were designed to be folded in half, with each record company having their own format, but from the '90s they were designed not to be folded. For example, Moritaka Chisato's singles, which featured her entire body on the cover, showing off her legs, were excellent examples of how they made use of the 2:1 portrait aspect ratio.

As with Tamagotchi, there were many CDs that jumped on the trend. At the time, Dango 3 Brothers was also popular, and then there were variants like Dango 4 Brothers, so-called bandwagon-hopping products, and there are many projects that I'm surprised were approved.

Those were good times. You could even spend money on promotional materials that weren't for sale and make special CDs. The 20-minute recording time was just right.

Recently, we have also seen overseas collectors buying these albums in order to have a complete collection of the same song across various media.

Overseas, Japanese strip CDs are called "snap packs."

With records, it seems like even rare grooves have become so well-known that they're already familiar, but with 8cm CDs, you can discover a world of titles you've never heard before. Among them, you might find some amazing songs that you've never heard before.

It's not something that's been explored much in the music media yet, so it's worth digging into. It's nice to see new releases coming out now, not just old stuff. It's fun to dig into things you've never seen before, and it's also nice to re-buy the 8cm versions of songs you liked back then.

It was a period of about 12 years where music sales were so high that it was a period that had never been seen in the history of Japanese music. Million-sellers were churned out, and at the same time, it was interesting to see how many strange CDs were produced. When you look at 8cm, you can see that it was a short but intense period.

There are a huge number of 8cm CDs in the world, over 150,000 titles that I have been able to identify so far. They have many different charms, but there is something indescribably endearing about the imperfect form of the strip itself.