~Kami Memorial~

Kamimura Ukyou was born on Febuary 1st, 1973 in Ibaragi, Japan. When he was in elementary school he  was interested in  traditional brush writing and abacus. , called Soroban.
He was often sitting in the music room after classes and listening to record for hours..In fifth grade he started to play drums at school and was unusually talented  , but he didn't continue until high school.

In high school , a friend of him started a band and he was interested in playing the guitar , but  wasn't  good at it so he remembered that he played drums in school, so he took the drums.

He was very interested in Uk music and his favorite  bands were  were Duran Duran and Culture Club.

Between this time, Kami devoted his afterschool hours to practicing his favourite hobby, tennis.

He took up a part-time job and saved up for a simple drum kit. He worked very hard at it and played for 4-5 hours on weekdays and all day on Sundays. He didn't play on Saturday because he had tennis club practice .

After he graduated , he realized that  he must go to Tokyo to become a professional drummer, so he moved to Tokyo and stared a punk band.

Shortly after that he fell in love with Visual Kei style and started a VK band called Kneuklid Romance

Kami's new band played at many livehouses and that's where he first met Yu~ki. Yu~ki explained that he was the bassist of a band called Malice Mizer and asked Kami if he'd like to join. He refused the offer. Soon after that, Mana called Kami and convinced him to join the band.

Malice Mizer released their debut album, Memoire, his first inclusion in a publicly released album. This album  proved to be a mild success and shortly thereafter, their lead singer, Tetsu, abandoned the group.

Kami said he liked Malice Mizer's style. They played very complicated music which changed sound and rhythm alot. He said it looked like a challenge and he was really excited to play such difficult drum parts.

Kami was the type of guy who always seemed happy, because he usually always was happy. He did admit that he was very quiet and very trusting and kind, which he said makes it easy to cheat him . He liked to have fun, whether it was hacking around with Yu~ki or flirting with Gackt on stage.

Közi fondly dubbed him "Monkey Man" because he was always jumping around and being silly =^.^=. Along with Yu~ki's Bruce Lee impression and Közi's Mana impression, they must've been quite a group! Kami admitted to buying lottery tickets when he was bored. He said he spent 300,000 yen in one year (that's $2,417.41!) on them and only won about 10,000 yen back (That's $80.52)!! He loved to gamble, but was obviously not very good at it.

He said once that he liked a few children's songs and usually wanders around singing them. He had his quirks lol. He never let hot water touch his long hair, always woke up at 8:45 am, no matter what time he went to bed and .  also collected perfume bottles. He didn't really care what they smelled like, he just loved the bottles. He had about 80 bottles and only wore 4 of them.

Kami kept his long hair,   a light brown with hints of red. He used a hair manicure (shampoo that dyes at the same time) and he found a perfume that smelled like the shampoo . It's called Ma Cherie and it became his favorite and he always wore it.
One of his most popular trademarks was his long, beautiful hair which had grown so long that he actually could sit on it. However, in 1998 he cut it off and totally changed hairstyle. He constantly claimed that this was because his hair always got in the way while he was drumming. After the famous trademark was gone, he returned to the stage along with even better drumming skills and cheerfully delighted the audience with his brand new look.

He also was fond of collecting many perfumes  and shampoos, one  hobby that was shared by fellow group member Yu-Ki  which often led to them trading and recommending various products to each other.

He was fascinated by the imagery and symbolism of the butterfly and he had at least three tattoos on his arm, all of butterflies. He was also known to have bought anything he saw that had to do with butterflies.

  One of his favorite anime/manga series was Leji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 and he even  cosplayed the lead role Maetel (in both traditional wear and a special pink leopard print edition).

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 Kami also had an interest in the Sengoku era army general,Shingen Takeda. He was known to attend the Shingen Takeda festival every year, stating that he was glum he could not spare any time from Malice Mizer as he wanted to be a part of thecelebration.
"The attraction of Shingen Takeda is that he took very precise actions as he had calculated before," adds Kami. "He could grasp the whole situation very properly. Many books says that if Shingen had been born 5 years earlier, he probably could have taken over the country. But in fact, he died without taking control. I think even that fate is very cool."
"When I got interested in those old Japanese captains 2 years ago, MALICE MIZER was trying to take over the Indies world, so I guess I could relate to them."

He died of a sub-arachnoid hemmorhage in his brain. An anneurysm (a weakness in the brain that shows no symptoms) burst in his sleep, killing him instantly. There was no moment of pain for him. No waking up and slowly dying... Aneurysms are over before they start, so at least he went peacefully. Horrid as all that is anyway, he wasn't found until four days later.

There was a small funeral that very day. Only his parents, Mana, Kozi, Yu~ki and a few other close friends were there. His body was cremated after that.

Gackt, who had just launched his solo career, was on tour at the time and did not hear about the death of his close friend until about a week later. He was reportedly very devastated. In the months before his death , Kami had taken to composing music ,, writing two complete songs, 'Unmei no Deai' and 'Mori no naka no tenshi'. These would later be released on the memorial album 'Shinwa'.

Information taken from:

Wikipedia and http://tatsie.at.infoseek.co.jp/kami.htm 

Taken from http://www.angelfire.com/anime5/kamimura156/kamimemorial.html

 ~There are three things which Yu~ki especially hates: gambling, alcohol, and smoking... but after Kami's death he started smoking and he admitted in an interview that he smoked one pack a day.

~Kami's best friend was supposedly Gackt. Once they had talked on the phone for about eight hours!! But after one of their lives, Gackt kissed him, and Kami said that it was a very lousy feeling

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~Months after "memoire" had been released, Malice Mizer's former vocalist Tetsu decided to leave due to differences in what the band's direction should be. At thier last live performance, the feeling was stifling. Of all the members wrapped up in their performance, only Kami, on stage playing drums, showed an expression of sadness. It looked like even tears were welling up on his face. (Actually, sources say that backstage he really was crying).

~When asked what food he would like to eat again, Kami's first answer was "The first girl I slept with!"