Susumu Hirasawa

Hirasawa was born on April 2, 1954, to his father Kiyoshi (平沢 清), a firefighter as well as a calligrapher. Under the penname "Hōseki" (峰石), he wrote the names of album and band for the cover art of the P-Model album Potpourri. Hirasawa lived with his older brother, artist Yūichi (平沢 裕一, born October 5, 1950), who goes by the moniker "YOU1". He formed a stage effects team for Mandrake and appeared at the band's final show, running on a treadmill. Yūichi was P-Model's art director for the band's first 9 years of existence, and has done occasional artwork for his brother from 2013 onwards. His only musical credits are for writing the lyrics of "For Kids" and "Sunshine City" (from In a Model Room), and for doing backing vocals on "Rocket" (from The Ghost in Science).

Since childhood, Hirasawa had an interest in machinery, and thought of himself as an engineer. He was an RC plane enthusiast, wanting to be a pilot, and repaired broken devices like radios and flashlights given to him by his parents. He studied in the electronics department of Honjo Technical High School, where he was the first to finish the graduation project, the construction of a TV, despite the fact he did not fully understand the circuits. He also had motocross as a hobby.

He enrolled in the Tokyo Designer Gakuin College in 1972 and graduated cum laude in 1975 from the university's interior design course. According to the Tokyo Designers' Gakuin College '75 Design Annual, his graduation project was a dome-shaped stage set hall for Tangerine Dream's performances.

In his fifth year of elementary school, Hirasawa learned to play the electric guitar, inspired by the surf and instrumental rock bands he heard on the radio and on TV, later joining his junior high school's band. In 1973 he formed Mandrake, a progressive rock band that incorporated elements from heavy metal and krautrock together. Being one of the few Japanese progressive rock bands of its time, Mandrake achieved little success and released no albums during its lifetime.

During the early days of Mandrake, he worked as a part-time carrier on a fruits and vegetables market during the morning and at a Pepsi warehouse during the night, alongside Mandrake co-founder Fumiyasu Abe. In 1978, Hirasawa applied for a part-time lecturer position at Yamaha Music Foundation, and got the job, as he was the only person who applied. He taught courses at the Yamaha Synthesizer School until 1983, and met various musicians that he would later collaborate with through these lectures. After leaving his position as teacher, he took to making commercial jingles for the rest of the decade to make ends meet.

After discovering punk rock and working on synthesizer-heavy projects, Hirasawa decided to change the band into the electronic rock band P-Model in 1979. Initially met with success, they changed to the unpopular post-punk and experimental rock genres after Hirasawa went through an adverse reaction to his fame. With Hirasawa at the forefront, the band went through various lineups and achieved some popularity in the Japanese independent music scene.

In 1989, Hirasawa launched his solo career with the release of the album Water in Time and Space. His music incorporated elements from other genres, alongside themes from philosophy and psychology. He continued to change his musical style while concurrently working with two different iterations of P-Model until the group was disbanded in 2000. He has been actively releasing new music since then.

In 2013, Yūichi opened the café bar Gazio in Tsukuba. Although branded as a "new wave" café, the establishment was heavily themed around P-Model and Hirasawa's discography; it contained various band related memorabilia, served original cocktails titled after his songs and often held special events and shows by members and associates of the band. Hirasawa made exclusive content for it and, as he gives his brother most things he has no need for at a given moment, many studio and stage objects were displayed in the café. Gazio ceased operations as an active restaurant in 2015 and rebranded as an art studio; Yūichi now holds twice monthly "Café Gazio" events in Kichijōji.

Hirasawa started smoking in 1979 and quit in 2001; he has since become an avid user of electronic cigarettes. He is also a teetotaler, since drinking more than one fifth of beer makes him feel like his head grows "...five times bigger, then explode." Despite this, he previously drank wine before singing in order to preserve his voice; he has since replaced this with throat lozenges.

Hirasawa is a vegetarian, as he has remarked before, "At any rate, meat is unappetizing and gross. Eating meat makes me tired and makes me throw up". He lives in a house in Tsukuba with his pet calico cat named Tebin (テビン). His house also has a garden, where he grows some of his food. He also cultivates bacteria to make soy yogurt.

While repeatedly incorporating various concepts from Shintoism and Buddhism in his themes, as well as ones from other Asian religions, Hirasawa has never specified what his beliefs are. However, at one point in time, he supported the return of the imperial cult of the Emperor of Japan as a psychological measure: "I think His Majesty needs to recover his glorification. In this matter, I'm sort of right wing; the Emperor of Japan needs to regain his symbolic position as a God. But this is for the sake of a healthy process of collective consciousness, so please don't lump my position in with all the militaristic talk".

In 1988, Hirasawa sold a Cassette Book at a flea market in Yoyogi for charity. It contained three original songs made specifically for the release and came with a thirty-six-page long booklet containing an analysis of his dreams and his current experience. All proceeds were donated to the Human Earth – Awakening Village (人間大地・めざめの里, Ningen Daichi Mezame no Sato) volunteering welfare facility for the mentally ill in Gunma Prefecture, founded by the psychologist who gave Hirasawa counseling around the time he made the P-Model albums Scuba and Karkador.

In 2001, a pregnant stray cat appeared in Hirasawa's studio. He took care of her and helped carry out four of her pregnancies from 2001 to 2002. Since he could not take care of all the kittens, Hirasawa created a temporary site to recruit possible adopters and keep up with the welfare of the various cats.

As Hirasawa objected to the American response after the September 11 attacks, which he believes involved excessive carnage, and the Japanese government's aiding of such actions, he offered downloads of online banners and two of his songs for free, which he hoped would be used as tools of objection. One of them is a rerecording of 1994's "Love Song", which is about children in the battlefield; the other is "High-Minded Castle", about a man who "can not know the truth and true background through media, he tries to face the real tragedy on the other side of the world". The latter was taken from the Blue Limbo album, which displays a dystopian theme partly influenced by the American government's retaliation.

To support freelance journalists, independent and citizen media, Hirasawa started a free music archive to be used by independent news as background music. He sent e-mails to various associates and members of P-Model requesting involvement, the only one to join was guitarist PEVO 1go. The files uploaded were instrumental mixes of songs by both musicians, including some from Vistoron, which revolves around the propagation of a false reality by mass media.

In the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Hirasawa started traveling around the country with a Geiger counter, measuring the radiation levels and reporting them in his Twitter account. In June 2011, a song was posted on his site, titled "Nuclear Power" (原子力, Genshiryoku): A rerecording of the P-Model song "Boat" (from 1984's Scuba) in the style of "The Aggregated Past – Kangen Shugi 8760 Hours" project, with the lyrics changed to protest against Japan's use of nuclear power and to criticize the government and the media. The song, credited to "Stealthman", was only available on the site for six days, but could be redistributed if unaltered and not for profit. An instrumental mix was posted on the site by Hirasawa after the original was taken down, following the same distribution guidelines. As these events occurred, Hirasawa told a story on Twitter of being assaulted and having his computer and website hacked by "Stealthman". Through his tweets and the way the posts were worded on his website, Hirasawa effectively distanced himself from the track and disowned it. The song is available on the karaoke service provider Xing's JoySound online song library, credited to "Stealthman".