Imase Profile, Age, Hiatus Update and His City Pop Sound

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I first discovered imase through a short clip on social media, and his song "NIGHT DANCER" stopped me instantly with a groove that felt lifted straight out of a 1980s Tokyo night drive.
Self-taught, self-produced, and barely out of his teens when he started, imase turned that one viral moment into a genuine city pop revival for a new generation of listeners around the world.
In this article, we cover his real profile and age, the health hiatus he announced in 2025, and exactly why his sound resonates so strongly with international listeners raised on Yamashita, Takeuchi, and Anri.

Who Is Imase? Profile, Age and His Self-Taught Rise From Gifu

imase is a Japanese singer-songwriter and producer born on November 9, 2000, in Gifu Prefecture, making him 25 years old as of 2026.

His stage name is drawn directly from his real surname, though his full legal name has never been officially disclosed.

What sets his story apart is that he had zero formal music training. In November 2020, at age 20 and working an ordinary day job, he bought an acoustic guitar after a friend inspired him to try it, and started teaching himself to write and record music from scratch.

With no background in performance or music theory, he taught himself composition, arrangement, and even DTM (digital music production software) entirely through trial and error.

Within less than a year of picking up that first guitar, he began uploading original songs to TikTok, and his effortless falsetto and instantly catchy melodies caught on fast.

By December 2021, he had signed with a major label and released his major-label debut single "Have a nice day," officially becoming a professional recording artist barely a year after touching an instrument for the first time.

That kind of bedroom-to-mainstream trajectory, built entirely without formal training, is part of why his music feels so immediate and unpolished in the best possible way.

Source: Wikipedia "imase" (accessed August 2026) / Universal Music Japan Official Profile

Is Imase on Hiatus? What Happened After His Budokan Show

One of the most searched questions about imase right now is simple: is he okay, and is he still active?

On July 25, 2025, imase played a sold-out solo concert at Nippon Budokan, one of the biggest milestones of his career. In the days that followed, his health took a turn for the worse.

After medical evaluation, doctors advised long-term rest, and on August 4, 2025, imase's official website announced that he would be pausing all artist activities to focus on recovery. The specific diagnosis has not been made public, and out of respect for his privacy, it remains undisclosed.

As part of the hiatus, previously scheduled festival appearances were cancelled and he stepped away from his regular radio program.

As of August 2026, no return date has been announced. His official fan club and social channels remain active, and one song he had already recorded before the hiatus was released as the theme for an anime film in March 2026, but that release does not represent new activity.

Fans in Japan and overseas alike have responded with patience rather than pressure, a sign of just how deeply his short catalog had already connected before the pause.

Source: imase Official Site News (accessed August 2026) / Music Natalie

Why Does Imase Sound Like 80s-90s City Pop? The Secret Behind His Global Appeal

The reason imase's music resonates so strongly outside Japan comes down to one thing: he never studied music theory, so his chord progressions are built entirely by ear rather than by rulebook.

That intuitive, unstructured approach happens to land him squarely inside the sound of Japan's golden-era city pop, the smooth, groove-driven style of artists like Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, and Miki Matsubara that defined Tokyo's nightlife soundtrack in the 1980s.

This overlap isn't a coincidence built for nostalgia marketing. International listeners have spent the last several years rediscovering original-era city pop largely through YouTube's algorithm surfacing tracks like Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love" to a whole new overseas audience.

imase's music slots directly into that same lineage, rebuilt with modern production and a distinctly Gen Z songwriting voice: R&B-inflected basslines, a seamless switch between falsetto and chest voice, and lyrics that read as personal rather than performative.

"NIGHT DANCER" captures that blend perfectly. The track became the first J-pop song to break into South Korea's Melon Top 20 chart and has racked up hundreds of millions of streams from listeners who, in many cases, had never heard a Japanese song before.

It's this rare combination, an authentic bedroom-pop origin story wrapped in a sound that feels both retro and completely current, that explains why imase built a genuine international fanbase before his hiatus began, and why so many listeners abroad are still streaming his catalog while they wait for his return.

Source: WIRED Japan Interview / Billboard Japan (accessed August 2026)