Where the room was born
London, 1996 — that’s where the video was made.
But the story starts somewhere else. A few winters earlier. In Japan.
A city buried in snow.
The streets above: empty. No one.
He asks an old woman — where is everyone?
She points him down a staircase.
Below: people, people, people.
Color and sound. An entire city, underground.
Jay Kay told this story himself, on stage at Tokyo Dome in 1999 — and said the impression became this song.
Jay Kay’s own words, preserved in footage of the 1999 Tokyo Dome MC (Qetic, 2018 ↗)
Which city was it?
SAPPORO?
SENDAI?
On stage in 1999, he said Sapporo. The 20th-anniversary liner notes of Travelling Without Moving say Sendai.
Even in his own memory, the city drifts.
What never drifts: the snow above, and the crowd below.
Discrepancy verified by Domingo’s 2026 fact-check ↗. Jamiroquai played Sapporo in February 1995; the song was released in 1996. Sendai, for the record, has never had a major underground shopping district — Sapporo has one of Japan’s largest.
A future, named in 1996
VIRTUAL REALITY
VIRTUAL INSANITY
He took the buzzword of the decade and bent it — into a warning about a civilization driven, without brakes, by its own technology.
A song wary of a future where life moves underground — born from a city where it already had.
Title and theme as explained in Sony Music Japan’s official commentary ↗
Now watch it again
The empty streets. The city below. The room with no windows.
Knowing all of it — once more.
It doesn’t look the same anymore, does it?
19962026
Thirty years on.
Japan, 2026
In August 2026 — thirty years after the song’s release, days before Jamiroquai returned to Japan for Summer Sonic — Sony Music Japan released the official Japanese-subtitled video.
The song born from a Japanese city can now, at last, be read in Japanese.
Released August 5, 2026 (Sony Music Japan, official ↗)
Taken apart, rebuilt
Thirty years on, musicians are still taking this song apart and rebuilding it.
One studio. One take. Jamiroquai and the Bee Gees, folded into a single song.
Thirty years ago, he named it
“Virtual Insanity.”
What should we call
the place we’re living now?
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