INPUT⇄OUTPUT is out worldwide. The first full statement from WEST.’s longtime in-house writer is less a vanity project than a map of who he has been listening to for twenty years.
Tomohiro Kamiyama spent twelve years as one of seven voices inside WEST. — the Kansai group that used to be Johnny’s WEST, now under STARTO ENTERTAINMENT and ELOV-Label — before he finally put his own name on the spine. INPUT⇄OUTPUT, released September 1 on physical (Family Club Store online only) and September 2 on every major streamer, is his first album as Tomohiro Kamiyama. It is also the first solo project any WEST. member has been allowed to run this far.
The pitch from the label is tidy: birthday single in July, full album two months later, Zepp tour in September and October. The record itself is messier in the good way. Nine core tracks plus three edition-specific bonuses, most of them written or co-written by Kamiyama, running from guitar-forward city songs to Osaka cypher rap to a SUPER EIGHT senior handing him a metamorphosis anthem. “G.O.D.” already topped Oricon’s weekly digital singles chart the week of July 13. “No Filter,” the Umeda Cypher cut with a lyric video now circulating, is the one fans keep calling the unfiltered version of a man they used to meet only inside group choreography.
From Hyogo Lesson-Sei to the Guy Who Writes the Group’s Sharpest Songs
Kamiyama was born July 1, 1993, in Hyogo. He entered Johnny & Associates in February 2004 as a Kansai lesson-sei, bounced through Kansai Boy’s and Top Kids, and by 2007 was in the unit that became 7WEST. WEST. formed February 5, 2014, and debuted April 23 with “Eejanaika.” Green member color. Main-vocal lane with Akito Kiriyama. Dance parts that still show the five-year-old who started because his older sister was already in the studio.
What set him apart inside the group was not the high notes. It was the catalog. He has been writing and composing for WEST. for years: “Evoke” and “We are WEST!!!!!!!” on WESTival / WESTV!, “Survival” on W trouble (lyrics, composition, choreography, and stage direction), “ANS,” “Hanbunko,” “KNOCK OUT” on rainboW, later “WESTraight” with Umeda Cypher on 2025’s A.H.O. –Audio Hang Out–. When the group needed a song that treated the fan chant as a second vocal, he wrote it. When they wanted a hip-hop experiment without looking like they had rented a rapper for the afternoon, he called the Osaka crew he already knew.
Offstage he is the member with too many guitars, a serialized column in music magazine MG, and a documented friendship with Official Hige Dandism guitarist Daisuke Ozasa and with KNOCK OUT MONKEY — the rock band he has name-checked for years, and who later rearranged his “KNOCK OUT.” He acts: Switched (2018), Hakubo no Chronicle (2024), The Producers as Leo Bloom (2024), Mission: Sorta Possible (2025). None of that is the album. All of it is why the album does not sound like a company asked an idol to “try rap.”
rooms he has been collecting since junior days | Photo: Starto Entertainment
What He Took In, and What He Sent Back Out
The title is the method. Input is the people and rooms he has been collecting since junior days. Output is the first time those rooms are allowed to sit next to each other without a group concept holding the center.
He wrote and composed “Tokyo,” “G.O.D.,” “Just like dancing,” “caféine,” and “マトリョーシカ,” and he co-arranged the last of those. “G.O.D.” is the birthday single — the kanji in Kamiyama can be read as “mountain of the gods,” and he leaned into the joke without making it cute. Choreography on the video is his, with Kaita of dance crew RHT. “Tokyo” got its own MV and making-of on the Blu-ray edition.
Then the guests, which is where the record stops being a diary.
- “It’s never too late feat. KNOCK OUT MONKEY” — co-written with w-shun and built by the band he has been circling for half a decade.
- “自分に甘く” — co-write with Da-iCE’s Sota Hanamura (SOTA.h, MEG.ME, Louis). Fans clocked the Da-iCE DNA immediately: the vocal approach keeps changing song to song, and this one feels like sitting inside a Hanamura session.
- “マトリョーシカ feat. 小笹大輔” — Official Hige Dandism’s guitarist on a Kamiyama original; Higedan posted the credit the morning the tracklist dropped.
- “Metamorphosis feat. 安田章大” — Shota Yasuda of SUPER EIGHT wrote and composed it. Infinity Records posted the handoff. It reads like a junior finally getting a song from the person whose guitar he used to watch from the wings.
“No Filter” is the one that most clearly is not a WEST. song. Lyrics by Take-M, KOPERU, and KennyDoes; music by Cosaqu; produced by Umeda Cypher — the same Osaka collective that already built “WESTraight” with him. Group WEST. still has to leave room for seven personalities and a family-club live. Solo Kamiyama can take a cypher beat and not apologize for the density.
Bonus tracks split by edition: “虹の橋の麓で” (First Press A, self-written), “虹色の歌” (First Press B, MASA / Koji Makaino), and “All or Nothing” (Regular, Blue Vintage with DJ IZOH on turntables). Physical is still locked to Family Club Store online. Streaming is the open door.
This is Not WEST. With the Other Six Muted
WEST. live is still a Kansai variety machine: acrobatics, band corners, call-and-response that Kamiyama himself designed so the crowd is a credited vocal. The group sound in 2024–25 ran from festival-size pop to the Audio Hang Out experiment, and the 2024 tour cycle put them at the top of Japan’s live-attendance ranking. That machine needs hooks that seven people can wear.
INPUT⇄OUTPUT does not owe that machine a chorus every 40 seconds. The rap sits lower and faster. The guitar tracks are allowed to be guitar tracks, not “the member who owns acoustics gets eight bars.” The Yasuda and Hanamura songs borrow other groups’ harmonic habits instead of sanding them into WEST. brightness. Listeners who have been asking for a slower, headphone Kamiyama finally got one.
He has been careful about the mothership line. In July he said he lives to express himself — singing, dancing, writing, performing as the unfiltered version — and that WEST. remains home. The solo work, he said, is repayment to fans and a possible on-ramp for people who have never heard the group. The unofficial sentence is in the tracklist: he did not wait for a ballad compilation. He used the first solo hour to put Umeda Cypher, Higedan’s guitarist, a Da-iCE vocalist, a SUPER EIGHT senior, and a rock band he has loved since before debut on the same record as his own city songs.
What Fans Are Actually Saying
The loudest public noise right now is not stan war. It is logistics. Tokyo’s Zepp Haneda dates open September 18–19, then Zepp Nagoya September 30–October 1, then Zepp Namba October 14–15 — nine shows, first solo tour. X is thick with face-value-plus-fee resale posts, which is a blunt popularity metric: people bought multiples and now need the second name to go to someone who will actually use the ticket.
On the music, the repeating notes from Japanese listeners after the September 2 stream date: the voice is doing more colors than the group mix usually lets him show; “G.O.D.,” “Tokyo,” and “自分に甘く” feel like three different singers; “No Filter” is the flex they wanted after “WESTraight”; the slower cuts are the ones that made longtime listeners say the album is not just a dance reel. A few posts treat the record as proof that WEST.’s internal writing engine is still running even after the late-August agency notice around members Ryusei Fujii and Nozomu Kotaki — some fans are reading Kamiyama’s output as the part of the house that did not go quiet.
International listeners are thinner on the ground, which is the point of the worldwide links. WEST. has never been a global-export act the way some Tokyo groups were. Putting the album on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and the smart link is the first time his writing is easy to audition without importing a CD. The “No Filter” lyric video is the sampler.
The Tour Is the Real Output
An album this stuffed only finishes in a room where he does not have to split the mic. The 1st LIVE TOUR 2026 INPUT⇄OUTPUT is built for that: Zepp scale, not dome scale, which is the honest size for a first solo run. Goods already include a G.O.D. penlight and a Beaty plush. First Press A came with a T-shirt and a 44-page photobook. First Press B is the MV disc — “G.O.D.” in two versions plus “Tokyo,” with making-of.
If you already know WEST. as the group that makes a festival crowd yell “yabai meccha tanoshii,” this record is the writer of that yell working without a committee. If you do not know WEST. at all, start with “Tokyo,” then “No Filter,” then “Metamorphosis.” The rest of the album is the argument that an idol who has been submitting demos since the late 2010s was never only an idol. He was waiting for a catalog that could hold every input at once.
Listen: tomohirokamiyama.lnk.to/INPUT_OUTPUT
