Interview for Music Life

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On June 15, 1965, The Beatles were at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, to record the track “It’s Only Love,” which would be released on the “Help!” album.

During this session, The Beatles were visited and interviewed by Hoshika Rumiko, from the Japanese magazine Music Life. The interview was published in the August 1965 edition of the magazine. Rumiko would meet The Beatles on several further occasions over the following years.

I met the Beatles in June 1965. I boarded a plane for the first time in my life and flew to London for an exclusive interview with John, Paul, George, and Ringo at EMI’s legendary Abbey Road studios. A year later, the Beatles came to perform in Japan, at the Nippon Budōkan. Following that original interview in 1965, I was able to meet and interview the Beatles every year until the band split in 1970. This wonderful opportunity gave me a precious glimpse of the personalities beyond these icons of my generation. […]

It was just after five in the afternoon of June 15 that I set out for the EMI studios in Abbey Road, where the Beatles were recording. Producer George Martin welcomed me to the mixing room of Studio 2. The Beatles were downstairs in the studio. Curious about this new arrival, dressed in a kimono, they stopped their conversation and looked up toward me in the mixing room. Paul McCartney pointed to the staircase and gestured at me to come down into the studio.

They’d been told that a journalist was coming to interview them, but probably hadn’t expected someone like me: a small (150-centimeter) woman dressed in a kimono. George Harrison rushed over and started asking me questions. Why was I wearing such a huge belt? And why were my sleeves so long? My decision to wear a kimono turned out to have been an inspired decision, proving an ideal icebreaker and talking point.

I think the sight of me—around the same age as they were, speaking hesitant English, small, and obviously harmless—put them at ease. They opened up right away. I’d been told I had only thirty minutes for my interview, but in the end I was with them for three hours. We’d solicited questions for the four Beatles from Music Life readers. When I handed a piece of paper with around ten questions to Paul, he took one look at it and said, “With your English, this’ll take all night,” and hurriedly passed question sheets to his bandmates. They all started dutifully writing their answers to our readers’ questions.

The most talkative of the four was John. At first he’d struck me as a bit reserved, but he soon relaxed and started cracking jokes. He seemed to know a fair bit about Japan, and told me he wanted to meet a sumō wrestler if he visited the country. He said a friend at art college had shown him a collection of old photos of Japan, including some “beautiful” photos of sumō wrestlers. “I can speak Japanese, you know,” he told me, before launching into a demonstration of pseudo-Japanese babble.

From London I flew to the United States for a month of interviews and other work. When I got back to Japan the issue with my Beatles interview was already in the shops. We normally sold around 50,000 to 70,000 copies per issue, but for this issue we printed 250,000 copies, almost all of which were snapped up. […]

Hoshika Rumiko – From When Beatlemania Came to Japan | Nippon.com, July 28, 2016

I knew I wouldn’t have much time, but then it turned out that they were very welcoming. They had never interacted with the Japanese before. The Beatles had already toured the United States, but they were not well known in the East. Therefore, they were glad when an offer came from the magazine “Music Life”. They said we could take as many photos as we wanted. Movie stars are usually not very open. But the Beatles were very friendly and they were interested in us. They were like a new type of creature in the celebrity world. Their approach was different. So my first impression of them was very positive.

Koh Hasebe – Photographer – Unknown source. Translation from Russian, From beatles-chronology.ru