🌙 A song released in December 2019. A 22-year-old composer, a 19-year-old vocalist, and a short novel from an open submission contest. Six and a half years later, that song is the first Japanese track ever to cross 1.3 billion streams. No movie tie-in. No anime hit attached. Just one song that refused to stop being played.

A Number That Has Never Existed in Japanese Music

On May 12, 2026, Billboard JAPAN announced that YOASOBI's "Yoru ni Kakeru" (translated officially as "Into the Night") had crossed 1.3 billion cumulative streams on its Streaming Songs chart. It is the first song in Billboard JAPAN's history — across any artist, Japanese or international — to reach that figure.

The previous Japan-first milestones held by this same track now read like a timeline:

  • 2020: tops Billboard JAPAN's year-end Combined Songs chart and Streaming Songs chart
  • January 2023: first Japanese song to cross 1 billion cumulative streams
  • May 2026: first to cross 1.3 billion

The duo's anime megahits arrived after this song. "Idol" (the Oshi no Ko opening) is at 1 billion streams. "Gunjō" (Blue) sits at 900 million. "Kaibutsu" (Monster) at 700 million. The debut song, with no global anime franchise attached, is still ahead of everything that came after it.

Where the Song Came From

YOASOBI is composer Ayase and vocalist ikura (Lilas Ikuta). Their concept, from the start, has been simple and unusual: every song is based on a short novel.

"Yoru ni Kakeru" was their first. It was built from "Thanatos no Yūwaku" (The Seduction of Thanatos), a short story by Mayo Hoshino submitted to a Sony Music-run novel platform called monogatary.com. The story deals with depression and the temptation of "leaving everything behind" — Thanatos being the ancient Greek personification of death, used in psychology to refer to the death drive.

That origin is part of why the song's sound and its lyrics feel like they don't match. The melody is bright, fast, and danceable. The words are about being pulled toward an edge. Ayase produces it like a high-BPM J-pop banger. ikura sings it like a love song. The dissonance is the point.

When listeners ask the duo where the emotional charge of the song comes from, the answer is always: read the novel. The song is a translation, not a confession.

A note for younger listeners: the song is widely loved as music, and YOASOBI have spoken openly about the importance of mental health resources alongside it. If anything in the song's themes feels close to home, please reach out to people who can help — friends, family, or a local support line.

Why It Refuses to Stop Being Played

1.3 billion streams in a Japan-only chart is a different kind of achievement from a global #1. It means the song was played, on Japanese services, on average, well over once per person living in Japan — and then again. And again. For six and a half years.

A few factors stack up here:

Generational catch-up. "Yoru ni Kakeru" went viral in mid-2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns put a huge swath of the country onto streaming services for the first time. Teenagers who were 12 then are 18 now and still adding the song to playlists. The song never really exited the Japanese listening rotation.

Karaoke staying power. In Japan, a song's life is unusually tied to karaoke. "Yoru ni Kakeru" has been a karaoke top-20 fixture in Japan for years, which feeds back into streaming because people listen to remember the parts they want to sing.

Anime fans working backwards. International fans who discovered YOASOBI through "Idol" or "Yūsha" (Frieren) routinely backtrack to "Yoru ni Kakeru." That international interest also shows up on the domestic chart through global streaming services counted in Billboard JAPAN's tally.

The Billboard JAPAN counting method. The chart aggregates plays from ten or so streaming services operating in Japan — Spotify, Apple Music, LINE MUSIC, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and others. This means the chart captures both domestic and inbound international listening through global services. It's a "Japan listening" snapshot, not a "Japanese-language only" one.

Beyond One Song: YOASOBI's Catalog Now Has 21 Songs Over 100M

Billboard JAPAN's release listed every YOASOBI track over the 100-million-stream milestone. The number is now 21. That's an unusual depth for any J-pop act:

Song Streams
Yoru ni Kakeru (Into the Night) 1.3B
Idol (アイドル) 1.0B
Gunjō (群青 / Blue) 900M
Kaibutsu (怪物 / Monster) 700M
Halzion, Shukufuku, Haruka, Sangenshoku 400M each
Ano Yume wo Nazotte, Encore, Yūsha, Mou Sukoshi Dake, Tabun 300M each
Yasashii Suisei, UNDEAD 200M each
Love Letter, Taishō Roman, Tsubame (feat. Midories), Adventure, Seventeen, Mister 100M each

For comparison, having even one song clear 1 billion streams on this chart was, until recently, considered the ceiling. YOASOBI has two over 1 billion and another in the 900-million range. The number reflects something the duo themselves have repeated in interviews: they are not chasing one hit. The novel-to-song concept produces a steady output, and the catalog is meant to be revisited rather than consumed once.

And Then a North American Tour

The streaming milestone arrives weeks before YOASOBI's biggest North American run to date — the YOASOBI NORTH AMERICA TOUR 2026 NEVER ENDING STORIES, opening July 31 in Montreal at OSHEAGA and closing August 16 at the 20,000-capacity Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Tickets, powered by Crunchyroll, are already on sale.

For Western fans, the framing of YOASOBI is often "the anime-opening band." For Japanese listeners, the central song is still the one before any of that — the one that opened the door to streaming dominance.

The number 1.3 billion lands in that gap. It's a reminder that before "Idol" was on a Time "best songs" list, before Coachella, before Hollywood Bowl, there was a small story from an open novel platform and a producer who decided to set it to music.

Is YOASOBI popular in your country? What was the first YOASOBI song you ever heard — was it "Yoru ni Kakeru" (Into the Night), "Idol," "Yūsha" from Frieren, or something else? And if you've discovered the band through anime, have you gone back to the older songs? Tell us in the comments.

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