What is the origin of the name of this website?

“nerve” and “雑音空間” each have separate origins.


In the beginning, this site was called “The Space for Sundry Matters”. It meant something like “The Junkyard”. But no one remembered the name correctly.

So I decided to give it a catchy Japanese name, and decided to read “Sundry Matters” as referring to “miscellaneous music”, “雑多な音楽” in Japanese.
The literal translation “The space for miscellaneous music” (“雑多な音楽のための空間” in Japanese) was then abbreviated to “雑音空間”.


One day in 1999, I suddenly had an idea and changed the name of the site to “nerve” without prior notice. However, many visitors said that this name made no sense and that I should change it back, so I resurrected the original site name with brackets and “nerve(雑音空間)” became the official name.

I don’t remember exactly where nerve came from, but it is probably one of the following.

  • Acronyms of Noise Environment (which) Recalls Vivid Enchantment
  • I was given part of the title of master musician Brian Eno’s album Nerve Net, as I was a big fan of his ambient furniture music at the time.