Yousuke Yukimatsu: From Osaka Underground to Opening for The Weeknd
Osaka born DJ and producer Yousuke Yukimatsu rose from the underground to global recognition after a viral Boiler Room Tokyo set and a powerful comeback from serious illness. He now opens for The Weeknd in Tokyo, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur.
There are career moments and then there are the moments that make you put your phone down, just sit with what you just read for a second. Yousuke Yukimatsu joining The Weeknd on his Asia tour, opening in Tokyo, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur, is the second kind. A Japanese DJ and producer who spent years playing small underground parties in Osaka and Kobe, survived a malignant brain tumor, went viral with one of the most watched Boiler Room sets in history, played Coachella in 2026, and is now stepping onto some of the biggest stages in Asia alongside one of the most famous artists in the world. If you wrote this as fiction someone would tell you it was too much.
Just Who is Yousuke Yukimatsu
Yousuke grew up in Osaka on a diet of classic rock from his Deep Purple obsessed father. He started DJing in 2008 at a friend's party and spent the next several years in the underground scene across Osaka and Kobe, playing the kind of small parties that teach you everything about what works on a dancefloor because the crowd tells you straight up.
His mixing style developed into something hard to pin down. Techno, acid house, experimental electronics, ambient music, post punk references all bleeding into each other not as genre tourism but as a synthesis from someone who absorbed all of it seriously over years. His sets move between eras and sounds with a fluency that makes other DJs take notice because the transitions feel inevitable rather than forced.
The moment that shifted everything came in 2014 when he played alongside DJ Nobu and impressed him enough to receive an invitation to play Future Terror in Tokyo. If you know the Japanese underground scene you know exactly what that means. Future Terror is one of the most respected techno events in Asia and a co-sign from DJ Nobu carries weight in that community. That one night put Yousuke in front of an audience that recognised what he was doing and responded to it seriously.
The part that puts everything in perspective
In 2016 Yousuke was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor while working in construction. Two surgeries. Serious treatment. When he came out the other side he quit the construction job and committed fully to DJing. Not as a fallback or a comfort during recovery but as a all in decision about how he wanted to spend his time.
Everything that has happened since traces back to that moment. There is an intensity in his sets that people consistently comment on and it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from someone who understands on a very real level that time is not guaranteed and that showing up fully is the only way to do it.
The Boiler Room set that changed everything
In early 2025 Yousuke played a Boiler Room set in Tokyo that went completely viral. Not because of one specific moment but because of the whole thing. The energy from first track to last. The way he plays with an intensity that feels almost physical. The set pulled from Romy, Overmono, deep cuts from the Japanese experimental underground, acid house records that felt decades old and completely current at the same time, and transitions that were adventurous in a way that felt intentional.
Pitchfork had previously called his 2020 mix album Midnight is Comin one of the most immersive DJ mixes in recent memory. The Boiler Room set brought everything he had been building in that world to a global platform. It hit 12 million views within six months and currently sits over at 18 million and climbing. Comment sections filled with people asking who this person was and why they had never heard of him. Other DJs shared it. It became a reference point for what a truly great DJ set looks and feels like.
Why The Weeknd called
From that Boiler Room set things moved fast. Coachella 2026. Lollapalooza in South America. A role in the film Happyend by director Neo Sora, playing a DJ at an underground Tokyo party, which is about as perfectly cast as it gets.
And then The Weeknd's team called.
The Weeknd's After Hours Til Dawn tour is genuinely one of the biggest things to ever happen in live music. A billion dollars grossed. Seven and a half million tickets. The highest-grossing solo artist tour on record. The Asia leg goes through Tokyo, Jakarta, Singapore, Seoul, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur, proper stadium shows in cities that take live music seriously. And Yousuke is opening select dates, including Tokyo, where his whole story really started.
To be more specific in which countries Yousuke will be opening is Tokyo. Jakarta. Kualu Lumpur. Three cities with enormous live music cultures and audiences that are deeply engaged with what is happening globally. This is not a support slot handed out casually. Yousuke is an artist with 18 million people who have already watched him play and came away wanting more. He brings credibility from the deepest end of the underground alongside a crossover appeal that comes not from compromising his sound but from the fact that his sounds is that good.
For Tokyo the weight of this is particularly real. That city is where Future Terror changed his trajectory. Where the Boiler Room happened. Where the underground scene that shaped him still exists and still matters. Coming back to play there at this scale is a full circle moment for an artist who has earned every single bit of it.
