Teru

Teruhiko Kobashi — TERU — was born in Hakodate, Hokkaido on June 8, 1971, and went to Hakodate Commercial High School before his band, Glay, became one of the defining rock acts of Japan's late-nineties boom. The detail I always come back to is that he started out as Glay's drummer, not its singer. Frontmen are usually born wanting the microphone; he arrived at it sideways, from behind the kit. You can almost hear that in his singing. It is not a technician's voice, full of ornament and proof. It is clear, unguarded, and pitched for a stadium — the kind of tone a crowd of tens of thousands can sing back without stumbling. That is a rarer gift than virtuosity, and much harder to fake. Decades on, he is still standing at the front of the same band, which says something about both the voice and the man carrying it.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Teru

Name (Japanese)

TERU

Reading

てる

Born

June 8, 1971 (age 55)

Origin

Hakodate, Hokkaidō, Japan

Occupation

singer / guitarist

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Boar

Active years

1988 -

High school

Hokkaido Hakodate Commercial High School

Spouse

Ami Onuki

Works summary

Appearances

39 (1996–2024)

By year (titles with a known year)

1996: 3, 1998: 2, 1999: 2, 2001: 2, 2002: 1, 2003: 1, 2004: 1, 2005: 1, 2006: 1, 2007: 2, 2008: 1, 2009: 1, 2011: 1, 2012: 1, 2013: 2, 2015: 1, 2017: 2, 2019: 5, 2020: 2, 2022: 1, 2023: 1, 2024: 3, year unknown: 2

Debut work

SPEED BALL / D.I.E.

Filmography / notable works

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/_t_e_r_u_/
• Xhttps://x.com/TE_RUR_ET
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teru%20(singer)
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERU
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q498174

Tags

• Hokkaidō
• singer
• guitarist

Last updated

September 24, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.