[8] Early material for an album had been considered and dropped, including the proposed title track "European Son", which later appeared on the compilation Assemblage.

The band then approached Roxy Music producer John Punter, but he was unavailable at the time and the group began to record with manager Simon Napier-Bell.

[10] In a retrospective review of the band's work, The Quietus characterised the album as defining "a very European form of detached, sexually-ambiguous and thoughtful art-pop, one not too dissimilar to what the ever-prescient David Bowie had delivered two years earlier with Low".

Lyrically the title track refers to problems the band was going through at the time, having lost their US record contract and the lack of commercial success in the UK.

72 in February 1980), the album returned to the charts in early 1982 after the commercial success of 1981's Tin Drum and the Hansa Records compilation Assemblage.

In other countries, including the band's native UK, Hansa chose to promote the album with the standalone single "I Second That Emotion" with "Quiet Life" as the B-side.

Eighteen months later, in line with the band's increasing popularity and media profile, Hansa released "Quiet Life" as an A-side single in the UK and Ireland in August 1981 (with the instrumental "A Foreign Place" as the B-side).

[15] "All Tomorrow's Parties" was remixed by Steve Nye and issued as a single by Hansa in February 1983, two months after Japan had permanently disbanded, and three years after the original album release.

The album nonetheless received positive reviews from other critics such as Melody Maker's Steve Gett and Sounds editor Geoff Barton, garnering the band some of their first real support from the British music press.

[1] Trouser Press viewed the selection of John Punter to produce the album as "significant, as the band's sights had shifted from gutter-glam to elegant decadence.

All songs arranged by JapanThe band originally intended for the track listing to be 1) All Tomorrow's Parties, 2) Fall in Love with Me, 3) Alien, 4) Quiet Life, 5) The Other Side of Life, 6) Despair, 7) In Vogue, 8) Halloween, 9) A Foreign Place, and the notes in the CD cover booklet of the 2006 remastered edition suggest that the listener should try listening to the album in that order.