Songfacts®:

• Lead singer Chris Martin explained to Entertainment Weekly: "No one associates romance with Japan. Everyone thinks Japan is just about Hitachi and neon signs, but every time we're there, we see these amazing sunrises. It's very sexy."
• This Indie-Pop tune blends into a layered piano based hymnal with fairytale lyrics. Bassist Guy Berryman explained to Q magazine July 2008 why they combined the two songs: "Couldn't we make our minds up? No, it's because we didn't want to have an extra number on the CD. To keep it concise at 10 tracks." Drummer Will Champion added: "We just preferred to have less titles and more stuff. The album as a whole has got the most on it, but it's the shortest. We wanted to make it almost impossible for you to not listen to it all in one go."
• Drummer Will Champion told MTV News the story behind the piano sound on this track: "We were in a studio in New York, this place called the Magic Shop, and it had this thing called a tack piano there, which sounds like an old honky-tonk piano, where you put little tacks in the hammers, so it sounds like more of a harpsichord almost. And so we wanted to use that kind of sound, but we didn't have a tack piano, so rather than sample it, we went and bought an old piano from the shop up the road from our studio, and we bought a load of tacks, and me and (bassist) Guy (Berryman) and (guitarist) Jon (Buckland) spent a couple of hours pushing tacks into the piano hammers."
• Chris Martin (from The Sun newspaper May 13, 2008): "We always wanted a song title which was two in one - buy one get one free. Part of the reason for having two titles in a couple of places with slashes is because Justin Timberlake did it on his last album. I just thought it was cool. You have to know how to steal and where to steal from."
• Coldplay's EP Prospekt's March featured a new mix of this song titled "Lovers in Japan (Osaka Sun Mix)." In an interview on Coldplay's website, frontman Chris Martin said of the new version: "Well, we've been playing it live better than it is on the record. So the live version has informed this Osaka Sun version, which is just a bit more lively."
• When performing this song on Coldplay's 2008 American tour, a shower of transparent confetti butterflies drops down from above the stage, and as they fall they glow in the stage lights. The effect was inspired by a visit Martin took to the butterfly section of a zoo with his children. He told Rolling Stone: "Even if the show's going s--t, I know that there's two moments that'll be fine. The song 'Viva La Vida' - and when the butterflies glow in the dark."