Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

An article I wrote about “continental melodies,” a 1930s genre of pop songs from Japan that mimicked China and Korea, has just been published. Taking their cue as much from Tin Pan Alley Orientalism as from contemporary “Yellow Music” on the continent, these seductive tunes enjoyed massive popularity in Japan during the early years of its war with China.

My essay, “Japan’s Orient in Song and Dance,” is included in the volume Sino-Japanese Transculturation: Late Nineteenth Century to the End of the Pacific War (Lexington Books, 2011), edited by Richard King; Cody Poulton and Katsuhiko Endo. In it, I try to rethink the genre through the lens of recent cultural studies work on American black-face minstrel shows. Here’s how I set up my interpretation of the genre:

Here, I take up a popular music genre that was closely associated with Ri Kōran [an enormously popular wartime Japanese singer and actress who "passed" as Chinese], but which aimed at a subtly different effect. I will look at three singers in particular: Watanabe Hamako, on whose hit song the movie Shina no yoru was based; Hattori Tomiko, who played a Japanese woman in that same film (for which her brother Hattori Ryōichi composed the score); and Kasagi Shizuko, who as Ryōichi’s protégé would emerge in the postwar era as the Japanese Queen of Boogie Woogie but who began her recording career a decade earlier. All three recorded tairiku merodei (大陸メロディ, continental melodies), a genre that enjoyed enormous popularity in the years following the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident. These songs incorporated Orientalist elements, both musically and lyrically, to signal fantasy forms of Chineseness. Moreover, Hamako and Tomiko in particular would sometimes appear in Chinese dresses with Chinese hairstyles and all three would occasionally sing phrases in Chinese. Hamako even recorded cover versions of Chinese songs. Despite these Orientalist flourishes, though, no one would ever mistake these singers for Chinese. Their performances included elements believed to be Chinese, but unlike Ri Kōran they made no attempt to “pass.” In fact, a large part of the enjoyment of their performed Chinese-ness lay in the unmistakable fact that the singers were Japanese. In other words, these performers engaged in a game of masquerade, and their songs produced pleasure by openly acknowledging their counterfeit status. What sort of Japan-China relationship did this genre of explicitly counterfeit culture entail?

You can watch Watanabe Hamako, the “Queen of Continental Melodies” perform her signature number “Shina no yoru” (China Nights, 1938) here.　　You can also listen to jazz singer Kasagi Shizuko’s delirious “Hotto Chaina” (Hot China, 1939) here. And let me leave you with a contemporary performance by Hattori Tomiko of her 1938 hit “Manshu Musume” (Manchurian Girl), with Tomiko decked out in full Orientalist trimming:

Happy New Year to you! Here’s hoping 2012 brings us all peace and joy.

As the traumatic year 2011 wound down in Japan, there were any number of notable music events. Rock veterans Moonriders ended their thirty-five year run with a rooftop concert in Shinjuku, holding the Beatles’ legendary “Let It Be” rooftop performance in London very much in mind. Leader Suzuki Keiichi even ended the set by asking, ala John Lennon, if the group had passed the audition. Here’s a nice Japanese-language report, complete with photographs, from the Asahi newspaper.

As always, we welcomed in the new year by watching NHK’s annual musical extravaganza, “Kohaku Uta Gassen.” Among the highlights in my mind were Shiina Ringo’s set (“Carnation” and “Onna no ko wa dare demo”); the borderline political remarks by the all-star indies rock combo Inawashirokos, who before performing their “I Love You & I Need You Fukushima” declared that “nothing is finished yet,” obliquely referring to Prime Minister Noda’s mendacious declaration a couple of weeks earlier that the nuclear disaster was now under control; and Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi’s chilling performance in a live remote from the playground of a devastated school in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. Tendo Yoshimi turned in a nice Misora Hibari tribute, as well, while the K-Pop representatives (KARA and Shojo Jidai) acquitted themselves nicely. Lady Gaga contributed video of a nifty performance from New York. Here’s the full line-up of performers from the show.

Over the break, we were also able to watch the DVD I picked up in Sendai last month of Kuwata Keisuke’s remarkable September 10 and 11 concerts in Sendai. The shows were held in the Sekisui Heim Super Arena–a facility that served for several months as an emergency morgue for victims of the March 11 tsunami. Kuwata chose to come to Tohoku to launch his first national tour since receiving cancer treatment, and it is clear from the DVD that the concerts were cathartic experiences for both performers and audience. Proceeds from the DVD will be donated to the Japan Red Cross.

Let me leave you with the promotional video for Inawashirokos’s charity single, “I Love You & I Need Your Fukushima,” featuring 47 famous actors and actresses (one from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures) singing along with the band in a message of support for the stricken prefecture. What a year it was….
idarity/

The list continues:

4). The Beatniks, “A Song for 4 Beats)
Takahashi Yukihiro (late of Sadistic Mika Band and Yellow Magic Orchestra) has been making some remarkably lush-sounding music lately, especially with his new unit, pupa. Here, he reunites with Suzuki Keiichi (late of Hachimitsu Pie and Moonriders) under the moniker The Beatniks. The specific beatniks name-checked in the lyrics: Jack, William, Neal, Allen, and Harry.

3). Tokyo Incidents (東京事変) “Atarashii bunmei kaika” (新しい文明開化)
Shiina Ringo and company continue to crank out excellent tunes that range across the spectrum from jazz standards to noise punk. Here they mine the J-Rock vein with wonderful results. The guttural growl that Shiina lets loose at about 0:17 pretty much made my whole summer musically.

2). Kuwata Keisuke (桑田佳祐), “Sore yuke baby!!” (それ行けベイビー!!)
Kuwata debuted this number during his post-illness comeback appearance on last year’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, NHK’s New Year’s Eve spectacular–that’s where this footage comes from. The chords he uses in the main verse sections are utterly unlike anything he’s written before, while the chorus brings him back into more familiar territory. Brilliant songwriting.

桑田佳祐 復帰 by plutoatom

1) Saito Kazuyoshi (斉藤和義), “Zutto uso datta” (ずっとウソだった)
Certainly the bravest song by a major Japanese pop star this year. In April, Saito created a sensation when he went live on Ustream with an updated version of his top-ten 2010 hit, “Zutto Suki Datta” (It Was Always Love). The new title was “It Was Always Lies,” and the revised lyrics mounted a fearless attack on industry and government for selling the Japanese public on the myth of safe nuclear power. The original video went viral (you can watch it here), but perhaps the most emotionally satisfying version was this one, performed live in Fukushima at a September outdoor music festival.

Given my current listening post in exile, I’m hardly in a position to claim anything like a comprehensive grasp of today’s music scene in Japan. But here are some songs I’ll remember 2011 by. What a year it was….

8). Ando Yuko (安藤裕子), “Kagayashiki hibi” (輝かしき日々)
I’d been trying to get myself to like Ando’s work for a couple of years. The process got considerably easier when I heard this song, the theme song for the NHK television drama 「カレ、夫、男友達」.

7). GODIEGO (ゴダイゴ), “Walking On”
I especially like it when old guys (and gals) put out good new music. GODIEGO were enormously popular in the 1970s and early 1980s. Mickey Yoshino, Steve Fox and friends are still at it, and I found their new single very attractive.

6). Sakanaction (サカナクション) “Bahha no senritsu o yoru ni kiita sei desu” 『バッハの旋律を夜に聴いたせいです。』
A young (well, from my perspective) band that’s been firing on all cylinders the past few years. I like the intelligent lyrics about the emotional impact of listening to Bach late at night. And talk about hooks: the two breaks that insert fragements from Bach always make me smile (especially the second one).

5). Coma-Chi, “Say NO!”
One of several terrific protest songs to appear in the wake of 3.11 and the Fukushima disaster. Chuck D of Public Enemy famously called hip-hop the “CNN of the ghetto”; here, it serves as the CNN for post-Fukushima Japan, when the public found itself unable to rely on the government and mass media to learn what was really happening with the nuclear meltdowns.

I have about 20,000 songs stored on my I-Pod. A few months ago, I became haunted by the bizarre notion that I should listen to them all at least once: some vague idea about the ethics of ownership, about taking responsibility for music that I’d decided to hoard. I started going out of my way to listen to tracks with a 0 play count, proceeding alphabetically by artist name.

I’d gotten up to K with that method. But I was faltering, because this procedure required me to devote, for example, several days to listening solely to the Beatles or Blur. I’d get bored listening over and over to the same artist. Wasn’t there a better way?

I finally figured it out this past Monday: I’ve created a “Smart Playlist” consisting of all the songs that have zero plays (excluding those from the genres of classical and podcast) and then use the “shuffle songs” setting when I play it. The I-Pod now randomly plays songs from the list and, because I used the “live update” setting, it eliminates them from the collection once they been played. I started out with about 3500 songs in the playlist; that’s down to 3300 at this point.

You can’t imagine how pleased I am with myself over this technological breakthrough. I’m exploring the nether regions of my music collection, skipping around from artist to artist so rapidly that I never find any particular style tedious.

While typing in this entry, I’ve listened too:

“All Night Stand,” The Kinks (bootleg unreleased demo)
「慕情」, Southern All Stars
“Love’s Gonna Walk Out on Me,” Toots and the Maytals
“COLORS,” Utada Hikaru

Four down, 3296 to go…. I’m so excited about this.

It’s kinda sad, really.

Sakamoto Ryuichi played a stunningly beautiful one-man show earlier tonight at the Vic here in Chicago. It was mostly solo piano, although he used a number of electronic effects to add layers of complexity to the music.

The evening opened with an atmospheric number in which Sakamoto strummed directly on the strings inside the piano in accompaniment to a prerecorded quiet soundtrack–something like crickets chirping on a summer night. This was followed by “Hibari,” the first of three duet numbers. There were two pianos on stage, one played directly by Sakamoto, the other played indiirectly–often via prerecorded tracks, but sometimes it seemed as Sakamoto was feeding his own live playing into a kind of sequencer that immediately transferred the pattern to the second piano. “Hibari” is a hypnotic, captivating track from Sakamoto’s latest album, a fine instance of musical minimalism, and it worked wonderfully live.

The set also included a number of Sakamoto’s hits, all rendered solo on the piano — “Amore,” “A Flower is Not a Flower” (also a “virtual duet”), “The Last Emperor,” and (closing the main set) “Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence.” Sakamoto is an expressive player: he brought a delicate touch to the numbers, highlighting the details of their musical texture in strikingly beautiful ways. The stage was sparse; there were constant images, mostly abstract, projected on the screen in back.

The audience didn’t quite know how to react to the show at first, and the first several songs were greeted with silence. It was finally after the fifth number (“Amore”) that people started clapping between songs. By the end of the encore, though, they knew what to do: give Sakamoto a rousing standing ovation. Sakamoto loosened up a bit on the three-song encore: he put his body into his playing more than he had in the main set, and it probably helped that the songs were some of his best-loved compositions.

We got to go backstage after the show and chat briefly with Sakamoto. He joked about all the incidental noise from inside and outside the theater. I asked him how conscious he was of, say, the sound of the El trains that rumbled the theater, and he replied that he certainly heard it, but like John Cage he thinks noise is music too.

I’d seen Sakamoto perform earlier this year with Yellow Magic Orchestra in a huge outdoor rock festival in Tokyo (where the set included a couple of the numbers that Sakamoto played in his Chicago gig: “Tibetan Dance” and “Thousand Knives”), and I asked him about the difference mentally for a performer in that sort of event versus the more intimate show he had just played. He said it was much more nerve-wracking to do a solo show: with more players on stage, there is a sense of safety in numbers, but when you’re out there alone, there’s no place to hide.

A few weeks ago, on his Twitter account, Sakamoto responded to a query from a fan, asking how the fan could become a great pianist like Sakamoto. His response: “Don’t practice!” The man, in other words, has a sense of humor on top of being a gifted composer and performer. He heads for the West Coast next; it’s a show well worth seeing if it comes to your town.

The full set list (from Sakamoto’s homepage)
1. glacier
2. improvisation
3. hibari
4. improvisation 2
5. amore
6. a flower is not a flower
7. tango
8. bibo no aozora
9. high heels
10. loneliness
11. the sheltering sky
12. the last emperor
13. merry christmas mr.lawrence

encore 1
14. tibetan dance
15. happy end
16. thousand knives

I’m a little behind the curve on this story, but the Neojaponisme website has a fine postmortem report on the the recent closing of the HMV Store in Shibuya, Tokyo. W. David Marx analyzes the shifting role the influential music retailer played in the years after it first opened in 1990, becoming headquarters for what came to be called Shibuya-kei rock. The shop later lost its unique position of authority, however, and Marx suggests that its demise is due less to the rise of digital file-sharing and more to tectonic shifts in the structure of contemporary Japanese youth culture. As he aptly notes, “Popular music, more than ever in Japan, is an expensive hobby,” and after paying their cellphone bills kids today simply don’t have that kind of money to throw around.

Well, our upcoming fall concert-going season is pretty well set, and I’m looking forward to some exciting live music. Here are the events we’re planning to attend. How about you?

September 4-5: Chicago Jazz Festival (one of the nation’s premiere jazz events, and it’s all free!)

September 19: Aimee Mann (Old Town School of Folk Music)

September 25: Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Almost as good as the Chicago Jazz Festival, and it’s all free, too)

September 30: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Center; Riccardo Muti conducts Mozart and Haydn)

October 1: Eels (Metro)

October 26: Sakamoto Ryuichi (Vic Theatre)

November 13: Stew and The Negro Problem, featuring Heidi Rodewald (Museum of Contemporary Art)

December 2: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Center; Pierre Boulez conducts Schoenberg and Janáček)

Yesterday, we braved the heat and humidity here in Tokyo to attend World Happiness 2010, the annual musical festival organized by the members of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Luckily, the sun stayed behind the clouds all day, making it almost bearable to be outside the whole afternoon and evening.

We arrived around 2:00, just as punksters Mongol800 were finishing up their set. This meant that we missed Love Psychedelico, who I’d really hoped to catch. Maybe next year. Arriving late meant we also had to set up our “leisure sheets” on the grass far, far back from the stage, so that we mostly watched the performers via the giant video screen.

At any rate, the first band we saw were Ohashi Trio (大橋トリオ), who played a tidy set of country-rock, including a mandolin and an upright bass. They remind one a bit of Happy End back in the day. Worth exploring more in the future, I thought. They were followed by Okinawan singer Cocco, whose stage patter is a tad overly precious. But she delivered some solid J-Pop with a rock edge: imagine Bruce Springsteen as a girl raised in the Ryukyu islands. (Granted, this requires a particularly vivid imagination).

Kahimi Karie (カヒミ・カリィ) followed, doing her Brigitte Bardot imitation — in fact, the first tune she sang came complete with French lyrics. She did a set of slow-tempo chanson numbers, and was the only lead performer to sit down while singing. I like Kahimi’s breathy style and soft, melancholic songs, but on the whole, she would work better in a jazz club than in a mass outdoor setting like this.

The energy level leaped back up with the next act, Rhymester. They got the crowd going, with jokes about being the only authentic hiphop act on the bill and having to follow Kahimi Karie. They performed “Choudo Ii” and several other numbers with energy and verve. They were followed by □□□ (I still don’t know how to pronounce the name of the band), another group grounded in hiphop, albeit with live instruments. Leader Ito Seiko had a terrific stage presence as they performed “Everyday is a Symphony” and other tunes.

Next up were pupa, one of the bands I really wanted to see. Formed by Takahashi Yukihiro from YMO and featuring Harada Tomoyo on vocals, pupa have released two terrific albums. Yesterday they did a fine job of reproducing their sound live: their mid-tempo melodies weave together electronic and acoustic musical instruments, male and female vocals, to produce a lush, beautiful sound. Takahashi looks more and more like the older Groucho Marx every time I see him….

Ando Yuko (安藤裕子) followed with a set of her original numbers that, I confess, I mostly sat out. A fellow has to make difficult choices, after all. But I’ve just picked up one of her CDs to make up for it.

Next came one of the acts I was most looking forward to: Moonriders (ムーンライダース). Formed by Suzuki Keiichi and other former members of the band Hachimitsu Pie in the mid 1970s, they’ve been an innovative collective who’ve changed styles repeatedly. What would they look like in 2010? Unfortunately, they turned in a confused, confusing set–and perhaps were having technical problems with the sound equipment. They opened with a long drone-style jam, even before they were introduced. After about ten minutes, this morphed into the song “Kurenai futo,” complete with a vuvuzela. This was followed by “Tabula Rasa” and “I Hate You and I Love You,” among others. Kojima Mayumi joined them to performed the ending theme for the forthcoming film version of “Gegege no nyobo,” a psycho-rockabilly-ska number that is kind of a mess. Kojima stayed on to perform an updated cover version of “Never on a Sunday,” and they closed with the classic “Muscat Coconut Banana Melon.” The band seemed a bit out of it throughout their set and never really connected with the audience: disappointing.

Things picked up with Sakanaction (サカナクション), who immediately grabbed the crowd by opening with some tribal drumming, followed by a playful allusion to YMO’s “Rydeen,” before launching into a set of their own terrific material. This was in fact their second show of the day: they’d played several hours earlier just a few train stops away at the “Summer Sonic” festival. It’s great to see a young band perform just as they are cresting, overflowing with energy and creative ideas, and they had the crowd up again. Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra then followed with one of their typical joyful, high octane sets (albeit with some technical difficulties at the start). Terrific.

Next up were one of the rarities: the veteran punk group Plastics. Their set started off a bit rough, with their minimalistic new wave sound (think B-52s or Devo) not quite connecting. But then they hit a powerful No Wave groove that carried me back to CBGB’s circa 1977, grooving to the likes of James Chance and the Contortions. A really powerful noise that had me dancing — but most of the young ‘uns didn’t seem to get it, I’m afraid.

Finally, it was the headliners, Yellow Magic Orchestra, backed by Oyamada Keigo (Cornelius) on lead guitar, with a full horn section (augmented for a few numbers by the guys from Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra). They opened with one of my favorite YMO numbers: their deconstructive take on the Beatles’ “Daytripper.” For me, the highlight of the whole day was finally getting to see Hosono Haruomi live: there is basically a whole chapter about him in my forthcoming book on Japanese popular music. He sang the opener and played bass, keyboards, and even some nifty xylophone as the evening wore on. All in all, YMO gave a fine performance, although their Sly Stone cover (“Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa”) with guest vocalist Crystal Kaye was surprisingly unfunky. The encore was another Beatles’ tune: the very appropriate “Hello Goodbye.”

The full set list:
Lotus Love (Hosono on vocals)
Daytripper
ONGAKU
TAISO (Sakamoto Ryuichi sang through a loudspeaker, issuing orders to two male dancers who joined the band onstage for this number)
Thousand Knives
Behind The Mask
Tibetan Dance
Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa (with Crystal Kaye on vocals)
Rydeen
Fire Cracker
Encore: Hello Goodbye (Takahashi Yukihiro on vocals)

I’ll leave you with some fan videos of YMO’s performance from yesterday:

The Beatles’ live shows at Tokyo Budokan in the summer of 1966 were a turning point in the history of Japanese rock–and in the history of the integration of Japanese youth into the global music market. Some of the four shows they played were filmed for television, providing us with a good document of the fairly ragged nature of the Fab Four’s live act at this stage in their career. The audience for the concerts included a veritable who’s-who of 1960s Japanese culture: novelists Mishima Yukio and Kita Morio, film director Oshima Nagisa, future Jacks’ lead singer Hayakawa Yoshio, both of The Peanuts, etc., etc.

One of the songs featured in the Tokyo live shows was “Day Tripper,” originally released as a single around the world the previous December. As he introduces the number, John isn’t quite certain if it was released in Japan as a single, and he gives a very awkward impression of spoken Japanese, but no one in the audience seems to mind.

Also in the audience for the Tokyo concerts were members of The Spiders, one of the top Group Sounds bands. In fact, they had famously turned down an invitation to appear as an opening act for The Beatles in those Tokyo concerts. The Spiders were one of the first Japanese groups really to “get” The Beatles, after their chief songwriter Kamayatsu Hiroshi discovered a copy of the Meet the Beatles LP at the American Pharmacy in Tokyo in early 1964. They were famous for inserting new Beatles’ singles into their live act even before the original records had had the chance to climb the charts.

The Spiders recorded many covers of Beatles’ songs on their own albums. One of the best is, in fact, their version of “Day Tripper,” included on The Spiders Album No. 5 (1968). The Spiders were so hip that their cover version is based less on the original Beatles’ recording than on Otis Redding’s marvelous soulified take on the number: the famous guitar hook fades away, replaced by a very funky organ riff and The Spiders topped this off with some nifty Group Sounds choreography. Here’s video from a wonderful 1981 reunion gig:

The Spiders weren’t the last Japanese rock band to record the number, either. In 1979, Yellow Magic Orchestra released an industrial-grunge, postmodern take on the song, one that is as inventive as any of the other recorded versions (including The Beatles’). Moreover, YMO’s version is clearly rooted in The Spiders’ take on the song. Drummer Takahashi Yukihiro’s vocals are run through a filter that makes him sound like an android, the tune decays at key points into metal machine music, and what we are left with is an ironic undermining of the whole teenage pop concept. Very cool. Here are YMO performing it live in NYC in 1979.

YMO will be playing a reunion gig in Tokyo this summer when I’m there, and I’m debating myself over whether I should go. Do you think they’ll play “Day Tripper”?