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….
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The year 2011 took a heavy toll on Chicago blues: the deaths of Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith contributed to the sense that an era was passing rapidly. Will the art survive, and if so, in what form? Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune published an important series of extended pieces over the course of the year on the present state of the local blues scene, well worth checking out:

“21st Century Blues: Can an Ancestral Art Form Survive?” (June 5, 2011)

“Chicago Camp Teaches Kids Blues 101″ (August 20, 2011)

“Playing the Blues in Black AND White” (November 26, 2011)

“Is This the Twilight of Blues Music?” (Dec. 28, 2011)

In fact, there is a rising generation of excellent mid-career blues artists–Michael Burks, Shemekia Copeland, Sean Costello and Larry McCray immediately come to mind. Alligator Records just celebrated its fortieth anniversary and is still going strong (as also reported by Reich in the Trib). We are also blessed with the continuing presence of many strong veteran performers: we have tickets to see Eddie “The Chief” Clearwater at SPACE up in Evanston on January 28, for example. In other words, the music is hardly dead–but it is, as Reich reports, in critical condition.

The City of Chicago has, incidentally, just announced that the 2012 Chicago Blues Festival will be held June 8-10.

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’m feeling gorged in contemporary music that eschews the guitar. There is, for starters, the brilliant British charity holiday single by “Cage Against the Machine,” an all-star assemblage of performers gathered in one studio to record an epic cover version of John Cage’s 4’33″ (you know, the one that is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence). It’s all designed to derail the evil Simon Cowell’s vice-grip on the annual competition to top the UK pop charts at Yuletide. It’s been quite successful, and now the inevitable remix versions are available, too. The Guardian has the story here.

Then there is “Kiss Kiss Kiss,” a great new track by Chicago hiphop diva Kid Sister. Scheduled for official release early next year, the song’s been leaked and is available all over the Internet now — including here. Not a guitar in sight: voices, percussion (most of it seemingly synthetic), and a few electronic effects are all you need to produce a very catchy piece of music.

Finally, there are the Agitators, a new band that is emerging as one of the musical voices of the ongoing British student rebellion. They’ve released a couple of singles and have appeared live at several campus protests. The Guardian has a nice feature on the band, which boasts a strict “no guitars” policy. Three voices and drums, and that’s it. “A new kind of music, nothing more than banging, stamping, clapping and voices,” they declare, “something anyone could do anywhere – on a march, at a protest, on the barricades.”

I pick up my guitar and play,
Just like yesterday,
Then I get on my knees and pray,
We won’t get fooled again.

We’re tired of doin’ nothing,
Let’s start marching

As for us, aside from shoveling snow and watching our daughter play Debussy beautifully in a piano recital on Sunday, we spent a good part of our weekend giggling over these television commercials for Panda cheese.

We went to Symphony Center last night to see Pierre Boulez conduct an exhilarating program with the Chicago Symphony. It was the kind of performance that leaves you with goosebumps, even the morning after.

The evening opened with the orchestral version of Schoenberg’s 1899 composition, “Transfigured Night.” I know this primarily in its original format, as a piece for a string sextet. With five or six times that many strings thrown into the mix the piece not surprisingly feels fuller. In particular, the brief dissonant section in the second movement (I think it’s the second movement, anyhow) hit with greater force, setting a sharper contrast with the lush Brahms-like lyricism that characterizes the rest of the piece. It’s a lovely work, and the orchestra played with great precision and beauty.

After the intermission came the Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, a stirring epic that should be much better known than it is. A barbaric yawp that sounds more like fire and brimstone than anything you’d expect to hear in church (especially on the maniacal pipe organ solo that comprises the penultimate movement, played last night with appropriately over-the-top intensity by Paul Jacobs), it employs a full choir, pipe organ, four vocal soloists, and an enormous orchestra. You have the feeling, in other words, the you’re getting your money’s worth when you see this one performed live.

Boulez led the massed musicians at a brisk pace, and everyone performed brilliantly. Seeing it played live, I came to realize how the work is largely structured around a dialogue between the chorus and the brass section: they pick up each other’s lines, interrupt one another, echo each other’s chord patterns.

There was a small bit of drama in last night’s performance. I happened to be watching vocal soloist Mikhail Petrenko sitting in his chair, obviously getting mentally prepared to stand up and take his first solo. Suddenly, his foot slid back under his seat and knocked over the glass of water that was sitting there. He quickly reached down to set it back upright. I kept wondering if they would bring him a new glass between movements, but they didn’t. I also wondered if tenor Lance Ryan might slide his glass of water over to the other side of his chair to share with his bass partner, but that didn’t happen either. The other three vocalists kept sipped elegantly at their glasses of water to moisten their throats between their singing parts, but poor Petrenko had to go without. At any rate, he got through the rest of the performance without incident and sounded fine.

Boulez carries himself on stage with reserve, employing body language that I can only describe as charming. It’s hard to believe you are watching one of the legendary firebrands of modern classical music when you see him conduct. Perhaps he’s mellowed at age 85.

At any rate, a night at the symphony to remember. Both Andrew Patner (Sun-Times) and John von Rhein (Tribune) gave enthusiastic reviews to the program, as well.

Last night we attend my daughter’s high school winter concert here in Chicago. She sings in the choir, but we also enjoyed sets by the school orchestra, chamber ensemble, band and jazz ensemble. The band played a very striking piece I’d never heard before: “Whirlwind,” composed by Jodie Blackshaw. The worktakes a number of important elements from twentieth-century avant-garde classical styles (aleatory passages, nonconventional instruments, offbeat instructions to the players) and briiliantly arranges them into a form that is fully accessible to an amateur youth orchestra. The kids seemed to enjoy playing it last night.

I snooped around today a bit and came up with this website from the publishers of the score. The site informs us that Blackshaw won the Frank Ticheli Composition Contest with it. On YouTube, I came up with video of a performance by the Singapore American School Sixth Grade Band. It’s just cool to see an ambitious composition like this enter the musical repertoire of high school bands.

I’ve just stumbled across this very nice video clip introducing the Suicide Commandos, the godfathers of the Twin Cities musical scene that produced the Replacements, Husker Du (add an umlaut or two there), Soul Asylum, Trip Shakespeare, Golden Smog, the Jayhawks, and eight dozen other great bands you’ve never heard of. The clip combines archival footage with interviews and concert footage from the reunion gig they did earlier this year as part of a tribute to the late Bruce Allen, guitarist for the Suburbs (another fabulous band from the scene).

In 1977-8 (which is to say, my junior year in high school), the Commandos defined cool in Minnesota. I only got to see them play a couple of times in their heyday, because I was too young to get into the Longhorn and the other clubs around town, but I wore out my copies of their records. They really laid down the cultural pattern that other Twin Cities bands would follow: they insisted on fun, on an ethical rejection of pretension (no mohawks or safety pins allowed!), and on an appreciation of the revolutionary potential of pop. They even covered the Monkees’ “She,” except the line “why am I missing her/I should be kissing her” morphed into a commentary on the Nixon/Ford national security bureaucracy: “why am I Schlesinger/I should be Kissinger.”

“Complicated Fun,” the last song the band released (and later a Target TV commercial jingle), is one of the great unknown rock anthems of our time.