closing time

YAMAMOTO Tarô, 2004

Image from http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~nipponga/works/04/04.html

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this site. I opened it up when I started writing my “tenure” book. Which is now–cross your fingers–finished, and on fairly stable legs in the sea of the publishing process. This winter, I turned attention full-tilt to my book, and to day-job type writing, and put this blog on ice. I’m happily shocked, though, to see that there has been a lot of traffic lately, especially to the Captain Beefheart and the “parakeet of justice” posts.

Besides finishing the book, the parallel world that spun off this site, one further reason for shutting down–killing off this character, so to speak–is that I moved, so the small postage stamp of Atwater I used to write about is no longer my home. I moved just across the ‘5, to Silver Lake, in the hills, plausibly close to public transportation, and near cafés that stay open late at night–just like ‘real’ cities. !.

In any case, I”m re-starting a new blog, called Sengo, which I will post details on soon. Those of you who speak Japanese or know me from my day job know that this word means postwar (戦後) as well as, in the spoken vernacular, a thousand words (千語). I, along with some collaborators, will be posting 1000-word essays and translations–adorned by a single picture, worth 1000 words, naturally–mostly on Japanese pop culture, or things that connect current events in Japanese pop culture to more broad/deep/blurred swaths of history. I wanted to do something different than writing for purely scholarly audiences, and provide an alternative to the limited playbook of pieces from big news outlets on wacky/kooky Japan. This image is an example of such a group of 1000 words, yet to be written…

So, stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

drowning in the why, starving for the how

This is a feeling I often have when teaching my “modernology” class–which is about how people in Japan have developed ways to understand and get to being modern. Modern in a myriad of ways–from sitting on street-corners and drawing people in kimonos and putting them in bar graphs compared to people wearing “western” clothing, to measuring the GNP, to listening to insects to hear if they still sound like they “did” in 11th c. imperial manuals of poetry, to tracking who practices inter-racial international marriage with whom.

The “5 Ws and an H” stuff is hard to come by, and I can understand why, given the focus on stereotype that drives what seem to be the same 5 stories about Japan, written in the rapidly dwindling number of papers that have foreign bureaus.

Students–I mean undergrads here–are often remarkably stubborn about releasing their a priori judgements. Many if not most of which come from  ideas derived from wartime and Occupation-era military anthropology–all those “shame” versus “guilt” studies, the mandatory kissing in movies to show democracy, and on and on. So this statement, in a book I’ve been reading about the Free Software and Open Source software movements, rang true, recommended by my friend J. This is from Chris Kelty’s Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software.

It would be interesting to apply this to, say, cell-phone novels, or video-game music like Katamari Fortissimo Damacy, whose plot is driven by a breakway incident of binge-drinking…

… it is in Free Software and its history that the is-
sues raised—from intellectual property and piracy to online po-
litical advocacy and “social” software—were first figured out and confronted. Free Software’s roots stretch back to the 1970s and crisscross the histories of the personal computer and the Internet, the peaks and troughs of the information-technology and software industries, the transformation of intellectual property law, the innovation of organizations and “virtual” collaboration, and the rise of networked social movements. Free Software does not explain why these various changes have occurred, but rather how individuals and groups are responding: by creating new things, new practices, and new forms of life. It is these practices and forms of life—not the software itself—that are most significant, and they have in turn served as templates that others can use and transform:
practices of sharing source code, conceptualizing openness, writing copyright (and copyleft) licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing for all of the above. There are explanations aplenty for why things are the way they are: it’s globalization, it’s the network society, it’s an ideology of transparency, it’s the virtualization of work, it’s the new flat earth, it’s Empire. We are drowning in the why, both popular and scholarly, but starving for the how.

the case study seesaw hammock house

I stumbled onto this very fun installation on the way to a very serious concert at the Redcat by Yasunao Tone, an electronic musician, art writer and all-around charming fellow. Part of the charm is that although it is supposed to be kind of miniature–extracting 1 feature out of an idealized California house, in the manner of the postwar Case Study houses–it takes 2 attendants to get it going, kind of palanquin-like.

It’s kind of like a lazy-person’s seesaw. Or a 2-lazy-people’s seesaw, really, as you really need another bum on the other hammock to make the weights work. The attendants remove some sandbag weights, and depending on your respective balances, they move them around, to make it roughly balanced. Then you can push-me and pull-you, tho it is a straight up and down motion, not the arc of a seesaw. Still, it made me laugh like crazy and was immensely fun, especially in such a ’serious’ space.

The installation, by the architecture/space firm Atelier Bow-wow, has 2 other components, which are even more silly/wonderful. One is an area that is like a porch w/stadium seating, filled with some barbecues. The other is a large reclining pit, with pillows, from which you watch (a video projection of) a sunset.

The ABW gets its name, I think, because of its interest in “pet architecture,” which is to say, the built equivalent of pocket parks, “charming, small and humorous,” like pets, as one of their books says.

and that was something completely different

From the official statement released today of Cramps’ lead singer Lux Interior’s death. In Glendale, not half a mile from my house.

Their distinct take on rockabilly and surf along with their midnight movie imagery reminded us all just how exciting, dangerous, vital and sexy rock and roll should be and has spawned entire subcultures. Lux was a fearless frontman who transformed every stage he stepped on into a place of passion, abandon, and true freedom. He is a rare icon who will be missed dearly.

Influenced by the burgeoning punk scene in New York with bands like The New York Dolls and The Ramones setting the standard the two decided they would start their own punk rock band, The Cramps. In contrast to other punk bands at the time however, they also mixed a heavy dose of Rockabilly and B-movie imagery to form their own unique image. It was during this time that Purkhiser took the stage name Lux Interior, taking his name from a car advert. He also created a unique stage personia, one of a complete honky tonky punk wild man, or as one reviewer put it “the psychosexual werewolf/ Elvis hybrid from hell”. The genre they helped create was later known as “Psychobilly” even though Interior denies that that is what their music really is. In 1978 The Cramps showed the world just how deep their love for the weird and the off beat went when they gave a free concert to the patients at the Nappa Valley State Mental Institution. The next year The Cramps released their first official EP, “Gravest Hits”. That same year they released their first LP, “Songs the Lord Taught Us”.

I saw them in SFO, it must have been 1992 or 1993. They were mesmerizing. The pacing was tight, saucy, sweaty, and fun as hell, decadent and seemingly indestructible. I always thought they were an LA band all around, but Cleveland makes sense.

And last but not least, cha cha cha.

ymo discommunicates on Soul Train

I’m still on something of a YMO tear. Here they are in a 1980 shoot of Soul Train, showing and telling one of my favorite Japanese words, discommunication. It’s not miscommunication, which often results in wounded egos and trade frictions. The ‘dis’ is not the same ‘dis’ of dis-respect, it just means that whatever came out of your mouth or pen or vocoder completely bypasses where it’s supposed to hit. The utterance goes off into outer space, and sender and receiver both go their separate ways. One example I like is what Faulkner said, in a 1955 visit sponsored by the State Department, aka his anti-Communist tour: talking to his hosts was like two people running at top speed on opposite sides of a plate glass window. You get that feeling, more or less, in this clip.

Here Don Cornelius leads in to the q-and-a by admitting to no notion of geography. I’m not sure where I would look to find YMO on a map, myself, given their penchant for city songs (T-O-K-Y-O), as well as chinoiserie (Tong Poo) and more chinoiserie with goofy breathy French dubbing (La femme chinoise). But I think his point was that YMO seemed like they were from really far away, and that if he had at least read the Encyclopedia Britannica memo, he might have had a better take on the mystical whatever of their five-piece combo form.

DC actually gives a really good example of techno-orientalism in this exchange. Throwing up his hands (metaphorically) in bemusement at the discommunication, he horses around with drummer Takahashi Yukihiro–a famous glam rocker who used to be in a Yoko Ono parody band that turned real, called the Sadistic Mika Band. After the band intros, he asks Takahashi to explain “Einstein’s theory of relativity.” This is 2 years after the Walkman debuted, and the portrait of Japanese man-on-the-street as the next-door neighbor of rocket science is well on its way.

I have to say that I found YMO’s plant in the audience, the guy designed to break the fourth wall between the stage and the dance floor (“Japanese gentlemen please stand up!”), to be a bit odd. A guy in a 3-piece grey flannel-ish suit does not seem to help their own purported cause much—the de-mystification of exoticism (yellow magic, fetishism), and its postwar Occupation stereotypes.

The customizing of lyrics, in the Archie Bell song they perform, “Tighten Up,” is kind of great, though–the narration is provided by a pretty famous Japanese radio guy, Kobayashi “Snakeman” (in homage to “Wolfman” Jack) Katsuya. The plant gets so into the actual show, as the band performs, that he keeps dancing and forgets his lines, which is also kind of cool, so I guess the whole image does get a bit unhinged. The keyboardist, Aki’s, buoyant hopping is pretty great, too.

archaic YMO c. 1978

Some interesting interview footage with the three + members of YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra). The venue is the studio in which Solid State Survivor, the second album, was put together.

I say “+” because usually they have “fourth man,” the synth programmer MATSUTAKE Hideki on deck, but I’m not sure how many people are in the shadows here, in and among the gadgets.

Around 1:10 is a funny sequence where SAKAMOTO Ryûichi shows-and-tells how hard it is for a human to manipulate the piano keys fast enough to get the tempo he wants (it’s in Japanese, but you can see/hear clearly what is going on by watching the demo).

ruin(ed) tourism in Japan

Is there anything more poignant than a theme restaurant gone to ruin? Two theme restaurants gone to ruin?… Here, the Restaurant Chateau. This is a shot from a blog I have been reading, entirely devoted to photography of the ruin–more precisely, walking tours of ruins documented in photograph.

One of my students, Y,  had told me about the photo “boom” last year, but I had no idea that the walking tour was following in the hallowed footsteps of the “soundscape” tour, and any of a number of other walking tours very popular in Japan. There is, these days, even a blog called “Haikyo walker,” modeled on the popular walk-and-buy guides like Tokyo Walker, which give you tons of info about showings, new stuff to buy, date spots, and on and on, for about 450 yen–about 5 bucks at the sad exchange rate of today (90 to the dollar). This, in turn, has sprouted Yokohama Walker, Kansai Walker, Chiba Walker.

And when you get to Tochigi Walker, there is no magazine, only this, the ruin of a “highclass soapland.” (Soapland is a classy word for what used to be called a “Turk,” or “Turkish bath.” A high-end happy-ending type massage parlor.)

In the 1980’s, tourism was government-endorsed and built on the urban planning idea of “machi-tzukuri,” or town-making. After the bubble burst, tourism became also taken up in very DIY ways that were still linked to older practices–like the pilgrimage and the literary walk. Most of these photos are placed in the countryside, places that have been “hollowed out,” or made Wasilla-like as they are unlocalized at the same time as they are linked to multiple scales of other places, some of which are very far away. (I don’t like the sneering potshot tone of this video, the typical provinciality of the meteropole guiding with very restricted vision. But it makes some good connections…).

It’s a fascinating look, also, at how a country sees itself in decline (ok, a few people), after the bubble bursts. A former empire, no less. And what they choose to do with those ruins.

like “befriending a porcupine”–Trout Mask Replica, 1969

Another beauty from the 33 1/3 people. I was at Skylight, looking over the wares, and got to talking to the other guy doing the same thing. He recommended this one.

It’s a bit different than many of the series. It does start with the “conversion narrative” beginning–how the world was forever made different, and given a direction, even a misguided one, by the acquaintance with the particular record. Writer Kevin Courrier recounts how the album was given to him by a speed dealer, earlier maimed by a train (it gets better in his version, trust me). Rather than meditating on the difference between trapped/stuck/mobile that such an opening sets up, and going into grotesquerie and irony, he turns to an exploration of the metaphorics of “fish”–as in Don Van Vliet’s persona, the trout–and “pond,” as a broad concept for the larger world and the world-lets within it.

The chapters follow how Van Vliet fashioned himself as a weird fish, a small fish, in the smallish pond of So-cal suburbia, “jumped” out of the pond, met and tangled and worked and collaborated with Zappa, and how in the end “everybody drinks from the same pond.” It’s not the most eco-friendly of ponds, but, hey.

Courrier succeeds in grounding Van Vliet in American/primitive/surrealist/blues counter-circles, at the same time he really conveys how the Trout Mask Replica album was just really out there. It was simply not devoted to being a “tissue sample” of its day and age, but is actually “an art album which actually forces the desert island experience on a listener, whether the listener wanted to retreat or not.”

Lester Bangs got at the extroverted anti-social-ness of Beefheart’s Lick My Decals Off, Baby pretty well. Typical of Bangs’ style writ large, his review is full of generative words, which in this case fit the affirmative desperation of DVV’s particular brand of freakiness. The Courrier book got to me in a different way than Bangs’ headlong apreciation, because it effectively dramatized how yo-yo’ing a feel it is to swim in DVV’s world. One minute you’re immersed, the next, because of some over-the-top control freak move, like twenty sleigh bells full of syncopation, you’re cast out by over-saturation. True story from TMR rehearsal history: you’re living in a communal house in the San Fernando Valley where your food is rationed, and you find yourself crawling into the kitchen under cover of darkness, to filch yourself a little something to eat: pancake syrup squeezed from a bottle into a mug, which you drink, sip by syrupy sip.

Indeed, the album is, as Courrier says, like “trying to befriend a porcupine.” Cf DVV’s description of a watch: “you see, a lot of people put this little circle on their wrists, which is really amusing: keeping time.” You see, such circles are for squares: in the DVV universe, you can sneak into the rhythms of time, outrun it, get people lost in it, but you can’t, literally, keep it.

I have this album on LP. While I find it a bit too polarising to say “Zappa was shrewd. Beefheart was a visionary,” I see why Courrier included this 1971 breakdown as a representative point of view. There is no doubt that a song about a girl who sits on a burning waffle iron may indeed have a hard time finding mainstream success. A bit of Crumb-style fear of cooties streams through the blues moans, but then again, 1969 was a mixed-up year.

The social context cross-over that I actually found most jarring and pinpointed that yo-yo effect, to illustrate the “cast out of the pond” feel of the record, was the song “Pachuco Cadaver.” I know the 60’s had an affection for metaphor. In general, we’re supposed to read the maximalist hostility as a kind of devotion, at least in the case of the girl/big-mama songs. She’s glam and can kick his ass, so she has to be a bit overwheming, preferably in a way that has a delicious payoff (as do most of the romances in DVV’s songs).

But this one seemed a bit too referential, for someone growing up in Southern California as DVV did. Courrier sees the title as misleading, that it is actually a “surreal love letter” to “the Zoot Suit era of the 40’s and 50’s.” (I think he means the WW2 era, especially between Pearl Harbor and the summer of 1943, but he is writing from Toronto, and might not have the micro-view of So-cal histories.) It is indeed truly a joyful song, like happy Swordfishtrombones. But in my listen, despite the loopy imagery and wild-westy story-telling voice that strive for intimate folksiness, the “pachuco” figure is purely decorative, and very much sidelined.

I get this impression because while the singer gets the girl, the other guys are left out: “pachucos got the blues.” Turning to the lyrics, in the form of the song, I heard what Courrier hears as tribute more as triumph.  The singer (DVV) casts the patchwork surrealist girl as a hybrid of people and objects (she is 99, she wears a bolero, and “She looks like an old squaw indian,” all at the same time). She is an inaccessible figure, even if she is tempting in her gaudy display of experience (“She wears her past like uh present”). And what she wears is a predatory belt-notching past that has not been easy on soldiers (“Got her wheel out of uh B-29 Bomber”). But in the end she goes, if in fantasy, with the folksy but ultimately white singer.

Drives uh cartune around
Broma’ seltzer blue umbrella keeps her up off the ground
Round red sombreros wrap ‘er high tap horsey shoes
When she unfolds her umbrella pachucos got the blues
Her lovin’ makes me so happy
If I smiled I’d crack m’ chin

Not quite the moral panic that was called up in the Zoot Suit riots of 1943, when, as Luis Alvarez writes, “As Chicano/s historians have demonstrated, hundreds, if not thousands, of young Mexican American men were violently attacked by white servicemen” (155). I know we’re not supposed to take loopy stream-of-consciousness surrealism at face value, but still, the song does stage a competition between the singer and the “Pachuco cadaver” left in the dust, a kind of drama of the (white-but-curious?) woman let loose to drive her own “cartune” during wartime, whose dalliances are now over, when the singer shows up.

I recently read Ken Gonzalez-Day’s history and photographic history  Lynching in the West, a history of unofficial justice between 1850 and 1935. Long story short, frontier justice was multi-cultural in its reach, and more executions and vigilante killings of Mexican Americans were conducted than of any other ethnic group. (The book contains some of Gonzalez-Day’s own photographs, a series he did of the “hang trees” where lynchings took place. It is a compelling outline of an under-known map of the city of LA and larger parts Californian/western.) So while I know “Pachuco cavader” is one of DVV’s “colorful” psychedelic throwaways, it bugged me, given the history.

Courrier does a great job of micro-mining the journalism and interviews for phrases such as this. The understatement and “blank space” he finds in descriptions of DVV the maximalist, who left room for virtually no “negative space.”  As a book that set its own terms, a system of metaphorics that goes way beyond the “conversion”/production/track-by-track structure of many of the books, I found it quite awesome.

on hiatus/”this is the universe. Big isn’t it?”

Will be offline for a while, due to a cyborgian attachment on my finger. I had a run-in with a Venus-flytrap-like rice cooker lid, which took a whack at my finger and fractured it. No big deal, but typing is a bit of a no-go at the moment. Meanwhile, please enjoy my favorite use of a medical appliance in a music video, a tribute to the “Stairway to Heaven” sequence of the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death.

the parakeet of justice

In preparation for the start of the jury system–and jury duty–in Japan in 2009, the Ministry of Justice has been doing a little grass-roots campaigning. Given that Japan is a country where every one-horse town, product and movement has a character symbol, and even the “weak” (緩い) and the lame characters are embraced, the ministry thought it a good idea to secure the cooperation of its very own leader, the Minister of Justice, in spreading the word. Here is Hatayama Kunio strutting the Saiban-inko (サイバンインコ) costume, cutting edge-wear in participatory democracy. “Saiban” is trial, and “saiban-in” is a jury member. “Inko” is a parakeet:

In keeping with the pleasure principal of popular culture, I would like to suggest a few new pairings of characters with the jobs we have found them to cozy into, warm and fuzzy-like.

Vice-President Dick Cheney as King of Ghidorah

Sporting two legs, three heads, and bat-wings, this monster is known for its ability to withstand nearly anything, due to armored scales. The 3 heads allow for easy multi-tasking, as each emits a different shriek. Known to be easily mind-controlled, his wing lightning, developed in-house and field tested in desert conditions (see below), is especially useful for ‘enhanced interrogation.’

to be continued…