We Can't Bear their Departure...

On the first of every month, I got an automatic free blog post to save myself from dwindling into a repetitive diatribe about the "Japanese authorities" - namely, the Subway bear posters. Oh, how they were so naughty! Empty cans strewn across the platform, eating sloppy American-style hamburgers, leaving Japan for vacation.

So it is with much sadness that I must report the end of the Subway bear campaign, and to add more to my meta-narrative of Japanese decline, our little, overly-detailed cutesy bear has been replaced with amorphous cultural imperialist Elmo. What could he possibly know about shaming Japanese men and women into good behavior like they were elementary school students?!?

The Talent Industry 101

The hard-hitting journalists at Japan Today wrote up this expository introduction to the world of Japanese talent. Some choice quotes:

And...

Bilinguality is the new Monolinguality

Unfortunately, whether I post in Japanese or English, I'm going to alienate a chunk of my readers, but I'm happy to have opened up some new channels of communication with my recent forays into Japanese.

Yesterday, in response to my post about the Japanese media's habitual presentation of fiction as reality, reader Hayashi responded that consciousness about this problem is low in Japan and the laws against "false advertising" (虚偽広告) are weak. Article 8, Section 2 of the 1976 Door-to-Door Selling Law (訪問販売法）prohibits "considerably" （著しい） false or extravagant advertising, but it is very difficult to prove the degree of "considerableness" in the court of law. So essentially, this kind of media fibbing - fictional "reality" shows, ads with lines from "real people" - is decriminalized.

I wasn't going to sue Gaba or the show Ainori (「あいのり」) anyway, but there doesn't seem to be anything in Japan to check the ambitions of producers and manufacturers who will naturally gravitate towards selling fiction as reality. And with little public consciousness of the problem, why should we expect consumers to be able to fight it?

嘘の現実

この上に載っているGABA(英会話の会社）の広告で「もしも、わたしが英語を話せたら！？」という質問に対して「本物のBーBOYになる」をはじめ「アメリカで子育て、一人はアーティストに、一人はプログラマーにする」までの夢が叶うような答えがいっぱい書いてある。全部が本当の人の間で行われた調査から取れた引用みたいに見えるが、このブログでコメントを書いた元GABAの人によると、全部が広告会社に書かれたそうである。つまり、フィクションである。

日本では、こういう「嘘の現実」が多い気がし、ワイドショーで現実のはずがあるゲームやセグメントがあっても、物語のような仕舞いが絶対にある。昔、「あいのり」が面白いと思った時期があったが、脚本があるとか皆が俳優とか分かってからもう「騙された！」という気分でとてもイヤになった。

アメリカの「リアッリティ番組」で「創造的」な編集で本当にない話が作られていることが分かるが、脚本があるまで至らない。５８年に「クイズ番組スキャンダル」がアメリカで大ニュースになり、クイズ番組に出ていた人が提供していた会社からクイズの正解する答えをもらっていた。一般大衆が大変に怒らせられたから、反虚偽広告法のように「作られた現実」のテレビ番組などが違法になった。

この法律が結構厳しく、今でもアメリカの広告が弁護士のチェックがされずに出るのがあり得ない。キャッチコピーに微妙な「嘘」があっても、訴えられる可能性があるから、会社が何回も弁護士に送ったり書き直したりするべきだ。日本にこういう法律があるか分からないけれども、あっても、訴えられる可能性は非常に低いから、こういう「嘘を抜く」プロセスはないであろうか。

僕が日本人に「この番組が絶対に嘘！」という文句を言っても、「夢がない」などの反応が来る。つまり、日本のメディアでは、現実だと言われても、誰でも現実だと思っていないから、エンターテインメントとして取り扱って、楽しむべきである。僕は、何となく自然に「嘘の現実」に戦いたくなるが、これは個人的な問題だけか分からない。。。

Japanese Dub

Does anyone know why Japanese TV shows from the 70s (think Ultraman) don't have live-sync sound? Even the home dramas are all dubbed. I've never noticed this with American TV, even shows the 50s, but I'm not sure about European shows from the era. Anyone have an idea?

When Trendy Cafes Disappear

According to JeansNow, they have closed down the Bape Cafe in Aoyama. I had only been there once in 2003 for some opening after-party, and I found the food and interior to be very classy. But as explained by my Japanese friend at that time, "Nigo opened it and Bape Cuts (Ape's hair salon), because he didn't want to pay tax that year." In other words, they were always unprofitable tax dodges more than legitimate attempts at new business.

Ape is clearly in a certain level of decline, but their track record should warn against predicting the end. Magazine editors have been whispering about Ape's death from about 1997, but since then they have only got bigger. Nigo's new alliance with the U.S. hip hop world and the Buppie market may pay off back in Japan in a couple of years, but a trip to Busy Works Shop Harajuku these days isn't quite what it used to be. Last time I visited, the staff was helpful, the stock was plentiful, and the customers were an international mix of young and old - all signs of decaying brand cachet. Kids at Bunka Fukusou don't want to wear the same clothes as families from Singapore.

Back in the 80s, Japanese kids massed in Harajuku to buy the "latest American fashions" on Takeshitadoori, and then later in the decade, massed in Omotesando to buy the "latest designer fashions." The whole Ura-Harajuku scene's charm was the idea that Japanese kids were "buying the latest Japanese fashions." Ape was just t-shirts and jeans, but they created a whole unique subculture around them. Earlier this month, the only queue I saw in Harajuku on a Saturday afternoon was for the limited-edition Nike shop. Maybe Japan still gets the premier sneakers first, but all that money goes back to Portland.

It's way too early to write a full eulogy for A Bathing Ape, but the cafe's disappearance may mean that the brand can no longer flagrantly use their cash flow to build vanity projects. What a pity.

When Artists Are Resurrected

A month ago, I did a post about Japanese pop musicians "disappeared" by their labels for public transgressions or deviating from the script. Suzuki Ami takes the cake for Best Disappearance Ever when her management company blackballed her from the industry for trying to legally dissolve her contract. However, she will soon be making her controversial re-debut on Avex, and over the last two weeks, I keep running into these huge moving billboard trucks blaring her new single into Downtown Tokyo. In the Japanese Pop version of the Christ story, you come back sounding like Eurobeat.

The Three Most Underrated Singles of All Time

3. Beck - "Loser" In the spring of 1994, a curious song hit the MTV Buzz Bin - a post-modern blend of hip-hop beats, folk guitar, PopCult wordplay, and a chorus to sum up the entire "Slacker Generation." Now that the Internet has coronated the geek, we tend to forget the age when we were all "losers." But at the time, this song spoke volumes to the overeducated and underrewarded. Unfortunately, the jocks and capitalists of the world - bent on preserving an honest appreciation of straight-path social success - buried Beck's career. He put out his next two albums on tiny imprints Bongload and K and was last seen making frequent appearances as a VH1 guest commentator.

2. Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Weird "Al" Yankovic ushered in the "Grunge" era with his massive hit "Smells Like Nirvana," and while most had assumed the song title refered to the old British psych group Nirvana, in fact, the music had been completely ripped off the Seattle band Nirvana (US)'s major-debut single. The original blows Al "Yankovic"'s version out of the water - like a torpedo - with its guitar and bass unity, bigger than life MIDI-trigger drum sound, and melody line guitar solo. Lead singer Kurt Cobain's intentionally awful lyrics stick it to the entire Pop System: "A mulatto / an albino / a mosquito / my libido" (Whatever, man. Nevermind...). Trivia: the bassist went on to form top indie band Sweet 75.

1. The Beatles - "Hey Jude" After Beatlemania (the actual phenomenon, not the revival show) subsided in the mid-60s, the Beatles put out some drug records and faded into countercultural obscurity. Their fantastic attempt at a comeback single in 1968 - "Hey Jude" - could have been the greatest pop song of all time had their refusal to make Christ their personal savior not made headlines around the world.

The War with Japan that Never Happened

When the Cold War ended in the early 90s, America searched quickly for a new enemy, and as large-scale military battles were also instantly outdated, an economic villan was the obvious answer: JAPAN!!! The CIA went so far as to collect Japan scholars to create an anti-Japan report now known as "Japan 2000: DEFCOM 1," which was quickly disowned by its authors and leaked to the press. During this period, President Bush I flew over to Japan and delivered a message from Detroit, "Buy more American cars!" before vomiting all over the Japanese delegation.

For the first couple of years after the Bubble burst, Americans continued to write about Japan under the spectre of possible economic defeat. Rising Sun is the embarassing fiction and cinematic contribution, but meanwhile in the political section of your local library, there were booktitles screaming The Coming War with Japan (by George Friedman and Meredith Lebard). Even Chalmers Johnson's insightful 1994 Japan: Who Governs? deals heavily with trade issues and Japan-U.S. tension in a tone predicting future confrontation.

A decade later, no one's writing books about diabolic Japanese economic mercantilism, but no one seems to be writing anything about the Japanese economy outside of its decline, its possible globalization, and its history. Very few people still believe in a speedy Japanese economic recovery, and even contemporary issues like the Japanese refusal to buy diseased U.S. meat don't get Americans out hitting Yoshinoya gyudon with baseball bats. Japan never changed their economic policy to please the U.S., but after 13 years of economic stagnation and the decline of the U.S. manufacturing sector, nobody cares anymore. Guys from Goldman Sachs are no longer reading Way of the Samurai for management tips. The hot areas in Japanese Studies are soft issues like pop culture, race, sex, and consumerism. But Americans no longer write books about how the Japanese education system can teach Americans some lessons like Merry White's The Japanese Educational Challenge.

We are in the midst of a widespread Japanese pop culture boom, and there's never been so much good-will towards Japan from the rest of the world. (Except for Japan's East Asian neighbors who'd like Japan to stop praying for the souls of Japan's war criminals.) And as much as the demonizing of Japan was ridiculous and counterproductive, there was a subtext of admiration: hate stems from jealousy. Tensions have cooled, and the U.S. has bigger plans in other regions for economic Imperialism. Even though Japan is still essentially the world's second largest economy, the perceived threat has evaporated. How fickle, American fear and loathing!

Kenka Bancho

For the last four years or so, new trends have been hard to spot here in Japan, but one thing I keep running into is the 80s yankii revival. First, the band Kishidan showed up with their pastiche of 1980s Japanese rock and ultra-furyou style, and then companies started using the once-belittled Takenoko-zoku to sell cigarettes. Now, the revival has made it to the video game world with Kenka Bancho - a GTA-style game that blends fighting, strategy, and romance set to the backdrop of early 80s yankii culture. One of the fighting techniques is the "menchi beam" - a blue electrical beam approximating the devastation of the bully's "cold stare." Bancho is the word for the head of the school gang, and at the time, they were considered to be a huge social problem.

As I wrote in my OK Fred article, Japan is on a serious nostalgia kick at the moment. This is a relatively new occurance, which I suspect stems from an increase of cultural self-confidence in the 90s. Should a "postmodern" culture be so late to self-reference or is this a sign that the old "BUY NEW" consumer market is starting to bend backwards?

日本の方へ

このブログを読んで下さる日本の方がいらっしゃるでしょうか。

ポストのコメントで、日本の文化の意味などに関して議論されていますが、西洋人ばかりであれば、退屈になってしまいます。日本人のご意見もありましたら、大分面白くなると思います。例えば、前のエッセイでおニャン子クラブの歌詞を訳して分析しましたが、どのように「おっとCHIKAN」などが今の日本人に扱われているか分かりましたら、皆に非常に役立ちます。

日本語から英語まで翻訳できる人がいっぱいいるので、是非コメントを書いてみて下さい。楽しみにしております。

（ちなみに、「Preview」というボタンを押すと、日本語が文字化けになってしまうから、保存する前に、「Preview」を押さずにテキストを編集して下さい。）

Halcali - HarukaRImikkusu

Remixing began in context of the neo-tribal ritual of "rave parties" and developed afterwards as a less functional, more metatextual advertisement for up-and-coming producers. Both types have become a predictible bore, and the official "Remix Album" is an diabolic act of commercial neccesity, only one-step better than a "Greatest Hits 2003-2004." (Shugo Tokumaru's NPRMX coming soon on Music Related with a remix by Marxy!)

The Japanese record industry has never quite seen their artists as anything more than commodities, and they get worried that fans will cease to remember an artist if he or she does not show up in the Press once every three to four months. This is a fair concern, however, for those in the product business: if you didn't see Almond Joy at your local 7-11 for a long stretch, you'd be pretty convinced they had ceased production. For a brief period from late 1999 to Spring 2000, I did indeed "forget about Dre" so maybe the Japanese market is on to somethng. In this spirit, a bunch of guys who have Reason installed on their computers - "remixers" in industry parlance - have toyed with Halcali's music.

The album starts with Yuka Honda's reworking of "Tandem," which is fantastic demo of a remix. Can't wait to hear the real track! I can almost hear what it'll be like once she replaces all of the preset patches with better sounds. Takkyu Ishino's kitsch techno mix is still hilarious after all these years, and I recommend digging online to find the terrible line-drawing Centaur-fantasy promotional video that went with it. Force of Nature put Haruka and Yukari (or is it Halca and Yucali?) over something uncomfortably close to the Beastie Boys' "Ch-Ch-Check it Out," and K.U.D.O. throws their "Marching March" vocals over a laptop version of "Tommorow Never Knows" (or perhaps, "Setting Sun" by the Chemical Brothers. Same deal.) If you love hearing melodies over mismatched, simplistic harmonic accompaniment, this is your dream album!

Listen, girls, your CCCD single for "Electric Sensei" broke my CD/DVD superdrive and your last album broke my heart, and I'd just stop listening if I didn't have the whole piggy bank invested on you saving Jpop. Tell you what: let's just proclaim that "Jpop is officially dead" so that when you come up with a good single, I can write something that starts with, "Arising like a phoenix from the ashes of Jpop..."

Mero Mero Does Pico Pico

Episode 5 of the Swedish radio program MeroMero includes interviews with Music Related's Trevor and underappreciated electropop warriors Macdonald Duck Eclair, plus a nice selection of tunes from Citrus to Plus-tech Squeeze Box.

The Leftover Plurality

Momus has an excellent essay today about something I had felt vividly when I was back home in December: the U.S. Right has appropriated identity politics from minority movements. After the Republican's total victory last November it has waned a little, but the Right Wing and their media spokesmen constantly make themselves out to be the victims of some imaginary Left Wing Conspiracy, when in fact, they are still strongly gripping the reigns of power. America's demographics are changing, and in a very short time frame, WASP Americans will no longer hold a full majority. However, the other races and minority groups stand only as small fragments, and the Republicans can easily rule through a plurality of WASP support.

As someone pointed out in reference to my intentionally terrible "Trend Sheet" parody, an abundance of media naturally destroys "uniform culture." But I would imagine that in both politics and consumer markets like fashion, the rate of subculturization increases as one approaches "liberal" or "fashion-forward," respectively. In other words, the more you're into fashion, there's an increasingly better chance you're into a differnet fashion than your peer with equal interest. There's a lot of people using the Internet, but we're all using it to do totally different things. And in the end, there's a lumpen plurality of "mainstream" consumers/voters whose tastes tend to be simple and unrefined and quite uniform.

There's also a natural force pushing back to the middle. Fashion in 1980s Japan was essentially monolithic - one fashion code for one age group. If you weren't wearing DC brands in 1985, you were not "cool." In the 90s, fashion became subcultural, but there were usually only 5-6 looks in the public sphere - Skater-kei, Uraharajuku-kei, Mode-kei, etc. - and most people could manage the information required to read others' fashion tastes. Now, however, the number of looks has grown exponentially, but the adopters of each are proportionally lower. And as the information required to break the code reaches overload, most people find refuge back in the "mainstream plurality." I see Japanese kids in Mod gear, hip-hop, skater-wear, NYC rocker, and ultra-punk all the time, but I've also never seen so much Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Men seem to overcome the info overload issue by buying generic brands like Uniqlo, but Japanese women buy those particular luxury items in the certainty that they signal taste (and ultimately, wealth) to the largest percentage of population.

I'm grateful for the variety of consumer lifestyle choices and free information in today's society, but unless we on the fringes can band together to create a larger coalition than the mainstream plurality, we will be witness to the lowest point in mass culture history. In the 1950s, mass culture may have been vanilla, but they also had to attempt to please those with somewhat alternative tastes. Now that we've exited the main cultural spheres and are blogging to our 25-person audience, mass culture can just totally write us off and go on its way without us.

Deconstructing America

Kichiku Daienkai

On a tip from reader Alin, I rented the film Kichiku Daienkai (鬼畜大宴会), thinking it would bring me broader perspective on the Japanese student activism of the late 60s and early 70s. Gasp. I can only blame my own naivete and lack of pre-viewing review-reading for what I have witnessed. The first half opens as a somewhat endearing political film, but it slowly descends into a full-out gore flick where heads explode and brains and entrails are things to be played with. I'll eventually get over the nightmares, but the film's fatal flaw is that this fictional retelling of the United Red Army saga does not even approximate the horror of the real event. Six revolutionaries kill themselves in bizarre ways! Big deal: the real leaders oversaw the lynching of twelve members and then went back to Tokyo to take a vacation.

The film exploits the sex and horror for shock value and ultimately pins the killings on "madness" - the Nagata Hiroko lookalike stumbles around in traditional Japanese dramatic garb after the bloodshed. But the really terrifying thing about the URA is the banality of a student-led Marxist study group extending their ideological practices into murder. Stalin or Mao are a lot more frightening than anything Hollywood could ever imagine, because you can't blame the occult or the supernatural. Rational bureaucracies led to the deaths of 100s of millions of people.

A trailer for the film can be seen here.

The Fader: Yura Yura Teikoku

In the brand new issue of the American music magazine The Fader, I wrote an article about the Japanese psych-rock band Yura Yura Teikoku (ゆらゆら帝国) called "Louder than Bombs." They are pretty fantastic songwriters and otherworldly performers, and what makes them stand apart from a lot of Japanese acts is that they're not gimmicky. They make a pretty broad range of melodic pop/rock without being "Japan's answer to (insert Western band name here)." For preview purposes, here's an mp3 of their track "Hakkoutai" (Luminous Body). If you like what you hear, I would suggest up picking up either their Japanese releases on MIDI Records or the American rereleases on Mesh-Key Records.

New Saizou: Orange Range Pakuri

In the new Saizou (technically, Cyzo), there's a story called "〈オレンジレンジ〉今月もパクリ疑惑を徹底検証" - Orange Range: This month we again throughly examine the suspicion of pakuri (melodic-theft) - in which the writer compares melodies from Orange Range songs with those from older hits. There's a lot of "pakuri" in the world of Jpop and Japanese indies, and question is whether no one particularly cares about stealing melodies or whether it's a tolerated evil. Seeing that Saizou is one of the few magazines that "tells it like it is." I would proffer the idea that at least the Japanese educated classes don't think so highly of the practice.

The Spammer Look

This graphic came from a small leaflet inside of my monthly AU phone bill demonstrating a new function blocking spam C-mail. I like how they represented the spam C-mail sender: fluffed-up chapatsu hair and a bad pinstriped host-suit with an open collar. (click on image above for closeup). I find it interesting that this very Bubbly look has become synonymous with hosts, touts, spammers, and other suspicious young males. By the way, he's saying "降参" - "I give up."

Springtime

I was just walking down the street, and I saw a woman walking a dog that had a tiny monkey riding on its back.

Movies on Demand

Tivo and NetFlix are teaming up to provide digital downloads of NetFlix films through the Tivo hardware. Whether they're the first to do it or Anthony Michael Hall storms in later, America is extremely close to having the infrastructure for the digital distribution of movies and television. Maybe the Tivo will be the black box or maybe the computer, but regardless, the future is now. Pretty soon, I'll be watching that episode where Becky Slater punches Kevin whenever I want.

Meanwhile in the hi-tech futuristic world of Japan - whoa, that flying car came very close to hitting me just now - there are hard-disc recorders on the market but with little public fanfare. There's no Japanese equivalent to the verb "tivoing." With cable diffusion rates around 37.2 (2000 figure), most Japanese families can manage the simple seas of basic television with just the wooden paddle of a VCR. The Tivo developed as a way to handle the deluge of television content, and in Japan, there's no real perceived need for digital recorders. Also, Japan is developing all of their internet technology within cell-phones, and subsequently, computers have not made a huge impact on everday Japanese lives. Seeing that widespread usage of Tivos or computers is a prerequisite for tv/film on demand, how long will the lag be between Western usage and Japanese usage? Will all the films download to cell phones? Will two Asimos just act out the story for us?

Dogs in Asakusa

The Fragility of Pop Culture

On Click Opera, Momus wrote in response to a comment:

The media reports tendencies and directions and changes and trends rather than underlying solid states. (This same tendency is a real weakness in Marxy's analysis. Incremental changes seem to him like definitive states.

We've had the solid state vs. change debate before, but the problem with ignoring incremental changes is that the Japanese Cultural Explosion of the 90s grew out of a combination of very fragile social conditions.

Japan's pop culture market first came together in the 1970s when rich Baby Boomer families spoiled their kids endlessly. The 60s were all tear-gas and pentatonic melody, but by the 1970s, income equality reigned and companies found themselves rushing to fill the huge mass market for children's products. Classic animations like Gundam went on the air as a way to sell toys, and toy firms moved into the field of video games to appeal to kids in new ways. In the 80s, only the rich got richer, but mass tastes massively inflated in the spirit of unbridled wealth. In 1980, Ivy league style was the standard; by 1988, designer European labels.

Despite the growth of the internal market, however, the rest of the world generally ignored Japanese popular culture and art before the mid 1990s, except for children's toys/animation and the occasional eccentric band (Y.M.O., Japanese metal). The system had become so advanced in its Western trend-spotting, media importation, and cultural cataloging that the 1990s creators were playing with high-level cultural ingredients completely unknown and forgotten to most of the West. In a span of a few short years, Japan's pop culture became one of the most vibrant on the planet - a fact which the U.S. and European media now explicity concede.

In spite of this unprecedented rise, the underlying conditions that spawned and maintained the Japanese pop cultural surge are starting to deteriorate. For example, 20% of the population of 1970s Japan was in their teens or younger, compared with 20% of the present population being over retirement age. The Japanese pop culture market is almost completely youth-oriented, and a shrinking number of youth means less market expenditure and production. Furthermore, income equality is greatly increasing, meaning that consumption of "good taste" is solely a leisure activity for the upper echelons of society. And the success of the market itself has led the younger generation to ignore Western influences and primarily consume domestic products, leading to a closed feedback loop. There's less money, less consumers, and less openness, and this all changed quickly in a half-decade.

The American pop culture market has so many deep roots within the international system that very little can stop the tank from advancing. Japanese pop culture, however, is internally unstable and being externally processed as a fad with uncertain long-term prospects. Therefore, small incremental changes mean the difference between life and death, and if the current trends continue, Harajuku will be even less Undercover and more Nike, Louis Vuitton, and Starbucks in every passing year.

The Onyanko Club, Pt. III

In the last few days, I've been asking around about The Onyanko Club, and all the girls I know commented that their second single "O-yoshi ni natte ne TEACHER" - "Stop it, Teacher" - was absolutely the worst of their catalog. ("本当にひどいよ," they say.) High-school girls cheerily talking about underage sex or molestation is somewhat suprising, but the tone of this track leads me to a higher plane of bewilderment. Whether you're a fundamental believer in statutory rape laws or not, I think most societies generally agree that romantic relationships between students and teachers are wrong for a myriad of professional and ethical reasons. But as this song reminds us, the most important thing blocking anything from happening between the two characters is that he's not even her type.

We also get treated to the idea that girls are bad at math and their only chance at a good grade is a campaign of seduction. Notice, however, that even these high-school idols are studying calculus - a relic from when Japanese student math scores were super high on the international ranking charts.

A note on language: o-yoshi ni natte (およしになって) is a polite form of "stop it" usually said by women to men in their superior - like a geisha saying to her customers, "Oh, quit it. (giggle)" It's not a particularly strong form of rejection.

The lyrics in English (translation by me):

A Note on the Word "Chikan"

Chikan - 痴漢 - is technically a noun for a "male pervert, lecher" but has become a verb as well (痴漢された！ - I was molested.) The first character means "stupid, foolish" and the second character is usually used to mean "Chinese" (as in 漢字 - Chinese characters, 漢文 - Chinese literature). I found this odd for a long time - certain evidence of discrimination against the Chinese! - but it turns out that when it's used as the second character in a compound, it can mean "man" (巨漢 - giant, 悪漢 - scoundrel, 好漢 - fine fellow).

When talking about female perverts or molestation by a female, the word is "痴女" (chijo) - although this seems to be a recent creation of the media, not a word with any lexical history.

The Onyanko Club, Pt. II

In 1986, the Pussy Club hit Number One on the Oricon with their peppy surf-rock ode to sexual harassment on the public transportation system: Otto Chikan!. The word "chikan" means "male sexual pervert" and also refers to the action of men feeling up women on the subways. Not exactly a term that just screams "pop song chorus." The song starts as an anti-chikan rant from a high school wanting revenge on the suspcious males in her train car, but turns out, she was wrong to complain: the creepy kid in thick glasses just wanted to give the girl a love letter. Crisis averted.

The song seems to say: these men who appear to be in the art of - excuse me for this one - chikan'ery in fact have pure romantic intentions (love letter). Don't jump to conclusions, little girls!

The lyrics in English (translation by me):

Correction: I updated my translation a bit, and in doing so, I realized that the "man" is actually probably a student from another school. So, there's no real pedophilia angle in this song... you'll have to wait for the third entry. Another note: in the second verse, she essentially is saying "I don't mind if I get chikan'd and my uniform gets messed up, but it's fun to scream 'Pervert!'"

Update 3/22/04: Due to bandwidth problems, I had to remove the actual mp3s. Bummer.

The Onyanko Club

Even without a history of Puritanism, Japanese television and mass culture systematically shy away from the controversial and subversive. And therefore, what in the world are we to make of the mid-80's Onyanko Club? A strict translation of their name would be "The Kitty Club," but seeing that nyan nyan is a widely used term for sexual activity (namely, the sexual harassment of women), a more apt translation would be "The Pussy Club."

If the name of the band weren't enough, they also starred in a child-targeted afternoon show called "Yuuyake Nyan Nyan" (meaning "Sunset Meow" to only the most naive viewers.) The producers evidentally had much fun making this 19-person high-school girl idol collective sing somewhat inappropriate songs with a straight face to an audience of elementary and middle school students. Many Japanese today are puzzled on why no one complained at the time, seeing that the public culture was much more sexually repressed than it is now. On many fronts, the Japanese are more open about sexuality today, but Onyanko's contemporary legacy Morning Musume perform nothing even approaching sexual content. In general, most pop songs about teen sex wrap up the message in metaphors and mystery, but the Onyanko lyricists left subtlety at home.

Ironically, many members of the group were kicked out for smoking or having boyfriends.

So, for your enjoyment, their 1985 debut single "Se-ra- fuku wo nugasanaide." Translation: "Don't Make Me Take Off My Sailor Uniform."

The lyrics in English (translation by me):

A Small Amount of Interest

I just noticed that my Japanese bank paid me exactly 1 yen in interest for the year. I promise not to spend it all in once place.

Podcasting, Mon Amour

In the past, I fancied myself a DJ, and this culminated in my 2002 self-referential megamix-ode to Shibuya-kei: Symptoms of the Audrey Hepburn Complex. For those who didn't catch it when I originally tossed it online, here is a full mp3 of the 27-song, 40-minute romp from my former alter ego, (cough) dj david, mon amour. With art by world-famous Mumbleboy! The bright side: spending hours cutting up other people's music with Pro Tools got me back into making my own.

English, Pt. III

This ad for the Gaba language school asks Japanese people to fill in the blank: "If I could speak English, I would..." Ads with quotes from "real people" in Japan are often written by copywriters, but even if these aren't actual answers, the responses provide a glimpse into the process of a Japanese company selling English to possible customers. (Click on ad to see a larger picture.

Here is a translation of the first several responses:

I would live in Hawaii with lots of dogs.
I would go by myself to buy in London antique shops.
I would eat all the desserts in the world!
I would go to [my company]'s foreign office and become project leader.
I would buy the materials for aroma therapy and mix them myself.
I would open a shiatsu massage parlor in Hollywood for celebrities.
I would lecture the loud foreigners on the train.
I would raise my children in America: one artist, one computer programmer.
I would go work in a foreign marketing firm.
I would start a dental office for foreigners.
I would run a surf shop in the Gold Coast.
I would live in a house where I could wake up and dive right into the pool.
I would want to increase my income by 100x.
I would publish a weekly manga magazine in the English language world.
I would look for a job in California that would end in the evening and I could go to in shorts.
I would do a satisfying amount of experiments at an American company that provided research money.
I would become a wife of a foreigner and raise kids in California.
I would become a "buyer" using my own tastes and fly around to all the world's fashion shows.
I would challenge myself in New Zealand's pro rugby league.
I would go across America on my graduation trip.
After I retired, I would go live with my wife in Canada.
I would watch DVDs without subtitles.
I would watch musical after musical on Broadway in NY.
I would become the world's expert on the JFK mystery.
I would lead global-level M&As and retire in my 30s.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I would introduce Japanese traditional arts to the world, ceramics and knitting.
I would make all my subordinates Americans and start a hamburger joint with great atmosphere.

Seeing that most of these answers have little to do with English itself, for a certain segment of the population, English language ability appears to become a psychological barrier to dream fulfillment. For example, why can't you raise your children as artists and computer programmers in Japan? Why can't you live in a house in Thailand where you dive right into the pool when you wake up? Why can't the guy yell at the loud foreigners on the train in Japanese? Whether these tasks are impossible in Japan or even possible in America, this ad posits that there are Japanese who feel that a lack of English prevents them from leaving Japan and the expectations/limitations of Japanese society. A far cry from "not wanting to learn English" (so thinks Momus), English ability embodies the realization of impossible dreams for the upwardly mobile. Or in another light, they are blaming their pedestrian lives on their lack of English ability. Regardless, the ad is preying on a Japanese "English complex," which the company assumes to exist and hopes to exploit.

Towards the end, there's one more interesting entry:

"I would become a real B-boy."

The Postmodernists love to claim that Japan is ideal because there is no concept of "authenticity" (an elitist form of subtle discrimination!), but if this is a real quote, perhaps we can extrapolate that the Japanese are aware of the demands for authenticity, but choose to ignore them because they have no other choice. To even begin exploration in hip hop, they must abandon the idea of "keepin' it real." For this one (possible imaginary) hip hop fan, only those with links to the mother tongue can be "real B-boys"; are the Japanese-only types "fake"?

Inside My Juno-6

Lately, my Juno-6 had been acting up - the pitch was unstable and a mystery LFO-like pulse seemed to plague each of the oscillators So, on a whim, I opened it up and cleaned out the two decades worth of dust, hair, and grime from the inside. (Who originally owned this crazy thing I bought for $180 at a Greyhound bus stop in Providence, RI?). The cleaning seems to have solved the problem for now. If anyone has further advice on repairing early 80s Roland synths, let me know.

NPRMX

Music Related's off-shoot our small label will soon release the remix album of Shugo Tokumaru's Night Piece, NPRMX. There's a Marxy remix of "Switch" plus remixes by dj codomo, Midori Hirano, Pandatone, Digiki, and many others. Check out the mp3 sampler with short clips from all the songs.

Okay, Fred.

Thank you to OK FRED for letting me play at the opening party for their fantastic new issue 005 - "This is Our Tokyo." (That's me on the right rocking out on an acoustic guitar like it was 1994.) Coincidentally, I have an article about the generational split in the Japanese indie world about explicitly using Japanese influences in this issue entitled "Neo-Shibuya-kei and the Generational Rift of Japanese Cool." I urge you all to pick up your own copy.

English, Pt. II

Momus was trying to "fox" me with his "Marxy Challenge" - the Herculean task of finding a single human being in Japan who thinks that this post-Platonic wonderland is not overflowing with milk and honey. Robert did us all the huge favor of providing a long list of blogs possibly containing hints of criticism towards the Postmodern Playpin of Nippon. So for your enjoyment:

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/hira333/20050207

http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/gakutaro/diary/200501250000/

http://blog.livedoor.jp/hirox1492/archives/10732223.html

http://www2.diary.ne.jp/logdisp.cgi?user=119209&log=20050203

http://my.casty.jp/hayashi/html/daily_2005/d_2_2005-02-23.html

http://fuum.sub.jp/fblog/

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/wakainkyo/e/807c34b9000b419c98bbff8dcd1522bc

http://blog3.fc2.com/taninaka/blog-entry-22.html

http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/butakobuta/diary/200411080000/

http://blog.livedoor.jp/kenjiro45/

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/nancy_9

http://blog.livedoor.jp/happily_109/archives/13599649.html

A caveat: I have not personally had the time to look at any of these, but they hopefully will stimulate some discussion.

Back from Kyoto

Back from Kyoto, very close to resuming normal blogging. Legs tired from climbing to the completely deserted top-level Daigoji temples. Kyoto is a city-sized commercial for a Japan that no longer exists.

OK Fred Issue Launch

Kiiiiiii and Marxy are playing OK Fred's new issue launch party on Thursday March 10th at caniche courage. I go on around 7.

I'm going acoustic.

Fat Planet

There's a small write-up of my album on Fat Planet today.

Off.

I have some old chums from my school days in town and will be only blogging lightly until the 14th or so.

English

Here's some English I learned on the Yamanote line's "Learn to Speak English" series. (No joke.) :

"Don't monkey about him."

"He was foxed by his girlfriend."

In the Old-Timey Asakusa

The great thing about making your building look like a giant frosty beer and a... gold... turnip (?) is the structures become permanently kitsch. There isn't that 10-15 years of looking like ugly, out-of-style architecture before a second-life of retro camp admiration - the ironic enjoyment starts on Day One!

Where did the White People Go?

I had written about an advertisment showing a Russian girl as an English language teacher, and as odot suggested, she may be a fellow student and not a teacher. I need to look at the ad again before I can make the correct analysis. Sorry for the confusion.

Kiiiiiii Concert Film: We Do It

Kiiiiiii. Club Que. Shimokitazawa, Tokyo. March 1st, 2005. "We Do It."

Update: Removed to put up a new Kiiiiiii video.

Kids These Days!

For the last week Tokyo's ultratoxic levels of pollen have destroyed my stamina and health, and I can do little more than sit around my room, reading a somewhat new book called Japan's Changing Generations: Are young people creating a new society? (Ed. Gordon Mathews and Bruce White) between sneezes. The problem with most academic works on youth culture is that the writers are essentially two or three decades removed from whatever they're writing about. They may perceive their own mistakes about Glay members as mere trivia, but I start cribbing score and by the end I'm pretty sure they basically have no idea what they are talking about. Who wants to read a book about the Rolling Stones written by the WWII generation?

But enough of my ageism, there's a pretty interesting essay by Kotani Satoshi with the cranky title: "Why are Japanese youth today so passive?" He brings up some very interesting points about why the counterculture failed to change Japanese society like it did in the West:

1) The Japanese Left chose Marxism and not Liberal Democracy as its rallying philosophy, which left little room for real adaptation into society. When revolution didn't happen in an increasingly rich Japan, they either could do a 180 back into the workforce or drop out completely (and most likely be lynched by their own comrades.)

2) The Japanese economy's unprecedented growth of the 70s and 80s further perpetuated traditional gender roles instead of leading to a critique. Men were able to supply enough income to their families so that women could very easily stay full-time housewives. There's a deeper message here: the "conservative" Japanese system could easily show great proof of success through rising incomes all the way until the early 90s. How could the counterculture convince people with fatter paychecks to change horses in mid-stream?

A Correction: In the past I've written that Japanese student protesters mostly went straight back into society, but that was only true for the '60s Ampo-era protesters. The more violent late 60s variety were summarily blacklisted from major companies - a practice that the Supreme Court legally upheld in 1973.

Pay Pay Pay Music Champ

Some unconfirmed gossip I got last night: artists have to pay to be on Fuji TV's Hey Hey Hey Music Champ. They receive a very small "gyara" (performance fee) but are required to pay background performers and all sorts of other fees to a point where they end up paying to be on the show. The jimusho personnel who fronted me this info said that their firm had to turn down requests from the show a lot because they did not deem it a wise financial investment.

Also, if Rockin' On JAPAN really, really likes your music, they only charge you half-price for an article! Now that's journalism!

99 Bottles of Bear on the Wall

Our Spartan young bears can get thirsty training for baseball and future roles in the bureaucracy, but there is no excuse for leaving those empty sports drink cans in the subway cars and platforms! The makers of these ads have become indulgent in their details: click on the image above for a close-up of the "Mr. Bear Power Drink" which includes the text, クマ専用　(special bear-use).