In Churasan, NHK's enormously successful 2001 morning serial drama, the heroine's shiftless father Keibun, played by Sakai Masaaki, wants only to sit around the house drinking awamori and playing the sanshin (Okinawan samisen). (Here's a "making-of-the-series" videoclip; Sakai and his sanshin show up from 2:15-3:00) His likes to boast that people used to call him the Okinawan Jimi Hendrix. This was something of an inside joke, in that back in the 1960s, Sakai first achieved fame as a rock-and-roller, a member of Group Sounds sensations The Spiders.

He was citing a practice common in Japanese rock, tangled up as it is in the double bind that demands both imitation and authenticity. The more you sound like someone else, the more 'real' you are. Whenever a Western musician or group attains a certain status, claims are staked as to which musician provides the best approximation of that figure in Japan: the Japanese Elvis Presley, the Japanese Bob Dylan, the Japanese Sex Pistols, etc.

This weekend, I stumbled onto two other candidates for title of Japanese Jimi Hendrix--or, as he is known in local slang, "Jimihen." The first comes from a 1968 recording by Group Sounds band The Tigers: "Wareta Chikyu" (Broken Earth) from their album Human Renascence. I couldn't find video of this online, but here's a thirty-second sound sample (click on the blue-gray play button with the "Volume" symbol at the center of the page). Listen especially for what's going on just as the selection fades out.

The second is more recent. Here are indie rock faves Yurayura Teikoku playing "Grapefruit Chodai" (Give me a grapefruit) in 2001 at the Shimo Kitazawa Shelter club in Tokyo. It's a homegrown fan video, but check out the solos and esp. the chord structure. "Grapefruit" is the second song in the clip; it kicks in at around 3:15.

A tamer, but professionally recorded, performance by Yurayura Teikoku is available here: you still hear Hendrix in the chord progressions and bass/guitar interweaving, but the solos are pretty mild, especially compared to the Shimo Kitazawa Shelter rendition. How about Hendrix' theatrical showboating with the guitar? Check out this third version of the song, from the 2004 Ezo Rock festival up in Tohoku. No lighter fluid or smashing of amplifiers, nor even any dental picking, but you'll spot the Hendrix gestures in the crazed final minutes of the performance.

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