Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

It must have been 1998 or thereabouts. Walter was 7 and Sonia was 2, and we were living in Los Angeles. One winter Sunday morning, we got up early and drove down to Anaheim, timing it so we arrived at Disneyland just as the park opened. The thought, of course, was to beat the crowds.

We rush in through the entrance gate and there is no one, I mean NO ONE, there. I tell the kids, quick, let’s jump onto as many rides we can before the long waiting lines form. I don’t care what rides: just anything, while there is no waiting. Without thinking, we rush into the Peter Pan attraction. It isn’t a good choice: we end up riding through the dark with mechanical pirates popping up and threatening to attack us. Sonia breaks down into hysterical wailing. Even big brother Walter is a little shaken up. Who would have thought a Peter Pan ride could be so intense?

After that, Sonia is leery of any rides. It takes a good deal of coaxing and persuading, but we get her to ride the spinning teacups, the flying Dumbos, and one or two others. And then I think: “It’s A Small World.” What could be safer?

By now the park is pretty crowded. We have to stand in line at “It’s A Small World” for maybe twenty, thirty minutes. All the while, I’m telling Sonia how much she’s going to like this one. Finally, we get into the little boat. We start moving forward through the channel, slow and gentle. Everything’s fine. But then we enter into a dark room. Sonia tenses up. Next we turn the corner and are suddenly surrounded on all sides by hundreds of little horrific dolls, all singing in diabolic voices, “It’s a small word after all…,” all of them swiveling in this robotic jerky back-and-forth movement. Sonia screams in terror for the rest of the ride, completely inconsolable.

I’ve learned this week that Sonia isn’t the only one to get freaked out about “It’s A Small World.” Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune interviewed rising UK singer Ebony Bones this week. He asks about her striking look, and she describes her style as being like “a dark Disney ride.” Kot pursues this issue further:

Did she ever experience a dark Disney ride?

“Absolutely! My parents took me when I was 9 and it was vile. I hated it. The ‘It’s a Small World’ ride terrified me: All these kids from strange countries staring at me. I wanted to jump off the ride.”

I don’t know if St. Vincent had any bad Disney experiences while growing up. She seems pretty well adjusted. Anyhow, I really like what she does to the Beatles’ “Dig a Pony.”

The great Monogolian yokozuna Asashoryu has announced his retirement. Just a week after his victory in the New Years tournament gave him his 25th title and third place on the career championship record list, he stepped down to take responsibility for an ugly, but still murky, incident that took place on the sixth day of the tournament, when he got into a late-night drunken brawl that is the subject of an ongoing police investigation.

It’s an incredibly sad moment for this sumo fan. Asashoryu at his prime was one of the two or three greatest sumo wrestlers ever, combining astonishing technique with a terrifying determination to win. The look in his eyes just before a match, especially a match against a difficult opponent, was something fierce. He was also, however, always daunted by internal demons and seems to have been battling depression for the last few years, though it has never been announced as such. On top of that was the extra pressures he faced as a foreign sumo wrestler: he became the sumo wrestler the tabloids loved to hate. Early on in his career, he was able to transform that hostility into a source of energy, but lately it seems only to have worn him down.

He was clearly past his peak, and yet he is only 29 and his victory in the most recent tournament demonstrated that he still had some terrific sumo left in him. It’s an awful waste. Moreover, do you know how boring sumo is going to be without him? In terms of talent, personality, and charisma, none of the other wrestlers can touch him. So long, Asashoryu, and thanks for a truly thrilling ride over the past decade.

Over at The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus this week, they have a set of excellent new translations by Roger Pulvers of tanka poems by the one and only Yosano Akiko (1878-1942). Akiko broke all the rules of decorum when she began publishing her passionate, disorderly poems in the first decade of the twentieth century, and she is still capable of astonishing readers today. Here’s a sample, but by all means check out the whole collection:

野茨をりて髪にもかざし手にもとり永き日野辺に君まちわびぬ

According to the BBC, they fine you there if you lip-synch in concert. Besides, according to the article, you need a license to be a pop singer in China. It’s hopeless for me.

A few years back, as part of an ongoing project to rethink the works of novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) in relation to the rise of modern regimes of property ownership, I wrote an article on him in relation to Mizuno Rentaro (1868-1949), chief architect of Japanese’s 1899 copyright law, a legal code that remained in effect — albeit with amendments — until 1970.

Under that law Soseki’s copyrights expired in the 1940s and his works entered the public domain. But in 1979, when Readers Digest Japan advertised a new series it was publishing that reproduced first editions of Soseki’s works, it found itself the target of multiple lawsuits filed by various publishing houses and other parties. The plaintiffs claimed that they held intellectual property rights in the physical appearance of those first editions. In essence, a moral right of authorship was being asserted for the acts of typesetting and printing of a book. As a result of out-of-court settlements in the Readers Digest Japan case, a new “right of reproduction” became standard in the Japanese publishing world. In a move the current U.S. Supreme Court would no doubt beam down upon with approval, the locus of the creative, original mental labor that was the original justification for copyright protection was shifted away from the personality of the author and onto the act of investment of the publishing house. Capital was granted the status of moral personality.

In a depressingly similar move, this week the NFL claimed ownership over the “Who Dat?” slogan used by fans of the New Orleans Saints football team. Though the phrase has a long history preceding the 1988 trademark registration filed by the team, the NFL is claiming exclusive authorship privileges and threatening to sue anyone who uses the phrase with permission. The NFL claim rests on very shaky legal ground; in fact, another business registered a trademark on the phrase several years before the Saints did, and the phrase has been in popular circulation for more than a century. But few small businesses or individuals have the financial capacity to engage in a court battle with a huge corporation like the NFL when it mounts this sort of intellectual enclosure.

This sort of situation is increasingly common in trademark law. Trademark originally was supposed to pertain only to specific, denoted meanings of a phrase, but increasingly legal decisions are expanding its domain to include secondary connoted meanings produced in the public commons by anonymous users of the phrase. Hence, McDonalds Corporation, for example, has claimed to own the nickname “Mickey D’s.” As legal scholar Rosemary Coombe notes:

The trademark owner is invested with authorship and paternity; seen to invest ‘sweat of the brow’ to ‘create’ value in a mark, he is then legitimately able to ‘reap what he has sown.’ The imaginations of consumers become the field in which the owner sows his seed—a receptive and nurturing space for parturition—but consumers are not acknowledged as active and generative agents in the procreation of meaning. The generation of new, alternative, or negative connotations are ignored, denied, or prohibited because patrilineal rights of property are recognized as exclusive: no joint custody arrangements will be countenanced.

(Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation and the Law. Duke University Press, 1998, p. 71)

The author may be dead in literary studies, as we focus more on the dialogic process by which meaning is produced through the relationships between author, text, and the community of readers. But in trademark law, the High Romantic version of the Author as the seminal source of all Meaning remains alive–or, more accurately, undead, a kind of zombie creature that lives on by sucking the living blood of readers and, now, of football fans.

It’s another instance of what scholars like Kembrew McLeod (the man who trademarked the phrase “Freedom of Expression”) and James Boyle have attacked as the contemporary equivalent to the enclosure of public commons land during early capitalism. It’s depressing to watch Japan in recent years follow the lead of the U.S. (which in turn is following the lead primarily of the motion picture and television industry) and propose extending the length of copyright protection to seventy years. I’m not opposed to copyright per se, but we are seeing an alarming destruction of the public domain, assaults on the notion of fair use, and a general attempt to transform into private capital the cultural and intellectual discourse that by its nature must be shared in common.

I’ve been a big fan of musician Stew for more than a decade, since I first stumbled across his band The Negro Problem back in the late 1990s. He takes the sound of 1960s sophisticated California pop (think Arthur Lee and Love or Jimmy Webb) and updates it with lyrics that shimmer with wit, intelligence, and poetry. Throw in a remarkable gift for composing haunting melodies and you have a singer-songwriter who I think is a living national treasure. The best gift I ever gave Satoko was for Valentine’s Day 2006, when I was able to get Stew to record a personalized song for her commemorating the holiday. Satoko said it almost made up for all the other crummy presents I’d given her over the years.

So I was delighted when Stew’s musical, Passing Strange, won him some much deserved attention, including a Tony Award for its 2008 Broadway engagement. I thought about flying out to New York to see the show during its two runs there, but never made it. I did snap up the original cast recording CD when it was issued and fell in love with many of the songs on it.

In the end, though, I never saw the show live. Last night, I got to see Spike Lee’s film version, which records the final Broadway performance at the Belasco Theater. I was prepared to like this film, needless to say. But I wasn’t fully prepared for how powerful the experience was. It had me in tears more than once–that is, when I wasn’t laughing or tapping my foot in time to the music.

It’s a Portrait-of-the-Artist-as-a-Young-Man narrative combined with an electrifying rock show: Stew, his longtime collaborator Heidi Rodewald, and band are on stage the whole time, frequently interacting with the actors. The cast is astonishingly good. Many of the players take up multiple roles during the course of the evening, and it is sheer pleasure to watch them inhabit the bodies of radically different sorts of characters. Through it all, Stew serves as the avuncular narrator, stepping up to centerstage whenever the need arises for a rock-and-roll explosion. Spike Lee’s direction is lean but creative: he even gets a cast member to carry a video camera on stage to film one sequence (watch the Special Features section on the DVD for more about this).

I can only guess how much more powerful the show must have been live. It’s difficult to imagine another cast ever taking it on, so probably this filmed version is the best I’ll get. I hate to set you up with excessive expectations that no movie could ever satisfy; undoubtedly, the best way to encounter this would be to stumble across it unexpectedly and be blown away. But I’d hate for anyone to miss this one: do yourself a favor and watch the thing. It’s a work of art, and to paraphrase Stew, life is full of mistakes, but art is where we go to correct them.

The gloom of winter: this morning, the radio newscaster announced that the wind chill factor outside was “4 below” and then, not five minutes later, amended that to “6 below.” Yikes. But things got a little more warm and cheery in Chicago yesterday, because we learned that Ray Davies is on his way: a new March U.S. tour was announced. It includes a March 13 gig here at the Riviera. The full tour schedule is available here.

On top of that, “Postcard from London,” Ray’s new duet with Chrissie Hynde, was officially released in the U.S. yesterday. You can download it at Amazon.com or at I-Tunes.

So I’m in a pretty good state of mind. And I’ve shut the radio off, because I don’t want to hear what the newscaster will say next.

The weekend began Friday afternoon at Symphony Center for a matinee performance, Pierre Boulez leading the Chicago Symphony as part of the celebrations for his 85th birthday. I’d never seen the great man conduct before and was struck with his economy of motion: no over-emoting for him. Whatever the style, it worked: the orchestra played as well as I have heard it. The program opened with the latest incarnation of Boulez’ own Livre pour cordes, a particularly warm instance of serialism. They moved on from there to take on the tricky twists and turns of Bartok’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra, played brilliantly by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich as the keyboard soloists. It’s a work in which Bartok explores the percussive nature of the piano, setting the keyboards in complex dialogues with drums, xylophones, and other struck instruments. The program closed with a thrilling rendition of Stravinsky’s The Firebird played in the full ballet version. John von Rhein, the Chicago Tribune’s classical music critic, was similarly enthusiastic in his review of the Thursday evening performance.

In the meanwhile, on the other side of the world, yokozuna Asashoryu, the bad boy from Mongolia, took charge of the New Year Sumo tournament. He wrapped up the title on Day 14. It was his 25th career championship, putting him in third place in the record book. The victory came in the final tournament for Uchidate Makiko, Asashoryu’s long-time nemesis on the Yokozuna Deliberation Council, making it all the more satisfying. Moreover, Asashoryu gave us yet another spectacular example of his trademark misbehavior during the tournament, coming close to getting himself arrested in a drunken brawl late at night after Day 6. The tournament, as expected, also saw the retirement of the great ozeki Chiyotaikai. Yokozuna Hakuho managed to defeat Asashoryu in their direct meeting on the final day, but that victory was purely moral, as Asashoryu was simply killing time until the trophy ceremony.

Friday night ended with another classical concert: Europa Galante led by violinist Fabio Biondi at Mandel Hall. A period instruments ensemble, they opened with two lovely pieces by Telemann. Guest flutist Frank Theuns could easily be the model for a new muppet character. They closed with an edgy version of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the schmaltz factor reduced to almost zero, reminding us in the process that a terrific piece of music lies buried beneath all the abuse that mass culture has heaped on to it. Two short encore pieces by Corelli and Gluck (the latter had the violinists plucking their way through) brought the evening to an airy close. The Chicago Classical Review website liked the performance, as the did the critic for the New York Times, who caught much of the same program last week at Carnegie Hall (where, no doubt, the acoustics were better….).

The New Year sumo tournament is heading into its final days now with yokozuna Asashoryu holding the lead at 11-1 and fellow yokozuna Hakuho lingering one step behind at 10-2. Hakuho just lost today to ozeki Harumafuji, but perhaps the most exciting match so far was yesterday’s face off between Asashoryu and sekiwake Baruto. See if you can tell who won from this photograph (link courtesy of Moti’s sumo news mailing list). Meanwhile, the sport’s backstage politics have hit the front pages, as former yokozuna Takanohana pursues his reform effort by seeking a spot on the Sumo Association’s board of directors.

Meanwhile, in another fine old Japanese cultural institution, the Emperor’s New Year waka poem for 2010 (source):

Where rays of sunlight
Filter through the trees I see
In the middle of the path
Carpeted with fallen leaves
A clump of green grass growing.

The assigned theme this year was “light.” Back in the old days, this would have been by definition the best poem of the year.

Although I have my doubts about the accuracy of the crowd count figure given, this article shows that legendary J-Rock band X-Japan can still pack them in, even in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the Tokyo Shinbun newspaper is reporting (Japanese-language only) on the hit chart bounce enjoyed by artists featured on the NHK Kohakau Utagassen New Year’s Eve television spectacular. Ikimono Gakari’s “YELL/Joyful” (performed to great effect in the NHK broadcast with the backing of a choir of junior high school students) jumped from #23 to #12 on the Oricon charts the week after the show, while Kimura Kaera’s “Butterfly” moved up from the teens to the #1 slot on several music download sites, including I-Tunes Japan.

This has nothing to do with any of the above, but recently while wading through the Internet, I came across some amazing live performance of Iggy & The Stooges from 1970. Let’s call it “The Sweet Bloom of Youth.” Subtitle: “A Boy and his Peanut Butter.”

The Yomiuri newspaper is reporting (Japanese-language only) that legendary singer Asakawa Maki was found dead Sunday in a Nagoya hotel. She was 67 years old. A legendary, charismatic figure, she was the late 1960s “Queen of Underground Music.” Asakawa began appearing in Terayama Shuji’s experimental theatrical productions in 1968 and quickly became an icon of New Left culture. She released her debut album in 1970, featuring a melancholic singing style that combined jazz, blues, and chanson. Her persona coupled a cool, mysterious sexiness with searing intelligence. Asakawa always dressed in black and was usually surrounded by a haze of cigarette smoke (or at least, that was the image). She continued to perform and record regularly over the decades and was in Nagoya this weekend for live appearances at a jazz club there.

R.I.P.