Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

The Chicago Shimpo, a local bilingual weekly aimed at the Japanese-American community, has given nice front-page coverage to our recent conference, “Engaging Commodities: Crossing Mass Culture and the Avant Garde in 1960s Japanese Film, Music and Art.” The newspaper focuses on the guest musicians who participated, The Golden Cups and Alan Merrill, including interviews with the Cups, their manager, and with three long-time fans who traveled from Japan to attend the event. The article includes many photographs, as well.

A .pdf file of the English language version of the article is here, and the Japanese language version is here.

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately. How ’bout you?

Ugaya Hiromichi, J-Poppu to wa nani ka: Kyodaika suru ongaku sangyo (What is J-Pop? The expanding music industry, 2005). A provocative study of the music business in Japan since the late 1980s, when marketing executives coined the word “J-Pop” to suggest the appearance of a Japanese pop music scene that could compete on an international basis. Ugaya isn’t as interested in musicians as he is in the business, technological, and marketing sides of the industry. He shows, for example, how the switchover to the CD format (along with the rise of inexpensive CD players) transformed the gender and age demographics of the music-buying audience in Japan.

Jane Austen, Persuasion (1816). In which a British female writer tells us what women really want. It’s amazing how contemporary Austen’s characters remain, despite the now-archaic nature of the world they occupy. Differences of birth or class are both overcome and reinforced (just like today!), and of course the colonies hover in the background: the widowed Mrs. Smith gets her happy ending when her rights over her late husband’s estate in the West Indies are recognized. No wonder Natsume Soseki loved her writing so much. A fine novel to begin the summer with.

Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch (1998). In which a British male writer tells us what men really want. Hornby’s comic memoir of his life-long obsession with soccer seemed a good choice to accompany this year’s World Cup. As usual with Hornby, it’s inlaid with countless funny, poignant observations–e.g.:

The first and easiest friends I made at college were football fans; a studious examination of a newspaper back page during the lunch hour of the first day in a new job usually provokes some kind of response. And yes, I am aware of the downside of this wonderful facility that men have: they become repressed, they fail in their relationships with women, their conversation is trivial and boorish, they find themselves unable to express their emotional needs, they cannot relate to their children, and they die lonely and miserable. But, you know, what the hell?

Bernard Haitink is stepping down later this month as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony, and he’s going out with a bang: he’s leading the orchestra through the full cycle of Beethoven symphonies in a special series of concerts this summer. Satoko and I headed downtown to Symphony Center last night to catch the penultimate program in the series: it closes out this weekend with, of course, the Ninth.

They opened last night with Symphony #1 in C Major, Opus 21, a work in which Beethoven doesn’t realize yet that he is Beethoven. It’s a pleasant combination of Mozart and Haydn, and the orchestra played it smoothly: at times, I found myself imagining an accordion winding its way through a Viennese waltz as I floated down the Danube River. We noted that concertmaster Robert Chen, one of our favorites, was absent from the stage, his place ably filled by assistant concertmaster Yuan-Qing Yu.

The first half closed out with the more Beethoven-like Leonore Overture No. 3. Here, the real stars of the evening began to emerge: the woodwind section, especially principal flutist Mathieu Dufour, who played with such aching beauty that the audience exploded in cheers when Haitink acknowledged him during the ovation. On the haunting trumpet call from the distance that occurs twice in the piece, it seemed to me that none of the visible members of the brass section were playing, and I wondered if they were using an extra trumpeter in the back corridors behind the stage (we saw the orchestra use this trick with the chimes-from-hell in Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique a year or two ago). But no one emerged from backstage during the ovation, so now I’m not so sure….

After the intermission, the orchestra played my favorite of the symphonies, No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92. The last time I saw this rendered live was about fifteen years ago in a wretched, underrehearsed summer gig by the Minnesota Orchestra, but last night was simply brilliant. The cellos and basses at the beginning of the second movement played with such warmth as to be physiologically chilling. The woodwinds again played spectacularly well (the cheers they received were even louder than those following the Leonore overture). Robert Chen was in his usual seat for the piece, and the violins played wonderfully. Haitink took things fast, especially in the third and fourth movements: I cut my teeth on the Seventh with George Szell’s impatient recording with the Cleveland Orchestra, but last night Haitink left even Szell in the dust. But it all worked magnificently well, and the audience lept to its feet for an enthusiastic standing ovation at the conclusion.

For the first time all evening, as he slowly shuffled off and then back onto the stage to acknowledge the applause, Haitink looked his age (81). He had conducted with great energy and fire, and it was clear now that he had given his all during the performance–just as he has given his all during his four-tenure here in Chicago. Godspeed, Mr. Haitink, and thanks for a magnificent 7th. And here’s hoping the woodwind section sticks around for a few more years: it will be fun to see what Riccardo Muti, the incoming Music Director, does with their talents.

It won’t last for long, which is all the more reason to commemorate the occasion here: as of this morning, I have moved into first place in the “Critical Asian Studies” fantasy baseball league. It’s a nice little ending for what’s been mostly a chaotic week.

Sad news from Los Angeles re the passing of legendary basketball coach John Wooden. One of the pleasures of teaching at UCLA in the late 1990s and early 2000s was that every once in a while you would walk past the great man on campus, still quite spry in his 90s. “Don’t give up on your dreams,” he once said, “or your dreams will give up on you.”

Kan Naoto, the new Prime Minister of Japan, was actually our local Diet representative when we lived in Fuchu-shi in western Tokyo from 2005-2007. We used to see posters of his face all around the neighborhood at election times. And now I live just a few blocks from the residence of the current President of the U.S. Apparently, I am fated to haunt the neighborhoods of power….

Finally, here’s a lovely new feature on one of the last Kinks’ music videos, “Lost and Found” (1987). A rarely seen clip based largely on Ray Davies’ cinemaphilia, it takes up a lovely, melancholic tune, and the folks at the Kast Off Kinks website have tracked down several people involved in filming the video. Be sure to check out the video and the interviews there, but for now let me leave you with another video of the Kinks ‘performing’ the song ‘live’ in a late 1980s television appearance:

The good folks at Altamira Pictures and Altamira Music, who manage The Golden Cups, have posted a series of photographs from the Cups’ visit to Chicago and our conference this past weekend, including some nice shots of Alan Merrill as well. They promise to post more in the near future, too. Check it out here.

[Update on 29 May 2010: And here are some more photos; see if you can spot me….]

Yesterday was the second and final day of the conference, “Engaging Commodities: Crossing Mass Culture and the Avant Garde in 1960s Japanese Film, Music and Art.” We began in the morning with a panel on “Engaging Cinematic Commodities,” with papers from Junji Yoshida (University of Chicago postdoctoral fellow) on the ways wartime memories were commemorated via jokes in 1960s popular films, Stephanie DeBoer (Indiana University) on the flows of people, technologies and forms between Tokyo and Hong Kong in the musical film genre, and Richard Davis (University of Chicago graduate student) on the depiction of advertising, both visual and aural, in 1960s film.

After lunch, we had a panel on “Radical Visual Culture in 1960s Japan” with Jonathan Hall (Pomona College) situating Okabe Michio’s remarkable 1968 film Crazy Love in dialogue with Susan Sontag’s writings on camp, William Marotti (UCLA) on the significance of early 1960s avant garde musical performances by the Group Ongaku, and Miryam Sas (University of California-Berkeley) on a variety of experimental animated films from the period.

Our last panel covered “Music in Film,” with Daniel Johnson (University of Chicago graduate student) looking at changing modes for representing romance/sex and sentiment/irony in Nikkatsu action films, Michael Raine (University of Chicago) discussing how we might rethink the practices of reading that 1960s popular films seem to suggest as their proper modes of use, and Junko Yamazaki (University of Chicago graduate student) on the use of avant garde musical forms in the film soundtracks composed by Mayuzumi Toshiro.

The conference ended with a screening of the remarkable 1964 Toho musical, Kimi mo shusse ga dekiru (You too can get ahead!, dir. Sugawa Eizo), a marvelous film that brings together many of the themes we had been talking about over the course of the conference. It was a stimulating, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes exhausting two days, and I’m grateful to all of the participants and to all of my colleagues for making it possible.

Here’s a trailer for Kimi mo shusse ga dekiru:

Our conference, “Engaging Commodities: Crossing Mass Culture and the Avant Garde in 1960s Japanese Film, Music and Art” got off to an exhilarating start yesterday. In the afternoon, we had our first panel, “Popular Music as Engaged, Popular Music as Commodity.” James Dorsey (Dartmouth) spoke on how the censorship of protest folk singer Okabayashi Nobuyasu actually generated new opportunities for creative agency on the part of musicians, audiences, and the music industry. Christine Yano (University of Hawaii) presented on the great enka diva Misora Hibari as a figure of “jet set culture,” in whose work a musical cosmopolitanism existed in tandem with an increasing sense of cultural nationalism. Michael Molasky (Hitotsubashi University) explored the changing meaning of “jazz” in Japan from the late 1950s through the 1960s, especially with an eye toward the rise of the “jazu kissa” (jazz coffeehouse) as a crucial institution in the rise of the “modern jazz” of such figures as Miles Davis and Art Blakey.

The evening program began with a talk session with musician Alan Merrill, who was active in Japan from 1968 to 1974. He told remarkable stories about his days with the Group Sounds band The Lead, as a solo performer under the management of the all-powerful Watanabe Pro agency, and as the founder of the pioneering glam rock band Vodka Collins. He wrapped up his presentation with a terrific acoustic set of some of his best-known compositions, playing “Sands of Time” and “Automatic Pilot” from his Vodka Collins days before closing with a high-energy rendition of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the song he wrote and recorded with his band The Arrows in 1975 and that later became a worldwide hit for Joan Jett and others.

Alan brought down the house–and we were just getting started. Following his set, we screened the terrific documentary, The Golden Cups: One More Time, about the legendary Yokohama Group Sounds band. This was followed by a lively question-and-answer session with three original members of the Golden Cups: Eddie Ban (lead guitar), Louise Louis Kabe (bass), and Mamoru Manu (drums). We had a large delegation of Cups’ fans in the audience, including people who had traveled from Japan, Florida, and elsewhere to be there, which all added to the sense that something very special was happening. The evening closed with a jam session between Eddie Ban and Alan Merrill, as they performed “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Namida” (Alan’s 1969 solo hit), and finally “Route 66.”

I’m extremely grateful to Alan Merrill, the Golden Cups, the people from Altamira Pictures and Altamira Music who made the arrangements to bring the Cups over from Japan, the fans and scholars: everyone who made this memorable day possible. Next up is day two, when we turn our focus to film and art….

Alan Merrill with Vodka Collins, “Sands of Time” (1972)

The Golden Cups’ astonishing 1968 recording of “Hey Joe”; pay special attention to Louise Louis Kabe’s blazing bass lines:

Yesterday, I ordered Stew’s new CD, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, from the good folks at CD Baby, a terrific clearinghouse for independent music. Below is the shipping confirmation e-mail I received from them this morning, a brilliant parody of customer service that in fact performs brilliantly as customer service. Bravo!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, May 13, 2010. We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh…
We miss you already. We’ll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
—
CD Baby

The classic “Black Men Ski,” from a 2006 concert appearance by Stew.

On May 21-22, the University of Chicago will host “Engaging Commodities: Crossing Mass Culture and the Avant Garde in 1960s Japanese Film, Music and Art,??? a conference focusing on the remarkable world of 1960s Japanese culture. During that turbulent decade, Japanese filmmakers, musicians and artists operated in a highly fluid environment in which boundaries between mass-culture entertainment and avant-garde art came under constant pressure. This remarkable environment gave rise to hit songs and movies that incorporated abstract experimental techniques, as well as to avant-garde art pieces that freely integrated elements from commercial culture. The conference will include new scholarly papers on experimental film, popular genre film, jazz, folk music, rock-and-roll, animation and other cultural forms from the period.

The conference will also feature special appearances by musicians who were key figures in the 1960s Japan rock scene, including Alan Merrill, an American singer/songwriter who was a member of the Group Sounds band The Lead, then a solo performer signed by the influential Watanabe Pro management agency, and subsequently the leader of the pioneering glam rock outfit Vodka Collins. (After leaving Japan in 1973, Merrill founded The Arrows, a band that had several hits in the UK, including the original version of “I Love Rock and Roll,??? a Merrill composition later recorded by Joan Jett and many others).

Three original members of the legendary Group Sounds band The Golden Cups will also appear at the event — lead guitarist Eddie Ban, bassist Louise Louis Kabe, and drummer/singer Mamoru Manu — and the conference will include a screening of The Golden Cups: One More Time, an acclaimed 2004 documentary about the band.

All events are free and open to the public, but RSVP is required for the Friday evening sessions featuring Merrill and The Golden Cups. The RSVP link and a full conference schedule are available on line at:

http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/japanatchicago/

The event is the eighth in the annual Japan@Chicago conference series and is sponsored by the Committee on Japanese Studies at the Center for East Asian Studies. Persons who may need assistance to participate should call 773-702-2715. For additional information, please contact Sarah Arehart, Outreach Coordinator for the Center for East Asian Studies (sarehart@uchicago.edu).

[Updated May 13: We have added the RSVP system for the Friday night sessions mentioned above because we anticipate a large demand for the limited number of seats available]