There Is Only One Reason

Give me one reason to stay here
And I'll turn right back around.

- Tracy Chapman, "Give Me One Reason" (1995)

There is only one reason why Abe Shinzo and the LDP have plastered the phrase

景気回復、この道しかない = "To Economic Recovery、 This is the One and Only Way"

everywhere.

In luminous, uplifting fashion



in dark, ominous fashion



in omnipresent fashion fashion







and that is for the same reason anything would have to be repeated, over and over again.

Because it's not true.

Abe Shinzo's Life Out Of Balance

You may recall that a few months back the Prime Minister's Residence release a video of Abenomics set to an amazing soundtrack. (Link)

You may be wondering whether the Kantei is offering a follow-up video, offering the popular view of Abenomics in the aftermath of today’s stellar third quarter preliminary GDP figures. (Link)

As far as anyone can tell, the Kantei has not...but I believe I have discovered a working copy of the rushes of the video on You Tube.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1kOW-luAoI

Now that leaks from the Kantei regarding Abe's desires for dissolution (Link) have pushed everyone into deep campaign mode, freezing all activity in the Diet and sending the opposition scurrying for policy and institutional union (Link) even as the PM is plaintively warbling, "But I have never said that I am going to dissolve the Diet!" (Link - J）the question arises:

"With the economy in recession, a loss in Okinawa (Link), reactors restarting, the Special Secrets Act going into force on December 10, the public still ticked off at the dodgy constitutionality of the July 1 announcement on collective self defense and the loss of marquee reform legislation (empowerment of women and labor mobility, for example) to the dissolution, what does Abe and Company think it will be telling the voters is the reason they should vote for the Liberal Democratic Party?"

To　be sure, the Second Coming of the Abe Administration has been exemplary in trying to stay ahead of the curve, cutting off straying actions at the quick, avoiding a loss of momentum. Now, on the eve of an election without great purpose (大義) or causes to fight for (争点) being ahead of the curve seems to have put Abe and his people on the edge of a cliff.

No More Barricades To Be Broken, It Seems

Rural revival and Ebola Countermeasures...

Yesterday, the establishment forces in the Liberal Democratic Party mounted a spirited counter attack against the bull rush of the motley crew of election advocates in the party.

Today, resistance to the pro-election fervor seems to suffered a reversal again. Machimura Nobutaka, the leader of the Machimura Faction and ostensibly Abe Shinzo's superior, still does not see a need to delay the imposition of the rise in consumption tax to 10% or a need for an election right now (Link - J video). The main LDP apparat, however, seems resigned to the prime minister's calling an election, advising the freshman and freshwomen to be ready for campaigning. (Link - J video)

As for what significance, if any, the election will have for the voters, I look at that issue in my latest post for Langley Esquire "The Japan That Can't Say No."

Time to break out the Procol Harum (Link) I guess.

Senryu For 6 Sept 2014

17-syllable poems on politics and social affairs published on the editorial page of the Tokyo Shimbun on Saturday, September 6, 2014:

大臣に
女５人と
囃し立て

In response to five women
Becoming ministers
Sudden cheering

- Matsuda Masaru, Saeki City

In a poll conducted on September 3-4, the Yomiuri Shimbun found that support for the Cabinet among women voters rose 18 points, from 45% to 63%, in the aftermath of the announcement of a new cabinet line up including five women as ministers.

That same poll found that 67% of the voters "appreciated" (hyoka) the increase in the number of women in the Cabinet from two to five. By contrast, 25% of voters did not appreciate it, presumably because these voters felt the increase was mere electoral pandering.

So Mr. Matsuda is either reflecting the enthusiasm or the cynicism of one segment of the voting public or the other. It is up to the reader to decide which.

軍国を
「うつくしいくに」って
読むのかい

So the words "Military State"
should be pronounced
"A Beautiful Country"?

-- Hakeshita Koba, Yokohama City

Last week the Defense Ministry submitted the largest budget request in its history, with highly visible requests for an extra Aegis destroyer, an extra submarine and Global Hawk surveillance drones, among other hardware. (Link)

The poem, however, probably is alluding to more that just the defense ministry budget request, which, when compared to the growth in military spending in the region, is a risible increase. Instead, the author (Hakeshita Koba - the pronunciation is a guess - it may be a nom de plume) is probably also making reference to the July 1 Cabinet Decision on collective self defense, the loosening of restrictions on arms exports and last year's passage of the Special Secrets Act. The sarcastic suggestion that the kanji for "military state" (gunkoku) should be pronounced "Beautiful Country" (utsukushii kuni) is a reference to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's book Toward A Beautiful Country (Utsukushii kuni e -- a sympathetic review of which can be found here) wherein the PM waxes nostalgic about the majesty of the pre-1945 Japanese state and its people.

The practice of having idiosyncratic pronunciations of kanji is widespread in the arts. An example of a similar duplicitously deviant pronunciation of a provocative kanji compound can be found in Shiina Ringo's theme song for NHK's broadcasts of the World Cup - a song which sparked quite a kerfuffle due to its seemingly World Cup inappropriate pugnacious punk patriotism.

In the song Shiina (above photo) sings, "Hurrah, Hurrah, for the blue skies of Japan" (Hure, Hure, Nippon bare). "Blue skies" is an allusion to both the actual sky over Japan and "The Samurai Blue," the nickname of the men's national soccer team (with France's "Les Bleus" and Italy's "Di Azurri" the blue category seems kind of crowded). In the printed lyrics of the song, however, the expression pronounced "Hurrah!" is written "Banzai!" (万歳!) in kanji -- an upfront patriotic and historically problematic expression. (Link - You Tube Video - J)

As luck would have it, the men's team crashed out of the tournament early. The public was spared full renditions of NHK's theme song -- and an extension of the controversy over its lyrics -- during the latter weeks of the tournament.


Later - For those who only know Shiina Ringo from her Kurt Cobain phase (YouTube video) here is something a little more recent...and in something of a different mode. (Youtube - video)

To be fair to the NHK execs hired Shiina to provide the theme song, they really had no idea which of her personae would show up.


Photo image: Shiina Ringo promotional photo for the World Cup
Photo courtesy: unrecorded

Memory Whole: When The Aliens Landed In L.A.

Thirty five years ago today.

Good luck with your cancer treatment, Sakamoto-san (Link). Your country needs you, now more than ever.

Link: "Cosmic Surfin'" from the Yellow Magic Orchestra's August 4, 1979 performance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, YMO's first North American concert appearance.

Dancing Toward A Better Japan-South Korea Relationship

On the occasion of Tokyo Governor Masuzoe Yo'ichi's 40 minute summit meeting with President Park Ge-Hyun (keep in mind that until the Abe-Kuroda devaluation, Tokyo's economy was assessed to be bigger than Indonesia's - Link) a gratuitous embed of World Order's "Permanent Revolution" - where Sudo Genki and the boys posit their Japanese Ultra Everymen as the agents of an East Asian concord in such sharp contrast with the current, discouraging discord.

(In HD - so do click on the Full Screen button)

It has been a lousy several weeks and months for the human species - where we seem hellbent on spinning out ever farther from Sudo's definitely quirky (and deeply skeptical of the role and motives of the United States) appeal for hitotsu no sekai e.

Later - The concantenation of ironies of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's having to rely on freshly minted Governor Masuzoe, who had been Abe's nemesis during Abe's annus horribilis of 2007, in order to get the president of South Korea, a fellow U.S. ally, to talk to him, is not lost upon me.

Later still -For those who catch it -- in the scene shot in front of Seven & I Holdings's world headquarters, Sudo demonstrates he has issues with the Masons too.

From The Folks Who Gave You A World Cup In Qatar

I'm the Burning Bush
I'm the Burning Fire
I'm the Bleeding Volcano!

- Jagger & Richards, "She's So Cold" (1980)

Today is six years to the day of the proposed start of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The shade temperature at the site of the new main Olympic Stadium is at this hour a balmy 36ºC (97ºF for you of the U.S.A. persuasion). The temperature in the waterfront areas, where many of the Olympic venues are to be concentrated, is a brisk 35ºC (95ºF).

I put to you the proposition that the date of the opening of the 2020 Olympics may need to be pushed into October -- as it was in 1964.

Later - More on the heat from the good folks at JapanRealTime. (Link)

Image courtesy: NHK News

The Only Popularly Elected National Leader

It's that time of year again, when the fan election for the "president" (sosai) of girls megagroup AKB48 (Link) and its affiliates confuses the algorithms of Google News, causing the AKB story to be displayed in the #1 position in the Japanese-language Google News / Politics feed.



Given that the next electoral test of the nation's actual political parties are the unified local elections of next spring -- which, contrary to their name, are not unified, the terms of local offices having been spread all over the calendar by deaths and resignations (WIGFTL*) -- and that the next Diet elections do not have to be held until 2016, the election of the 2014 leader of AKB48 leader election perhaps should be the top story on the politics page. After all AKB48's sosai is the only national leader chosen in a direct vote by the people -- and the only national election of any kind save the reaffirmation votes on the justices of the Supreme Court, which happen only together with the first House of Representatives election after the appointment of the justice in question, then every 10 years thereafter (Article 79, Constitution of Japan).

The story encircled above? The news that for the fifth year in a row the thick electoral guide to the AKB48 leadership election is the highests-selling book (All Categories) in mid-May.

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* "Which Is Good For The LDP"

She Wuz A Sk8tr Grrl

The problem with Avril Lavigne's "Hello Kitty" is not that it is racist or exploitative of Japanese. (Link)

The problem is that it is cringeworthingly, strap-Malcolm-McDowell-down-with-his-eyelids-pried-open bad.

(Hello Kitty)

If I am going to be musically distressed whilst watching a video shot in Tokyo, I would rather it be by Nakata Yasutaka's polyrhythms:

(World of Fantasy)

While we are on the subject of North American bottle blond pop stars with a Japanese street fashion fetish, let it be on the record that "Hollaback Girl of Constant Sorrow" is still the best mashup ever:

(Hollaback Girl of Constant Sorrow)

Three Cartoons By Sato Masaaki On The Abe-Park Meeting

Tokyo Shimbun editorial cartoonist Sato Massaki is a national treasure. With the U.S.-Japan-South Korean trilateral meeting on the fringes of the nuclear security summit at The Hague, the first face-to-face meeting of any substance between the leaders of Japan and South Korea since Abe Shinzo became prime minister, only hours away, here are a trio of recent Sato cartoons on the fraught Abe-Park relationship.

[N.B. The sequence of cells within a cartoon is supposed to be read from the top right to the bottom left.]

"A Collection of Contemporary Disappeared Items"
Published: 18 March 2014


Click on Image To Enlarge

Relevant URLs:

"Japan's Beethoven Admits He Is A Fraud"
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26039226

"Reliability of STAP cells 'breakthrough' questioned"
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/Reliability-of-stem-cell-breakthrough-questioned.aspx

"For Abenomics, 'Third Arrow 'Is Hardest -- And Most Needed"
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/02/25/for-abenomics-third-arrow-is-the-hardest/


"Ending? Beginning?"
Published: 22 March 2014


Click on Image To Enlarge

Two hooks here. The seemingly eternal run of noontime variety show Waratte ii to mo ("It's OK to Laugh") comes to a close on April 1. Abe, in tribute to the show's longtime appeal and in order to counter his reputation of being a stiff, made the first and what will be last appearance by a sitting prime minister on the show on Friday. (Link)

The recurring bit in the show is to have the guest call up a "friend" on the telephone and invite that friend to appear on the show. The friend, after some banter, is supposed to agree with a cheery "that sounds good."

In reality, Prime Minister Abe called up superstar actor and musical performer Kimura Takuya, who did his part by replying cheerily in the affirmative. In Sato's cartoon world, Abe calls up President Park of South Korea. Her response to his invitation to appear is a grudging, scowling, shrugging resignation.


"We Want This To Be A Match Without An Audience”
Published 25 March 2014


Click on Image to Enlarge

The title reference is to the Urawa Reds - Shimizu S-Pulse match played to a stadium of empty seats in a league punishment for a fan group's display of a xenophobic banner. (Link)

However, the audience behind Madame Park that Mr. Abe and for the most part U.S. President Barack Obama want gone is composed of North Koren leader Kim Jong-un, a South Korean flag-waving President Xi Jinping of China and the comfort woman statue installed both in front of the Japan Embassy in Seoul and in a park in the California city of Glendale.

Ue O Muite, Aruko

National Public Radio, on the most improbable #1 hit record ever in the United States.

I had no idea the lyrics had anything to do with the Ampo demonstrations. You learn something every day.

Of course, the coda, which has Sakamoto Kyu dying in 1985 in what is still the worst single aircraft disaster ever, does not quite fit into the uplifting message of the piece.


Later - If you can identify all those singing the song in this string of video clips...you have been watching way too much television.

I do not know what is trippier, Becky's warbles or Miura's Yuichiro's mug.

Signs of the Apocalypse #5

The #1 story on "Google News Japan - Politics" right now is...

....the latest updates on the white hot electoral race for the post of leader (sosai) of...

...AKB48.

Here is the screen grab. Click on the image if you want to see the evidence of our decadence in greater detail:



OK, so it is politics...of a sort.

Still, I cannot shake the sense of our species having hit rock bottom.

Bring on the rule of the machines! They purport to know what we really want!

Arc Of The Cool

You don't know me, you're too old.
It's over.
Nobody listens to techno.

- Eminem "Without Me" (2005)

Sakamoto Ryuichi (with the rest of YMO)

Behind the Mask (1979)

and

Sakamoto Ryuichi (with the incomparable Bernard Fowler)

Behind The Mask (1987)

and

Sakamoto Ryuchi (with the rest of YMO, minus Yano Akiko)

Behind The Mask (2010)


Mr. Mathers, in this blessed land, techno never goes out of style.

As for the opening act at the end of the world, I submit Perfume.  Does the linked video not look like the cabaret scene in every "the human race in its final state of decadence" SF film ever produced?

Perfume

edge(⊿-mix) (2009)


Fritz Lang would have loved this performance. "Zis is vat I vaz dreaming of. Except zat it is even harder to tell the robots from ze humans zan even I imagined."

In the United States, the music community uses holographic technology to resurrect Tupac Shakur, murdered on the Las Vegas Strip in 1996. In this blessed land, they use holographic technology and crowd sourcing to create pop stars where there is no authorial voice and no attempt to recreate reality.

I am sure that W. David Marx could compose a 15,000 word exegesis on just that last point alone.

Dia De Los Muertos

Once upon a time, Tokiwa Takako was on television interviewing Sakamoto Ryuichi. The subjects of the hour-long conversation were music, stardom, the Yellow Magic Orchestra – all the subjects one want to hear about from Sakamoto-san save his views of Japan’s divorce laws.

Offhandedly, Sakamoto asked Tokiwa about the kinds of music she listens to.

"Well, mostly I listen to The Grateful Dead," she replied.

At this, Sakamoto had jerked upward with such force that he nearly tumbled out of the armchair he was sitting in (he walks now with a cane).

A startled Tokiwa cried out, "That's all right, isn’t it?"

"No, no," replied a now calmer Sakamoto, "It's all right. In fact, I think it's great. It's just that it was the last thing I thought you might say."

Well today, November 1, is the Day of the Dead in Catholic countries. So for Tokiwa Takako and Paul Scalise, the go-to man on TEPCO who rubbished The Dead on Facebook the other day, a list of links to easy-listening favorites:

Studio

Box of Rain

Casey Jones

Sugar Magnolia

The Wheel

Truckin’

Uncle John’s Band

Live

Franklin’s Tower

Ripple

Scarlet Begonias

Touch of Grey

Live Covers

Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Not Fade Away

Quinn the Eskimo

Satisfaction (Image is of Bob Weir, but may be NWSF)

The Star-Spangled Banner

The Weight

Werewolves of London

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Notes:

1) Tokiwa Takako is appearing on NHK as the improbably beautiful and perfect wife of an impossibly handsome Matsushita Konosuke in the pretified biopic Kamisama no Nyobo. This is one of a mini-explosion of NHK programs on the wives of famous men, the most prominent being the current Taiga Dorama on Go, the wife of Tokugawa Hidetada and her equally prominent sisters, and last year's NHK morning 15 minute drama series Ge,Ge,Ge no Nyobo on the wife of cartoonist Mizuki Shigeru (Not such a bad deal, really. The NHK series on Mizuki's wife earned him and his wife an invitation to the Emperor's Autumn Party this year. Not that having a TV drama on his wife will do Matsushita-san any good, since he died in 1989.)

Sakamoto Ryuichi has his own program on NHK, Schola where he is shown each week teaching the fine points of various styles of music to students.

2) If you should ever go to Tokiwa Takako’s incredibly fey official website, you will mutter, "Yep, this is exactly the kind of site a Deadhead would dream up." Her production company must love her.

On Musical Accompaniment

Late last night on NHK I was watching a documentary on ninja. Entitled "The Last Ninja" (Rasuto Ninja -- yes, it was in katakana), it was exploration of a series of texts from the later 18th century purporting to reveal the secrets of the ninja and the historical use of irregular warriors in the period stretching from the late Sengoku to the Shimabara Rebellion. Most of the program was dedicated to trying to find out if the weirdest weapons described in the texts could actually be manufactured.

Fine...but why did the entire program have to be scored with music by Pink Floyd, drawn from Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here?

OK, sure, Pink Floyd's music is oft moody and ominous, with a driving drum beat. As a sound editor, you get to put in musical jokes, like having the section of the documentary on the payment of ninja scored with, of course, "Money" from Dark Side of the Moon*.

But did NHK pay even a yen's worth of royalties for an hour's worth of Pink Floyd? You have got to wonder...and you have got to worry for NHK. OK, sure, Syd Barrett and Richard Wright are no longer with us...but Roger Waters and David Gilmour are very much alive and VERY litiginous.

Which points up a possible reason (other than "it's better") for the near ubiquity of American and British music in public use. The music used in exercise classes, the ambient music in local government offices...all drawn from the English-language canon, even where the persons being served could not possibly identify the songs being played...all because no one is there to protect the rights of the original performers and composers. Play nothing but Frank Sinatra in your coffee shop? Fine. Play 15 seconds of an EXILE song (if you do not know about EXILE, count yourself lucky) and JASRAC comes around to make your life miserable -- or at least that is my understanding.

Which begs the question as to whether commercial Japanese music would be of better quality -- by which I mean more exportable to a global audience -- if those who spend all their time protecting the rights of Japanese music producers would just lay off a little and let folks use the music as the beat of their daily lives.

Of course, to find out anything about the Japan music business and rights issues one would have to query W. David Marx, now with YouTube Asia.

----------------------

* My all-time favorite sound engineer's joke? The TV Asahi's New Station breaking news report on Kanemaru Shin and the Sagawa Kyubin scandal, backed up in its entirety by "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits.

July's Song - "Marshmallow" live

A seriously twisted 2002 performance of Okuda Tamio's paen to obliviousness by a pickup supergroup featuring Okuda on drums (taking his consistent homage to Sir Paul McCartney a little too far, perhaps?) Yano Akiko (the former Mrs. Sakamoto Ryūichi - eight years in divorce court...no comment) on keyboards, the rather weird chanteuse Onuki Taeko and fairly normal Miyazawa Kazufumi (he who gave karaoke "Shima Uta") on guitars and the old man Suzuki Keiichi on bass.

Okuda sure loves Sixties musical motifs and moods. The weird thing? He was born in '65 -- he has no memories of the time.

June's song is“Marshmallow” performed by Okuda Tamio and friends, on YouTube here.

June's Song - Kodo

I do not have much to say about the Yoshida Brothers. Only that they have made a welcome effort to make the shamisen cool, frenetic and contemporary.

Why have Japanese musicians have found it so hard to incorporate traditional instruments into modern musical composition? China's composers, both classical and contemporary, seem to have had fewer problems insinuating qiu and other traditional instruments into modern compositions—or in using the traditional instruments alone for performances. Part of the problem is that traditional Japanese string instruments are plucked rather than strummed or bowed. However, the technique aspect cannot be the whole of it, for Indian and Pakistani contemporary music is rich with plucked sounds.

Of course, it might take an age to undo the damage wreaked on the nation's musical senses by enka orchestration.

Moody lighting and young dudes can help bridge the gap, as one can see in June's song "Kodō" by the Yoshida Brothers, on YouTube here.

Denki Groove - Shonen Young

Curse W. David Marx for turning me on to "Shōnen Young" by techno sonic manipulators Denki Groove (master of ceremonies Ishino Takkyū's homepage has a good English side).

The video is beyond fascinating; it is hypnotic.

To think that all you need to reproduce an entire era's worth of banal, virginal femininity is pale lipstick, lip gloss, a hair dryer and pastel monochrome backgrounds.

Even the image of the woman in silver with the antennae works as a "this was the producer's idea. We know it doesn't work" interlude.

"Shōnen Young" was released as a single on December 5 of last year. The video is obviously a direct attack on the commercial depictions of young women. However, it takes an end run around the easy, polemical route. In a darkly ironic set of images, it sandwiches the viewer between imagery objectifying the feminine face and body and the subversion of the authority of those images.

I can think of entire books this could replace--and a raft of assertions about "Nihonjin" it undermines.

May's Song is "Shōnen Young" by Denki Groove, in the column on the right or here.

April's Song - Anniversary

Notable for being one of Matsutoya Yumi's few tunes not rendered cringeworthy by her husband's bombastic overproduction...

..not that Yuming has any sense of proportion or scale herself, mind you--as but a single glance at any one of her stage shows amply demonstrates...

...and for the unabashed, romantic love she expresses for her partner of 10 years.

April's song is "Anniversary" by Matsutoya Yumi, Japan's most maniacally productive female singer-songwriter (34 studio albums and counting) in the column on the right or here.

Later - The music police have struck. The video has been removed.

All I Ever Wanted To Do Was Wear A Gray Suit

The video of "After Dark," a song by Asian Kung-fu Generation (whose song "Blackout" was featured here in November) has been awarded the Space Shower Award for Best Rock Video.

The video explores, humorously, the struggle against and final acceptance of personal difference. It seems to find the rejection of fear of difference liberating and of tremendous social value.

Perhaps the video should be required viewing for anyone asserting the existence of a happy (or exhausted) national to conformism.

Maybe.

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Hat tip to Sparkplugged.