It’s the eve of Whitehouse’s most recent performance in Kyoto, February 2004. The new, ascetically streamlined lineup of the world’s most notorious ‘noise band’ is plowing through a set of slick, monochromatic sonics for an appreciative and stereotypically polite Japanese audience. Kyoto’s Café Independants is a (by Japanese standards) spacious and well-built venue featuring such continental European touches as long wooden dining tables , real stone walls and fresh baguettes. On an especially inebriated night, you might be able to compare the atmosphere to that of trusty avant-garde standbys such as Rhiz in Vienna. And, speaking of Vienna…..Swiss scatologist and walking Viennese Aktionist tribute Rudolf Eb.Er (of Runzelstirn and Gurglestock) is in the audience tonight, apparently the only person on hand who disapproves of this show. Rudolf is about as underground a character as you are likely to find, his fascinations with bodily discharges and Janovian primal screaming just being the tip of his particular artistic iceberg. So, when he realizes that his forerunners in Whitehouse are going to limit the evening’s transgressions to merely some loud sounds, he becomes visibly impatient. The dynamic duo of William Bennett and Philip Best carry on unaware of the glowering imp in their midst- they look clean, upbeat and not just a little comedic. They flit around the stage with a self-assured glee that, to quote Bennett himself, the new lineup of Whitehouse (sans Chicago’s darkly incisive author Peter Sotos) have been “…given carte blanche to do whatever we want.” His disgust with the band growing exponentially by the minute, Rudolf eventually takes to hurling some chunks of ice on stage, and is ejected from the show by the Café staff without a second thought. I met with Zbigniew Karkowski in Shinjuku much later (Mr. Karkowski helped to organize Whitehouse’ tour through Japan). He believes that Eb.Er’s actions were his way of injecting confrontation into a performance that he had expected would be a little more, well, confrontational. An homage of sorts to the DeSade-ian ethic which the band once espoused, and which some say they have disavowed for a new role as guerilla psycho-therapists. Which is to say nothing for William Bennett’s love of Italo Disco, and other forms of personal hedonistic exercise which ruffle the feathers of his original audience.
Eb.Er’s ice-throwing tantrum, while fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, does point at a new rift growing between the original ‘extreme music’ consumers and producers of the 1980s, and the new breed of the 21st century. Both in Asia and the West, there seems to be a shift away from the 1980s’ physically demanding performance art / theater aesthetic towards a focus on more refined sound and a more compact live presentation. Leading the 21st century contingent are laptop-powered artists such as Russell Haswell, Peter Rehberg, the aforementioned Whitehouse, and Merzbow / Masami Akita. Merzbow is conspicuous among this group, because not only does Akita play out using a laptop (or two), he plays one with an unmissable MEAT IS MURDER sticker on it. Not only has Akita changed his sound from the raging analog miasma of the past to a digitally wounded and rhythmic computer sound, he has also completely abandoned his previous subject matter (ritual bondage, re-appropriation of urban detritus) for a new ethos of protecting animal rights. However Akita still seems to view his music as a weapon of sorts- in an interview for the 'NorNoise' DVD, he claims that he wants his music to destroy people who are “destroying beautiful animals and nature.” Collectors of recent Merzbow releases may have already noticed this theme running through the album titles and artwork (see especially 24 Hours: Day of Seals on the Dirter Promotions label, and the same label’s Houjouue 6-cd box set, which takes its name from a former Japanese emperor’s edict demanding that all captured animals be released back into the wild.) Not content to just preach to the choir of the noise underground, Akita has also released a book last December entitled Watashi no Saishoku Seikatsu (literally “My Vegetarian Lifestyle”, although the book’s front cover has it translated as “Cruelty-Free Life.”) The cover also features a picture of Akita lovingly cradling one of his prized bantams, and some snippets of wisdom such as “is the joushiki (common sense) of humanity the hijoushiki (irrationality) of the planet?!” The book is written in a simple and accessible style obviously meant to reach as large a number of Japanese people as possible, and deals with such issues as the public humiliation of seals in Tokyo-area aquariums (where they are occasionally forced to wear Santa Claus hats and dance samba routines), the difficulty of getting vegetarian meals on Japanese airlines, and nods to earlier animal rights activists such as Nocturnal Emissions and the “Devastate To Liberate” compilation LP. As a long-time follower of Merzbow, I can’t help snickering a little bit when I read Akita’s mentions of walking about his house with doves riding on his head, or with his chickens napping alongside him. It’s an unexpectedly sweet and gentle detour, one which has produced mixed reactions in the Japanese scene veterans- from empathy to mockery.
“Cruelty-Free Life” is most likely the first book of its kind to be printed in Japan, a book which extols both free noise culture and the vegan lifestyle, trying to draw a tenuous link between the two at times. Especially revealing is the book’s tour diary, in which a show with The New Blockaders in London turns out to be a deciding factor in Akita’s taking up the vegan banner (TNB, in turn, have been inspired on this path by reading an animal rights message into the Bhagavad Gita.) It’s fairly dry reading at times, and a lot of the conclusions that this book reaches will already be common knowledge for liberally-inclined Western readers, but it is an interesting glimpse into aspects of Japanese sociology that are often overlooked. For example, Akita stresses how difficult it is to maintain a social life in Japan without frequently going out for meat-based meals (in izakaya or Japanese-style public drinking houses). While Japanese menus are rigorously itemized to show what menu items will aggravate certain allergies, there are far fewer options for vegetarians than in Western countries.
Some still thirst for extreme music with a purely apolitical agenda, or at least for an indifferent examination of current socio-political phenomena. For these listeners, Merzbow has given them a royal smack in the face by grafting an animal rights agenda onto his otherwise ‘open to any interpretation’ surge of rainbow electronics. And while undifferentiated harsh noise may not be everyone’s idea of escapist music, it truly is for some Japanese fans. Trapped in the concrete grids of coddled, materialist convenience and ‘in-group’ loyalty that characterize urban Japan, the outcast noise music fan comes to appreciate even hellish dystopias of psychological disorder as an exotic alternative to unbroken daily routines. This is evident in places like the Babylon video shop in Tokyo’s Koenji district, your one-stop shop for DVDs of earthquake disaster footage and imported compendiums on serial killing. Where can these listeners turn to for consolation within the Japanese underground? The options are becoming increasingly limited, if for no other reason, because of the very real specter of death looming over the scene. One of the most tragic losses of last year was Koji Tano’s stomach-cancer related death: the 44-year old visual artist, noise maven, and magazine publisher (his Denshi Zatsuon magazine was the most thorough documentation of the, as he called it, “elekt-noize generation” in Japan or any country) was not only one of the better noise sculptors, but a truly enthusiastic and effective international communicator. Koji was one of the first members of the Japanese avant-noise community to have a bi-lingual internet homepage, beating other highly-regarded artists such as Masonna by a number of years. For what it’s worth, Merzbow has only just begun developing his own web content, and other scene originators such as Hijokaidan seem reluctant to ever take this promotional step. In his defense, though, Hijokaidan’s Jojo Hiroshige is busy heading the Japanese Baseball Card Trading Association on the side, and is not alone among the noise community in holding down high-profile day jobs- Toshiji Mikawa, one hard-drinking member of the Incapacitants duo, is a section chief in a Tokyo bank. Koji Tano was also responsible for booking nearly all the best ‘difficult music’ concerts in the metropolitan Tokyo area over the last few years, from Lasse Marhaug to Leif Elggren. And Koji is not alone among last year’s partings- Shohei Iwasaki, longtime veteran of the guitar-driven Monde Bruits, perished in a motorcycle accident. Iwasaki, like Koji Tano, also saw the necessity of “multi-tasking” within the noise scene: it was he who organized Merzbow’s first concert in Osaka. As if this wasn’t enough, a hyper-energetic drummer named China, who was playing with Seiichi Yamamoto’s (of the Boredoms) touring band, DMBQ, also died in a car accident on their 2005 U.S. tour. She has the unwanted distinction of being the first Japanese musician to be killed while on tour in the U.S. Her death has reportedly prompted the emotionally rattled Yamamoto to move his activities away from the free music hub of Osaka after decades of musical development there (the Boredoms’ Yamatsuka Eye also retreated from Osaka recently, citing an obsession with clean drinking water.)
Make no mistake: there is a thick “make-or-break” sense of urgency hanging over the Japanese musical underground at the moment. Loss of key personnel is a definite factor, and so is the downright Caligula-like contempt that the infallible Japanese bureaucrats continue showing for such ‘non-functional’ elements of society as independent musicians. Just a week before the writing of this article, for example, a governmental edict banned the sale and purchase of second-hand amplification equipment and electronic instrumentation. Their justification for doing so was that 5 Japanese citizens had died from fumes released by 20-year old Panasonic home heating units. In contemptibly lazy fashion, the Japanese government has made such desperate moves to get money flowing into the coffers of electronics manufacturers, using a fairly transparent screen of ‘concern for the public’ to keep everyone placated for now. Time will tell if this move leads to any rioting or wide-spread dissent- the ban takes effect this coming April.
One final challenge, if it is resolved, might get the wheels rolling again. In all my years observing the Japanese underground, on stage and at after hours izakaya get-togethers (sometimes with the dearly departed people listed above), I have noticed extremely little socializing among musicians of different age groups. Jojo Hiroshige has gone on record as dismissing the younger generation of avant-gardists entirely (his word for them is mane, or imitation), and many of the 20-somethings just cutting their teeth on weird sound are a little too intimidated by their elders- a very traditional sense of Japanese hierarchy, in which one must respect their sempai (senior student) and not interfere in their actions, unfortunately pervades even the most deviant corners of Japanese artistic development, it seems. It often feels as if Japanese underground musicians treasure their exclusivity and really don’t want their ideas to ever influence mainstream thought- the music’s function is thus limited to “contacting like-minded individuals” rather than “creating like-minded individuals.” Some inter-generational communication and collaboration might provide a new vitality that will allow this micro-culture to weather the storms ahead. In this respect, Masami Akita can do no wrong by re-wiring his sound and the political agenda behind it. If the Japanese underground repertoire 5 years from now consists of nothing but albums about chickens and seals, well, it will be because no one else wanted to use this medium for purposes beyond finding other people who make noise. The future of intense Japanese sound lies in creating other agendas beyond cyclical nihilism, societal frustration and impressing one’s peer group- and it will take an army of ice-throwers to change my mind on this one.
-Thomas Bailey, Tokyo 2006
note: this is the English version of an article for the Czech magazine 'His Voice'