A REAL WILD CHILD: THE MUSIC OF TAMA

My love affair with TAMA began in 1990 when I saw them on Japanese TV. Chiku, one of the members, was asked why he had a band-aid on his forehead? He said because he was coming on TV. When I found the CD Sandaru, the packaging was a knockout, especially the photos of Chiku in his old style clothing and Yoshikawa, the drummer, in his singlet. The music is mostly acoustic and the lyrics and melodies explore a naive, childlike view of the world.

Yukio, stage name Mojo Rising, imports musical instruments from around the world and is an enthusiastic player of the didgeridoo. You can listen to him playing digeridoo (and other instruments) on a 2008 CD called Oto no Tegami (Letter of Sound) and his latest CD Spiral Rainbow 2013. A group he plays with call themselves Poetical Planet. Recently Yukio sent me a copy of a PASCALS CD and Chiku’s live DVD, recorded in a Tokyo izakaya in 2005. On the DVD, Chiku drinks and plays guitar, ukelele and gazoo. A respectful, mainly female audience listen head bowed as Chiku, gap-toothed like a vagabond (think Tora san or Sugawara Bunta) sings some very wistful, lyrical and beautiful melodies. There are tales of sleeping sharks, fish swimming through the night and then there is the story of Giga, the dog. In a scene reminiscent of the shop on the cover of Parthenon Ginza, one of the best of the TAMA CDs, Chiku performs in the small shop with the menu lining the walls…

TAMA had a prolific career despite the early departure of Yanagihara Yoichiro to begin his own solo career. Since the demise of TAMA, Chiku and Ishikawa Koji have joined forces with the ukele collective known as PASCALS. In retrospect, TAMA celebrated Japanese life in a way that is raw, earthy and whimsical. The Japan that people enjoy when they go to the sento, drink sake at a bar or go to a local matsuri. This part of Japanese culture is all about local traditions that connect people with their community; hence TAMA celebrate archetypal figures such as the rear-car man and other symbols of a fast disappearing Japan in their songs. Hunched over his guitar and singing his sad songs about lame children walking under blue skies Chiku is a great sentamentalist.

Unbelievably, urban hippies like Chiku live their lives in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo staging small scale events celebrating their freedom. Dr Umezu is another one of these free spirits. A legend on the saxophone, he toured Melbourne in the early 1990s with the jazz pianist Itabashi Fumio. After the show at a now defunct venue on Lygon Street in Carlton, they collapsed in the lift from sheer exhaustion. During the interval the piano needed re-tuning. Chiku has recorded a live event together with Dr Umezu in 1994. These inspired (and drunken) ramblings rely on risk taking and trust, and Chiku's gap toothed smile is a reminder of the free spirits that Yoshimoto Banana talks about when she recalls the 'wild' children she grew up with in downtown Tokyo.

KANEHARA HITOMI AND THE SHOCK OF THE NEW?

In 2009, Kanehara Hitomi was a guest at the Melbourne International Writer’s Festival. In front of a small but enthusiastic crowd Kanehara was interviewed by Paddy O’Reilly the author of a collection of award-winning stories The End of the World, a novel The Factory, and a novella Deep Water. During the interview Kanehara reassured the audience that she had not personally shared the experiences of her characters. Given the hard boiled nature of some of these experiences this was a great relief to the audience! The following excerpt from my PhD thesis on Yoshimoto Banana looks at the success of writers like Kanehara Hitomi in light of Yoshimoto’s career.

The success Yoshimoto Banana has achieved in her writing has undoubtedly helped to raise the profile of female writers in Japan. The latest example of this success came on January 15^th, 2004, when the 130^th Akutagawa Prize went to two young female writers Wataya Risa, nineteen years old, and Kanehara Hitomi, twenty years old. Previously, the youngest recipients had been male and included Shintaro Ishihara and Oe Kenzaburo, both twenty-three at the time. Of the 2003 winners, Ashby (2004) writes that ‘It’s been amazing to experience all the excitement surrounding the latest winners of the Akutagawa Prize’. Of the five finalists in 2003, three were women. In relation to the media interest that this provoked, Saito Minako is reported as suggesting in the Asahi Shimbun that there is an element of sexism in the ‘media frenzy over the two girls’. Why, she wonders, is it normal for men in their 30s but not young women to be finalists? (Saito in Ashby, 2004).

Saito’s response suggests that gender is still an issue which Japanese women have to contend with in their professional lives. It corroborates Yoshimoto’s observation that it is difficult for a woman to be accepted as a ‘writer’ in Japan.  Despite more and more Japanese women abandoning the stay-at-home life of their mothers and grandmothers they are still treated as curiosities. According to Saito, however, there has been a ‘change in the attitudes of the older men in the literary establishment’. Writers such as Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki have paved the way for such a change.

Given Yoshimoto’s prolific output, it is unlikely that critics will jump to the conclusion that Kanehara has said everything that she has to say or that the future of Japanese literature is in danger. Yoshimoto Banana, like Murakami Haruki, has moved on to what she has referred to as the second phase of her career and started to engage with a broader range of social issues in her writing. This is a move that, in Murakami’s case, long time critic Oe Kenzaburo has applauded. Jay Rubin (2005) writes that Oe Kenzaburo, the chief spokesperson for the Prize committee which awarded Murakami the forty-seventh Yomiuri (Newspaper) Literary Prize for 1995, said that in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Murakami was able to respond to the expectations of a wide audience whilst exploring themes that are deeply his own (Rubin, 2005, 235).

An ongoing feature of shifts in literary taste is the ‘shocking’ nature of such change. Ishihara Shintaro won the Akutagawa Prize in 1955 for Taiyo no Kiseki. In a review of Ishihara’s 2004 memoir Ototo (Younger Brother), Todd Croswell and James Bailey suggest that with sales of 2.6 million copies, Tayo no Kiseki  ‘made the Akutagawa’ (Croswell and Bailey, 1996). The translators in the 1966 English language version Season of Violence noted that:

The stories in this collection of translated works are, in a word, shocking. They are shocking for their content no less than for their being completely different, image-breaking portrayals of postwar Japanese youth (Season of Violence, 1966, 7).

What was so shocking was the ‘wild, wilful, and seemingly amoral youth of the story’ (John G. Mills, Toshie Takahama, Ken Tremayne, Introduction to Season Of Violence, 1966, 7). People’s capacity to be shocked by the new does not seem to be diminished by time. There was just as great a sense of shock ten years later when Murakami Ryu won the Akutagawa Prize with his novel Almost Transparent Blue (1977). Murakami’s characters, members of the counter-culture, embark on various drug-fuelled escapades that include group sex with African American soldiers from the Yokosuka army base. There is a heightened awareness in the novel of their non-conformity. A policeman says to the group:

“Hey, you kids, you’ve got it too much your own way, it bothers us, all of you lying around naked in the daytime, maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but some people – not like you punks – know how it is to feel ashamed” (Almost Transparent Blue, 1977, 102).

  

Yoshimoto Banana herself shocked the literary establishment in 1988 when Kitchen was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. This time the shock was due to Yoshimoto’s literary influences that included children’s manga such as Doraemon and Stephen King. If she had been writing about bad sex, bad drugs and youth ‘gone bad’ she might have been more acceptable. She could have been filed away with the school of rebellious male writers like Dazai Osamu, Ishihara Shintaro or Murakami Ryu or equally rebellious female writers like Yamada Amy for behaving badly. Instead, Yoshimoto Banana has created a literary style distinguished by its New Age pursuit of spiritual rather than sexual awakening. Her characters (both human and non-human) communicate on an intuitive level or through their dreams rather than on a physical level.

An interesting aspect of change in relation to this discussion to Yoshimoto as a female Japanese writer is the ongoing nature of change. This thesis has discussed the debate that surrounded the emergence of the modan ga-ru in the 1920s and the controversy shrouding the exact definition of the term shojo and therefore the specific nature of the threat posed by this figure. The freedom that postwar Japanese couples enjoyed by the 1960s, compared with previous generations, was the subject of much controversy described largely in photographic evidence in Life World Library Japan published in 1966, written by the influential translator Edward Seidensticker. There are photographs of young couples going on dates which their parents ‘could not’, young people protesting in a Tokyo Tomobishi tea room and a group of raritteru (sleeping pill addicts) partying at the beach. Seidensticker lets the photographs do the talking but notes that:
       

        The urban youth of today are heavily engaged in the search for new values to
        replace old dogmas in which they have no confidence. It is a process prickly
        for themselves and painful to their elders, who still submissively accept the
        authority of family, religion and state that is so brusquely rejected by their
        restless children. Sometimes the quest of youth ends bleakly in a withdrawal
        into self, but more often it ends in the excitement of new ideas and new heroes
        (Seidensticker, 1966, 83).

Today, forty years later, the dangers of ‘withdrawal into self’ identified by Seidensticker appear to be very prescient. This is so, especially taking into account the amount of controversy surrounding the figure of the otaku (anime fanatics) and hikki komori (social withdrawal) in the Japanese media. Moreover, this is precisely the tendency exhibited by so many of Yoshimoto’s characters that perhaps enables her readers to identify so closely with her writing in such large numbers, not just in Japan but globally. On the other hand, rather than being a writing of despair, loneliness and alienation, Yoshimoto has made a ‘withdrawal into self’ a step taking her characters on a journey of self-discovery and healing. It is a non-confrontational way of transforming the self which conforms to traditional expectations of self-effacement in Japanese society but also draws in the idea of retreating into an ‘inner space’ favored by British women writers that enabled them to create their own voice in a ‘separtist literature of inner space’.

While Yoshimoto celebrates life, looking to heal the body and soul through acts of self expression and a Jungian communion with nature, Kanehara questions the need to eat and views the body as an alien object. There is great hostility shown towards the body and a deep rooted suspicion about its needs. Whilst these two writers approach the body and its needs from very different perspectives, both challenge traditional notions about the place of women in Japanese society. Women's writing, once dismissed in Japan as being subordinate to men's writing, has proved to be diverse and individualistic, challenging traditional notions about women finding fulfillment finding marriage and motherhood.

INTERVIEW WITH SHIMADA MASAHIKO FROM 2000

This interview was conducted in Melbourne, on 18/5/00. Shimada Masahiko is one of a number of contemporary Japanese writers of fiction with whom Yoshimoto is often associated such as Murakami Haruki and Yamada Amy. As well as participating in the 2000 Sydney Writers Festival, Shimada also visited Melbourne to present a lecture entitled ‘The Dream of a Free Person: Talking about Suburbs, Suicide and Capitalism’ at the Readers’ Feast Bookstore. This interview gave me a chance to hear from a writer, as opposed to literary critic, about the reasons for Yoshimoto’s literary success.

1. Kitchen was now published ten years ago. How did you react to it at the time it was published? Has your thinking about Kitchen changed over the last ten years?

Over the last ten years Yoshimoto has published lots of books. One comment I would make is that, Yoshimoto writes about themes such as sadness and happiness, very simple emotions which have been central to Japanese literature since the Heian Period and Sei Shonagon. In the Edo Period, Modori Norinaga, in a discussion about karagokoro (Chinese logic) and mono no aware (Japanese emotions), said that in Japanese literature there is a long tradition of expressing mono no aware. And yet there are many people who say that novels based on logic have taken over from those based on mono no aware. It is strange that in Japan mono no aware novels don’t sell, isn’t it?

2. What promise did Kitchen show at the time of its publication? Has this promise been fulfilled by Yoshimoto? In which novels do you feel this promise has been most fulfilled?

At first Yoshimoto sold lots of books, it would have been good if I had been able to buy shares. She has lots of secretaries and translators and she is researching about Argentina. Since Kitchen there has been some debate as to whether she would be able to continue writing.

3. In this thesis I am comparing Yoshimoto’s fiction with novels by Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryu and Shimada Masahiko. Do you think that this group (the shinjinrui) represents contemporary Japanese fiction? If so, what do they represent about the thinking and attitudes of contemporary Japanese people?

The term shinjinrui is no longer used. If you use that term you will be laughed at.

Murakami Ryu is like a stock dealer, he latches on to emerging themes and social issues faster than anyone else and also manages to write about them very quickly. That is his strength. He is like a journalist. He reflects the thinking of the people at that time. But it would be better to explore things that people don’t already know. If you reflect the thinking of Japanese people today, as it is now, you will miss the boat. Reflecting the times is the job of the journalist not the novelist. But he is an excellent journalist.

Murakami Haruki is very complicated. He writes about contemporary themes but he doesn’t attempt to provide any answers to any of the questions that he raises. The stories always have ambiguous endings. His conclusion is always that there is no suitable solution to the problem. Within that circumstance he will tell a romantic story and he has many readers.

4. Oe Kenzaburo has been critical of the shinjinrui saying that they are not serious enough. He fears that contemporary fiction will leave only a ‘few objects like cars, TVs and microcomputers’ behind. Do you think that this criticism is warranted?

That comment was made nine years ago and the thinking at that time is now anachronistic. It was just an old person’s cliché in denial. In relation to technology and literature, Oe Kenzaburo learnt how to use a fax machine for the first time about six years ago. He thought he was keeping up with the times.

5. Contemporary classical music (such as that of Steve Reich) is competing against music from the past and is experimenting with sound through sampling and other new technologies. Is contemporary fiction being influenced by similar factors?

The writer has to do all they can to find a readership. They have to create their own readership. The writer has to establish a new communication with this readership. There are various efforts that need to be made. At the moment the biggest selling books, or the easiest books for a publisher to sell, are mysteries. There is a big market for these books.

6. If the novel is being aimed at a wider audience, does this mean that the standards of literature are being lowered or is the awareness of the public being raised?

Compared to twenty years ago, thirty years ago, the number of readers has increased. But what the reader is interested in has changed. The number of people who think that literature should entertain has increased whilst the number of people who think that literature must be high quality and contain new philosophies has decreased.

7. What has been the greater need for Japanese novelists since the Meiji Period, the need to explain Japan to Japanese people or the need to explain Japan to an international audience?

Japanese people don’t really need Japan to be explained to them do they? They understand their own times and the common debates of their own times. But for foreigners the context needs to be explained. But to take that to extremes it is related to what kind of language is the Japanese language? How do you teach the Japanese language well? To explain these things you need to have a strong framework or logic to do it in. Amongst Japanese it is not necessary to have such a framework. But when you are talking to people who do not understand Japanese very well if you want to explain how Japanese people think you have to invent such a framework to do this in. There is a big gap I think.

8. In a newspaper interview (Yomiuri Shimbun) in 1995 you said that 80% of contemporary Japanese writers are writing in an orthodox Japanese style. How would you define the ‘orthodox’ Japanese style? Is such orthodoxy possible in the global market?

Under foreign influences we need to reform the Japanese language. There are not many people who are aware of this I think. We need to communicate in Japanese but also we need to consider how we represent Japan and what metaphor should we use to represent Japan. Should we use technology? Should we use tradition? Maybe we should use the romance genre?

When the average person writes a novel they fall into certain categories. There are only percent of writers who do not fall into these categories. Previously you chose the category that you will use and then wrote about Japan. But there are Japanese people who have been forgotten about in Japan, there is a forgotten Japan that nobody can find and a Japan that has not yet been discovered. Only 20 per cent of Japanese writers are working hard in the language to find the answers to these questions.

9. Are contemporary Japanese novelists free from the need to explain Japan or is this still a function of Japanese literature?

Yes, very much so because politicians misrepresent the country. It should not become misunderstood. If they were journalists, Japan wouldn’t be misunderstood would it?

10. In this environment, how would you define the difference between literature and fiction and literature? What category would you put Yoshimoto Banana into?

Let’s think about history and the novel for a while. History is about facts and the collection of those facts that come to the surface.  Lack of historical material can be a problem. In a novel, invention or the use of the imagination is allowed. In history there is a plot. Historical plot is determined by the method of interpretation. The plot of a novel is determined by how the novel is going to entertain the reader, and what information is going to be provided to the reader. Therefore history and the novel are very different.

Of course literature includes history. The novel is also included in literature. And within the novel, fiction is a genre of literature… Romance…. Satire… Much data is collected like in an encyclopedia…. There are numerous genres. Banana writes fiction.