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.
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