SUKITA MASAYOSHI EXHIBITION IN OSAKA

The Sukita Masayoshi exhibition was being held in the Big Step in Amerika Mura, downtown Osaka. It was early afternoon and, heading south from Umeda on the Midosuji line, it had been quieter than usual despite this being a public holiday for the Emperor’s birthday. I could still remember when the old emperor had been on his death bed in 1989, the news in Tokyo broadcast details about his vital signs every night until the end.

 

After eating o-mu Raisu for lunch at Meijiken, an old favourite in Shinsaibashi that had been there since the 1930s, we found our way to the entrance of the gallery and straight away I recalled several of the photographs that Sukita san had used in his book on David Bowie for the launch of which he visited Melbourne and the Silver K gallery in 2012. Particularly the shots of Bowie wearing the Yamamoto Yoji designed clothes. After looking at the extensive selection of photographs we sat in some comfortable chairs and watched some videos… There was a news special from New Zealand about the book launch for Sukita’s photographs of David Bowie, there was a video of AKB48, there was another music video and then some scenes for a counter-culture inspired film in the early 1970s, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets… Elsewhere in the exhibition there were photos of Western musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Iggy Pop and David Sylvian as well as bands such as the B 52s, Bow Wow and Devo. There were lots of Japanese musicians including photos from the Solid State Survivor sessions for the Yellow Magic Orchestra and some landscapes and an interesting shot of some PET bottles that were filled with some kind of eerie light. One photo taken in Nagasaki in the early 1960s showed a man with some horrendous scarring on his neck. The shot was very grainy but it didn’t disguise the extent of the burns. Presumably he was a victim of the atomic bomb.

 

Despite his father being killed during the war when he was a child, Sukita still remembers him taking photographs. As a child he had been obsessed with films from the West starring actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean and he sometimes rode his bicycle 100 kilometres to see these films. As a result, he became a photographer and later travelled to New York and London to photograph various musicians such as Jimmy Hendrix, Marc Bolan and David Bowie...

MACH PELICAN SUPPORTING GUITAR WOLF AT THE TOTE

    

 

It was a nice hot day in town and Christmas was on the horizon. Guitar Wolf had played during the week at the Espy and now it was going to be on for young and old at the Tote. The Spazzys walked on to stage and played to a crowd that was still in its infancy. They didn't seem to mind and in what turned out to be their second show for the day weren't going to be distracted even when the lights went off. "It's nice in the dark" said one.

"Can someone please shine a light" said another. "I need to see where the dots are on my guitar."

An obliging punter held up his mobile and shone a light so she could find her spot for the next song.

After a short break Mach Pelican made their way on to the stage. The singer/guitarist took his spot in front of the microphone and they were off racing through the next few songs.

 

"Atsu sick cunt" came a cry from the crowd.

 

There was some drama as the bass player's strap came undone and he had to make a few adjustments. One of the punters was staring to make himself known air punching his way from one side of the stage to the next. He climbed up face level with the singer and air punched a long to the music to the alarm of the roadies. After awhile it became apparent that he wasn't going to connect with the singer's face so there a was a lowering of the tension. Julian Wu stood next to him slumped over the fold back. It didn't look like he was going to indulge in the same kind of hysterics. At the end of the set a group of beared men started chanting over and over:

 

"Whoa Mach Pelican

Whoa Mach Pelican

Walking along

Singing a song..."

 

The air puncher turned and stared. After a few repetitions of the same verse, he started to chant along with them.

 

With what appeared to be great disdain, the bass player from Guitar Wolf walked on stage with his bass which only had three strings and  tuned up before, with a flick his hair, he  walked off the stage. The drummer in his Hawaii shirt set up, played a few beats on the drums and then followed. Like creatures from another planet they set the tone for what was to come next... If that was possible. A large number of big boys with beards and short pants were already staking their claim at the front of the stage. By the time Guitar Wolf joined Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf on stage the crowd was thick and the band took advantage of the build up and just played slabs of noise. The bass player paddling away on his three strings as the guitar showed what you can do with power chords and a fuzz box. To start the show he skulled a stubby full of beer. Once that was down the hatch he cleared his throat grinned at the crowd pointing at them with his fingers before taking aim with his guitar and subjecting them to a barrage of sonic fire.

 

"Have you been to Japan" Guitar Wolf screamed several times. "I bet you haven't been to Mars." With that off his chest the guitar was cranked up again, the crowd surged and the scene for Tokyo Trashville in all its glory was set. Air puncher made his way onto the stage a few times but when he started pawing at Guitar Wolf who was flat on his back on the stage the roadie threw him off to the delight of the crowd. One woman in the crowd had already slapped him a few times with his own snapback. An intense looking man with an Asian girlfriend suddenly walked off leaving her with a look of consternation on her face. Late he too was thrown off the stage, this time by the bass player. The disdain he had worn before the show had well and truly been left behind as the intensity of the show picked up.

 

"Do you know baseball?" asked Guitar Wolf. "I don't think so. I think you know cricket." With that he took off his guitar and hit a ball into the crowd. A bottle was thrown narrowly missing his guitar. Either he didn't notice or he didn't care. Guitar Wolf unfazed, sent ball after ball into the crowd before strapping on his guitar again and hitting the fuzz box.

 

The big boys in short pants were taking it in turns to stage dive by now and there was plenty of crowd surfing going on. A Japanese woman with some impressive tattoos joined the Aussie boys before Guitar Wolf himself got in on the action. One of th4e crowd surfers tried to take his guitar and was then given it. Guitar Wolf sang the word Driver over and over pointing and prodding the punter when to play the guitar. he put his arms around him a few times and said something into his ears. Whatever it was the punter still looked confused. He looked to the bass player to get some idea of where to play on the frets. Guitar Wolf started to wrestle him to the ground. At some he must have injured himself because his hand was covered in blood. The roadie looked in in confusion. A young woman dressed in a big KISS t-shirt climbed up next to the speakers to take photos. By the end of the show the crowd were surging to and from the stage. There was lots of fist pumping and photo action happening. After the set there was a short encore and then it was all over for Guitar Wolf for the night. The punters looked shocked if not delirious.   

'WAR IS OVER!': YOKO ONO AT THE M.C.A., SYDNEY

Flying into Sydney the winds were a bit rough and the plane bounced around quite a bit. I had a few white knuckle moments as I braced myself and practiced some breathing exercises. Once we had landed it was off to Circular Quay and the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Yoko Ono retrospective. I had no idea what to expect but I was interested, very interested.

Inside the first thing on display was a screening of the 1965 film Cut Piece of which I had only ever seen stills in books. It was fascinating to watch as people came up to the artist to cut away her clothing… The whole idea of what an artist is and how art is produced was explored on camera in what appeared to be trying circumstances for the ‘artist’. Next was the chess board on which all the pieces were white so that the game was played by people in a way where colour was not allowed to separate or divide them. In a room to the side was the ‘Family Album’ collection which contained a pair of John Lennon’s glasses covered in blood. Next was the giant magnet towards which the contents of an entire room were being drawn. One of the strongest messages of the exhibition is the participatory nature of Yoko Ono’s art and therefore the importance of collaboration. Visitors are constantly encouraged to participate. There is a phone inside a maze which Yoko Ono calls each day… There are the helmets from the Vietnam War suspended from the ceiling, inside which are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of the sky… Visitors are encouraged to take one and so the visitor is challenged to feel that they are not touching something or stealing it (Though this interestingly wasn’t the message that seemed to be conveyed in her film).

 

Towards the exits was a room with another screen and there were hundreds of posters of her work and exhibitions on the walls. There various books that she had published over the yeas (including Grapefruit) and her music on some tablets with headphones.  I listened to part of I Am a Witch which was already five years old. The tracks had been remixed and jazzed up for the new millennium. Cat Powers was one of the artists she had collaborated with on this project. For Yoko Ono, the artist, the exhibition brought together all of the work that she had done over many years both before and after John Lennon and the impression was very powerful. This woman had been exploring these ideas for a very long time. And the message was validated and made more powerful with the passage of time which is pretty impressive given how weird and way out these ideas had seemed in their heyday. In the end, it wasn’t Yoko Ono that needed to change but the world around, not unlike Aung San Suu Kyi. Ultimately the message is that we are all artists. No ivory towers here… Rapunzel has left the building.

 

Outside the ferries were going to and from the wharves while the tourists were surrounded by seagulls looking for a feed. Some indigenous performers entertained a large crowd while a couple paraded the dog in a pink tutu. Getting off at central station, a woman and a man were arguing outside. Things came to a head when he suddenly took off from under a torrent of expletives after which the woman gave chase, pelting him with food. 

 

 

SPOTLIGHT ON SUGAWARA BUNTA AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN JAPAN

 

 

When I first went to Japan in the 1980s, a family I stayed with in Gunma prefecture had a lively dog that they called Bunta or Bunchan for short. I saw told that he was named after the actor Sugawara Bunta. This actor was of the old school and, like Takukura Ken, starred in lots of yakuza movies. Between 1975 - 1979 he also made a number of trucker movies in the Torakku Yaro series. In more recent years, he has worked as a voice actor for the Ghibli studios (playing Kamaji in Spirited Away) and even starred with Shinohara Tomoe in the TV drama series Sensei Shirani No. More recently he was the inspiration for the character Admiral Akainu in the 2012 One Piece movie 'Z'.

 

I had the good fortune on one trip back to Japan of finding a CD of the soundtracks to a number of the Torakku Yaro films... Not that my wife sharted my enthusiasm. To her, it probably reeks of enka or some other form of sake induced nostalgia for the 'good old days'. In my mind the Torakku Yaro films are up there with some of my other favourites like Bee Bop High School and the Wolf and Cub series.

Finally, of great interest to me (again), was the appearance of Sugawara Bunta on the NHK news in November 2013. The Abe government is apparently considering reforms that aims to restrict freedom of speech. Sugawara Bunta was interviewed after attending some kind of a protest meeting and he said that given the lack of freedom of speech under the occupation after the war he found it incomprehensible that the Japanese government now considered introducing these same laws on themselves as a democracy.

NUIGURUMI VERSUS HELLO KITTY

The Hello Kitty phenomenon in Japan is well documented. The Sanrio company hit the jackpot with this kawaii or cute character first seen in Japan in 1974 and in America in 1976. Its success with not only children but also young Japanese women has led to speculation that its sucess is indicative of the infanitilisation of Japanese society. Kawaii or cute culture has been blamed for creating a selfish generation of young Japanese women (and men) who refuse to take their responsibilities to their familes and community seriously. By refusing to marry and have children they are somehow not 'Japanese'. And yet others argue that Hello Kitty and cute culture more generally has helped empower women in Japan so that they can confidently seek self-fulfilment rather than social approval based on self-sacrifice. There is no doubt that in Japan today, young women are taking more control over their own lives and making decisions that reflect their own interests and desires rather than the interests and desires of others. Hello Kitty and cute culture in general, rather than Western feminism, seems to be largely responsible for this. The latest wave of kawaii culture can be seen in the youtube vidoes of Harajuku pop princess Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Kyary is the latest in a long line of kawaii pop princesses that includes Hamazaki Ayumi, Amuro Namie and in the slightly more distant past Puffy and the gya gya girl, Shinohara Tomoe... These women are, of course, representative of the street culture celebrated in the 2005 song 'Harajuku Girls' by Gwen Stefani which Japanese politicians seem to fear the most when they speculate on the reasons for the plummeting birth rate. In 2007 Japan's Health minister Yanagisawa Hakuo told Liberal Democratic Party members that women of child bearing age should perform a 'public service' and raise the birth rate which fell to a record low of 1.26 children per woman in 2005. In his speech, Yanagisawa referred to women as 'birth-giving machines'. 

Which brings me to the article above. In this article from a Tokyo newspaper that a friend, Shigemi san in Inagsahi shi, recently posted to her facebook page, Japanese women appear to be not alone in their obsession with kawaii or cute culture. In this article, a man appears to have appropiated the teddy bear that his wife bought and made it the centre of his attention. His wife is, not surprisingly angry at being supplanted by this non-human rival for her husband's affections. In some ways it is like the short story 'Mado no Soto' by Yoshimoto Banana (from the collection Nambei to Furin) in which a teddy bear helps a child come to terms with the death of a beloved grandmother. In the story, the narrator recalls something 'strange' that happened when she was seven years old. Her grandmother was criticially ill and she spent the night alone while her parents were at the hospital. When she awoke at dawn she saw that the teddy bear that her grandmother had given her was not in the bed. She looked around and saw it sitting with its face pressed against the window. Looking at the dawn together, she realised that despite her childish notions that 'life is forever' her grandmother would die as would her parents and ultimately she herself. In this story, Yoshimoto, herself a product of kawaii culture and Japanese anime and manga, subverts the conventions of 'serious' literature by infusing the world of childhood with a significance that others argue is symptomatic of the infantilisation of Japanese society. In this evolving Japanese society, maybe the husband in the article above believes that the nuigurumi (teddy bear) can communicate with him. If so hopefully it can bring him and his wife together!!! (Below is a picture of Shimizu Yuko in 2010, the creator of Hello Kitty).

 

 

 

'KU KIKAN' AT OFF THE KERB

Off the Kerb is a small gallery on Johnstone Street in Collingwood, opposite the Tote and next door to a Singapore noodle shop... Sally took Grimshaw to see an exhibition of contemporary Japanese art. Six artists from Kanazawa from Japan exploring the atmosphere of a space. Walking in off the street the gallery featured some works taped to pieces of cardboard arranged on the floor. Seals had been applied to the painted images... In translation they were listed as 'stickers'. On the second floor, Grimshaw climbed a ladder and in the household shrine mounted to the ceiling was a mirror on either side of which were two small video screens one of which showed Astro Boy and the other, footage from the tsunami that caused the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant. A separate installation featured a dozen or so small screens suspended from the ceiling in a circle. The viewer was invited to stand inside the circle to watch a sleeping woman roll over in and out of the camera frame. It was a little like being inside a goldfish bowl... Gasping for air, Grimshaw went back downstairs and noticed the small plant growing between some cracks in the floor boards. In one of the rooms there were several more installations and some pictures of a building. Looking closer, Grimshaw realised he was looking at some besser blocks. Amazing what catches the eye, he decided. Outside it was raining and all the talk was about the big match between hawthorn and Geelong.

'PLAYING STATUES' AT CAKE WINES POP-UP

Deep in Fitzroy off a side street and down a lane there is a space called Cake Wines Pop-Up... A small space in which three even smaller spaces are separated by curtains... In the central area a number of tables are set out for drinks and to either side are the spaces devoted to exhibitions and performances... 'Playing Statues' was a small exhibition that had drawn an even smaller crowd who held on to their wine glasses and closed in on the pictures. The pictures were comprised of tiny detail upon tiny detail of temples and buildings and figures representative of traditional Japanese culture. Sean Edward Whelan, the artist, had incorporated these into figures, the statutes of the title, that were in conflict with various pieces of equipment associated with playgrounds and theme parks that symbolised modern Japan. Based in Niigata, Whelan no doubt had been exposed to the ugliness of over development. It was a nation-wide phenomena that had preoccupied the best minds of a generation such as Miyazaki Hayao. His animated film 'Spirited Away' explored the same  contested space in which modernity fought against tradition. In the case of Sean Edward Whelan, the battle is contained to a few frames on display in Kerr Street at the tiny gallery in Cake Wines Pop Up. The gallery, tucked away down a laneway, is a perfect location given the number of pictures on display. To some extent an esoteric display, it probably represented more of a playful nod in the direction of dystopic fantasy rather than the full blown surreal assault on the senses that a disciple of performance artist Mori Mariko might have attempted. It was even less of a nod in the direction of Yoshitomo Nara or Murakami Takashi who had dramatised the lives of little girls with bandaged limbs and mutant plants respectively. The walk back home up Brunswick Street past Naked for Satan, Mary's House of Welcome and the Uptown Jazz Club was all that it promised to be. A diverse range of venues catering for a diverse range of people. Mary's House of Welcome apologised for the early closure  during the day but promised to be open in the morning for breakfast as usual.