The Condimental Op

by Andrez Bergen

  It’s a treat to see Connery wander through 1960s Shibuya, visit a sumo bout at the real Kuramae Kokugikan, since closed and replaced by a bigger sumo stadium in Ryugoku. We also get to indulge in one of the series’ best, and more amusing, one-on- one fisticuffs inside the offices of Osato Chemicals — a cover organization for SPECTRE.

  Osato Chemicals was set inside the real life Hotel New Otani, a ten-acre oasis in Chiyoda, here in Tokyo, that used to be the private garden of a 17th -century lord but was reinvented as a hotel in 1964 to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics.

  Straight after visiting Mr. Osato’s office, Bond exits via the main entrance and is almost murdered by a carload of hired gunsels before being rescued by the cool Japanese agent Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi, from King Kong vs. Godzilla) and they dash off together in her sleek Toyota 2000GT convertible.

  The hotel’s extensive, gorgeous gardens were also used in some of the ninja training scenes in the film.

  Other parts of You Only Live Twice were filmed outside Tokyo — in or near places like Kyushu and Miyazaki — as well as Spain, the Bahamas, and back in England.

  But here in Tokyo Bond took an onsen (hot spring), a massage by scantily-clad young women, chased skirt, then was escorted down to Tiger Tanaka’s private transportation hub — cue personal train — at Nakano-Shimbashi Station, not far from Shinjuku on the Marunouchi Line.

  Ernst Blofeld’s hideaway volcano set (erected not in Japan, but at Pinewood Studios back in the UK) and the Tinkertoy rockets are downright superb, especially for someone who grew up on Godzilla and Thunderbirds — which also happened to be a hit in Japan.

  The set was also obviously a huge influence on Mike Myers for both Doctor Evil’s appearance and that of his base of operations in the Austin Powers romps.

  So what if I later learned that James fired blanks in his declaration that the correct temperature for saké is 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit (it’s only one of many appropriate temperatures) or that his casual afternoon drive to Kobe, with ill-fated flame Aki, is actually a five-hour ride?

  I had a minor crush on the other Bond girl in the picture Mie Hama, as Kissy Suzuki — Bond’s sham ring-in bride later on in the yarn — and to this day remain mesmerized by the vocal cords of Tetsuro Tamba (Tiger Tanaka), though I’ve since learned that most of Tiger’s lines in English were dubbed in by another actor, Robert Rietty.

  Oh yeah, and this nifty flick has the “Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond” line itself that I’ve appropriated and delivered to mates at Narita Airport on countless occasions…with far less panache than Charles Gray or Tamba/Rietty.

  You Only Live Twice is also the reason that the month I arrived in Japan I promptly purchased the 48th printing of Instant Japanese: A Pocketful of Useful Phrases, first published in 1964, by Masahiro Watanabe and Kei Nagashima.

  It’s collected dust since but looks cool on the shelf, even if I’m the only one who makes the connection to that silly Moneypenny moment early on in the film. Along with Akira Kurosawa, Mamoru Oshii, Kinji Fukusaku and Satoshi Kon, Seijun Suzuki would rate in my top five of Japanese movie directors. I love the guy, and use present tense since — as I write these words — Suzuki’s still alive at age 90.

  Yep, he’s another one who’s had significant impact not only on how I perceive cinema, but how I write fiction and the scene transitions in same.

  In fact the reappearance of the gangster Katsudo Shashin, in Chapter 30 of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, is a direct reference to Suzuki’s A Tattooed Life.

  This long-winded homage was written for Impact magazine in 2011.

  Seijun Suzuki, Branded to Thrill

  If there were a dictionary of Japanese filmmakers, the entry for Seijun Suzuki would read something like this:

  Suzuki, Seijun (Japanese filmmaker, born Seitaro Suzuki, 1923). Has a penchant for the surreal, the bizarre, odd lighting and set designs, and an irreverent sense of humour. Directed Tattooed Life, Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill, and the musical Princess Raccoon. Better known in Japan as an actor; just celebrated his 88th birthday.

  Tragically, a hefty percentage of the Japanese population — even part-time film buffs I know — aren’t aware of the guy’s directing chops. When I mention Suzuki’s name and his originative movies from the ‘60s, the most people offer up is usually just a blank expression.

  Possibly this has to do with just how alien his concepts were to an emerging Japan twenty years after World War II, and the fact that he was blacklisted by the studio system in this country for 10 years.

  In the 1960s Suzuki’s studio Nikkatsu, a purveyor of youth-oriented flicks and film noir, tried to defang the director’s flights of fancy. While he focused on the subject-matter of yakuza gangsters — a turn-off for most women — Suzuki’s offbeat, somewhat bizarre eccentricities even now seem to sit well only with leftfield Japanese audiences who enjoy the latter likes of Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo, the Iron Man).

  Which means it appears that a grand total of very few people in this country know and appreciate the man’s directorial efforts. And actually it’s pretty much the same outside Japan — throw about monikers like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu at posh dinner parties and you’ll win friends. Mention Seijun Suzuki and you’ll likely get a shrug and a follow-through cold shoulder.

  To be honest, I find this unawareness just plain sad — not that I found it easy to discover him myself. It’s been only five years since I first viewed one of Suzuki’s movies. I knew of the man’s most famous flick, Tokyo Drifter, but hadn’t had the chance (or, honestly, incentive) to see it; when I received a promo copy of A Tattooed Life, I had a couple of hours to kill so copped a viewing of that instead.

  And was smitten — so much that Suzuki rates an homage in my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (on page 12, in case anyone has a spare copy lying about. Ahem).

  What snagged my senses wasn’t so much the underlying premise of on-the-lam yakuza gangster ‘Silver Fox’ Tetsu who hides out with his artist brother in a small town, doing labour work. It wasn’t even the tale of intrigue, revenge and love.

  What I loved about A Tattooed Life (Irezumi Ichidai, 1965) was its twist two thirds of the way through, when it went from Dorothy in dull, monochrome Kansas to vibrant, Technicolor Oz; the lighting, colour composition and set designs change from the straight-and-narrow to those bordering on madness — and, instead of ruby slippers, our hero Tetsu whips out a katana sword and hacks his way home.

  It’s like two completely different movies compressed into one, both fighting for control, but the madcap surrealist venture wins the debate hands down.

  By contrast Tokyo Drifter (Tokyo Nagaremono, 1966) is all about style.

  The title reeks the tone, 1960s Tokyo drips the stuff, and the central protagonist exudes it in spades.

  Ostensibly the story of Tetsu, aka the Phoenix — a yakuza hit man trying to go straight — we together traverse his escapades while pursued by nemesis-type Tatsuzo (the Viper); also brushing up against our hero, and thereby us, are a swag of conflicted personalities tethered to tangents of betrayal, suicide and love.

  There’s certainly death and mayhem here, as sometimes an entire room full of people is laid to waste, and the lead is played by Tetsuya Watari — later a veteran of Kinji Fukusaku’s ‘70s yakuza offerings like Graveyard of Honour.

  But what’s really at play is Suzuki’s canny appreciation of interior shots, a striking use of the colour palette, and innovative lighting — which border on the surreal and take the viewer into a terrain way, way out there. His shot of a large room that swings wildly from black (with a splash of scarlet) to snow white with alabaster pianos, is something British director Peter Greenaway would toy with 23 years later in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.

  The following year the director unleashed Branded to Kill (Koroshi no Rakuin, 1967) starring regular Suzuki player Joe Shishido as contract killer Goro and Annu Mari as Suzuki’s most memorable femme fatale Misako, who dreams of death.

  Apparentl
y edited in just one day, Suzuki riotously mixes satire with the surreal, offbeat with the abstruse. Our hero sniffs boiling rice to get his erotic kicks, there are bulletproof belts and headbands, Misako’s interior decorating bent involves dead butterflies, and one assassination involves camouflage within an animatronic cigarette lighter.

  On top of this there’s bizarre cartoon imagery in certain scenes, and a gloriously eclectic sound score by Naozumi Yamamoto, who — oddly enough — also did soundtracks for the homogenized Tora-san movies.

  Influences seem plucked from things as diverse as kabuki theatre and the Sean Connery James Bond films, pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, and with a heavy nod (or three) in the direction of film noir, gothic cinema, and Japanese New Wave.

  Gloriously violent, revelling in a theme that later directors like John Woo and Takashi Miike would extend upon, it’s since shaped up as a cult favourite regularly cited by the likes of Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-wai and Jim Jarmusch.

  The movie proved pivotal in other ways as well — after the film fizzed at the box office and he was fired, Seijun Suzuki sued the studio, Nikkatsu, in a legal battle that took more than three years; in return he was blacklisted for a decade at the height of his filmmaking prowess.

  Just in case you were wondering, the director’s enforced vacation from cinematic excess didn’t faze him upon his return to the clapboard.

  Although obviously older, he’s been chameleon-like in the years following on from his heyday in the ‘60s, yet no less essential. At one stage Suzuki even ventured into anime — helming one of the movies in the long-running Lupin III franchise, Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of Babylon (1985).

  Other nuggets include Pistol Opera (2001), which is either (a) a femme fatale remake of or (b) a sequel to Branded to Kill, and the disarming musical romp Princess Raccoon (Operetta Tanuki Goten, 2005), which featured Ziyi Zhang, Joe Odagiri (Azumi) and Taro Yamamoto — better known as the mysterious transfer student Kawada in Battle Royale (2000).

  I also like to write about music — having started my hack journalism career reviewing and waxing critical about electronica in Melbourne at a local street press publication called Zebra, along with 3D World in Sydney and Onion in Adelaide.

  Most of the older articles were tossed out, burned or stored away in boxes now ridden with snails when I left Australia in 2001, but I’ve continued to keep on top of the trick, occasionally for local English language magazine Metropolis here in Tokyo.

  I hope the next two tiny articles, pushed through that outlet in 2009-10, give you a marginally better understanding of the depth and breadth of Japanese music, and in fact Sayuri Ishikawa makes a guest appearance (hummed by Kohana) in One Hundred Years of Vicissitude.

  ‘Fuyu’ (winter) is Floyd’s tattoo in Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, and mine.

  Yamataka Eye from Boredoms

  With scraggly hair awry in most of the press-shots I’ve glimpsed, Tetsuro Yamatsuka’s not the best candidate to hustle home and greet sheltered parents.

  Yet while appearances-wise this 47-year-old is nowhere near Keith Flint from The Prodigy, he’s in fact far more raucous. Yamatsuka may have a predilection toward changing his DJ and production names but he’s best known as Yamataka Eye, and as such a member of Boredom — one of the greatest noise rock bands from Japan, a country equally renowned for Melt-Banana and Merzbow.

  Formed between 1982-86 and likely inspired by The Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten, Boredoms have wildly rotated their membership while keeping Yamatsuka in the role of front man. Known for his atypical vocal workouts and postproduction prowess, Yamatsuka was a pivotal player in the band’s most enduring album Pop Tarti (1993), which still stands strong 18 years on.

  Beyond Boredoms, Yamatsuka’s also recorded an EP —TV Shit, 1993 — with Sonic Youth, worked with Bill Laswell’s band Praxis and John Zorn’s Naked City, and released two absolutely brilliant live LPs in 1995 with experimental composer Yoshihide Otomo…under the underplayed alias of MC Hellshit & DJ Carhouse.

  Thrown together in disseminated ways Yamatsuka would probably appreciate, he’s a rock kami unto himself — hair awry and all.

  ‘Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyugeshiki’

  by Sayuri Ishikawa

  When local kids deride enka, I try to nudge them in the direction of singer Sayuri Ishikawa’s classic 1977 outing.

  Literally translated as ‘Winter View of Tsuguru Straits’ (the moniker given to the ocean between Honshu and Hokkaido), this is the ‘70s and Japan at their best. Mournful and kitsch, grandiose yet poignant, the music here sublimely infuses a funky orchestral backdrop with graceful power vocals by Ishikawa drifting toward Gloria Gaynor.

  The song was conjured up by lyricist Yu Aku with composer Takashi Miki (a.k.a. Tadashi Watanabe) who passed away earlier this year [2009] — and was also responsible for the insanely catchy ‘Anpanman no Machi’ theme song for the kids’ anime series Anpanman.

  The ‘77 effort, rather than that Anpanman ditty, is the first and only enka number I’ve actually fallen in love with.

  There’s fuyu (winter) in the title — my favorite season; I have a silly tattoo of the kanji to prove it — and as a hack DJ I’ve dropped this song between techno and hip-hop tunes in clubs as far afield as Beijing and Melbourne…and it’s (somehow) worked.

  It’s also the one song I coerce my Japanese mates to sing at karaoke; they’re never quite Ishikawa, of course, and they grimace a bit, but they always give it their best.

  Since we’re on a musical bender here, I’m going to unveil a soapbox rant I made in 1999, when I was the editor of street press publication Zebra in Melbourne.

  I found a copy of this on the ‘net, so it’s one of the few bona fide archival pieces I’m able to include. Yes, it’s a pretentious, dictatorial diatribe — but I did my uni thesis on industrial music in Britain in the 1970s, and I remember being annoyed about something.

  Problem was I had to squeeze it all up into one printed newspaper page.

  I ought to give this a go-through, edit, shake, update and double-check the accuracy, but that wouldn’t be honest to the archival nature of the beast…would it?

  Besides, I’m a lazy sod and no George Lucas.

  From Dada to Disco: a (Brief) History of Electronic Music

  Too often lately I’ve read the simplifications, the blanket statements, the outrageously inaccurate assumptions — that techno was started in Detroit, and that Kraftwerk are the godfathers of electronica.

  Sure, both that American city and the German band made vital inroads and helped to steer electronic-based music along a certain course, but the fact is that the foundations had already been laid decades before; a break from traditional instrumentation was engineered by the Dadaists as far back as 1916 and over the years since there’s been an undercurrent determined to push the perimeters of sound iconoclasm and to invent new means through which to generate these sounds themselves.

  So there’s always been an inexplicable link between electronic and experimental music, but the problem remains: how far back can we trace the ancestry of the machine-based sounds we take for granted towards the end of the 20th century?

  Let’s flashback here to the First World War, to Zurich in 1916, where a fledgling artistic group who got together at the Cabaret Voltaire formulated an ideal called ‘Dada’ to identify their activ-ities; the movement’s spirit was best captured by Andre Breton who declared that “Dada is a state of mind…Dada is artistic freethinking.”

  As such, the Dadaists set about turning ‘normal’ artistic conventions on their head and severed links with traditional concepts of art, including music, in order to create new and often anarchic forms. During the early 1920s in the USSR physicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen — a.k.a. Léon Theremin — developed the synthetic music instrument that became known by his name, and in 1922 performed the world’s first ‘official’ concert of electronic music at the Kremlin before an enthusiastic Lenin. The instrument Theremin developed has been called
the first synthesizer — it operated by using electrical fields which were tuned by the changes in distance between an antenna and the performer’s hand — but his own life was just as remarkable, reading like a trippy episode of Melrose Place intercut with The Maltese Falcon.

  Over the next 15 years he taught Lenin how to use the instrument, he worked in the same studio with Einstein, and reportedly spied on the Americans while living in New York City; after being abducted by the KGB and returned to his homeland, he spent time exiled in Siberia before returning for ‘special duties’ and developing the first wireless bug that was installed in the US embassy in Berlin during the Cold War.

  The Theremin instrument he originally developed so long ago has continued to be used here in the West, ingratiating itself with its eerie sound effects in B-grade horror and sci-fi films like Forbidden Planet (1956) in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), in television themes for Doctor Who and Dark Shadows, and in songs like ‘Good Vibrations’ by the Beach Boys and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’.

  Now rewind three decades.

  It’s 1939, and the eve of the Second World War. While working with broadcast radio John Cage uses test records of pure frequency tones, which he plays on variable-speed turntables, in his early piece ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 1’. In his subsequent effort, titled ‘Imaginary Landscape No. 2’, Cage pioneers live electronic music by using among his sound sources an amplified coil of wire.

  But it was the arrival of the tape recorder, invented in 1935 yet not widely available until 1950, that transformed the practice of working with sounds in the studio.

  Tape presented the composer with a flexible, versatile means of recording and storing sounds; of changing them in pitch and rhythm by altering the playback speed, of superimposing them, and of rearranging them in any order. Tape was, in effect, the first sampler.

  In 1948 Pierre Schaeffer, a sound technician working for Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, extended earlier work with discs to produce several short studies in what he called ‘musique concrète’, and here tape came to the forefront. Each of his compositions was based upon sounds from a particular source, such as railway trains or the piano, and the recordings were transformed by playing them at different speeds, forwards or in reverse, isolating fragments and superimposing one sound over another, with the intention to free his material from its native associations.