Kazuki Tomokawa — Kazuki Tomokawa 1975–1977 (Blank Forms Editions)
"Protest, Age 23" on SoundCloud
Emerging in the early 1970's as one of most important and polarizing figures in Japan's musical underground, Kazuki Tomokawa brought a desperately existential vitality to the burgeoning Tokyo folk scene, something he however never really felt himself truly a part of. Though not exactly a household name to many listeners outside of Japan, Blank Forms Editions hope to rectify this situation somewhat with the three-CD box set Kazuki Tomokawa 1975–1977. The set documents Tomokawa's first three LPs, all originally released on the Tokyo Harvest Records label. The collection of interviews also published by Blank Forms Editions, Try Saying You’re Alive!: Kazuki Tomokawa in His Own Words, gives valuable background information to the screaming philosopher's thoughts on music, as well as his activities as a painter, poet, construction worker, basketball coach, keirin track bike racing enthusiast, actor, radio disc jockey, TV host, pachinko parlor denizen, cook and all-around bon vivant.
Referring to himself as a “part-time singer” is just one of the instances in these interviews in which Tomokawa oscillates between total self-deprecation and utterly shameless boasting, sometimes in the same breath. But however he wants to characterize himself, the fact remains that even as a part-time activity, Tomkawa's singing easily inhabits the realm of absolutely bone-chilling, eviscerating emotion. To wit, “The Flower of Youth,” the opening track on his debut album Finally, His First Album, documents the then- 25-year-old's defiant scream into a black void. Sung against a simple two-chord guitar pattern that would not sound out of place on a Daniel Johnston record, Tomokawa sets the stage for all his work to come, shrieking out a litany of declarations against himself and God:
In that tiny room in Kawasaki Kawasaki Sharpening a knife Sharpening a knife in the early morning Ain’t that me? Slicing up your dreams just because you’re tired Dicing yourself up just because you’re frustrated But you can’t even kill a single cockroach! Go ahead and do it, kill if you can kill! Go ahead and do it, kill if you can kill!
The rest of Finally, His First Album navigates its way through elegiac folk rock (“Soul”), full-blown blues rockers (“Protest, Age 23”), hebephrenic screes (“Phone Call”), ghostly 3/4 ballads (“Grave”), traditional-sounding Japanese numbers (“An Akita Folksong Run Amok”) and sweet folk crooning (“Yumiko's Spring”). This inventory of styles might seem like a splattershot approach, but, across all these jarring musical detours, Tomokawa's fantastically evocative singing ties everything seamlessly together. One could easily place these recordings in the realm of ancient Greek poetry as sung by the bards. A sense of pathos suffuses each track on this LP. However, one gets the feeling at times that Tomokawa might not be that particular about the setting for his voice and lyrics, even though he always seems able to adapt to whatever his producer and band throw at him in the way of accompaniment. And he does so with unabashed aplomb on each track, easily surpassing any reservations one might have about the record’s smorgasbord of styles.
Including a photo of his late grandfather with the liner notes, Tomokawa's second release Straight from the Throat opens in a similar manner to his debut: the track “Grandpa” sets alternating exposed-nerve singing and banshee falsetto cries against repetitive acoustic guitar and, later in the track, an avalanche of cataclysmic drum set accompaniment from Tomokawa's long-time drummer, friend and musical inspiration, Toshio Ogiwara. Calling this track visionary would be a gross understatement. It foreshadows by decades the ideas of Freak Folk and New Weird America, but with the addition of Tomokawa's absolutely blood-chilling vocalizations. Segueing into the next track “Goddamn Winter,” the listener might get the idea they've just passed through some alternate reality portal, as the mood shifts radically into something like a folk ballad with wistful Roy Bittan electric piano flourishes. Still, it’s just great.
Straight from the Throat proceeds in a similar fashion to the first LP, ricocheting from musical style to style with little regard for sense of direction, other than the consistently mind-shattering singing and devastating lyrics:
I can see sorrow from up on the footbridge A salesman-type walks by Wiping the sweat from his brow Inside its cage, a bird thrashed wildly till it died Wilted, drooping red chili blossoms I can see sorrow from up on the footbridge I don’t want to die I don’t want to die, I don’t Maybe songs are a kind of cage
With the track “Don’t Kill the Sea Lions,” Tomokawa even scored something of a hit, taking a detour from his existential rumblings by evoking the angst of these suffering animals and the coarse indifference of people to their environment:
Bored housewives glancing at the tube Dying to find out how many they killed today The men can’t raise their faces to look up higher than they are tall While the children’s faces turned the color of concrete A dream is the dream of a dream dream dream . . . . . . Don’t kill the sea lions Don’t kill the sea lions We’re all sea lions Don’t shoot! Hey, don’t shoot! Stop, hey, don’t shoot me! You there! Don’t shoot me!
Uncannily enough, some of this record's text evokes Springsteen's lyrical turn on “Born to Run”, released just one year earlier. See “Cars–A Poem for My Little Borther”; here Tomokawa reveals a sharp eye for life's more banal details as a tableau vivant of intense passion (and we should bear in mind that Tomokawa’s brother was a suicide):
The young cars howled through the vastness At blistering speed A police car following hot on their tail Ready with a mountain of complaints A hearse drove by: Forget all that and return everything to the soil
Straight from the Throat closes out with “Stone,” a kind of nod at things to come with blanketing keyboard banks, something approaching a severely detuned West Coast whistle synth and spoken text—as if Dr. Dre and Brian Eno found themselves in the studio together when Tomokawa happened to be passing by, and they yanked him in.
The third CD of this box set, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth, starts with a vaguely New Wave atmosphere of keyboard synths and punctuating drum accents before, depressingly enough, collapsing into a Classic-Rock-à-la-David-Gilmour wailing guitar solo. Mercifully, Tomokawa has not attempted to add anything to this track. But he kicks back in on the second piece, “Try Saying You're Alive.” The song pretty much sums up what Tomokawa is all about, as he demolishes his guitar and cries out in a nerve-on-edge, quivering voice:
This world is no slaughterhouse! So why all the anguished melodrama? This loneliness, kindness, suffering and pain You’re no cripple! So why are you dabbling in the joy of sorrow? Hippy vagabond beggar child You call that life? Try saying you’re alive! Try saying you’re alive! Try saying you’re alive!
It just doesn't get any better than this. The intensity, the sheer desperation, reaching for straws in the eternal darkness. And then, another rollercoaster ride, skidding into the third piece, “Kill or Be Killed.” It’s tender and sweet, a soothing respite from the previous track. Tomokawa seems to inhabit a Jekyll-and-Hyde world. Either it's a glorious summer day or he’s going through a nervous breakdown. And the middle ground is a wasteland of jarred emotions played out across a vicious hangover, and the sense that at any moment we could die an incredibly torturous death.
A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth conjures up a potpourri of styles as in Tomokawa's first two LP's, though by this time one gets the impression that perhaps he's lost some interest in the whole studio process. His band and the overall production seem more in the forefront than on the first two LPs, and, quite frankly, some of the musical decisions are less than fortunate. Like the last track of the record, “Missed My Time to Die,” blends what could be a demented Klezmer melody line with some absolutely cheesy funk guitar strumming. Still, time and time again, Tomokawa manages to surmount all these musical obstacles with absolutely compelling vocals and powerful lyrics:
Long lines snake Through town again today Give me your sadness Give me your sadness The women stand in line I can’t walk sober And I can’t walk drunk The gaggle of skulls is weeping And glaring at me Hey! Got a problem?
Tomokawa went on to record another 30-odd records after the first three documented here. He enjoyed something of a resurgence in the 1990s with his recordings for the Tokyo PSF label, also known for the work of Fushitsusha, Keiji Haino and High Rise. In his introduction to Tomakawa's collection of interviews, Try Saying You're Alive! Damon Krukowski notes, it's “not always the meaning of the words that gets a song across. Great singers always communicate, regardless.” And indeed, whether one is fluent in Japanese or can't understand one single word of it, the voice of Kazuki Tomokawa will fill you with a lust for life and a deep compassion for all sentient beings around us. These are exceptional qualities we could use now more than ever. So, yes: Try Saying You’re Alive!
Jason Kahn
