Creator Loves Tokyo

[imomus]

Today I want to talk -- no, I want to listen to others talk -- about two Western creators who have special links with the Japanese capital: Mike Mills and Cyril Duval.



Mike Mills made a big impact on the Tokyo I experienced in the 1990s. He formed part of an extended family of Californians (Sofia Coppola, Mark Borthwick, Geoff McFetteridge, Susan Ciancolo) who had strong connections with the musicians of the Shibuya-kei scene. This Californian family (who bonded via a shared interest in design, skate boarding, film-making, Grand Royal magazine, Alleged Gallery) featured often in Japanese magazines like Relax, Studio Voice and +81.

I'll interview Mills on Saturday for 032c magazine, and I suppose I want to ask your impressions of Mills and his work. He made Air videos, he made the sleeve for AIr's Moon Safari and Cibo Matto's first album and the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, then later he made the Thumbsucker movie. Yes, that Mike Mills! Has he impacted your life? What kind of things do you think I should ask him about (apart from his art show at Pool Gallery, The Only Way Out Is Through)? If you need to know more, here's a video interview with Mills. And of course we discussed his documentary on depression in Japan -- Does Your Soul Have A Cold? -- last month.

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032c will also host a party tonight (I don't know if I can make it) featuring an "altar bar" by Item Idem, aka Cyril Duval, a Frenchman who's made the kind of impact (or perhaps I should say striven to make the kind of impact) on Tokyo this decade that Mike Mills made during the last. Duval -- one of the snappiest dressers I've seen in a long time -- was the editor of the re-launched Tokion magazine, and is therefore part of that intrepid little group of mukokuseki diasporans -- global creative brahmins based in Japan -- responsible for OK Fred magazine, the Tokyo101 Art Fair, JeanSnow.net, Mekas, and so on.

As Item Idem, Duval moves as freely in the art world as in fashion -- but, you know, I'm not writing a press release. I think he makes a serious and good impression in the video above, but he's mostly appeared (obliquely) in Click Opera as "the man who failed to make the relaunched Tokion fly". I don't think it's his fault -- the reason, I think, is one Marxy raised when the magazine relaunched in September 2006: are enough people in Tokyo interested enough in what a small group of expatriate creatives are thinking, saying and doing to sustain a whole magazine about them, in the current climate? The answer seems to have been no.

I'm interested in all sorts of links between Mills and Duval -- the Tokyo connection they both have, the "Creator Loves Tokyo" angle and whether there's, more recently, been a cooling of that love on either side, the way they both began as commercial creatives focused on the quirky upper end of the mass market, but have more recently been re-inventing themselves in the context of the art world. Were art-like things possible in the commercial world in the 90s that are no longer possible now?

I'm interested in the difference between the decades Mills and Duval made their biggest impact in Tokyo, and whether the city is a steeper and more slippery mountain to climb now if you're not Japanese. If 1990s Relax magazine featured Mills frequently, relaunched 2000s Tokion (the Japanese edition, not the American one) was Duval's baby. Those magazines have both now gone, luxury culture teeters on the brink of recession's humdrum abyss, a new sobriety quells the giggles of cliques, and Japan looks outward... less. Mills may have picked a timely way to rebond with Tokyo when he made his documentary about depression, and blamed it on foreigners.

Comments

Mills

[flying-squid.livejournal.com]

Don't forget about his documentary about American paperboys, Paperboys (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372459/). I used to be a paperboy myself actually, but I found nothing in common with the boys in Mills' short (by the time I watched it, I was a sophomore in high school and had quit my paper route - the boys are all between 10 and 13, if memory serves me).

Mike Mills also has a Gas book (http://www.amazon.com/Mike-Mills-Gas-Book-11/dp/4861001463) of his own, but I've never read. I find it hilarious that you have to buy it used on Amazon for over $100 when it's still available from Shift (http://www.shift.jp.org/en/archives/2007/08/gas_book_mike_mills.html), who even have their online store in English!

As for this family of Californians... I still like enjoy Lost In Translation (because of Bill Murray mostly), but I don't care about Mills. I don't even listen to Air anymore.

Stipend

[boof-boy.livejournal.com]

Ask him if he's fed up with being asked about REM.

[(Anonymous)]

Woah, I never knew this stuff about Mike Mills! But now I do, I think R.E.M's decline from the mid-nineties on makes a lot more sense. I'd always put that down to Bill Berry leaving the band, but Mike's involvement in the Tokyo scene puts a different spin on things. Obviously if he was spending a lot of time in Tokyo with his own projects, that would leave a lot less time for his work on R.E.M., which in turn meant it became more of a Stipe vanity project. Anyway, thanks for the info.

[(Anonymous)]

Mills' harmonies are so underappreciated. I like "Texarkana" a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. It really shouldn't be a surprise that he's worked with melodic groups like Air.

[(Anonymous)]

"Accelerate" was truly crap. Ask him why he still bothers with R.E.M. when he's got all these other interesting projects on the go.

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno, Accelerate wasn't too bad. Actually, I wish Mills focused a whole lot more on the music and less on all the extracurricular movie-making and Tokyo scenester-ing and what-have-you.

Re: Mills

[(Anonymous)]

I was a paperboy, too. Some subscribers would be very nasty about having the paper set neatly on their porch, which was awful in the dead of winter, having to get off my bike and walk up. Usually these people were inclined to expect the moment of my arrival, seemingly gaining sexual pleasure from the idea of my genuflecting to their precise instruction. After thus 'servicing' them with a personal delivery, it was back to the cold bike and icy roads, my hands and feet ingravescently turning to ice. I see that you are from Ohio -- did this happen to you as well?

mills

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe it's worth to ask Mills about his distanced aproach and mise en scene to subjects and individuals in documentaries (oposed to the usual cinema vertité, realism and all that documentary preacher crap). During an interview he told me he used this method even in Thumbsucker. But we never had enough time to chat about the real motivations.

More questions/thoughts:

Aestetical connections between filmmakers of his generation and the 70's scene, specially Hal Ashby or Warren Beatty.

I don't know much about design but the Humans stuff is a universe as powerful as anyone of his audiovisual pieces.

Low cost and the Blonde Redhead videos.

Objects, books, chairs as a reflection of the owner...

NOTE: Mike Mills is not same person who plays bass in REM

Interesting article, but...

[(Anonymous)]

... I am not quite sure if you really can write that Cyril Duval could be made "responsible" for anything that has to do with the failure of Tokion. As far as I could see - and I'm living in Tokyo and working directly together with a lot of people (among them Cyril in his Tokion-times) that you're mentioning in your articles about Tokyo - Cyril made his best efforts to create a magazine that goes beyond the rather limited approach of the publisher infas but ended up "fighting against windmills".

But anyway, what do I know...

Re: Interesting article, but...

[(Anonymous)]

Bob Hoskins, I thought... no?

[(Anonymous)]

hahaha... but, uh, you realize this mike mills isn't the REM one, right?

[(Anonymous)]

Ask him if there's any chance of Bill Berry working on an R.E.M. album again.

Re: Interesting article, but...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I am not quite sure if you really can write that Cyril Duval could be made "responsible" for anything that has to do with the failure of Tokion.

Well, I'd love to hear more detail about why the magazine failed so quickly. I do say "I don't think it's his fault -- the reason, I think, is one Marxy raised when the magazine relaunched in September 2006: are enough people in Tokyo interested enough in what a small group of expatriate creatives are thinking, saying and doing to sustain a whole magazine about them, in the current climate? The answer seems to have been no."

I don't think that explanation is incompatible with the struggle between Duval and INFAS you're suggesting. If Duval's direction were attracting readers and advertisers, I'm sure INFAS would have been delighted. Then again, having vision and creativity often alienates the market, and sometimes creators with too damned much of the stuff are better off in the R&D lab of the art world.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Come on, enough lame-oid REM jokes, please. You guys are bigger than this.

The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each other.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

i don't really see the point of this comparison

Re: Mills

[flying-squid.livejournal.com]

Nope, I'm afraid not. I'd do was walk up and down the blocks, either placing the paper in between the screen door and the real door, or I was just chucking it onto their front porch (if they had no screen door). A couple of them wanted the paper in their mailboxes or something like that, but they were the rare exception. This was often done around 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, and most people on my block(s) were still asleep.

I inherited the route from my brother, who started the 'screen door' placing and found it favorable with the customers. We both got tips from the customers for being more people-friendly than the larger newspaper here (we were paperboys for a much small local one).

I quit mostly because of high school being more demanding, and the local paper was getting disorganized, with my papers being dropped off right before I left for school. Also, I was getting tired of having to collect the customer's dues in the end. I still though have people spot me at the supermarket and go, "You used to be my paperboy! What are you doing now?"

The bigger paper eventually bought up the smaller paper... and now of course they're having problems like all other newspapers, in addition to some special ones (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/business/media/12plain.html).

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, this is something I do. I take two points that have some things in common and some things not-in-common, and I see how they relate to each other. I find it very telling, actually. It creates a narrative that combines existing narratives, but sets up new resonances that neither or those existing narratives could produce. It's a bit like certain resonances that suddenly happen between two notes -- there's a moment when the resonant frequency of the whole room starts to be heard. "The whole room" here being Japan over the last 15 years or so.

Re: Mills

[imomus.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding like one of Monty Python's Four Yorkshireman, I was a paperboy in Montreal. You'd get up at 4am, in the depths of winter, when the snow was three feet deep... breakfast on poison, clean out the lake, get thrashed to within an inch of our lives by Dad...

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[akabe.livejournal.com]

yes, that should work in theory -especially when making art- but i can't quite see this discussion resonating (and that was kind of my point). i think you need to come to tokyo soon

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think I need to come to Tokyo soon too!

But if you're saying that Cyril's enterprise can't compare with Mike Mills', that's kinda the point. That says a lot about the possibility for foreigners to impact, this decade, on the Japanese commercial creative scene (and I draw a distinction between that and the art scene). I realise this point is rather Marxy-esque, but he's not always wrong, you know!

[(Anonymous)]

Blamed it on foreigners? Barfo. Sometimes you pro-Japan guys treat the Japanese like they're "noble savages" that are being tainted by decadent Western attitudes. I hate Said, but maybe he had a point.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What's your point, caller?

I'm certainly generally "pro-Japan", but in my piece on this issue (http://imomus.livejournal.com/428252.html) I disagreed with the idea that depression (utsu) and anti-depressants weren't widely-known in Japan until foreign pharmaceutical companies moved in during the late 1990s.

By the way, if you are suffering from Barfo, could I recommend Contrabarfophenomytoxene, imported from Russia?

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[akabe.livejournal.com]

On the 25th of September 2008 Ways&Means (http://www.wegotways.com/) opened the KINFOLK speakeasy for the new internationalist in gritty Nakameguro, quite possibly the trendiest district on the current Tokyo scene.​

maybe you were right after all predicting the rize of nakame-kei in gritty nakameguro

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[(Anonymous)]

Some factors which contributed to the rise of Shibuya kei (certainly not the only factors) were cheaper rents brought about by the bursting of the bubble which allowed people to set up in central Tokyo - previously priced out of their reach - also a strong yen, which gave people purchasing power abroad, and finally a lack of other employment opportunities.

Rents haven't collapsed quite yet but they will, while the other two conditions are currently being met. Whether this results in another wave of creativity is unclear. Unfortunately, at this stage, we should probably expect to see more shops, magazines, cafes, restaurants, bars, indie labels, galleries, publishers closing before we can see any new shoots.

Unless you've kept a yen account well stocked or get regular income in yen, the bad news for you and Hisae is that Japan is now more expensive because of the sharp change in currency rates.

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[akabe.livejournal.com]

>gave people purchasing power abroad

but what really is there to purchase when so much cultural capital abroad is made in or inspired/infected by japan (be that anime or keirin frames), while the biggest collections of old crap (be that bossanova vinyl or vintage campagnolo parts) are still in japan.

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[akabe.livejournal.com]

LV bags was the correct answer.

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[(Anonymous)]

The idea that there's nothing left for the yen to buy is interesting but probably wrong. If I knew what would be either hot or trendy then I'd be setting my stall out now. Instead, I'll just wait and see.

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[(Anonymous)]

cheaper rents brought about by the bursting of the bubble which allowed people to set up in central Tokyo

Flipper's Guitar and Pizzicato Five were already doing their thing during the Bubble, so I don't know who you are specifically talking about. The other thing is that the '80s set consumer growth that continued on through the post-Bubble, which meant that it was relatively profitable to set up trendy cafes and record stores, etc. Maybe the rent drop helped a bit, but I don't think it was a "Bohemian" type movement where cheap rent brings in an influx of hipster culture. Shibuya-kei was the leading-edge of Japan's consumerist juggernaut.

finally a lack of other employment opportunities.

I dealt with this idea back in the day:
http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/2007/06/japanese-cool-f.html

Marxy

Re: Mills

[flying-squid.livejournal.com]

You'll like the documentary, I think, Momus. It's very much about a microcosm; all four of the boys he interviews live in the same town, and presumably deliver the same newspaper. They show him what their hobbies are, what they spend their money on, all that stuff.

Re: The binaries don't have to work in the same field or have any logical relationship with each oth

[(Anonymous)]

I wrote that they were "certainly not the only factors" but you seem to think they weren't factors at all. What's it like in your fantasy world? Or maybe it's a Brave New World where all Japanese people decide what to do with their life when they are 12 and don't change their minds no matter what happens.