Shibuya-kei is b-b-back?
Sep. 29th, 2004 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
I don't know if I've caught some kind of cold -- which would be odd, since I haven't had one for years -- or if all this sento bathing has made me feverish, but I spent my last day in Tokyo walking round in some kind of weird dream state. My throat and nasal membranes were lightly inflamed, a heady musk of mutton fat rose in my throat, and I felt the pleasantly hallucinatory sense of nostalgic unreality that often precedes a cold. In this kind of state I often get flashbacks to scenes from years ago. I'll see a recurring image of the East End of Princes Street, Edinburgh, for instance (upstairs from what's now Burger King, but used to be... the dingy cafe of Patrick Thomson's department store, didn't it?), and then, the next moment, a room in Finland.
The really odd thing about today, though, was that the city of Tokyo seemed to be conspiring with my fever. The whole place transformed itself into one gigantic psychedelic flashback. Suddenly the excitement of the 90s was back. Was it because I've been in Osaka so long, and saw Tokyo -- its zippy consumer spectacle, its stylish supercool youth -- afresh? Was it just sento fever? Or was something afoot, something fresh stirring in the autumnal air?
Taking my cue from Jean Snow's blog I went to Shibuya to see the Braniff International exhibition up on the seventh floor of the Parco Museum. Now, my ties with Parco run deep. It was at Parco's chain of Quattro Clubs that I played the gigs that first brought me to Japan, in 1992 and 1993. Later, I released albums on the Parco Quattro label. My first address in Tokyo was the Tobu Hotel, just a few steps away from the Parco department store. Shibuya-kei, the movement organised around 'jet set' lounge culture, 60s optimism, cosmopolitanism, and so on, was also, for me, organised around Parco department stores. And so it shouldn't have been so surprising that the Parco Braniff show turned out to be recycling exactly this sort of 60s- and-70s-in-the-90s imagery: Alexander Calder-designed jets, Pucci-styled stewardesses in space helmets. To evoke this imagery at its peak in the prime of the Shibuya-kei period I just have to recall Yoshinori Sunahara's 'Sounds of the 70s' album, the Bungalow label, and a Pizzicato 5 show I saw in London in about 1997 (it was, to sum everything up, a Wallpaper magazine party) in which Maki Nomiya was dressed in a dainty sci-fi air stewardess' uniform all in white.
Now, my first reference to Shibuya-kei on my website came in September 1998, when I declared Shibuya-kei dead. Well, I may have been a bit premature. I come today to tell you that Shibuya-kei is no longer dead. Perhaps it never was, or perhaps it's walking undead. It's back, like a Pucci Lolita, like a snapshot in a cherished copy of FRUiTS magazine. For five years the spirit of Gap and Uniqlo has banished all but beige, grey, cream, black and white from Japanese streets. But pinks, yellows, oranges and reds are back, synthetic fabrics are back, a bold sort of sensuality is evident again. Not only in this Braniff exhibition, but in the second show I saw today, an impressive display, designed by Groovisions, of Guy Peellaert's Pravda action girl comics (last seen in a book published by Shoichi Kajino, my A&R man at Nippon Columbia at the height of Shibuya-kei and now designer of fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin -- a true dandy of vintage Shibuya-kei).
Down in the basement bookshop of Parco -- recently revamped in orange -- Kahimi Karie is once again on magazine covers (sporting with Swedish children in travel magazine Lingkaran), 'frenchy pops' records are displayed prominently in the record store alongside the obligatory bossa nova, and the new film at Cinema Rise (with its classic post-modern 80s dome, a trompe l'oeil rumpled and flipped toga in concrete) is 'Doorway To Love', a comedy about cool otakus by Matsuo Suzuki with the most cluttered, pinkest poster you ever saw.
Playing old Kahimi numbers at my Tokyo concert recently I joked 'this is retro-Shibuya-kei... welcome to the Shibuya-kei Museum!' What I didn't find out until later (when I listened to the clutch of CD-Rs people thrust into my hands after the show) was that half the audience were in neo-Shibuya bands like McDonald Duck Eclair, Dahlia and Migu (who sound exactly like prime-period Buffalo Daughter and comprise ex-members of the Cornelius touring band). The trend is confirmed by the success of new bands like Plus Tech Squeeze Box, whose flirty, squirty J-pop parody records recall classic Escalator / Trattoria groups like Yukari Fresh and Citrus.
It all strikes me as very odd that this stuff should be back so soon. Then again, I did once say that Shibuya was the place where all trends would one day be invented and revived simultaneously (mathematicians have calculated that that day will arrive in 2013). And perhaps I shouldn't declare things dead quite so early. Often, they're only sleeping. Something that summed up as many key Japanese concerns as Shibuya-kei did -- cuteness, positivity, the image of a non-toxic and ludic consumerism, sex appeal, futurism, the exotic appeal of Brazil and France, sex, sensuality and generosity -- doesn't simply disappear. It goes underground, lets people wear denim and black and Gap for a while, then pops up suddenly like a pink and white Takashi Murakami mushroom.
In my tiny way I helped create this particular fever. I understand and appreciate its values. Nostalgia for its optimism makes perfect sense to me. If something from the 90s has to come back, I'd rather see this stuff popping back through the damp topsoil than Madchester, Britpop or Grunge. So welcome back, Shibuya-kei! We missed you.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-28 10:48 pm (UTC)Fruits is still a reasonably recent phenomenon in the mainstream. And if you ask most western people about japanese style they would describe something roughly similiar to a page from that magazine.
Add to this the fact that japanese band Polysics have recently been receiving huge amounts of acclaim here in London. Playing sold out shows and releasing a greatest hits. everything is fine with this, but when I listen to them i feel like I'm being transported back to the 90s.
There is however a new branch of japanese music emerging which is far more interesting. A pastoral, but electronic psychedelia influenced by Acid Mothers. I can't name these artists right now because I'm not at home and can't spell the names without referencing. but I'm sure you know who i mean.
In the West or Japan?
Date: 2004-09-29 02:21 am (UTC)That Fruits look (created from following lessons of Cutie etc) has wained since the mid-late 90s. There is still a subdued version of it around, but I wouldn't equate Western recognition with maintained existence.
Polysics are not Shibuya-kei nor Neo-Shibuya-kei.
I think that Japanese psychedelic stream of the Acid Mothers etc has been around quite a while, but has moved out of the Other Music record bins to large audiences.
Marxy
Re: In the West or Japan?
Date: 2004-09-29 06:55 am (UTC)You're right, Marxy, I have been ignoring this stuff, and simply dismissing it out of hand, for the last six years or so. My main wish is that people create NEW styles and bring FRESH ideas. But I do find the values of Shibuya-kei less toxic than, say, the hip hop values you correctly identify as rather dominant in Japan just now. I was in Zest Records yesterday, then crossed the road to the hip hop slate store and it was undeniably more vital -- even the sleeve artwork was better, although I'm not into 'urban' imagery per se. And yes, the exhibitions and bands I listed might well be the result of 30something art directors and curators and musicians feeling unashamed nostalgia for their youth in the 90s. I could also have mentioned Konishi's new singer, Nomoto Karia (http://www.chipple.net/mt/agenda/archives/000872.php), who was launching her album 'Karly' while I was in Tokyo at some neo-lounge club on the Aoyama Dori. There is definitely some kind of 'return of the repressed' going on in relation to 90s memes. Personally, I'll be continuing with my 'estrangement' and 'disorienteering' themes.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-29 12:48 pm (UTC)Well sure, the only people really wanting to be called by a genre are those who want to be part of it - like foreigners. Only a tiny percent of acts actually want to be called "electronica" or "techno" too. At the very least though it's a convenience to let one another know what some music is like and what it's not.
n.d.kent
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-29 12:29 pm (UTC)No, Shibuya-kei was always one of the major alternatives to cute commercialized J-Pop. It revives the Jet Set mentality of the late 60s early 70s.
Polysics (who are on a Sony label though were once a sucessful indie fwiw) aren't really Shibuya-kei, they usually get called Neo New Wave with their roots in 1979 era acts like pre-major label "hardcore" Devo, P-MODEL, Hikashu.
As for psychedelia, I remember that Marquee magazine used to be all psychedelic and prog acts before they began focusing on Shibuya-kei and their relations, that's a scene that never really went away though perhaps doesn't quite have the bursts of crossover mainstream success that Shibuya-kei had from time to time back. Though I do follow you in believeing that some sort of morphing with elements of ambient is going on.
nicholas d. kent
http://www.artskool.biz/jem/
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-29 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-29 06:57 pm (UTC)