Opera from the Works of Tadanori Yokoo - Toshi Ichiyanagi [1969] RE-DUG

Prescient and unprecedented tribute to indeterminacy, electronic hiss, ruptured nostalgia, guitar / siren wail, ghostly future times past, patriotism, distant bells, radio transmission, tape manipulation, hubristic pre-war swagger, and in the end, friendship. For all the artiness of the undertaking - avant garde to the core - "Opera" is intensely autobiographical and engaging.

Ichiyanagi compares music to Japanese garden design: meticulous, painfully ordered yet always interacting with indeterminate elements - moisture, light, wind. Despite the self-declared tilt at natural multiplicity over concentrated construct, the do-it-yourself flow of patchwork elements benefits from intimate aleatoric framing. The details look after themselves.

To Tadanori Yokoo, Japanese pop design magus. Like Ichiyanagi, Yokoo's multi-layered approach is highly personal and gives the lie to easy comparisons, notably "the Japanese Warhol" moniker. Modus operandi converge. Yokoo saturating and manipulating popular by-gone images in bang up to date lysergic colour; Ichiyanagi knitting traditional enka  with musique concrète and psych feakout à la mode. Both artists tackle tricksy themes around nationalism and nationhood: Yokoo's risqué red sun ray flag (kyoku jitsu-ki) as recurring motif; Ichiyanagi's sampling of rousing miltary marching song. More cultural reclamation than the revivalist impulse that drove contemporary  - and Yokoo friend and influence - Mishima Yukio.

The “Opera” is a multi-media affair; the importance attached to the visual side of the production well ahead of its time. Attention to sonic and visual detail - however indeterminate -as meticulous as traditional Japanese art and crafts. The work is ahead of its time in other ways.

Side A

1 Aria ichi [Aria one]
Traditional ballad setting leit motif of melancholy nostalgia.

2 Erekutorikku chanto [Electric chant]
More hiss and whine than chant. "Chant" well-chosen, nevertheless, as sickly electronic  Buddhist drone morphs into air-raid siren. Cue martial brass band and military singing. Oppressive and rousing; attracting as it repels. 20 years later, the likes of Current 93 and Death In June would court controversy with similar use of Nazi martial tunes. No gimmicks here.

3 Otoko no junjo [Man’s pure heart]
Distant noises, footsteps, two men feeling their way into a song on skeletal piano. Complaining about the piano, they notice the environing silence:


"Everybody’s gone – nobody is watching. Should we continue when there is no one?"
Big question. Finally, free from background noise, the song is delivered in full.

Switch: crowd noise. Rumpus. Sports match? Riot? Protest? Woman sobbing  - fear or erotic excitement?

Low-flying aircraft passes overhead.

(1966, a group of Narita locals tool up with student activists and left-wing politicos forming Sanrizuka-Shibayama Union to Oppose the Airport)

Side B

4 Uchida Yuya to Za Furawaazu (Uchida Yuya and the Flowers)
27-minute long psych free form freak out. 20 mins. one side, remainder on next. Ichiyanagi let loose the reins on budding young psychonauts with the sole stipulation that the piece be titled after Yokoo's signature 1965 poster I Was Dead.

The central slogan on Yokoo's poster: “Having reached a climax at the age of 29, I was dead". Inkling that Ichiyanagi is having a joke at young gun expense.

Side C

5 Uchida Yuya to Za Furawaazu (Uchida Yuya and the Flowers)
Caution, mind melting in progress. 7 more minutes.

6 Nyuyooku no uta [New York song]
Poem recited in Edo-jidai Japanese, then contemporary dialogue and short monogatari. 

At this point, check again Ichiyanagi's integration of Yokoo thematic riffs. For instance, the "Opera" shares imagistic and sonic links to Yokoo's 1965 animation Kach Kachi Yama:

7 Kayo myuzikare [Kayo musicale]
Medley: radio jingles, random commentary, film excerpt (adult scolds initially recalcitrant but ultimately pliable young woman for accepting something from a stranger), and Meiji Chocolate ad given the full Group Sound treatment  chokoreeto – chokoreeto.  Switch: European church bells, harpsichord looped, echoed, deconstructed. Switch: sound of massive bombing raid. End.

Amounting to what? Let's venture: a comment on corrosive Western / capitalist influence? Whether low art  or high - reedy GS organ peddling chocolate or god pandering Bach keyboard -  the outcome obliterates.

Side D

8 Love Blinded Ballad Uta 1969 
Archival announcements, patriotic songs, marching fanfares, speeches, classical violin, military songs intermixed curvilinear fashion.  Whirlwind tour through 30s & 40s public sphere. Pervading unease and eeriness recalls Derrida's hauntology. Ichiyanagi way ahead of "nostalgia for the future" curve.

And blinded by love for what exactly? Patriotism....

9 Spite Song Uta 1969  Frogs croak, waterfowl cackle, crows caw; earlier patriotic choruses hover ghostly in the background. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake subjected to discordant squeaking as AM radio tunes in and out of romantic cliché to the point of unlistenability. Final transition to bombing alert siren comes as relief!

10 Takakura Ken, Tadanori Yokoo o utau [Ken Takakura sings to Tadanori Yokoo]
Or is it more an "All Clear" signal? That would make sense as next and last up is enka serenade by yakuza movie hard man Takakura Ken.

Ichiyanagi's choice of Takakura Ken is apposite and affectionate. Tadanori Yokoo provided commercial posters for several of Takakura’s gangster flicks and was obviously enamoured.

And so, a warm, personal ending to a disquieting, shattering journey. Enjoy the trip.

Oddi wrth y brawd