The Gap between the Music Industry and Me hr683

 I used to go to music school and present my songs on the live stage there in the early ’90s. The presentation event was held once a month where the students sang their own songs in front of the renowned music producers and the top artists of the time, who gave their suggestions or impressions of the songs. I tried to seize the opportunity for a break and made a new song every month for the event by writing, arranging and recording the accompaniment until dawn with cutting down on my sleep. Though I was picked as the best of the class and the producers and the artists were impressed at my song on every stage, nothing further ever happened. I had imagined that people in the music business were looking for songs of good quality so that I could sign a contract only if I provided them, which wasn’t how it worked as it turned out.
In those days, my partner with whom I created music together worked part-time as an attraction cast at the theme park which host is the famous mouse. Since our music career hadn’t been going as we had expected, he constantly brooded over his future as a musician. He couldn’t get rid of anxiety out of his mind and felt at a deadlock. One day, too much distress caused him a panic attack during work at the theme park and he suddenly pushed the stop switch without thinking. His operational error made the entire attraction aborted and the guests had to leave the attraction. Fortunately the matter was settled by submitting a letter of apology and he was spared from being fired. Nevertheless, he thought he couldn’t go on with such a mental state of his and quit voluntarily. To recuperate mentally, he was walking for a couple of hours every day and rented a movie at a rental video shop that existed at the time to watch one film per day. Now that he had gotten time to spare, he looked up music producers of Japanese record companies, copied my songs that I presented at the music school on cassette tapes, and sent them out to the producers.
While he had been sending to thirty or forty producers each time I completed a song, some of them contacted us and we had a meeting. In those cases, we were nervous but extremely excited at the same time to picture that this could be a break. We visited the high-rise shining building where the major record company resided and met quite a few producers there. The best meeting for me was with the one who worked for the very band whose songs had been the decisive reason why I became a musician. He told me that the artist of the band of whom I was an avid fan had actually listened to my song and admired it. In another case, a producer even promised to prepare a studio for us to rehearse the recording. After that meeting, my partner and I opened a bottle of champagne at home. The thing was, they would stop contacting us after the meeting without exception. Although all the meetings seemingly went so well, everything stopped right there and no further progress occurred. They never called us again. No matter how excited the producer sounded when we received a call from him, his passion dispersed once we met face to face. It seemed that their sweet offers were only to avoid conflict and end the meeting peacefully. When we called them day after day persistently to ask how things they had promised were going, they were always out. They apparently dodged us. Then I finally learned that it was our looks and uncompromising music business model. What they were looking for was good-looking musicians who would give in to any demand from the producer. On the contrary, we had determined what our working style as musicians should be and expressed we had no intention to change that, while my partner wasn’t handsome and I wasn’t pretty. No matter how good our music was, they regarded us as useless the minute they saw we weren’t beautiful puppets whom they needed. I was circling in a tormenting loop where I completed the best song in my life, sent it to producers, had meetings with them, and lost contact.
During those unrewarded years, I had searched for a way to fill the gap between what the music industry wanted and what I wanted. Although I couldn’t find the way, it was a shame to give up because I was confident of my songs’ quality. An unbreakable heavy wall appeared in front of me who had simply thought that making good music would lead to a contract with a major record company. Back then, I was a young musician who had believed making a big hit meant success. Sadly and foolishly, it was decades later that I finally understood the notion like that was all wrong and what success truly meant.

 

Cheap Japan hr682

 

In recent years, many foreign travelers have come to my small town that is a rural tourist resort. When I first moved to this remote town, it was rather a desolate place except for the skiing season. But soon, more and more people overseas were coming for skiing and now they flow in throughout the year as well as Japanese travelers.

I assume that Japan owes increased foreign tourists to its low prices and safety. Everything is sold at about half or one third of the price in the U.S. while the quality is good and the service is superb although there is no custom of tipping. The majority of travelers are from Asian countries and so many of them visit my town regularly as well. I’ve seen an Asian tourist shopping for a basketful of cosmetics at a drug store near the train station, which is one of recent trends nationwide. Instead, Japanese people have had a hard time for a trip abroad since prices in foreign countries are too high.

Why Japanese prices are so low is because of the weak currency. The Japanese Yen has decreased to almost half the value of the time when I often traveled overseas. That means the country’s economy has sharply declined. In addition to persistent gender discrimination, slow digitalization made Japan left behind in a rapid tidal stream of the world. It seems as if time moved slowly here in Japan. For instance, women are still forbidden to step in a ring of sumo wrestling for the reason that women are unclean and sumo is a sacred Shinto ritual offered to God. For the same reason, I was forced to carry a small paper parcel of salt when I visited a shrine back in my hometown. If a voice that says it’s awfully atrocious is raised, it will be silenced by a theory that is so called Japanese culture. People get meek when it comes to culture, thus it remains unchanged.

Quite a lot of those undesirable cultures exist in Japan. As a native who was born and grew up in Japan, I tend to overlook their oddity that is regarded as norm. Since I was an elementary student, teachers and students alike had tried to ignore me whenever I expressed my opinion that the Emperor system in Japan had to be abolished because only a man could be an emperor was a discrimination against women. Their attitude toward my strongly attached view had taught me how much taboo it was. People make a face at someone like me who constantly points out discrimination against women. Their expression says “Here it comes, somebody hysterical who complains about everything is bubbling something to disturb harmony.” They believe that Japanese should live in unity without complaining or being distinguished. That’s why people have been working in silence overtime at a low salary. As a result, a low-priced, safe Japan has been developed.

In the course of nature, I couldn’t find my place here in Japan as a constant complainer. I was expelled from Japanese society and became a singer-songwriter isolating myself in a remote rural town secluded by mountains, which I have willingly accepted because I believe I’ve been doing the right thing. As a crazy person claims their sanity, I’m not sure what other people think of me. Furthermore, I don’t care how I look to others now that I live only according to my conscience, not this nonsensical world. Even if I disrupt a well-ordered harmony, I choose to be myself, that is more important to me.

The Umbrella hr681

 I was about to leave the beauty salon for the supermarket across from it when there suddenly came a downpour. It rained heavily enough to whiteout everything around. Some people were dashing toward the supermarket soaking wet instantly. I pulled out a folding umbrella from my bag. In my school days, my grandmother would never forget to say, “Have you got an umbrella?” whenever I was leaving the house, rain or shine. That has made it my habit to carry a folding umbrella wherever I go regardless of the weather forecast to this day.

When I was a high school student, I went to school by local bus. I needed to transfer the bus on the way because the school I went to was far from my home. One day, while I was transferring and waiting for the bus at the bus stop, a heavy rain started to fall. The bus stop was on the street and had no roof. I stuck my hand into my school bag for a folding umbrella, then remembered that morning at home. Since it shined brightly and I felt it bothersome to go get my folding umbrella, I lied to my grandmother’s daily confirmation for once and said yes though I didn’t have it in my bag. As it sometimes happens, it never rains but it pours. I wasn’t carrying an umbrella on that particular day. Learning how right my grandmother had been, I was bracing myself to get drenched. Then, it stopped raining all of a sudden. To see what happened, I looked up. There was an umbrella above my head. And I saw a girl who was about my age and wearing a uniform of a different school standing close to me. I hadn’t noticed she was also waiting for the bus and stepped closer to me to let me share her umbrella when it started raining. It was her umbrella that covered me.

I had been a bad person under the influence of my mother. She was all vanity and cared only how she looked to others. She made me go to the most privileged school in the area based on her values. She believed which school they went to decided people’s rank. After I actually enrolled in that private school, I found out that other students thought in the same way as my mother did. As I was too weak to defy it, I went with the flow and soon adapted that kind of ranking myself. Each school had its own uniform by which the school a student went to could be identified. I was sporting my uniform of the elite school to show that I belonged to the upper class. Most Japanese students use public transportation to school. The students of my school including me were snobbish and overtly despised other schools’ students when we were riding the local bus together on our way to and back from school. We cold-shouldered and ignored the students of the lower rank schools as if they had been invisible. Accordingly, other schools’ students apparently hated us because of our attitudes. As a result, an inamicable, tense atmosphere was created whenever we shared public transportation. The girl who held out her umbrella for me was wearing a uniform of one of those schools that we had been looking down on.

My mother’s mantra had been that everything people do was nothing but for gain, which had inevitably inhabited my mind for a long time since my childhood. But here she was, a stranger who was getting drenched half of her body by giving up half of the cover for me. Even though she had recognized from my uniform that I was one of those pretentious students of the privileged school, she didn’t gloat over my misery. Her expression wasn’t patronizing at all, but rather apologetic as if she expected that I would consider help from a lower rank school’s student as an insult and reject it with anger. I was flurried by an umbrella offered without gain. It proved my mother’s mantra was wrong, my friends’ attitudes were wrong, and I was wrong. I thanked her and we waited for the bus together silently under one umbrella. And we separated into each other’s friends as usual when the bus arrived. Only, now that I broke an evil spell of my mother and my friends, my attitude had changed since then. I learned the school’s rank wasn’t proportionate to the students’ humanity, or rather, was inversely proportional. I greeted that girl every time I saw her and sometimes had a chat with her on or off the bus. When my friends saw me doing that, they would sneer at me saying, “Is she your friend or something?” to which I replied yes. What I didn’t explain to them was that she was my benefactor who rescued me from the evil world with her umbrella.

When I was opening my folding umbrella under the eaves of the beauty salon, I noticed a woman came out of the building, looking discouraged by the pouring rain. I thought of sharing my umbrella with her momentarily, and stopped. I’m extremely careful about helping people. Whenever an occasion arises, I muse deliberately and discreetly whether I should offer help or not because I don’t want to offend someone with my help. I imagine some people may regard it as an unwelcome favor and would rather do it by themselves. I also fear that someone takes my kindness as being looked down on. From those worries, I always try not to meddle with someone. In this case, however, I wavered because an umbrella was involved. While the encounter with the girl in my high school days popped up in my mind, I chose to stick to my way and stepped out in the downpour alone. A few steps later, the woman dashed past me in the rain. The moment I saw it, I shouted to her, “Would you get in my umbrella!?” totally unconsciously as a reflex action. She looked back in surprise and I covered her with my umbrella before she replied while I was surprised at my action myself as much as she was. We ran to the entrance of the supermarket together under one umbrella. She thanked me gratefully and disappeared into the store gleefully. Half of my body got drenched which was exactly what I had prevented by carrying a folding umbrella all those years. Although it  felt stupid to get wet by breaking my principle not to meddle with others, I felt extremely good at the same time because I looked like the girl of the umbrella, half of whose body had been drenched as I was now. I realized how deeply her deed had resided in me and how much I longed to become a person like her. 

Pride or Survival hr680

When I lived in Tokyo in my early twenties, I desperately tried to succeed as a musician while working at a part-time job. Although I had clearly envisioned a plan for success, reality was much more cruel than I had expected and ate into me both physically and mentally. I consumed a large amount of alcohol every night to get rid of stress and exhaustion. I knew it didn’t help as I found in the packed train car one morning on my way to my part-time job that I had left home wearing an unmatched pair of shoes inadvertently.

I abandoned a presupposed secure life for me in which I would take a husband into my family by an arranged marriage, have a child as a next successor to me and live in the family house as the successor until I die when I left home for Tokyo to be a musician. That was the reason why I wasn’t willing to ask for financial help from my grandfather who had been the master of the family that used to be wealthy. I thought I should be on my own if I wanted to live my life. Japanese people’s consensus in those days was that doing what one wanted to do for life was a childish idea since the possibility of financial sustainability in that kind of life was one in a million. Most of them believed that adults should lead a responsible life by standing on their own feet. Doing what they didn’t want to do was the norm for financial independence, and to have a family eventually. That notion had prevailed so deeply that not only my friends but also a stranger who had a chat with me and happened to know I was trying to become a professional musician scolded me and told me to live seriously.

In those unrewarding, exhausting days of my life, I heard about a music school that a renowned Japanese musician newly opened. As a conceited young musician, I thought there was nothing to learn there for me, but I saw it as ties to the Japanese music business because the owner was the best selling, top artist in Japan. Also thinking that it was an opportunity to change my stifling situation, I decided to enroll. Needless to say, I had neither time nor money for the school. To make time, I quit my part-time job. For money, I resorted to my grandfather’s fortune. Although it wasn’t a solution of my liking, or of Japanese society’s common sense for that matter, I no longer had leeway for how I looked to others. My career as a musician had been stuck and nothing went according to my plan. I had been less motivated and drinking more instead. I had been cornered to the point that my choice was either to get financial support for my dream or to die.

The music school where I started to go was like no other ordinary school. It was more like a small salon. It didn’t have classes. Students came to school to present their music. A teacher gave them some advice and an impression. It held a presentation event once a month where students sang their songs on stage in front of the owner famous musician or other top Japanese music producers. In the first presentation I participated in, I was picked as the best. Until then, I had felt other students were my enemies to beat and they had kept me at a distance probably because they sensed how I looked at them. But after that event, their attitude changed. I seemed to have earned their respect and they came to talk to me. I learned they were struggling musicians like myself and we had a lot in common. My attitude toward them softened as well. We even hung out at the family restaurant after school. They were fellow challengers and rivals among whom I tried to be the best in every presentation. As it was held monthly, I completed my song every month, which was an amazing rapid pace for me. It was as if something inside me had woken up. I drank less and less, and lost weight for the monthly stage.

The school brought a drastic change to my life. Driven by a competitive spirit, I was motivated and focused to make music more than ever. I noticed I was breathing. My stifling days were over and I found myself out of darkness.

Manners for All You Can Eat hr679

 

The Japanese Government rolled out a travel benefit to help the travel industry that had suffered after the big earthquake. Hotel plans in the applied areas were all half off by using the benefit. As I found an extremely saving plan that included a gorgeous all-you-can-eat dinner, I stayed at that hotel with my partner to shake off my everyday stress.

In order to make the most of it by eating as much as I could, I stepped in the restaurant at the opening time with my excruciatingly empty stomach. Although I had learned on the website that its all-you-can-eat buffet would be the most lavish one I had ever seen, the real one easily exceeded the information. Added to the buffet, a main dish was served at the table where a small individual rice-cooking pot was set on a solid fuel cube, which meant I was able to eat Japanese beef steak along with freshly boiled brand-name rice. Incidentally, both Japanese beef and brand-name rice cost three times more compared to imported ones.

Already dazzled by luxury, I walked into the spacious buffet area. There were three long counters that offered over thirty kinds of expensive delicacies. I was seeing beef stew, carpaccio of a variety of fresh fish, lasagna, smoked salmon, sushi, and tempura that a chef fried right in front of my eyes, not to mention salads and elaborate desserts. The thought that I could eat them as much as possible almost made me faint with excitement. With my pounding heart, I rushed to take them on a plate though I knew I didn’t have to hurry, and took desserts as well for fear of stock-out though I knew it was unlikely to happen. Three large plates with mountains of luxurious foods and one with Japanese beef spread over my table. I felt ashamed a little because it seemed to accurately represent the degree of my greed.

Though I hardly have beef because of the high price, I was able to tell that this Japanese beef was completely different from the beef I know. It had a thick, deep taste and was tender enough to disappear quickly in my mouth. Shrimp tempura also had a clear difference from the one I usually get at the supermarket so that it felt like I was eating some novel dish not tempura. I had always had negative views for brand-name rice that its name made the price high, not its quality. I had been skeptical about the effect of freshly boiling it at the table, too. But it turned out to be a special treat by itself, which was not rice I had been familiar with at all.

While I was devouring, a conversation of a young couple at the next table came into my ears. “I saw a man taking every kind from the buffet. Can you believe it?,” a woman asked. “I can’t believe there’s a person like that.” a man replied, and they laughed. It surprised me. I had thought it was a norm to take every kind at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Of course I did so there, but was it bad manners or something embarrassing? That sort of thought had never crossed my mind. If not, I had believed that I should or must take every single kind on the buffet, which was a concept of ‘all you can eat’. I glanced at their table that held few plates with a small amount of food. They stayed for only about ninety minutes and left saying “I have had enough.” My partner and I were panting, suffering from fullness, but kept eating until the restaurant closed. The time like a dream came to an end and I left feeling myself pulled by the hair from behind. I earnestly wished for one more stomach.

The next day, I had a pricking pain in my stomach, which aggravated into a piercing pain by the day after next. Eating and drinking provoked more pain. Tossing and turning did the same so that I couldn’t sleep. In the morning, I even had a slight fever. I looked up on the internet that suggested sinister possibilities such as appendicitis, or cancer. I was utterly dreadful. Is this any kind of serious disease? Should I go to see the doctor, that I loathe to do and haven’t done for decades? Do I need to go through an operation? How can I pay for that since I don’t have my savings? Will I borrow money from somewhere and be in debt? Besides, is this curable? Am I dying?? Fear inflicted sleepless nights on me more than pain. I bitterly regretted and blamed myself for having eaten so much to the point of risking my life at the buffet restaurant. A horrifying week later however, pain subsided and was almost completely gone in the following two weeks to my great relief.

My body may be intolerant of high-class foods. Or excessive overeating simply caused the ailment. It’s extremely difficult for me to control my greed, which is always the case.

The New Generation and Power of Hope hr678

 

What occupation did you want to have when you were a child? As for me, I wanted to be a singer. My father got a cassette tape recorder that was a new gadget of novelty on the market back then, and he used to record my a cappella singing of popular songs of those days over and over. I also remember as one of my earliest memories that I won an amateur singing contest in a local festival by singing a children’s song a cappella. I thought I had a talent for singing, but now I suspect that I won not because I sang best there but because I was such a small child among all adult participants.

I heard a topic in a news show that the occupation which Japanese schoolboys of today want most is neither a baseball player nor a professional gamer but an office worker. To me, it seems like a work style rather than an occupation because the point is what kind of business they want to work at an office for. I guess that wanting to be an office worker in whatever business means there is nothing they want to do in the future other than making money.

Every time I see young people of the new generation, I find many of them are kind, gentle and have good manners. Until a few decades ago, Japan had had a male-dominated society where a woman steps aside to let a man walk straight in a narrow street. I have defied those unspoken rules all my life so that I have often almost bumped into a man before he flipped aside at the last moment. I used to see that occasion as a face-off with Japanese society. Nowadays however, even in an old rural town where I live, I have seen more young men let me go first, step aside or hold a door for me. On the other hand, they seem too benign and content. I don’t feel strong ambitions from them such as achieving something no matter what or aiming to live in a gorgeous mansion someday. They look satisfied enough by sharing their photos of new sweets at the cafe on SNS. Is a person like me, who list all the things of this and that I want to do, and literally rush about in a sweat everyday to complete everything on the list, an unsightly antediluvian? Should I instead take my time to gaze at artwork on the foam in my cafe latte cup, take a photo and put it up on SNS?

When I straightened up my room the other day, I found my old portable CD player that I hadn’t used for a long time. Inside, it held a CD of Pebbles who made a hit about 30 years ago. I used to listen to it whenever I walked to a gym because the songs’ arrangement was so superb that I could learn a lot for my music. I connected its tattered power cord and turned it on. To my surprise, the player was still alive and began to play the first track of Pebbles’s album. The moment I heard the sound, my past self returned all of a sudden.

In those days, I was an avid fan of Formula One World Champion, Ayrton Senna. I loved him so much that he had become the only motivation for me to be successful as a singer-songwriter. I made my songs and tried to get a deal with a major record company with all my effort because I had believed that would eventually lead to Senna. I blindly felt certain that I would meet him and marry him. Since I was possessed with the notion, it wasn’t about whether the day would come but when. For the day that should arrive, I made every preparation I could think of. That was why I was walking, swimming at the gym, and applying skin-care cosmetics. Since those preparation days for Senna were always accompanied by Pebbles’s songs, listening to them brought back my feelings of the past vividly.

My plan was abruptly smashed when Senna was killed by an accident during the race several years later. I remember debris of his crash looked like pieces of my dream on TV. I haven’t been able to watch any documentaries or movies about Senna to this date because it’s still too hard. Yet, my goal remained while my motivation died. I had to ask myself why I would keep going. The answer was simple; it was what I wanted to do. And now, although I don’t make a lot of money, I have become a singer-songwriter. From my experience, I can tell it’s possible to have the occupation that you want if you cling to hope. I think you will be able to spare yourself despair if you want nothing in the first place. But in exchange, you can’t get hope either. While disappointment may knock you down, the rapture you feel when even a small piece of your wish comes true, and sense of fullness you have when you strive for your goal, is wonderful beyond description.

Tears were running down my cheeks while I was listening to Pebbles’s album. It recalled to me how much hope my past self had. That hope was completely unfounded and groundless without any reasons, but I had doubtlessly believed it would be fulfilled somehow. I had forgotten about that kind of my young past self once existed and I realized I didn’t appreciate how happy I was then. I knew I had so much hope for my age, but not that amount and certainty. I couldn’t help feeling envious of my past self filled with unrealistic hope who surely looked stupid. Thinking how privileged I was when I was young, I couldn’t stop crying.

Money, Monks, and Good Luck hr677

 

Although I don’t regard myself as a believer in Buddhism, I visit a nearby temple once a year as a custom with lots of wishes for the new year when snow melts away at the end of a long harsh winter. I toss a one-yen coin into an offertory box, ring a bell that is dangled under the eaves, and pray for a few minutes.

Kyoto, where I was born and raised, is renowned as a historical city that had been the capital of Japan for over one thousand years. Historic landmarks are everywhere, most of which are temples and shrines. In that kind of city, especially a rural town like the one that I’m from has a strong relationship with a local Buddhist temple in the hamlet. The temple that my family served as one of its main parishioners was one block away from home and I used to have quite a few occasions to go there when I was little. The temple had a cemetery of the family’s ancestors in the hamlet on its premises and managed it. Inside the temple, a variety of gatherings were held, such as a meeting of main parishioners, a lecture meeting for elderly men and women separately, and sometimes a wedding or a funeral. The chief priest of the temple lived at the site, who preached the teachings of Buddha at the meetings and read the sutras at a funeral or a memorial service that was held for the deceased in a family every several years. The sutras are intoned monotonously, of which contents and meanings I can’t make nothing, and are supposed to purify people’s minds and give repose to the deceased’s soul. Although listening to them should be a boon, all I felt physically would be pain in my legs as we usually didn’t sit in a chair but had to sit our legs bent beneath us on the tatami floor, and mentally would be a wish for the sutras to end soon.

When I was a child, the folks in my hamlet respected the old chief priest of the local temple because his preaching convinced them that he had learned the Buddhist scriptures well and disciplined himself accordingly. However, the new young priest who took over his predecessor’s duties had fallen into disfavor. He preached irrelevantly and incorrectly, buttered up main parishioners with tacky flatteries, and urged unnecessary memorial services on which decline he threatened the family to be cursed. While I understood he must have had financial difficulties, he looked like a salesman rather than a priest. Other than the one in my hamlet, monks were spotted easily around the city as there were many temples in Kyoto. When I was in my late teens and worked part-time at a steak restaurant, I often saw a skinhead man wearing a monk’s stole, who I hoped wasn’t a real monk but just cosplayed which was sadly unlikely, have an expensive steak and beer in the middle of the day and leave by driving a luxury car. Ascetic monks in the Buddha era fasted at the risk of their life or buried themselves in the ground to seek the truth of spiritual enlightenment. Compared to those who tried to hear the voice of God abstinently, it seemed that monks in modern times cherished money over God. It’s not fair to blame only monks, though. We may have lapsed into the same state as them.

I create my songs by squeezing everything I got and taking years per song, in order to dedicate them to the Higher Power of the Universe that I call it. I don’t know exactly what it is but I feel its existence from my experiences in which something must have watched over and helped me by making unexpected things happen and giving me hope with that. Since it looks on me and gives me benefit, I should show gratitude and repay it with what I could possibly do. Then, that calls forth good luck, I suppose. Because I don’t think money brings happiness, I would be happy if I were being a blessed person.

A Super Drummer Appears! hr676

 

There used to be numerous kinds of music magazines at book stores in the mid-80’s when my partner and I moved to Tokyo to become professional musicians. Those magazines had classified ads on the last few pages to recruit band members. Among them, a magazine called ‘Player’ spared almost more than half the entire contents for the classified ads. In fact, my partner and I ran across each other through one of the ads in that magazine when I still lived in Kyoto.

One of the reasons why we came to Tokyo was that we had thought many good musicians would be found in Tokyo, which would enable us to form a band with professional quality in no time. Finding a good player had been extremely difficult when we played around the kyoto area. We recruited one after another who had never met our standard. In the end, we used a rhythm machine and sequencers in place of human members. It was the time when those gadgets had been just put on the market so that the technology was lamentably primitive. Machine troubles had been our norm in the gigs and we had bitterly learned the limitations of machine members.

Once we moved to Tokyo, we put as many classified ads as possible in the music magazines and met so many musicians. While we repeated test sessions with each candidate in the studio, we couldn’t find good enough members who matched our quest for the ones with high skill and a strong motivation to become professional. We gradually began to think that we had overestimated Tokyo.

On one of those days, we found Mr. Maejima. He was a highly motivated drummer of a bag of bones, who was refined and courteous, a dropout of college from passion for music as I was. In the studio session, he played accurately and delicately, who was the best drummer we had ever come across. He joined us as a band member instantly. We got along so well. We shared not only eagerness for success in music but also even hobbies, which made us closer. He invited us to his home where he lived with his parents. He gave me his old, first drum set that he had gotten by working part time so strenuously when he was a student, and came to my apartment with it to set it up for me. He also gave me a lot of gaming software that he had finished playing. The legendary film ‘Back to the Future’ was first known to us as his best picture. Together we ate out and even went to that famous theme park of the mouse, where I introduced him to the mouse as my band’s drummer. We were on good terms, that was quite rare for my partner and I who had no friends.

As for other members however, we continuously had no luck. We couldn’t find a bassist and a guitarist, and had to compromise with the temporary members to play for gigs and auditions. Those members played awfully in the studio for rehearsal and in the actual gigs. What irritated us most was they would make a big mistake at the important contest of all things and ruin our chance. On top of that, we were caught in a fight with the promoter of the gig who turned out to be a fraud. We were besieged with bad luck and our band had been in hot water for months.

Then at last, Mr. Maejima told us that he wanted to quit the band. My partner and I understood his feeling since a long predicament of the band added to our part time jobs for living had exhausted us as well. We were too dispirited to persuade him to stay. Nevertheless, it was so hard to see an unfailing partner leaving. A leaden heart by his leaving drove us to switch to recording our songs with synthesizers from playing them in a gig. In hindsight, it was a good decision that would work for us well.

A few years later, I received a letter from Mr. Maejima unexpectedly. It said that he had joined a new religious group and worked as a drummer of the group’s band. He suggested that I join it. While I should have felt happy for him, I felt sad instead. The fact that the mainstream of the music scene had no place for such a talented, motivated musician like Mr. Maejima. The reality that a would-be artist with good looks and no talent sold well and was adored. I knew that the world was unfair, but his letter made me realize it anew.

Decades have passed since then, and I have moved around several times. Still, I have a drum set that Mr. Maejima gave me. It’s on active service, only disassembled to components. They are used as containers in my apartment, holding my stuff including passion. 

Ramen Restaurants in Japan hr675

 

Japanese people love ramen so much. Ramen is Chinese-style soup noodles which is obscenely popular in Japan. I hear that there are about 20,000 ramen restaurants all over the country. The degree of its popularity is easily imagined by the fact that a McDonald’s closed and reopened as a ramen restaurant in my town. Chains are rampant while the majority are small restaurants run privately by individual owner-managers. In front of a popular restaurant, a long queue is formed before it opens until it closes for the day and the place is packed with customers all day long. Millions of websites, magazines, TV programs and YouTube videos feature and introduce ramen restaurants of any kind, in any area.

I like ramen but don’t eat it at the restaurant. I loathe a waiting line to begin with. And the atmosphere is a big problem. Those restaurants are clean but almost all of them are shabby. Customers sit at the counter elbow to elbow in a cramped space where they suck in noodles by slurping. Above all, the price is high. A bowl of ramen in an atrocious atmosphere costs more than a dish at a modern family restaurant. The reason why people choose ramen restaurants despite all of that is the quality of deliciousness, I suppose.

An owner-manager in any ramen restaurant is particular about his or her special recipe that is attained by a continuous process of trial and error over years, in which they have selected and contrived a mixture of ingredients for the soup, such as pork, chicken, fish, soy sauce or miso. They use carefully-selected noodles in their elaborate soup for which they begin to prepare the night before. Because they spend enormous time and effort to make ramen, profit is little in spite of the high price setting. I think that is why their restaurants are small and tacky. To me, it’s always a mystery why they wouldn’t spare just a tiny bit of their passion for the taste, to their place’s interior. But there’s one bigger question. If they can’t be rich no matter how popular their place becomes by their time, effort and elaboration, why do they run that kind of business?

Come to think of it, I take years to complete my song with persistent, rather obsessive elaboration although it doesn’t sell at all. I know I can earn money if I make many songs like recent hit ones that are catchy and arranged with loops efficiently done by copying and pasting on music software. Yet, I wouldn’t do that. Since we have limited time from birth to death, I want to spend mine for what I can enjoy as much as possible. From my experiences with my wealthy parents and my rich friends’ parents at the private school I went to, I learned that living in luxury gives more enjoyment is an illusion. I would rather have time for doing what makes me feel deeply satisfied and truly happy than for greed and a shallow delight given by looking down on others. After all, I feel happy by elaborating my music into perfection itself, which is more appealing to me than money.

I suspect that owner-managers of ramen restaurants may feel the same way I do. Even if that’s the case, I won’t enter their unrefined restaurants. I would definitely get in if there were a delicious, low-priced ramen place with a sophisticated atmosphere and no queue. However, the possibility that I come across that restaurant is as low as I become a successful musician. I would never say never though.

A Life Foretelling Poem hr674

 

My Japanese language teacher gave particular homework when I was a junior high school student in Kyoto. She assigned a Japanese poem to each student in the class and told us to interpret its meaning. The subject poem was from a Japanese classic anthology called Ogura Hyakunin Issyu which is composed of one hundred poems by one hundred poets. That set of one hundred poems was compiled in the 13th century in Kyoto, which was the capital of Japan then, and written by one hundred different representative poets of the era, who were  sort of celebrities at that time. All poems are written in a specific style called ‘tanka’ that is a long version of haiku. The anthology has been popular all along for some reason so that it became a Japanese classic card game at one point. Even now, a national tournament of the card game takes place annually, which is a fixture of the New Year in Japan.

One of those poems was assigned to me for homework. A number had been given to each student according to the student register listed by names in alphabetical order. My number was eight. The poems also had a number for each and the teacher assigned the corresponding one to the student number. Mine was the poem number eight written by Kisen Hoshi who was a Buddhist priest. Not only the style but also the words and the place names used in the poem were too old for me to understand. It wasn’t appealing and I didn’t appreciate it. Besides, I was a thirteen-year-old who had any interest in neither in tanka nor haiku. Just to finish my homework, I was looking into and trying to interpret it. But the further I went, the fonder I grew of the poem. Rather I sympathized with it. To sum up, the meaning of the poem is “I am living a secluded life in my hermitage that stands away from a capital city. People call me a recluse.” Back then, I had just entered a privileged private school where I had been struggling to fit in. As a daughter of rural farmers, I couldn’t get along with other students from rich families. I usually felt like an outcast at school and the poem generated deep empathy.

The homework stimulated my interest in the anthology and I fell for it before I knew it. I read and interpreted all one hundred poems and in the end, I won the school’s card game tournament by remembering all the poems completely. I don’t say that poem changed my life, but it surely influenced the course of my life. As an unknown singer-songwriter, I often feel that I’m not part of this society. And I suspect that the poem is one of the reasons why I quite easily accept that feeling. It told me that I was not alone. It also showed me the strong power of what someone creates fueled by empathy. My belief that a song can change somebody’s life for the better may have stemmed partly from this encounter with the poem.

I’m still able to recite some of those one hundred poems. Among them, the number eight that was given to me as my homework often comes up in my mind. After decades have passed since I came across that poem, I feel empathy more than ever. I had left my family and friends and moved into a remote town closed in by mountains to make music. When I see the snow-covered mountains from the window of my small apartment, I recite the number eight poem unknowingly, and find myself living just as it is written.