This is part four of a multi-part interview:

Part One - Part Two - Part Three

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In the West, if people know Zuno Keisatsu, they're known as key figures of 70s Japanese rock, releasing six politically incendiary albums before their split in 1975. What these people generally don't know, however, is that the story didn't end there: frontman Panta went on to an enormously successful solo career, and even reformed Zuno Keisatsu in 1990. Next year, Panta, along with Zuno Keisatsu mainstay percussionist Toshi, will be celebrating the band's 40th anniversary with a new album based on the poetry of the late Shuji Terayama (of Tenjo Sajiki fame.)

You can't do 40 years of history justice in one sitting, so Jrawk will post this exclusive interview in installments. Here, Panta details his return to politics, his self acknowledged most important album, and how life moves in cycles, whether you like it or not.

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JR: So with "R•E•D," you were back to politics. "Kristall Nacht" came next. When I first met you, you told me this was your most important album: you first had the idea after "Maraca," but it took ten years before you finally tackled it. Why?

PT: I wanted to make absolutely certain that I got everything right. It's a very heavy, very serious subject, and I wanted no mistakes.¹

JR: So how did it come about?

PT: Well, my label told me to take a break, just to take it easy for a bit, but I refused because I knew it was finally time to make "Kristall Nacht." The initial idea was to talk about Japan's actions before and during World War II: China, Indochina, etc. Problem is, there's no way an album like that would ever get released here: it would simply never make it out. But I thought that, by focusing on Germany, I could make similar points, use that as a kind of mirror to Japan. I'm still a little unhappy that I couldn't be more direct, but I still wanted confront this.

For Japanese, the words "Kristall Nacht" sound beautiful, like glittering jewels, but the truth is of course horrific. Most Japanese don't know much about this, so I did some explaining in the liner notes. Like I said, I wanted to use this as a mirror to Japan. I can only imagine how those words sound to Germans...I've always wondered how they would handle it, how they would address the history. I can also completely understand why they would turn away. It's taboo: don't even allow the words to touch your lips.

JR: One thing that's striking about "Kristall Nacht" is that, as angry as your music has been in the past, here you seem almost resigned to the brutality, as if you're too weary to be disgusted.

PT: I started out with a personal viewpoint, but I got more objective as it went. I understood that all the atrocity, it was all part of human nature, and that karma played a role. (Greek philosopher) Heraclitus said that everything is constantly changing, in a state of creational flux. (Japanese philosopher) Kamo No Chomei had the same idea: life is like that. Everything is constantly changing, and sometimes the human animal does things like this. I didn't want to make a two dimensional propaganda piece. It's way too easy to simply brush the Nazis off as inhuman. I understand that impulse, of course, but that's not going to offer any insight or accomplish anything useful. You don't learn anything about people by treating them like a two dimensional cartoon, no matter how horrendous their actions were. I didn't want to omit the fact that these were people, on both sides.

I had a conversation with a British woman, and I told her that everyone had it in them to be Hitler. Human nature contains that capacity for immense evil, and we're all still human. She said that was impossible, that he was evil, and there was no way it could happen again. That's a dangerous attitude.

Kristall Nacht

Hindsight is 20/20, but foresight never is. We can talk about how wrong these things were now, but acting like it was some sort of black and white situation at the time is naive, and dangerous. History, and human nature, played their roles. Kristall Nacht was the beginning, historically, but it didn't just pop up out of nowhere. There were many elements to Hitler's rise, like the economic depression in Germany, that made his ideas seem rational at the time. Treating that point in history like some kind of anomaly that can't reoccur...dangerous. Very dangerous.

JR: What was the atmosphere like during the sessions? How did it feel to finally get it all out?

PT: It felt complete! Of all the albums I've made, with all the concepts behind them, this is the one that came through the most clearly. I was very much satisfied with the result. It's the one album that worked the way it was supposed to, start to finish.

A couple of things stand out for me about the sessions. Usually, when I'm making an album, I'll have musical arrangements on sheets of paper everywhere, sitting on these tables in the mixing room. This time around, I had books! All sorts of books stacked up everywhere, for verification. I wanted everything to be as accurate as possible.

One of the book we had was a book, with photos, centered around Night And Fog.² (Guitarist and collaborator Takumi) Kikuchi-san was looking through it, and happened to be looking at the last picture when the song "Bei Nacht Und Nebel" ("By Night And Fog") came on in the mixing room. I looked over my shoulder at him, and he was sitting there, eyes riveted to the picture. He was shaking. I think the combination of music, with still images, is the most effective combination. It certainly was that day.

JR: Was the return to heavier material what made you think about getting Zuno Keisatsu back together?

PT: Well, what happened was, we would play live, and we had two very heavily political albums to draw from ("R•E•D" and "Kristall Nacht.") You couldn't really play pop songs in between tracks from those albums, and I had some other songs that we hadn't recorded.

P.I.S.S.

The song "Nacht Musik" was actually a continuation of the story of the man and woman from "Again And Again" (from "R•E•D," an outline of that album's narrative can be found here.) They had decided to meet up in Berlin. They stay in a hotel, and they can see a synagogue from their window. One morning, the man wakes up, and the woman is gone, leaving a note that simply said "Damascus," and I had written a song about that next scene. Live, we'd play those three songs in order: "Again And Again," "Nacht Musik" and "Damascus."³ Problem was, those three songs were fairly similar musically, so both the audience and the band would get confused! "Where are we again?" (laughs)

So we were back to the same problem: what to play with these dark, serious songs. It dawned on me that old Zuno Keisatsu material would fit the tone perfectly. Playing those old songs again, I had the thought of resurrecting the band.

JR: Ironically, your next album, "P.I.S.S.," was much less serious, more of a straightforward rock 'n' roll album.

PT: Well, when I decided to try and get Zuno Keisatsu going again, I called (ZK percussionist) Toshi. He said OK, but he needed a year to finish the musical projects he had going. So I had this one year chunk of time, and I thought it would be a good idea to make a lighter album. I called up (Roosters and Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies guitarist/vocalist Hiroyuki) Hanada-san, asked him if he could come up with some tunes. I had also been writing less serious stuff on the side, I had written songs for (former vocalist for The Tigers, Jpop superstar and PYG frontman) Kenji Sawada, Yoko Oginome, and The Checkers. Hanada-san and I put our heads together and wrote the material for "P.I.S.S." We were making fun of (Panta's poorly received solo album) "Kiss" with the title! (laughs)

We did that, had a quick tour, then Toshi and I went straight into the studio for (Zuno Keisatsu's reunion album) "7."

JR: How did the idea go over? How did people feel about your resurrecting the band?

PT: Actually, we kept it a secret! Victor Records had this brand new studio, all state of the art. A lot of their acts were jockeying to get time in there, since it was state of the art, and cheap.

JR: Cheap?

PT: Well, it wasn't considered to be a full fledged studio yet. State of the art, but still experimental, unestablished, and therefore cheap. Southern All Stars were our big rivals for the time, but we won out! (laughs) We were still being secretive, not telling anyone it was us, so we wrote "ZK7" on the schedule. Nobody knew what was happening.

JR: So how did you finally announce the reunion?

PT: Well, we had planned to play this secret gig at a club called Shinjuku Power Station. We figured a few people would show up, and that word would get out pretty quickly from there (laughs.) Problem was, there's this investigative journalism magazine called Uwasa No Shinso (i.e. "The Truth Of Gossip") that found out, and broke the story. At that point, we just thought screw it, let's just go for it.

JR: The first track on "7" has a teasing, mocking tone. You run through a list of politically charged words, almost daring people to challenge you. After that, there's "Blood Blood Blood," which might be the most viscerally angry song in your catalog.

7

PT: I don't do "Blood Blood Blood" anymore.

JR: Why not?

PT: (pauses, thinks) Before, when Zuno Keisatsu would perform these angry songs, we were part of a very specific group. We were all the same generation, with similar experiences and politics, and when we spoke, we spoke together, and we understood why.

When "7" came out, that wasn't true anymore. Zuno Keisatsu was playing the Rock In Japan Festival on the "7" tour, and the security staff had received this phone call from a guy that was threatening to go nuts with a knife at the show. They got him before anything happened, but I started thinking about the lyrics in "Blood Blood Blood:" "I'm gonna put this knife to your throat." I was speaking figuratively, aiming at people who were fighting something greater than themselves. The point was to take on the strong, to challenge.

But now, the cohesion, the implied understanding between us and our audience wasn't there anymore. People were taking it literally, and it was starting to actually happen in the real world. Before, it was easy to see what we stood against, but now...in the absence of that, people could easily get the wrong message. So I stopped.

JR: What about ("7's" final song) "Bambutsu Ruten?"⁴ As angry as the opening of the album was, this song is considerably less severe.

PT: That song was difficult! We had to record it from scratch three different times!

That song opens with a drum, and I wanted a big, natural sound, like it was coming from the top of a mountain. We had to try a lot of different drums, but their tone was too high. There's no bass on that song, the low end is held down by the reverberations of the drum, so we had to get it just right.

Usually, we would record with a click track,⁵ but it felt unnatural. So we recorded without one, and it was TOO natural (laughs) So we went back to the click track, recorded, layered, and mixed everything. But when it got time to do the vocals, it just didn't work. So we did a third one, somewhere in between the two versions. That worked, finally.

But it's not a happy song. My generation was getting older. I had always thought that when we took over, things would improve. But here we were, our generation was in charge, and things were getting worse, we were still doing stupid things. Heraclitus said that everything was always changing: if you put your feet in water, then take them out, then put your feet back in again, it's not the same water: it's changed. But at that time, I was considerably more cynical: water is water. People don't change. I had given up. "7" felt like the end.

歓喜の歌 (Song Of Joy)

JR: But there was one more Zuno Keisatsu album, "歓喜の歌" ("Song Of Joy.")

PT: The Berlin wall fell. Even though I felt like nothing was changing, things were still happening, so I wanted one more Zuno Keisatsu album. That one kept getting delayed. We played our last show at Shibuya Kokaido, and the album was supposed to be out for that tour, but it still wasn't done when we played that last gig. The band was only supposed to be together for a year, anyway.

JR: Why limit the reunion?

PT: I had never thought of it as permanent. I wanted to put boundaries on it. There's a special character to the band, and I didn't want to burn it out. The second time around was, of course, going to be different, a different situation, and I didn't want to give in to nostalgia. Nostalgia would have been a waste of time. We needed strong music, we shouldn't screw around with songs that were just going to be overshadowed by our older songs.

When we first started, it was us against the world. We tried to do everything, put all our souls and ideas in the band. But the second time around, I had spent a lot of time on my solo career, Toshi had done quite a bit as well, so when we got back together, there was less pressure to include every little thing. We had other outlets, so this time, we could concentrate on what made the band unique. One year was the right amount of time.

JR: So Zuno Keisatsu was gone again...then what?

PT: I drifted. Played around, didn't have much focus. One night, I went drinking with my friend Osamu (Setoguchi) and (The Stalin's) Michiro Endo in Okinawa. Well, Michiro doesn't drink, but he was there! (laughs) Setoguchi-san started talking about a Tarkovsky film, it might have been "The Sacrifice." He said there was a line in that film that said the world was stuck doing the same things over and over again, but every time it started again, something was slightly different. That's how progress was made.

I thought about this, and the more I thought about it, the more I could feel the weight of the world lifting off my shoulders. Why do I have to fight the tide all the time? If the world goes through these changes, and it always has gone through these changes, why couldn't I? Why not simply let myself be part of the world?

Then I started thinking about...everything. I thought back to 67, 68, the futen (the Japanese term for hippies) had nicknames for everyone: mine was "Panta," but I didn't like it. I didn't even know where it came from! (laughs) Around the time of Panta & HAL, I started thinking that I should lose the name, but on the back of "1980X," I had my picture taken on a Ducati Racing Pantah. Well, I can't change the name now! (laughs)

After talking with those two in Okinawa, I discovered the phrase panta rhei. "Panta" means "everything," and "rhei" means around. Everything around. Everything goes around. Everything is in a state of flux. It turned out that "panta rhei" was the Latin term for Heraclitus' theory of flux, the theory that inspired "Bambutsu Ruten!" Everything had come around to meet itself, and...here I was.

I had been disagreeing with Heraclitus, but...I came around.