"Onna; named by Keizo Miyanishi. This word means woman, female in Japanese. 'To be like a woman in behavior.' 'To be like a decayed woman.' The word onna is used when we have scorn for someone. But on the other hand, onna is mother, and longing, and a symbol of beauty. It is also the dogma of desire in common language. We can not escape from that. HE felt the approximation strongly between the existence of Rock Music and the word, so HE named it. Onna is HE himself. Onna is Rock itself."

JR: Your album, "Ningyoh-Tan" (Story Of A Doll)...it was named after her (Barae's) performance?

KM: (nods) Yes, that's the title of her piece, and the CD is the soundtrack. Whenever I'm making music, or drawing, I'm thinking of her. For this album, I took what she gave me and started from there. She gave me some beautiful ideas, and I took them and recorded the album. I wasn't thinking about dance, just her words. There's no scenario, it's just image.

JR: One track in particular stood out for me, Fish Hula Dance.

KM: There's a film, the Japanese title is "Sakana No Detekita Hi." (Mihalis Kakogiannis's "The Day The Fish Came Out" from 1967.) It happens at this peaceful southern island, and suddenly a nuclear device falls from the sky. A fisherman hides it, but NASA and the CIA are looking for it. The people on the island believe it's a gift from the Gods, which is why he hid it. Eventually, it goes off. It's pretty dark humor!

Fish Hula Dance came from the image in the film of this clear, beautiful sea that was contaminated: all the fish are belly up in the ocean after this thing has gone off. One moment it's peaceful, the sun is shining, people are fishing...a lot of simple, peaceful activity...and it's all destroyed by this outside force. Life goes on, but it's disrupted by this tragedy.

JR: The imagery became a lot more explicit with your next album "Katawa" (* see note below.) While "Ningyoh-Tan" is instrumental, "Katawa" has lyrics, most of them quite sexual and/or sinister.

KM: In Japan, sex has traditionally been taboo in music. My music comes from the eroticism I feel, and I camoflage it in the lyrics. I learn about sound and dance, physical spirit, from Barae. She's had a big effect on my view of things, especially my performance style. In the past, my style wasn't so special, but after meeting Barae, I understand how to show the World of Onna. Now I wear a dress and makeup during live shows because at that moment I'm purely Onna, not a normal man. All of these elements coming together complete me as a performer.

Performing music shows who I am. But the moment I'm standing on stage...that moment is my highest point of expression. That's when I show my essence. It's the most important moment. It's when the audience gets the fullest exprssion of who I am and what I'm about. I used to think constantly about my performance, but thanks to Barae, and everything I've learned from her, I no longer need to.

Ningyo-Tan Score

JR: What are you trying to communicate to an audience?

KM: I don't have the mindset of an educator. Fear, danger, eroticism, they're all the building blocks of life, they naturally find their way into what I do without any explicit intent. I want to deconstruct music, tear down the old structures, and create something new in its place from thse building blocks. This is the cycle of life. Making art is the embodiment of this process.

I'm not religious, but I have a great respect for nature, of the power of being that can control your life. I'm not trying to make a kind of point, or direct people to a conclusion. I'm just acting as a kind of prophet. I have an element of life that I must deal with. It's unpleasent, but it's necessary. That feeling may naturally come through my lyrics, but it's not a conscious intent.

JR: You're mostly known as a cartoonist, but you're obviously very committed to music as well.

KM: Visual arts and music are the same for me, they're just different ways of saying what I'm feeling. They give these feelings shape.

My start as an artist was as a cartoonist, and I developed a cartoonist's technique, but it's something I think about objectively. Music is the other way I can get these feelings out. However, I can make some sounds, but my technique is not as established as it is for my comics. I'm not a professsional. I'm not a really rock musician! (laughs)

For comics, one image leads to a lot of paper, and it gets filtered through the physical end, and also my client. But music doesn't work that way, I'm the only person involved in its creation, so it comes much more directly from the heart. My music comes from my Eros, and I try to embody that in the music.

JR: Were you influenced by Japanese rock music growing up?

KM: I hated Japanese rock music, because in Japan, it's basically business: copy western forms, sell a lot of records. It's not really music, it's product. It's a lie. Japanese musicians would present themselves as creating this music, when it was really just a pale imitation. It sounded the same, but it was completely different from rock!

Katawa

What I would call real Japanese rock music is still quite new. The music I make is from me...I'm influenced, of course...but it's not an attempt to copy something else.

Self expression...being myself, and not just imitating something...is a very mysterious process. Japanese people dont' really have a modern music that belongs to us, we're forced to copy. Black people have R&B and jazz, but Japanese don't have their own, new forms. Japanese rock music will inherently have an element of duplication, since it doesn't belong to us as a culture. It's difficult to make sincere music in this situation.

I needed a long time to integrate my own music with rock. I'm middle aged, I'm only starting now! (laughs)

JR: That said, rock music did nonetheless find a place in Japanese culture.

KM: We've accepted it, of course, and we've tried to use it, but I'm not sure we're using it well. Since I was a child, I've been drawing, and I've loved rock music just as long. I fixated on rock, not jazz or classical, because it's not as intellectual, not as academic. It's a much more direct way of expression: there's no rules or expectations, it's much more free. It's much less bogged down by theory. It finds wonderfulness in even the cheapest of things.

When I grew up, I heard all kinds of music, but rock was my basis. It's important for me to live my music.

JR: Your music has a strong psychedelic, experimental edge.

KM: When rock hit Japan, it followed a few trends: Janis Joplin, hippie music, music of the "flower people." Then there was hard rock, glam, things like Bowie, T Rex, then punk, new wave...it followed this framework. Now, all of these are pieces of the whole. In Japan, the business end started looking at these pieces as a kind of puzzle, doing things like combining hard rock and punk, to see what sells.

But truly psychedelic music doesn't fit a business model. However, for me, it's the starting point, like an unpolished gem that I can make into something unique.

Generally, in Japan, psych groups like Jefferson Airplane and Tim Buckley were very fashionable. The music industry tried to emulate them, but truly psychedelic music goes much further than that. It's a rush of ideas, like a trip. It's not a clean and beautiful world, it's fast, scary, and it sprints past. It's not reliant on strong technique, it's pure feeling.

JR: What do you mean by "scary?"

KM: It's like Formula 1 racing, they drive at these incredibly high speeds. If they ALMOST crash, it's cool and exciting, but if they ACTUALLY crash, it's not. That's the danger that psychedelic music has. It's exciting because it ALMOST crashes.

Promotional flyer. Click for full size.

It's thrilling, but sometimes it does crash: many musicians become drug addicts, alcoholics, etc. A lot of rock musicians get pulled into this, and it's dangerous. A lot of them just drown in it. We've had a lot of very successful musicians in Japan, they're big business. But many are kind of like rodents, always running on a wheel, they get victimized by the industry.

Real rock music is for people who are young, or have stayed young spiritually. If this spirit is to survive, it needs to be detatched from the business mindset.

JR: Do you feel some musicians succeed in that? They detatch from that mindset?

KM: People like Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haroumi Hosono, they keep the business in mind. They're just technicians, not artists. It's a big mistake, isn't it?

The Japanese music business is embarassing, they're cheating. It's too easy to simply make money, and it's shameful how most of it is simply rearangement and copying. They don't take the core of themselves, they simply imitate. You have people who can emulate, and the fact that people can make good livings off of that disgusts me! (laughs) The business end of it is simply rehashing the whole thing, keeping it on an unending groove.

On the other hand, the music of the underground, the music I enjoy, isn't about this. It frustrates me that people can simply take something, pretend it's their own, and win acclaim by this.

JR: What do you mean by "pretend it's their own"?

They pretend to be artists. I mean, if they understand music truly, or if they're true artists, they maintain great respect for their roots. Most Japanese "business musicians" don't respect their roots, they never consider them.

When the Rolling Stones appeared, they spotlighted the original black R&B. They didn't present themselves as the origin: they paid very clear respect to their influences, directed people to the blues and soul that inspired them. This is what I consider gentlemanly behavior.

Also, in those days, ugliness was important: it was wild, primitive, not sophisticated. It was a kind of sacrifice. Pop music would sometimes be based on folk music, but The Stones brought R&B into the mix. They sacrificed the pretty side and made something new, something outside mere pop music. For truly new rock, one must first have respect.

JR: Anything else you'd like to add?

KM: When words reach a page, a gap opens up. People often misunderstand interviews, and I can't control that. I'm responsible for my statements, of course, but I can't predict what people will think when they read this. But if anything of my ideas get through, it will be worth it. Thank you.

---

(* note from Barae: Katawa has a double meaning. Katawa means "deformity" in Japanese. The other meaning is "one wing:" 片 (kata) means one (as in one side of pain,) and 羽 (wa) means wing.)



---

"Katawa" is out now on PSF Records, who have an English page that accepts orders. Check Miyanishi's page for performance dates in Japan.