Laptop Performers, Compact Disc Designers, and No-Beat Techno Artists in Japan: Music from Nowhere.(Critical Essay)

The 1990s witnessed an explosion in the number of Japanese "digital performers" coming from virtually nowhere--or, more accurately, born directly from digital technology and hardware. Most of them had no musical background. They were graphic designers, programmers, rock musicians, or simply fans of 1970s progressive rock or 1980s alternative rock--Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, The Residents. This was a generation not particularly interested in music, but one that enjoyed editing digital files that contain sounds (among other things). For them, the music of diverse cultures and historical periods are all situated on the same ahistorical plane, a flat space that simply crosses the year 2000. The title of a recent techno-lounge-collage CD, The World Shopping with Space Ponch, accurately embodies this attitude: the world and its complexity are reduced to the surface of a discount cultural supermarket (Kishino et al. 2000; Kishino et al. 1999).

I will examine four parallel trends of digital musicians that have no apparent intersection between them: "live laptop performers," audio CD designers, "unclassifiable artists," and techno artists. They do, however, share numerous traits, either in the technology or the forms of expression used.

A Bit of History

Non-historicity is a point common to all four of these trends. Japan opened its doors to the outside world in 1868 during the Meiji era (1868-1912), after almost 300 years of seclusion (1603-1868), and absorbed Western technology and culture in record time. It is only much more recently that contemporary "cultural products" have found their way into importation networks. Sounds of the underground "indie" labels, computer music, and experimental electronic music simultaneously penetrated Japan at a time when the nation was feverishly engulfed by the skylines of the "bubble economy" (1985-1991), and when the value of the yen provided for favorable exchange rates in the purchase of imported records. Naturally, the assimilation of this kaleidoscope of cultural goods could not happen on a profound level. Rather, these goods arrived as commodities--scattered fashion objects. Art is worn in Japan like a fashionable garment, and cultural products assume the function of icons (Miwa 1999)--emblems drawing disparate groups closer together. Records are not made to be listened to, but to create points of intersection between the formation of cultural islands. Audio novelties are no longer presented in sonic form on the radio, but rather in visual form on television, as advertisements.

Japanese musicians have at their disposal an infinite array of samples waiting only for the inspired mix to give them local commercial value. Turntablist Yoshihide Otomo, renowned musician and producer of the Tokyo underground, considers himself the living representative of cultural collage. For him, collage does not stop at the assembling of disparate sounds or genres at the turntable, but extends to the collage of identities he portrays in his daily life: a "collage personality," at least until his meeting with Sachiko M., whom I will talk about later (Otomo 1999).

The phenomena of importation trends is important to an understanding of contemporary creativity. (I avoid using the term "art," for it is difficult in Japan to differentiate between "art," "design," and "fashion.") The parallel phenomenon of "reverse import" ("gyaku-import") is also an important link in the importation chain. Japanese artists will have little chance of success without first exporting their art to foreign lands. Then, their art can be re-imported to Japan with the aura of a foreign product. Academic research does not escape this phenomenon. From the Meiji era until the present, academic research has consisted primarily in the importation, translation, and recompilation of foreign documents and theses.

Regardless of the way in which one approaches this dependence on importation, it gives Japanese artists a fascinating advantage: a total freedom from historical or geographical ties. This is manifested by a freshness that fundamentally differentiates them from Western creators. Typically, Satoru Ono thinks of the world as an array of televisions, changeable at will by a click of the remote control (Ono 1999). Cultural goods are thus viewed as disposable commodities. An entire culture is channeled through the hierarchical distribution chain of department stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores. Who would dare judge quality in such an accelerated environment, solely preoccupied with direct remunerability?