Atsureki

Oh my gosh, Friction is so cool. And the guitar riff for Cool Fool is sooo good.

According to different accounts I've heard, either the lead singer and bassist of the band, Reck, started it after returning to Japan from New York, where he had been playing No Wave, or as soon as the band formed they went to New York then came back to Japan after a year or two and got big in Japan. In any case, they are awesome.

Unfortunately, I can't find any really good videos for this song on the internet, but all you need really to do is listen, right??!



I'll throw this live video with not so great quality in just for good measure, too.



Oh yeah, this video's pretty cool, too, though the song is different (Crazy Dream). Here's a transcription for what they're talking about in the beginning:
"Are you guys punk?"
"Uh...we don't think of ourselves as punk."
"So what are you."
"Uh...'i don't know.'"



I can't get over how cool these guys are.

I've been listening to nothing but Japanese music lately, actually, mostly from the '60s-'80s. I noticed the other day that I'm getting a lot of inspiration to make some good Chicano/a and/or decolonizing music once I get back to the U.S.

At the end of the last video, the lead singer's talking about how he lives in Tokyo and how the city gives him energy. Then, I think for the most part he's talking about how Tokyo throws away a lot of energy, so the energy hasn't taken off yet, but that he's making that energy take off. (Haha, he uses the word "energy" a lot so it's kind of hard to not do so here, too). He says he's putting out full energy and that people who understand what he's talking about can do it, too. Then, "...Don't you think so?" Haha. I'm not sure what he says at the very end, but it sounds kind of like, "Are you not used to this?" It's so interesting to me how different, yet similar, the singer and other members of the band are when they're playing and when they're giving an interview. Anyways, really interesting stuff to think about and inspiring music.

Quotes

Quotes from old men who look after me

"Mexicans are really smart. Do you know why? Because they're relatively pure-blooded. Koreans are smart, right? Chinese are smart, right? Blacks are smart, Japanese are smart. It's because they're blood isn't mixed. When you start mixing blood, things get weird."

"The quality of Japanese people has gone down since the end of the war. There aren't very many good people in Japan anymore. There were a lot before the war, but now, there are very few good Japanese people."

"Japanese people are becoming stupider and stupider. They barely even read books anymore, and just read manga all the time now, even full-grown adults."

"Japanese are different than they used to be before the war. Just last week, a 2nd year middle school boy was almost killed by three 3rd year boys. They just started beating him up, and luckily someone came by and saved him. Everybody watches variety shows that just make fun of people, anyone who's heavyset, or small, or old. Kids watch these shows and come to school and just make fun of each other and put each other down. In Osaka, you hear about young people beating up and killing homeless people all the time. The Japanese have become a people who pick on those who are weaker than them."

"You know how young Japanese people all dye their hair brown now? It's because they wish they could be like Westerners."

"Mexican women are really beautiful. You know why? It's because they're all mixed-blood. People with mixed-blood are really good-looking."

"As a Japanese, it really makes you feel good to hear that someone decided to study Japanese not because they saw some anime and thought the girls in it were cute or something, but because they thought the language itself was beautiful."

"The thing about Japanese is that if one person starts doing something, everybody else will start doing it too, until the whole country is doing it. It's part of the way we are. There have been good cases of it, Japan took in a lot of good ideas from other countries that way, but there are also bad cases. Young women only started dying their hair brown and trying to look more Western about ten years ago. Before then, no one was doing that. But all it takes is for it to become popular with one small group of people and everyone else who sees them will think they should do it, too. That's why so many people in Japan dye their hair."

"Whenever I hear him speak English, it sounds so cool to me."
"That's because that's how Japanese have been raised to think since the war. That's MacArthur's doing."

"The girls here are close to what women used to be like in Japan."

"It might be bad for me to tell you after you've come all this way and studied Japanese so much, but you should study Chinese. The future is in China. Japan's just going to continue going downhill from here. Economically, that is. Culturally, it'll keep cultivating itself - that's what happens in harsh economic times."

"I'm looking forward to seeing where you go from here."

Ah Articulation

I articulated a feeling tonight which has an uncannily haunting presence in my life:
No matter what I do to contribute to the world being a better place, no matter how far we come beyond our colonial past and existence, no matter what, I will never be able to escape the painful, terrible history of colonialism, because I am a part of it. It is a part of me. I am a product of it.
This is pain at a level I have never experienced until I articulated it tonight.
I will have to get over this at sometime; I actually thought I had gotten over it already. Perhaps renewed interest in the subject brought renewed self-reflection and perception into these feelings. This might mean I'm going to have to deal with this in different ways across my whole life. I really wish I would not have to, though.
I wonder, though - why do I feel so drawn toward learning more about this? It captures my passion and interest so much, along with a desire to do something good for mankind, but at the same time, in certain moments it can fill and paralyze me with despair.
What are we supposed to do, as a human race?

Westerns

(possible spoilers?)

Man, some of the Italian Westerns are pretty interesting to watch, and have some pretty good music, but damn the monumental racism just takes away from the experience so much. Extreme masculinity and white supremacy are such strong themes throughout some of these movies that it just waters down any cinematic grip the film has on you. I thought The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was bad, but man, For a Few Dollars More is just terrible. Every time I see a white guy in brown-face, which is a lot of times, it just kills the mood of the movie completely, and this time they even featured a "Chinese" guy for a moment. Nothing gets across the horrible, damaging feel of the movie across more clearly than the good old boy dialogue at the very end of the movie, right before Clint Eastwood goes driving off with a truckload of dead Mexicans. Man, I can honestly say I did not enjoy watching that movie, no matter how genius white fanboys claim it must be. Someone really needs to redo this genre. Way of the Gun may be the closest thing to a good Western-style movie that I can actually enjoy. And to think how much of U.S. culture and world views of the U.S. have been shaped by this movie phenomenon (interesting that it originates from outside the U.S. - does that point the way toward other possibilities?). A lot of work needs to be done.

Edit: Now that I think about it, Robert Rodriguez did do some good stuff that reshaped the genre to a degree.

Whoa

'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87

Whoa.

I think his is an inspiring story. I read it right when I'm trying to figure out if I really want to go to graduate school.

!

The history of the "inside-outside" mentality in Japanese culture and society and how it has acted as an agent of cultural preservation against cultural imperialism, how it has allowed for a somewhat balanced relationship between taking in new ideas and protecting indigenous culture.
how it is reflected in art and music and pop culture and consumerism
"making oneself 'cool'"

(what my spur-of-the-moment research notes look like)

(these videos are what inspired me:





display a uniquely Japanese aesthetic while embracing Western rock and taking part in new explorations of music, art, and technical engineering?)

Geez

By the end of World War II, "an estimated 1 million Filipinos had been killed, a large proportion during the final months of the war, and Manila was extensively damaged." This seems like a story that needs to be told.