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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Previously Published Works Title Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qk6w6p3 Author Novak, DE Publication Date 2021-06-27 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California JAPANOISE SIGN, STORAGE, TRANSMISSION A series edited by Jonathan Sterne and Lisa Gitelman JAPANOISE JAPANOISE DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS!DURHAM AND LONDON!2013 JAPAJAPANOISE NOISE JAPANOISE MUSIC AT THE EDGE OF CIRCULATION David Novak © 2013 Duke University Press Tis work is licensed under the Creative All rights reserved Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- Printed in the United States of NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view America on acid- free paper ♾ a copy of this license, visit http://creative Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan commons.org/licenses/by- nc- nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Typeset in Quadraat by Tseng Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, Information Systems, Inc. California, 94041, USA. “Noncommercial” Library of Congress Cataloging- as defned in this license specifcally ex- in- Publication Data appear on the cludes any sale of this work or any last printed page of this book. portion thereof for money, even if the sale does not result in a proft by the seller Frontispiece: Hanatarashi or if the sale is by a 501(c) (3) nonproft performance at Toritsu Kasei or NGO. Super Loft, August 4, 1985. Photo by Satoh Gin. Supplemental media examples and further information are available at www.japanoise.com. CONTENTS CONTENTS Acknowledgments | vii Introduction | 1 1 Scenes of Liveness and Deadness | 28 2 Sonic Maps of the Japanese Underground | 64 3 Listening to Noise in Kansai | 92 4 Genre Noise | 117 5 Feedback, Subjectivity, and Performance | 139 6 Japanoise and Technoculture | 169 7 Te Future of Cassette Culture | 198 Epilogue: A Strange History | 227 Notes | 235 References | 259 Index | 279 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Tis book would not exist without the participation and encouragement of many talkers, listeners, thinkers, players, organizers, collaborators, and friends. I am deeply indebted to Fujiwara Hide, Kelly Churko, Filth the Sleep, Higashiseto Satoru, Tabata Mitsuru, Gomi Kohei, Haco, Ishii Akemi, and Aoki “Pinky” Satoru for opening their homes, stores, practice spaces, and home recording studios to me, and especially to Hiroshige Jojo, Mikawa Toshiji, Ôtomo Yoshihide, and Akita Masami for sharing their perspectives and their writings on the worlds of Noise they created. I could not have asked for a better cohort of interlocutors in Osaka and Kyoto, and I thank Ishibashi Shôjirô, Matt Kaufman, Onishi Aya, Yamazaki Maso, David Hop- kins, Go Shoei, Yamamoto Seiichi, Jef Bell, Christopher Stephens, Mitch Kinney, Nishikawa Bunshô, Môri Katsura, and Toyonaga Akira for leading me further underground in Kansai. It was a privilege to have worked along- side the staf of Bridge and the Festival Beyond Innocence, especially Uchi- hashi Kazuhisa. My time in Japan was also invaluably enriched by talking and performing—and talking about performing—with Kato Hideki, Naka- jima Akifumi (Aube), Unami Taku, Ito Atsuhiro, Akiyama Tetsuzi, Naka- mura Toshimaru, Uemura Masahiro, Kudo Tori, the late Iwasaki Shohei, and the late Tano Koji. For the North American portions of my research, credit goes to Art Prat- ten, the late Hugh McIntyre, and all of the members of the Nihilist Spasm Band and the staf of the No Music Festival, Ron Lessard, Jessica Rylan, Clay Lacefeld, Kyle Lapidus, Mark Weitz, Sam McKinlay, Carlos Gifoni, and everyone at No Fun Fest; Chris Goudreau, Chris Cooper, Seth Mis- terka, and Dan Greenwood, who brought me deeper into Noise on the East Coast; and on the West Coast, Daniel Menche, Greg Saunier, Matsuzaki Sa- tomi, Mason Jones, and Seymour Glass. My advisor Aaron Fox was an unfagging source of intellectual inspira- tion and support in my doctoral work at Columbia University; Steven Feld, Ana María Ochoa, Marilyn Ivy, and John Pemberton were also profoundly involved throughout. I cannot credit them enough for their insights, and I am deeply indebted for their attention and confdence. Tanks also to Chris Washburne, Ellen Gray, George Lewis, Brad Garton, and the Center for Ethnomusicology. Tis project germinated at Wesleyan University, where I am grateful to Mark Slobin, Sumarsam, Alvin Lucier, and Anthony Braxton for their generosity. Other mentors have given valuable encouragement, including Tim Taylor, Louise Meintjes, Jonathan Sterne, Anne Allison, Ian Condry, Bonnie Wade, Sherry Ortner, Mike Molasky, David Samuels, Tom Porcello, Jairo Moreno, Martin Stokes, John Szwed, and Alan Cummings. My exceptional graduate cohort provided forthright critique through many years of friendship. Amanda Weidman, Amanda Minks, Joshua Pilzer, Brian Karl, and Matt Sakakeeny were particularly unfailing in their willingness to engage with my writing, and I’m thankful for countless conversations with Farzaneh Hemmasi, Maria Sonevytsky, Lorraine Plourde, Michael Fisch, Toby King, Jef Snyder, Paul Hogan, Ryan Skinner, Niko Higgins, Morgan Luker, Ryan Dohoney, Melissa Gonzalez, Paul Yoon, Cynthia Wong, Tyler Bickford, Anna Stirr, and Lauren Ninoshvili. I gratefully acknowledge the sources of funding and support that en- abled me to research and write Japanoise. Te Fulbright Foundation, the So- cial Science Research Council, and the Mellon Foundation sponsored my feldwork in Japan and North America; writing was supported by the So- ciety of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University, the Lane Cooper Foundation, the Warner Fund of Columbia University Seminars, and the Academic Senate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Primary feldwork in Japan was carried out under the auspices of JUSEC; thanks viii!|!Acknowledgments to my sponsors Yamada Yoichi and Hosokawa Shuhei, and to Kansai Gei- jutsu Daigaku for hosting my Fulbright research. Yamamoto Yuka, Nathan- iel Smith, and Odai Kiyomitsu provided help with research and transla- tions, and I also benefted from critical readings by Anne McKnight, Miura Hiroya, and Sakuramoto Yuzo. Tis book has benefted from the input of audiences at many talks and presentations. I thank all of the participants and respondents at the 2009 Listening In, Feeding Back conference, and Eileen Gillooly, Jonah Cardillo, and my fellow fellows at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Colum- bia University; the members of the AAA Music and Sound Interest Group; and audiences for workshops and talks at UC Berkeley, NYU, the Univer- sity of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hagley Museum and Library, the University of Rochester, UCLA, Brown University, the University of Oklahoma, Duke University, and the Radio Nacional de Colombia. At UCSB, further thanks go to faculty, graduate students, and staf in the Music Department, as well as the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, the Ethnography and Cultural Studies Re- search Focus Group, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and my af- fliated colleagues in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Anthropology. I feel extremely lucky to have received the careful attention of two anonymous reviewers at Duke University Press, both of whom provided ex- tensive and extremely helpful guidance in the revision of this manuscript. From the frst, Ken Wissoker has been a wonderfully enthusiastic and en- couraging presence, and his guidance was always on target. Liz Smith, Jade Brooks, Laura Poole, and Amy Ruth Buchanan expertly shepherded the book through production. Tanks to series editors Jonathan Sterne and Lisa Gitelman (not least for giving me the chance to say that I am putting something out on SST). Duke also deserves recognition for their excep- tional support of new forms of scholarly publishing, and for allowing this book to be published under a Creative Commons license that enables its open digital distribution. Tanks also to the photographers who contrib- uted materials and permitted their work to be reprinted on these pages, to Derek Gottlieb for the index, and to Popular Music for portions of chapter 3 that were published there in an earlier form (in “2.5 x 6 Metres of Space: Japanese Music Cofeehouses and Experimental Practices of Listening,” vol. 27, no. 1). I’ve learned most everything from my family, friends, and fellow musi- Acknowledgments!|!ix cians. James Fei has been a constant source of information, goodwill, and sonic challenge for many years, especially in our live electronic duo Mae- stros, whose performance tour in Japan was a particularly bright spot of my feldwork experience. Jeremy Novak provided an endless repository of new/rare/old/strange sounds and kept me playing as a member of the Live Dymaxion Interpretation Society. Toby King, Little Timmy Pearson, Brent Cramer, Josh Pilzer, and Danny Fisher endured many bar rooms and lugged much equipment with me in Habit Trail. Tanks to WKCR and Erin Chun for special broadcasts based on portions of my research, and to WFMU, WESU, and KCSB for hosting performances and interviews. My sons Gus and Finn are the newest sources of noise in my life; they keep my blood fowing and my ears listening (and sometimes ringing). And my companion and friend Jen Gherardi helped me more than I can say. x!|!Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Tis place is a classic underground spot: falling apart at the seams, bohe- mian quirkiness of the fake wood walls reminiscent of a postwar Middle American home bar in the basement, fan spinning creakily above us, all sorts of random swaying things hanging from the ceiling. But it feels like something special is going on tonight as two musicians begin jamming their equipment together, hurriedly plugging distortion pedals into tape echoes into amps, shoving guitar cases and suitcases behind the bathroom door, as the room flls to overfowing. A fre hazard for sure. People stand- ing all over, more in back by the bar than the twenty or so lucky enough to cram into mismatched chairs around a handful of tables in front of the stage.