At the start of ‘83 I compiled our live tapes up to the previous year and in the spring released them as a ten-cassette set called “Gokuaku no kyoten” (“The Atrocity Scriptures”). I had announced that it would be a limited-edition of 100 sets, but in the event there were only a few orders and only 50 were ever sent out. I had three reasons for wanting to release these cassettes - one was that because of the members’ various commitments it seemed that we wouldn’t be able to play very many gigs that year; second was that I wanted to make a reply to Throbbing Gristle’s recent release of a 20 cassette compilation; and thirdly because I wanted to release something that would be a summary of our live performances. We took the title from the ELP track , which was a big favourite with us. Our live performances were a total mess so we thought we’d better admit that we were “atrocious” before someone else pointed it out. The other reason that we chose ELP was because this particular release was truly the “Works” of Hijokaidan. Along with the tapes we included 3 brush-written stickers that said “Gokuaku no kyoten”, “Hijokaidan” and “Gokuaku shokuninzoku”. There were also seals with photos of Jojo, Oka, Ichiguchi, Yuka and Junko, and a photocopied poster.
Since our methods of staging were pretty similar and the members got on well together, there had always been some talk of The Stalin and Hijokaidan joining forces and doing a gig as “Sta-Kaidan”. The idea was that both The Stalin and Hijokaidan would play together on the same stage. It had first come up during an interview after the ‘81 gig in Shinjuku, but no progress had been made since then. I also seem to recall that there was a crazy plan for the three most violent stage-acts of the time - Ankoku Tairiku Jagatara, The Stalin, and Hijokaidan to play together in the same hall. In other words a lot of people tended to look upon us a variety act, and the “Sta-kaidan” idea was really an extreme impromptu response to that. In the summer of ‘83 Hijokaidan was asked by Beat Crazy in Kyoto to appear at a live event at the Seibu Kodo hall. They also asked me to negotiate with The Stalin who had temporarily ceased playing due to internal friction between the members. They were currently without a drummer so they were unable to play as The Stalin, but they agreed to jam with us as “Sta-kaidan”. The date was 17th September ‘83, at the Seibu Kodo Hall of Kyoto University. The plan of action was that The Stalin would play whatever covers they liked, Hijokaidan would lay some noise over the top of that, and that we would then both outdo our previous history of fucked-up stage antics.
The opening act was Sperma, which was led by Ranko from Beat Crazy. This group had been formed this year and was a different unit from The Continental Kids. I recall that they put it in a very rock performance, including some Zepplin covers.
Then it was the turn of Sta-Kaidan, eagerly await by the entire Kansai punk scene. From the Stalin side the line-up was Michiro, Shintaro, some guitarist I can’t remember, and Jun on drums - he had already left the band but had agreed to return just for this performance (afterwards he was to rejoin The Stalin on a permanent basis). From Hijokaidan the line-up was Jojo, Oka, Yuka, Woo, and Hayashi. While The Stalin played songs such as The Jacks “Marianne” that had been selected by Michiro, Oka upended buckets of fermented beans, raw fish, milk, eggs and god knows what else over his head. In order to avoid defeat The Stalin also started throwing around chicken carcasses and a pig’s head, and more buckets and flooring segments came flying from the audience. The Seibu Kodo and the 800 audience members dissolved into total anarchy. When a bucket thrown by someone in the audience hit me on the head, Hayashi charged out into the melee swinging a shovel. However this kind of chaos had been warmly anticipated by the audience and I believe that both they and the bands both enjoyed the show. I have very little memory of what we actually sounded like. Before the gig we had decided that this was to be a strictly one-off affair and so we purposely agreed not to record or video what happened. The event had grown out of the friendship between Hijokaidan and The Stalin and so we wanted to avoid it being turned into a commodity at some later date. Another episode that sticks in my memory - we had bought some shovels to use on stage, and after the rehearsal Hayashi and I put our heads together and dug a pit in the garden behind the venue. Ishibashi, one of the staff from the Seibu Kodo was good enough to fall into our pit twice - a comedy classic that still raises a laugh to this day.
This show was to prove to be Oka’s last with Hijokaidan. He had always put his efforts into the performance aspects of Hijokaidan, and I feel that he finally managed to expel all his demons during this performance. The reality of Hijokaidan as a violent performance group thus ended here. (Though, as you are of course aware that image has persisted to this day).
In March 1983 Ichiguchi died at his company’s dormitory in Chofu, Tokyo. He had been asthmatic and that morning, because he was unable to stop coughing he had drunk a lot of cough medicine. He died from a violent reaction to the cough medicine. That morning he had phoned a doctor and begged for a house-call, but the doctor had refused telling him that he could only make house-calls in the afternoon. When the doctor arrived at Ichiguchi’s room that afternoon, the room was strewn with pills and Ichiguchi was lying convulsed and dead in the midst of it all. Around the same time, Nishimori who had drummed with Inu and was currently the vocalist with Up-Maker had been working on a fishing boat when he got his foot caught in a conveyor-belt and drowned. It was a very bad time for all of us in the scene at that time.
In June of the same year Hayashi and I started Alchemy Records (I will save the story of the founding for a later date). We planned on the one hand to issue on LP recordings from the late seventies by Ultra Bide, SS and Inu, as well as a Hijokaidan studio album. At that time the only permanent members were Mikawa and myself. Recording took place at the home-studio belonging Kaneko, the ex-guitarist from The Stalin. The group for the recording was a quartet of me, Mikawa, Junko (vocals) and Hayashi (bass). We recorded some very musical semi-improvised songs using multi-track recording and drum machines. In the end these takes were issued on the A-side, while the B-side was a completely improvised old-school-style noise piece. The LP jacket was designed as a parody of Mikawa’s and my favourite German rock band Faust’s “So Far”. The title, “Viva Angel” was a combination reference to “Viva” by La Dusseldorf and the Neu track “Lila Angel”. The track names also parodied the psych band The Seeds with titles like “Pluck the young shoots in their prime”, “Bad character, but great sound” and so on. I believe that this album was the most absurd in the history of Hijokaidan. “Viva Angel” was released by Alchemy in November.
To coincide with the release of the album we played a concert with Outo at Eggplant in Osaka, which had just opened in the autumn of ‘84. Sakevi Yokoyama from Gism was originally scheduled for a guest appearance, but had to cancel due to various circumstances. The line-up for this performance was Mikawa, Jojo, Junko, and Woo. We projected a video on to a screen while we played and I recall that this was a rather ethereal performance for Hijokaidan. It was our first gig in two years, and we set a new record at the time for audience turn-out at the Eggplant, a record that would stand until 1985. This gig turned out to the last one with Hijokaidan for our female bassist Woo.