Kan Mikami Interview

Interview by Takuzo Nakashima; translated by Alan Cummings.¹

Like a lot of people, my first exposure to Kan Mikami's guttural, soaring heart-rending vocals was through his appearance on the early PSF classic "Live in the First Year of Heisei", a super-group that also featured Keiji Haino and venerable free-bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa. A bit of poking around in his back catalogue soon revealed that Kan had been a huge folk star at the height of the Japanese folk boom in the seventies, but that his dark, nightmarish lyrics and screaming intensity put him way ahead of the field of jangling acoustic losers with their pretty harmonies. Kan fell from grace with his major label backers in the eighties and entered into a period of oblivion, playing infrequent shows to miniscule audiences. During this period, his lyrics had become oblique and surreal compared to the early fear and loathing, he had a new uniquely jagged and rhythmic guitar-style, but the magnificent vocals still remained to soar and tumble, carress and lambast.

Mikami still plays very frequently around the live-house circuit in Japan, supported by a small band of intensely loyal hardline fans / drinking buddies known has the Mikami Komuten. His one-take solo recordings have become one of the mainstays of the PSF label, who rediscovered him. The PSF connection also gave him the chance to meet up with Japan's other long-time underground legend, Keiji Haino. The two often play together in shows of startling empathy and raw musical alchemy, most recently in the amazing Vajra trio.

Kan is also a published poet and novelist, a regular TV presenter (especially on late-night shows), and an occasional film-star. You may have seen him in Nagisa Oshima's POW drama "Merry Christmas, Mr.Lawrence" with David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto. You won't have seen him in numerous Japanese films of very dubious reputation. As an introduction to Kan's music, I would recommend "Jazz, and other things", the second Vajra album "Ring", or the afore-mentioned "Live in the First Year of Heisei". But all of his appearances on PSF are worthy of your investigation. And if you're ever in Japan, make sure to see him play live and have a drink with the man afterwards. Tell him I sent you.

When did you first pick up a guitar?

Mikami Must have been in 1965, but I didn't know how to play then. I'd just look at it and polish it.

Did you learn to play from a book?

Mikami I had this book by Koga Masao and I practiced with that.

Back then a lot of people would practice with steel strings on a gut guitar. Did you do that too?

Mikami Everyone did back then. I used to change the strings about once a year.

Did you have to go all the way to Aomori² to buy new strings?

Mikami No, there was even a music shop Goshogahara³. There wasn't one in Kodomari⁴ though.

Did you start writing lyrics at the same time?

Mikami No. First I spent a year or so learning some chords, and then I started writing.

What kind of themes did you write about at the start?

Mikami Anti-war stuff. The Vietnam war had just started, and everyone thought that folk equals anti-Vietnam War songs. So I wrote a few of those, though not that many.

Did you perform in public at all?

Mikami I played at my school festival⁵. Back then there weren't too many people who played guitar so it went down unexpectedly well.

Did you sing any anti-school songs?

Mikami No. I was the head of the students' representative body, and I was pretty aggressive in getting them to lend us somewhere to perform. But I wasn't really a model student. Our school was co-ed and they used to segregate the kids who couldn't study into a separate class. We kicked up a fuss about that. But there was a pretty free atmosphere.

Did you really get into the guitar about two or three years after you first started?

Mikami Yeah. I'd practice until six in the morning. There were a lot of times when I'd look outside and it'd be morning already.

Did you write a lot of your own original tunes back then?

Mikami I've forgotten them all. They were mostly imitations, or versions of stuff that was popular at the time.

Did you have any feeling that you would go so far with your guitar?

Mikami Not at that time. It was just a hobby—I'd pick up the guitar when I was tired of studying.

Between graduating from high school and coming up to Tokyo you went to a police training school. Did you really want to become a policeman?

Mikami I had a really immature attitude, and just wanted to fire guns and stuff. (laughs) I didn't associate the police with authority for some reason. Anyway, I did that for two years and then I quit.

So you left the police training school and came up to Tokyo. Had you always yearned to come to the capital?

Mikami Yeah, I really did. All the sixties pop-art stuff, and Shuji Terayama⁶ and Tadanori Yoko⁷. It seemed like there was a lot of crazy stuff going on in Shinjuku⁸ , and I didn't just want to watch it from the provinces, I wanted to come and get involved myself.

When did you come up to Tokyo?

Mikami The fourteenth of September 1968. The autumn.

Did you come up trembling on the night-train?

Mikami Yeah. There was hardly any information back then, and I wondered what was going to happen to me. I was a little worried—make that very worried.

What did you think when you first arrived in Tokyo?

Mikami I thought of the word "violence". It was as if the city was controlled by violence. The countryside is really pastoral, and I understood the relationship between man and nature. And then you come to a city, and suddenly violence is the real power. Like when the traffic light changes and everyone sets off at once in the same direction—when I saw that I felt like I was being chased by someone. Like there was someone following me and someone controlling it all. Like Tokyo itself was moving.

Where did you live when you first came up?

Mikami At the start I wasn't in Tokyo itself, but in Fujisawa⁹. I was there for about four months and then I moved up to Numabukuro in Tokyo itself.

Were you working and playing the guitar as well?

Mikami Yeah. Around that time Kansai-folk¹⁰ —Nobuyasu Okabayashi¹¹ and that crowd had just started up. I felt that I wanted to sing and perform again myself.

So did you first start playing seriously in live houses around that time?

Mikami There were hardly any live houses or places where I could sing back then. There were small theatres, so I got to know some theatre people.

After that you played at Station70 in Shibuya, and gradually got involved in that world. Did someone talent-spot you for that gig?

Mikami No, it wasn't like that. I heard that a new place had opened, and I went along to sound them about me singing. I remember them giving me an audition up on the roof, and then I played there for real. Station70 was where Marui¹² is now, underground. There isn't anything left now though. It's become a coffee shop now. It was really up-to-date back then—they had TVs on the wall—it wouldn't look out-of-place today. The PA was good too.

Who else played there at the time?

Mikami Kaoru Abe¹³ and a lot of other people who were just starting back then. Guys from the Tatenokai¹⁴ and the Japanese Red Army¹⁵ came along to watch. There were biwa¹⁶ performances and butoh¹⁷ —it was a real mixture. It was like a multi-purpose live house. When I think back now, it was an amazing place.

So at last you made your debut, at the age of twenty-one. How did you feel then?

Mikami Of course there was pressure, and there was also a feeling of becoming something outside of my own experience. Up until then I had been surrounded by my friends and family, but from now on I had to get my music across to people who were complete strangers to me. I remember being really afraid.

Did you start getting paranoid as well?

Mikami No, I didn't feel very much of that. I had this vague fear because I didn't know what was going to happen to me. Once you've gone out on your own, you can't predict how things will turn out. I had this fear that I was being marked out for something.

Around the time of your debut what kind of stuff were you doing?

Mikami I debuted under exclusive contract to Columbia, so there was a marketing campaign. Just like today's CD artists, I'd go around record stores and perform on the roofs of supermarkets in the provinces.

Do you remember your first solo gig?

Mikami I used to play solo every week at Station70, so I don't remember exactly when I first played solo in a concert hall. But I reckon it was probably somewhere around Goshogahara.

It's well-known now that your first album was secretly withdrawn from the shops, but how did you feel when you heard first heard about it?

Mikami Well, even before it was withdrawn I had felt that it was a bit dangerous. I understood at the time that my words were close to being banned—it was obvious. So I didn't get especially pissed off, because I had already suspected it would happen. That's the way it goes, so it was OK.

In 1971 you became famous nationwide after your appearance at the Nakatsugawa Folk Jamboree. How did you come to perform at that?

Mikami The first place that put out my album was a publishing company owned by Koichi Haba. But it went down the tubes in about three months, and I had to work part-time in Shinjuku's Golden Gai¹⁸. There I happened to meet the editor of Playboy and Meisei, and he had found my record at Haba's place and shown it to the people at URC. They thought it was interesting, and that's how it happened. But I didn't just suddenly play at the Nakatsugawa festival. Around June of '71 I had played with (Takuro) Yoshida and (Ryo) Kagawa at the Kudan Hall. I suppose that was my real debut. When I think back on it now, they must have realized that no one would have got it if I suddenly appeared at Nakatsugawa, so the promoters must have wanted to have a look at me beforehand—like an elimination round. But they liked me and decided to let me play the festival. But I didn't know when it was, and they rang me up at work. I had my guitar with me, and I got straight on the night bus.

The festival was recorded so you still hear how enthusiastic the audience was. Did that make you happy?

Mikami I was more surprised than I was happy. I mean, there were 300,00 people there—the entire population of my home-village was only 5000. (laughs) I was so amazed to see that many people in front of me. What are all these people doing here, I thought. I still wasn't interested in playing outdoors, and this was just a big Woodstock imitation. So I wasn't that much into it.

Did you think that it was enough if people remembered your face and your name?

Mikami I didn't think that anyone would like me. I was really contemptuous of folk music.

So you thought that you weren't folk?

Mikami Not like that. I had this idea of myself as a singer-songwriter, and I didn't want to be grouped in with everyone else.

At that concert, you really emphasized one side of yourself, and for better or worse that pulled your image in a certain direction.

Mikami It took me a long time to free myself from that image. If you stir up as much of a fuss as possible, people will also talk about the other stuff that comes along with it, won't they? But from that time on I gradually started to change my way of thinking. Briefly, there's not just the way you perceive yourself , there is also the way that other people perceive you. So I had this idea of fitting into the image that people had given me. A so-called professional attitude.

After the Nakatsugawa Festival you released several albums up until that "Hiraku yume nado aru janashi" album, which has been re-released on CD. It really shows one side of you to great effect, but what were you thinking about when you made it?

Mikami Basically, I had this desire to make something that was in an enka-style¹⁹ but a lot more complex. Enka was inside of me, like bad blood. Before I could make my own music I had to get rid of it, and then I could show myself fresh and pure. If I didn't do it at that time, then I would have had to do it later. Anyway, as the first step I had to vomit all that up. I don't think that I could do it the way I am now.

You did it because you liked enka?

Mikami I felt that I would run up against it sometime, and I thought it would be best to get it out of the way early on.

Even now you play some songs from that album live. What standard do you have for songs you play and songs you don't?

Mikami What standard do I have?I play songs that have become more like the stuff I do now.

Uhuh. That "Anata mo sta- ni nareru" track is sung really differently to the way you do it now. I think that now the speed and power have meshed together and it's become a very typical Mikami "rock" track. Maybe "rock" isn't an appropriate word to use. On the other hand, you have a lot of songs that you have put away in the cupboard as it were, songs you don't play anymore. Do you feel that you have sung them out, that you have fully understood them?

Mikami No, it's not like that.

Are there songs that you have come to hate?

Mikami There songs that I don't sing anymore—audiences don't want to hear them anymore maybe. There's no point to them anymore. When I play live they gradually seem to disappear.

OK. You have released quite a few live recordings—do you feel that they are best?

Mikami Well, also because people want to hear the live stuff. It's not really supply and demand, but I released them anyway. Back then it was cool to put out live records, and besides there weren't a lot of studios with good sound like there are today. Live records felt close and the sound was better.

Then in 1974 you moved to Gallery, and released "BANG!". It was a jam session with jazz musicians, including Yosuke Yamashita²⁰ and Ryojiro Furuzawa. How did you suddenly get the idea to play with them? Did you meet them all somewhere?

Mikami Yeah. I realized that were there various different ways of thinking about music, and so I decided to get to know some jazz men. There are things that folk singers can communicate even without using words. You can pick up what kind of world they are living in. And there are no words in jazz, are there? They try to express themselves just by using sounds, and it's very hard to catch hold of. So I was wondering what jazz really was, and the only way to find out was to play with them.

When you asked them, did they give you the OK just like that?

Mikami Well, yeah. A lot of the time musicians decide to play together just by going out for a drink together. So I was out in the provinces and I went drinking with Furuzawa, who was in Yamashita's band at the time. Yamashita was out on tour and we just did it one night.

When Furuzawa-san saw you play live for the first time he was allegedly amazed that there was someone singing that kind of soul music in Japan. Was your singing style at that time the same as it is now?

Mikami The feeling was the same. I haven't changed the way I sing.

What did you feel when you made "BANG!"?

Mikami I think that it would be difficult to make a record like that now. Back then, musicians weren't as controlled by the record companies—they could play whatever they wanted to.

I think that it sounds really free.

Mikami Shortly after that record was released URC went bankrupt. It was like they got a lot freer towards the end.

At the same time were you also playing live with Yamashita-san?

Mikami Yeah. We used to play a lot back then—maybe three or four times a month.

Did you play all around the country?

Mikami Yeah, just the two of us. Yamashita-san was the heretic child of the jazz world and I was the heretic child of the folk world. We were just forced out together. Then Maki Asagawa²¹ came along, and the three of us played a lot of big events. I'm annoyed that no one has continued doing the kind of music that we were making back then. There's been no one like us since then.

After that you moved labels. Were things still going smoothly?

Mikami Yeah, things went pretty smoothly around that time. There was still something left of the student movement, and when they went back home to the country during the holidays they would invite me to play. So it was pretty easy to get gigs.

You wrote a lot songs around that time, didn't you.

Mikami Yeah. Things were working out pretty good around '73.

Your hardcore fans' favorite album, "Kan", was released in 1975. You still play a lot of songs from that album live, so was it one that you were particularly proud of?

Mikami I had made four albums for URC and then I moved to Victor, so I was conscious that I could reach a wider audience. There were a lot of songs that departed from what my peers had been doing. I suppose that around that time I was thinking more in terms of being on a major label, aiming for hits if you like.

A lot of your songs from that period compare objects to people, don't they? For example, "Otobai no shitsuren"²² and "Mikami komuten ga aruku"²³. It sounds like you were concentrating your love onto objects.

Mikami I'm using objects as metaphors in those songs. I mean, all songs are about people, aren't they? Falling in love, splitting up...so I wanted to extend the lyrics into some other world. I think that was what I was aiming at.

There's a line in "Otobai no shitsuren" where you sing "There are a lot of songs about broken-hearted people, but no one writes about broken-hearted motorbikes". Was that an antithesis to the popularity of love songs?

Mikami There is that side to it. Recently there has been an gradual increase in the number of people who are using the voice as just another kind of musical instrument. Back then I wanted to see how far it was possible to take vocals, to sing about all human feelings. It's a funny way of putting it but I sort of wanted to lay down a challenge.

Your lyrics started to change from around that time too.

Mikami Yeah, I wanted to expand the framework of music. At that time I wanted to sing various things that no one had sung before.

After that, in 1977 you recorded a concert in Aomori and released it as "Yuyake no kioku kara"²⁴. Could you tell us about the venue for that concert—the D'Avignon Theatre?

Mikami In the spring of 1974 this guy called Ryosuke Maki built this theatre for plays, not for music. I helped him—banged in a few nails and so on. So I already had the studio album ("Kan") on Victor, but I wanted a live document as well, so I used the album as a base.

Was there any sense of Aomori being a sort of home-coming for you?

Mikami There's that as well, but when you record live then there is an atmosphere that you can catch, a scent. The scent of the north—that's what I wanted people to feel. The cover hints at that too, it's a "nebuta" picture²⁵.

Then in 1978 you released the acclaimed "Makeru toki mo aru daro"²⁶ album.

Mikami That came out on King, right? The reason I left Victor was because I didn't manage to sell as many records as I thought I could, and I knew I had talent. Around that time they were starting to classify stuff into "new music", and I was asked if I would become a producer. At that time Hisahiko Ita had become a producer and had given Pink Lady²⁷ a lot of hits, so the record company wanted me to do the same. One of the directors of Victor basically told me that I was going to be a producer and that I was going to develop new talent. It really pissed me off—I mean, I was only 28 or 29 and they had me as over the hill. I debuted in '71, kicked up a bit of a fuss and then moved to Victor where they made me sing popular songs. That was there intention from the start. I released that "Blue Flame" record and it didn't sell because it was a bit different. That was all they cared about it, it was just business. Then they tried to persuade me to become a producer, or an actor like Yusaku Matsuda²⁸ or Toru Murakawa . I took the attitude that I had been better than everyone at Nagatsukawa and that I was still developing in a positive direction. I didn't understand why, but I was so against their plans. It was no laughing matter, I had only been singing for seven or eight years, and they thought I was finished already. At any rate, I was in a surprisingly good situation. Most musicians never know what's going to happen tomorrow. I could have told them to make me a producer—you can't do that kind of thing anymore.

But you rejected their offers and here you are today. I think that's the way your fans wanted it to be.

Mikami All those offers were around 1977 or '78. It's very interesting if I think back on it now. I felt that from that time on the world started to lose its need for my songs. But it was preparing some other role for me. (laughs) I think that's the way it was. And in spite of all that, I wanted to make records and change record labels. They must have thought there would be no way I would turn down such a good offer. Victor wasn't that big a major at the time, but they were prepared to listen to me. I feel pretty bad about it now, after them spending so much money on me and everything.

There are probably songs that you wrote around that time where you concealed everything. Did you become distrustful of other people?

Mikami That came afterwards. Around '78 and '79 all the people around me gradually disappeared, like the tide going out. When I think about it now I understand why though, it was no good to just go on in the same direction. At that time I went back to the basics in a lot of areas, so people stopped coming to see me play.

Was that painful for you?

Mikami More than being painful, I just didn't know what to do—which was the best way to go. The only hope I had was to keep on singing, if I did that then things would eventually work themselves out. So I toured constantly, and sometimes there would only be one person who came to see me. Around that time TV games (Space Invaders) and so on got popular in the coffee houses, and while I was playing everyone would be bleeping away at these things. Then the owners started doing away with the stages altogether and turning their places into amusement arcades. Of course there were some owners who still wanted to keep the stages—they'd use them to store stuff on. (laughs) I was being treated like garbage, just some big piece of garbage. (laughs) I was singing in places like that, so it was just me with one guitar, and all around me there would be all this bleeping. (laughs) It was really bad. Then the next morning I would go off to play the next show and it would be just the same. I started to wonder why I had to keep on doing this, and when I think back now, that was a real do-or-die situation.

Where did the "There's times when you lose too" title come from?

Mikami That was when I was just coming out of that period. I couldn't say that I was totally winning, and it felt like I was still losing. My plans got a lot bigger during that period. I can say now that it was the time when I could see things the clearest.

Your lyrics from that period have a lot of literary elements. Were you reading a lot?

Mikami I was hardly reading at all then. When you are in that kind of world you don't have a lot of spare time, though I would read while I was moving from place to place. I would walk around with two guitars. When I think back now the music was very powerful—I was using an acoustic with heavy gauge strings and I would still break them. That's why I had to carry two of them. They're too painful to play now, but they still sold them back then. Do they still?

Only in the bigger shops. Even then there's no one who uses them any more. These days everyone uses light gauge.

Mikami Even the light ones are painful, aren't they?

Foreign light gauge is the same as Japanese medium. I use guild strings but even those are pretty painful.

Mikami So I'd have my two guitars, and a bag with one week's change of clothes. What must I have been like—walking through the snow, nowhere to stay so I'd crash at the houses of the owners who invited me. Their kids would be crying ... I'd like to make a film of it sometime. (laughs) It was really hard. Then I'd come home totally exhausted and there'd be a final demand for the rent and I wouldn't have paid the electric bill so there were no light. The water had been cut off. Of course a lot of musicians around the world go through a lot worse, but I think I've paid my dues too. Music is amazing in that respect. No matter how bad your situation is, no matter how unlucky you're being—you always have all you need, it's always the same. For example, if you are a novelist then if you don't have paper then you are fucked, but music isn't like that. At the time I really felt like I could do whatever I wanted, I could take my music wherever I wanted. Even if there is no one who will come to see you, and you have been forgotten, then that makes all the more free, doesn't it? The music is always going to be with you, and because there is nothing else you can choose whatever you want. In that respect it was free.

I hadn't heard anything about what happened to you in the late seventies so I'm very surprised by all of this.

Mikami I don't like to talk about it much, so only my close friends really know about that period.

In the eighties you moved again, this time to Toshiba EMI, and you started to appear on TV a lot more.

Mikami Around that time everyone started getting greedy for success, right? All the people I had known from before churned out a lot of hits. That was the peak of their success around that time. So they started wondering about what had happened to me, and King / Bellwood heard that I was down on my luck and approached me. They didn't have a lot of money, but they promised to do what they could, so I changed labels again. They released "There's times when you lose too". There's a lot of strings on that record. Too many names to mention but there were three or four members of the Boston and Berlin Philharmonic who appeared anonymously on that record.

There are hardly any of your own songs on that "Baby" record released by Toshiba EMI. Did you feel like singing other people's material?

Mikami Briefly, at that time I approached a lot of majors but they didn't want to have anything to do with me. (laughs) Then Toshiba is a very big famous company, and I reckon that they wanted me to have a hit record. I hadn't been too concerned when I was on Victor or King, but since it was Toshiba. They really tried hard. When I think about it now, the amount of people they called in to help, musicians offered their songs. It was like their last trump card.

Did you agree to all that?

Mikami I agreed at the time. After they had finished making my record, all those people left and started up their own label (Funhouse). They made my record, so my position in the industry was...it was like doing penance. They helped me out one time and then moved on to doing something very minor. They can relax and still sell records, but I think that they are going wrong—music isn't supposed to be like that.

You mean that you were used, in the best sense?

Mikami If I think about it now I suppose I was.

Toshiba is famous for putting out best-of compilations, and they released a best of Mikami Kan as well, didn't they?

Mikami When I think back now I am ashamed of the recording of that record. They would tell me how to sing, where to come in—I'm amazed I put up with it. (laughs) In the end the producer was showing me how to sing. (laughs) I can laugh about it now, but they took me along to see a voice coach—the kind of place where they take small kids. This guy would say "And this is how you sing . . . ". Then they took me along to this room with a metronome counting off the beat, and I didn't know what to do. (laughs) Like, get me the fuck out of here! Well it was a good experience—all that idol singers today learn to sing like that, from some pattern.

You've got a lot of interesting stories.

Mikami I had already quit by that time, but for some reason the head of Toshiba Records had taken an interest. He'd say, if we release that Mikami record the way it is the guy will become an even worse singer. He would order the guys in the studio to do all this stuff that was next to impossible. Everyone was always bitching about him. But there was a lot of pressure from above, and everyone was sensitive to it.

Was that why you quit?

Mikami There was nothing else I could do.

Did you play out a lot around then?

Mikami You can probably hear it in the records, but I knew some people from the Kansai Blues scene from a long time ago. I was playing out with them a lot, and I thought that maybe I was a bluesman as well. So I thought I'd better do it properly, shouting out "Get up!" and shit like that. (laughs) I tried to sing in that style but I didn't like it, and I ended up not going in that direction.

So in the end you came to realize that you were yourself?

Mikami Yeah, though there was something mysterious about even that—I thought that I couldn't just go on in the same way. People wouldn't really like it, though that's a strange way to put it. There was no way I would become a major star, and I thought that maybe there was something wrong with me myself. I keep on changing, I sing and then I change again. Up until now there has been something wrong with that constant changing.

From what I've heard so far, you sound a bit like this guy, Anbe Koshun, who I like.

Mikami Yeah. I've played together with him, and he's like me too. But I don't think I would like to be as big as he is. It's nothing to do with being minor or major being better though. I don't like the idea that music can only go so far, that there are things it can't say. I think that music can talk about everything there is in the world. Truly. Music isn't just something that can give you a bit of pleasure—you can turn everything on the planet into music. But if everyone became a musician, who would make the food? Essentially the world is vast, so when these classical musicians who deal with big themes like life and fate accuse us of being too limited, I think that they are mistaken.

Yeah. There shouldn't be any levels in music like that. Going back to what we said earlier, from about this time you started doing film and TV appearances at the same time as the music.

Mikami At the start, I thought that if I appeared on TV more people would come to see me play live. But it didn't work that way at all. It was a total failure. (laughs)

But you learnt a lot from it?

Mikami Definitely ! Up until that time I had done a lot of different things, but from that time onwards I began to choose stuff that would be of some benefit to me because work doesn't just materialize out of thin air. So I worked in TV and films, and I sought out things that were connected to music. There's even a relationship between music and slurping ramen, so there's not that difference between me as a reporter and me as a musician. I make sure that they don't tell me when I'm going to be on TV though. People will just start finding things they have said in my words. The directors and producers who use me all recognize me as a musician as well. They don't come to see me play live, but if we are filming together for three days or whatever they can sort of touch my musical soul anyway.

So from that time you were able to consolidate your unique position?

Mikami Bit by bit I changed my way of doing things. At any rate, I take care of my life separately, and then I've got to protect the music itself as well. I used to concentrate on just the music, but full frontal attacks don't seem to work that well in Japan.

Were you mostly playing in live houses?

Mikami Yeah. I started getting slightly larger audiences from around then. In Tokyo I played in Mandala²⁹ once a month for eighteen years—in the end that was the only place I could play.

What about outside of Tokyo?

Mikami In the seventies I was pretty much based in Kansai. I played around Kyushu and Okinawa too. In the eighties I played a lot in the north of Japan.

In 1987 you released the live album "Shokugyo", a mono recording from the jazz coffee shop Johnny in Rikuzentakada. How did you come to meet Terui-san, the owner?

Mikami I think I first met him in 1979. Aketagawa³⁰ asked me if I wouldn't play in Rikuzentakada, so I went and played for them. Terui-san is really interesting—he started off with this jazz coffee-shop³¹ , where there only ever about five customers. Then he changed it into a yakitori-ya³². (laughs) Aketagawa played him one of my records, but he really hated it. Said he never wanted to hear it again. It was the complete opposite of all the music he had been listening to, but even though he hated it it stuck in his memory. So he decided to ask me to play, with the intention of proving to himself that he hated me. But when I played, he realized that this is what music really is.

Why did you release that record in mono?

Mikami That time in 1979 was when my electricity and water were cut off, and I even thought that I was no good myself. But when I heard that performance I realized that it doesn't matter what kind of life a musician has, if he decides to perform well he will. My lifestyle wasn't as bad as some, but I was going crazy everyday. But when I listened to that tape I realized that I wasn't losing at all, that I hadn't lost any of my tension. So I released it for myself—just to say that you can't go on losing all the time. Releasing that record was like proving that musically at least I wasn't in the slightest bit knocked off course.

The cover is stunning too.

Mikami I just let Kuroda-san do whatever he wanted, and it was really good. I wonder how many copies of that record were sold? I have no idea.

Around the time you released that record your live performances began to get more complete as well.

Mikami From around 1989 I stopped worrying about other things and the music gradually got better. I became able to play the music I wanted to. Before that I had been running all over the place worrying about stuff, but I had already mostly worked it out.Yeah. Over the past two or three years I have worked on my music so that I won't lose out to anyone. Maybe you could say I have perfected my own style.

Then there was the release of the video "Jomon Songs"³³. Why did you use the word "Jomon"?

Mikami Because of the breadth of the music, and because I have the same approach to my music as the so-called shamans used to have. Because music used to be something so much huger than it is now.

That was the first time you had made anything for the screen?

Mikami On video, yeah. I made a forty-five minute thing for TV about twenty years ago. But there wasn't anything like video back then.

Your songs were matched up to images of the rising sun and the iron foundries at Kamaishi.

Mikami From about that time people became obliged to recognize my position. I was able to attain my own position, as a person, in the music.

And you knew that whatever happened from then on you would still be OK?

Mikami I suppose so. But you can never tell with music. Because I had been playing for twenty years there was just no way I could go back again.

Then there was a long period when you didn't release any records. Were you still writing a lot of songs?

Mikami I was always aware of the songs—so I suppose that means I was still writing them.

What kind of songs were they?

Mikami The ones I am singing now. I got the original ideas for the songs on the new album ten years ago. And there's still a lot of new ones to come. I don't write the idea down at the time, I save it up for the future. Ideas are still good for twenty years.

Next I want to ask you about that "Live in the first year of Heisei" album. How did you come to know Yoshizawa-san and Haino-san?

Mikami Yoshizawa used to play solo at Station70, so I knew him from that time. Station70 had been doing experimental stuff like that as well, so I was aware of his existence, and I really wondered if he was still playing. (laughs) He's very stubborn. So I knew Yoshizawa from all those years ago. Ikeezumi³⁴ introduced me Haino Keiji though. I had always been convinced that there had to be someone like me in Japan, someone who had just played by themselves for years. It would weird if there wasn't someone else like that. I had convinced myself of this, though I knew that maybe I was just a fucked-up example. It was like fix, there being someone else like me—when I met him I realized that I couldn't totally dismiss the Japanese music scene.

Ikeezumi-san was at the bottom of the plot to get us together here, and since he is with us now I'd like to ask what was he aiming at by bringing Mikami and Haino together?

Ikeezumi Haino has been in the scene on an ultra-underground level for over twenty years, and he is immensely charismatic. As far as rock is concerned I don't think there is anyone who can surpass him, in terms of the way he lives and the music as well. I had liked enka and pop from when I was a small kid at school, and all in all in Japanese folk there was no one better than Kan Mikami and Akira Kobayashi³⁵. I thought that if Mikami and Haino were to play together they could make something very interesting—though I was a bit worried. (laughs) So, about three years ago I took Haino along to see Mikami playing live at Mandala. When the gig was over Haino turned to me and said, "I didn't know there was anyone that amazing in Japan". And that's how it happened.

So you both wanted to play together?

Mikami The making of that two record set ("Live in the first year of Heisei") was like an affirmation that there was another level of existence in Japan, a level outside of the so-called major record labels. Just being able to make and release that kind of a record meant so much. Like there are strictly two kinds of music—good music and bad music. (laughs) It's always been the same for Japanese and for people in general, from the past there are two distinct levels or streams. In general, in the record industry in Japan today there is no real music—everything is based on the music of the (American) Army of Occupation. I want to say that outside of that there is real Japanese music within us, music that has continued from the distant past. So that record was like a big experiment, and in that respect it was very easy for me to do.

Like you were able to break through to something?

Mikami Yeah, I thought that it was a fuck of a record. You can't see it clearly now, but in ten years time I think that people will look back and be able to see that everything started from that record.

You recorded it live in Nagoya, right?

Mikami We didn't have any intention of turning it into a record, we were just touring together and things came together. The timing was right. We had played together two or three times and understood the extent of each other's power. We had come to understand where each of us had to stand—I think it was our best time as a trio. If we had gone on, things would probably have fallen apart. But all the same, I would really like for the three of us to play together one more time.If there were about ten people in Japan who could do that kind of thing, it would all get so interesting again. We could compare ourselves, but at the moment everyone is just focusing on the three of us. (laughs) Because we're all there is. And that gets boring, doesn't it? That isn't the way music should be—you've got to mix a whole of different things up together. There was a lot of meaning to dividing that record into two volumes.

It sounds like volume 1 is impact, and volume 2 is comprehension / tolerance.

Mikami Because we each had our separate themes on a high level, we were able to just charge off after each other—I don't think there has ever been anything like it. Usually it feels like just one person pulls everyone else after him. But when you want play music completely the way it should be played, then I think it naturally becomes like that. If you play it properly.

So on the flip-side, you're saying that people today aren't playing music as completely as they should?

Mikami If you ask me it's not music. Everything just sounds like a branch of science or electrician's henchmen. People are saying that music is a kind of liberal art, for fuck's sake. The thing that fucks me off the most is all these classical jerks trying to get into rock. These jerks think that they can play contemporary stuff just because they can stretch their fingers a bit further than everyone else, or they can hold a note longer. If you've made a mess of classical music then you're going to do the same to pop and rock and folk. These classical guys just think that they can turn their hands to anything.There's so many of them coming out now—and that shows how insipid our music has become. They're just taking the piss out of us. Once rock and folk were led by a bunch of hoodlums, but the ones who were out front had their limitations. Then these intellectuals came along, and they just played music in their spare time—and that's not the way it should be done. But it's really strange why the rock and folk guys didn't do anything about it. Why didn't they resist it?

I think that we need you' to be aware of that problem and be an antithesis to it.

Mikami Yeah. Music isn't something that you can dabble in. It doesn't matter if you haven't graduated from high-school, or that you can't read music. All they teach in school is that you've got to give something back to the establishment, right? It's the kind of education where the teacher just sells you his own sensibility, so you have no help in making yourself into an individual. Even if the hardware is complete, there's no human software installed, if you see what I mean. Just like a machine going round and round, or to put it another way, they have the necessary skills to play but they have nothing to actually say—there's no music there.

Thanks for your thoughts on that, but I'd like to go back to what we were talking about earlier. The cover of the "Live in the first year of Heisei" album is wonderful.

Mikami My son drew it. I happened to use it on my New Year's cards, and I sent one to Haino and he loved it. So we were able to decide on the cover just like that—usually it's a real pain. My message is that I want that kind of music to be the basis for three and four year old kids. I think that in twenty years time that this kind of music will be the basis. The other day my daughter was staring at the TV and I wondered what she was watching so intently. Turns out to be an all-Japan folk song competition. So you can talk about "world music" but my daughter listens to these traditional tunes and she hears them as something totally fresh, just the same way we used to listen to pop. Recently everyone picks up music from TV commercials, right? When you do that, you're no longer seeing or hearing it as music, it's become some kind of lifestyle sound. So my daughter was totally entranced by all these old guys just moaning away. My wife was worried that there might be something wrong about it, but for me it's just natural. I think it's good that traditional songs interest her so much.

Do your children listen to your songs?

Mikami Yeah, occasionally. My son really likes them, but my daughter always looks like she's about to burst into tears. She says that I should sing something happier—that my songs are too painful. If you treat music lightly it's going to have a real bad effect on the human race. It's a fascinating subject.

Then last year after a long break you released another studio album "Ore ga iru"³⁶. What meaning is there in the title?

Mikami Well, I took the title directly from that song by Nozawa. That was the first record I had released in ten years, and if I think about it, it's the first time that I've ever had the feeling of actually making a record. Before it was always because someone wanted me to put out a record, or because I had to, or because it was one of my tactics to become famous. But since "Boku ga iru" I have felt that I have got to make records with the realization of myself as a performer, an "expressionist". In general you don't think of it as something that you've got to do. Up until now it's always been more like something that I couldn't get out of.

So it wouldn't been wrong to say that this album is one where all your desires to sing and to create have finally been concentrated?

Mikami Yeah. It's not forced. My life and my making a record are the same. Because there was no sense of having to make it in a certain way, or having to try things out I think I was able to do a good job on it.

Yeah. Why did you decide to sing Nozawa-san's "Ore ga iru"?

Mikami That song was like a basic opportunity for me—I felt really worried. Like if I didn't do something drastic, then me and my music were going to diverge in a bad way. After you've been playing for a long time it no longer matters how people perceive your music, how they listen to it. Of course, there's the aspect where you allow people a certain amount of leeway and you won't allow anything beyond that, because then your music starts having a totally different and wrong meaning. One person makes some music, then another person interprets it up to a certain point, someone else takes the interpretation a bit further. If someone else understands more then they can interpret it even further. The piece of music is no longer anything to do with your world. So I felt impatient when I first heard that song—if I don't do something now then people are going to read too much into me and turn me into something else entirely. People started referring to you in reverential tones as a "folk legend", don't they? Especially young people. Because I have been playing for twenty years people want to keep me within that image. They start treating you like some natural memorial, or a Living National Treasure³⁷ or something. (laughs) It's not a title you give yourself, someone else starts trying to preserve you. And once that happens, then the music no longer matters. Before I put out "Ore ga iru" I was close to becoming like that. If I had put out folk genre record then things would just have expanded and after about fifty years people would be calling me "sensei". Watari (Takada) is half like that already. (laughs) He should just go on like that, they'll give him a medal for sure.

The First Order of Merit or something. (laughs)

Mikami I reckon that's what he's aiming for. (laughs)

Nozawa-san, who wrote the song "Ore ga iru" is here with us today, so I'd like to ask him how he came to write it?

Nozawa I'll have to admit that I wrote it back in 1986 just to amuse myself. I didn't have any money and I would just loaf around, making tapes with friends. In that song we thought it was pretty interesting that someone in our situation would scream out "I'm here", and we would joke around that it was my masterpiece. But after I had written it a lot of people told me they liked it, so I began to think maybe it wasn't that bad after all. Then I played to Kan-san, and he started to sing it live, then he made it into the album title. When an artist like Kan Mikami sings it, the song takes on a whole new meaning from when I wrote it—it becomes really radical, and begins to stand on its own.

Mikami That sense of isolation that Nozawa has just talked about—that's something we have all felt at one time. So the first time I played the song live the response was...the way people responded to it was like we had regressed back twenty years. People's responses were like the way a rabbit pricks up its ears when it hears a falcon, like "what was that??" So when I was making the record, I thought that a song like that could wake up fifty guys who had been asleep since the seventies. (laughs) Everyone probably thought that I wouldn't sing that kind of song any more, that I had already gone beyond that. If I had put up with things for just a little bit longer I was in danger of coming an institution—you just get eroded or ground down into something else. So I had to break free from that. I mean, people from my generation have now all reached middle management positions in companies. They have all stopped thinking about what they are doing, and they've lost their relationship with songs. I really wanted to communicate to them that they've got to keep on fighting.

Though the song overlaps with your life as well.

Mikami At that time Nozawa-san was an amateur and I was a pro, but the reason why I thought I could sing the song was because there are so many ways you can interpret it. That theme is clearly defined within the song. So I thought that it was the kind of song that could gradually grow and change with me. If you want to keep on singing a song it's got to be like that.

You sang it a lot before you recorded it, didn't you? In a different way than normal.

Mikami Yeah, for about six months before the record was released. The first time I sang it was at Jittoku in Kyoto, as the first song in the set, and I still remember how surprised people were. Everyone thought that I wouldn't write any more new songs, that I would just rely on my old material. So, because of that song people started coming to see me play live again. It was like everyone was tied to their chairs. (laughs) The atmosphere was really amazing. Yeah.

So everyone comes to see you thinking that they can slip back in time for a moment or two, but then they go home feeling like they've been smacked around the head with a hammer?

Mikami Yeah. While I was singing I was so tense that I couldn't even pause for an moment. In effect, the audience couldn't breathe out either. When the singer gasps out the words then everyone just goes with him—it's notan actual technique as such, that's just the way it happens. Everyone was just astonished and didn't respond at all. (laughs) And since they're like that I can't go on and sing the next song. It had been so long since I had had a response like that—it felt like the way it was twenty years ago when I first started out. That night was comparable to the time I played at the Nakatsugawa Festival. I was standing in front of those thirty thousand people and I knew that I had to consume them all—just because I had been sitting down and taking a lot of shit for the twenty years of my life. In that respect, performing is like an attack. If I had to take any more I'd fall out of the ring and lose, but I put my foot down at the last moment. I believe that the audience can hear the thrill of that.

"Ore ga iru" was pretty well-received critically, but out of all the good tracks on the album are there any that particularly stand out for you?

Mikami Yeah. That one, the one that goes "Hassen...".

"Ushi to Nagakami"³⁸ ?

Mikami Was that what I called that? (laughs) Yeah, the way I titled that was totally fucked. I used to title them in line with the lyrics, but then I started playing about with the titles as well. You play about with them too much and you start to forget their names. (laughs) But I really think that song is something special—the tension is so different. Though I sing it the same way as everything else. Up until this new record the song with the most tension was "Karasu"³⁹. It's strange, but even though it's the same kind of song as "Karasu", the songs on the new album have so much more tension. Though it doesn't mean that the old stuff was no good. It seems like the way I recorded and sang the songs on the new album is more effective. So I'm going to keep on singing that way and see what happens. I wasn't able to think this way in the past. Back then if I was tense when I wrote the song then I could put a lot of tension into it when I sang it, but people today are listening with their minds a lot more—they can enjoy stuff like that more. That's a unique difference between Japanese audiences and audiences abroad. Not just appreciating that the singer has made something, but interpreting that whatever way you want. I don't think there are many people like that abroad—maybe it's a special characteristic of the make-up of Japanese brains. There's times when the audience's tension is higher than the performer's. That's really unusual—for the audience to be more intense than the performer. I think that only happens in Japan⁴⁰.

The Telecaster sound on that album comes across really cleanly, doesn't it?

Mikami It kinda of felt like I had made pilgrimages to a lot of guitars and finally ended up with that one. Though I don't know if things will change in the future.

Might you go back to playing acoustic?

Mikami It's possible, depending on the time and place.

We're going back over ground you've already covered, but I'd like to ask you about playing live. Are you superstitious about playing live?

Mikami I'm not superstitious as such, but it's always a bit uncomfortable until I come to understand why I am singing in a certain place. From the time I get up until I actually get on stage. Well, I am able to think that it's my job and I should get on with it, but there are times when that doesn't work. I am able to stand up on stage once I have understood why I have to sing in this particular place at this particular time.

Are there times when you get up there without understanding why?

Mikami Most of the time I realize about a second after I've got up there. But there's about one time out of a hundred when I don't realize why, and that is immensely unsettling. Then there's times that I understand whilst I am singing, and then I can go for it. The worst is when the set goes on and I still don't understand why—there was one time when I only understood while I was playing the last song. That was when I was playing together with Keiji Haino, and he said that he realized at the same time as me. It was an immense feeling, but then we had to finish. (laughs) Most of the time I have to start again when I realize.

Do you decide what songs to play beforehand, or do you decide whilst you are playing?

Mikami A bit of both. In order to understand myself more, I think about the way things were in the same venue last time I played there, and I play the songs in the same sequence. I am aware of at what point I change strings. Maybe that's a kind of superstition, if things go wrong it's because of changing the string. I have a lot of jinxes like that.

This is something that I have wanted to ask you for a long time. Most of the time when you are playing you don't talk to the audience, but very occasionally you do. Do you have any special reason for that?

Mikami It just depends on how I feel at the time. For me, talking is like another kind of work. So if the live situation gets a bit better then I might talk a bit more. It's just another job for me, so that's why I don't do it so much.

Do you just want to devote yourself to the songs?

Mikami In my case, there is a huge difference between communicating through speech and communicating through song. The two never come together.

Just from watching your rehearsals it seems that you are very concerned with the way your guitar sounds.

Mikami Yeah, because I'm not playing any melody I'm very particular about the sound quality. That's why I change the strings every time I play.

Your playing seems to go beyond mere accompaniement. Have you been using a lot of different techniques recently?

Mikami Depending upon the guitar there are different demands.It's very strange, but each guitar is fated to be played in a certain way from the moment it is made—the guitar insists it be played that way. The guitar I am using now is sturdy and comfortably heavy. You've got to treat acoustics like they are middle-aged—just touch them slightly and you can damage them, use any more power and you will break them into pieces—in the worst cases the neck just snaps. That's happened to me before. It's very relaxing for me not to have to worry about that any more, to be sure that the thing isn't going to fall apart.

What's the make of that guitar you use now?

Mikami That? I'm really bad about stuff like that—all I know is that it's a Fender Telecaster. I stole it. No,actually I went to a friend's house and saw it sitting there, so I just stole it. (laughs) I was taking my shoes off and just slipped it under my coat.

The guitar was calling out to be played by the great Kan Mikami. (laughs)

Mikami Yeah. I have this Icelandic acoustic guitar, a George Roden. The first time I held it in my hands I knew that as far as acoustics went there would never be anything better for my songs than that one. When I stopped playing with that, I wondered what would be next—and in that respect, the very first guitar I owned is still the best. So from here on I have no idea what kind of electric I will move on to, or whether I will go back to an acoustic, or whether I will play the piano. (laughs)It all depends on the relationship. This whole relationship between people and instruments—sometimes I think that if I really understood that then there'd be no need for me to make music any more. Musicians never understand why they're attached to a particular instrument. I think about stuff, and there are times when I think that I understand this relationship between me and the guitar. But every four or five years it's like my natural rhythm and the guitar's natural rhythm become totally separate for about half a day. And when that happens it's terrifying...I can't put that feeling into words. The closest I can get is to say that it feels like I'd be better off dead. I think that we're not 100% conscious of everything that our ears take in. There are things that our ears pick up but our minds reject, our interpret a certain way. But those sounds remain in our memories. We've heard those sounds but never consciously experienced them. Your consciousness doesn't remember them but your body does—and that's why that phenomenon occurs. Guitars are really weird, and they give my life a hell of a lot of stress. Things would be so much easier if that disappeared.

I never realized that you'd thought so much about the guitar—it's interesting stuff.

Mikami It's just that no one ever talks about it. Everyone thinks about that kind of thing, except they think about it in terms of women or cars. Musicians think about this kind of stuff because they play guitar.

Listening to you talk today I've come to realize that people who are going to make music from now on are going to have to take a lot of this to heart.

Mikami If you realize that music is a dangerous thing then you'll keep on going deeper and deeper into it.

Recently there's been a mini folk boom—you see people sitting and singing in the street. What do you think about that?

Mikami If you're going to make music, stake your life on it—it's worth it. Making music is an intensely human act.

I'd like to ask you about words and music—for you which comes first?

Mikami The words. I come up with a title first. I never put a title to something that I've already written.

Are you always thinking about lyrics?

Mikami Basically you're always coming across words or phrases in your daily life that could become lyrics, aren't you? I always try to remember them. Then I come up with a point and try and match those words to it. I never know what people will make out of my lyrics, whether they can get any meaning from them. There are certain lyrics where I know that I am definitely the only person who's going to get them. That's that expression means. Nobody else has seen what I saw, there was no there at the same time to feel the same thing. Those are the experiences that I turn into lyrics. But because we're human we do the same things, so even these lyrics can communicate something to people. There's no performer who knows what will reach people, what will touch them. But they can feel that I have discovered something unique.

Does that make you feel good?

Mikami It feels good when I've succeeded in communicating something. But if you take step wrong then it just turns into self-conceit.

Like you're up there just giving pleasure to yourself. (laughs)

Mikami It's just like beating off, in one sense…But masturbation can be an amazing sexual act too.

Tell me about it. (laughs) But we're getting a bit off the track here. Are you the type of person who remembers words without having to write them down?

Mikami Words depend on how they're put together. There's a difference between words and poetry, and lyrics are different again. When you sing lyrics and put a melody to them then they become one with music. You can't say everything with the lyrics—they're only one third of the whole. The vocals are another third, then there's the guitar and melody. And those elements have all got to become one when you sing. Lyrics are totally different from contemporary poetry⁴¹.

Do you come up with the tune on the guitar?

Mikami Umm, yeah. I sort of strum and mumble along. Like putting ideas together.

Does it take you a long time to come up with a song?

Mikami The thing about writing songs is that there's no end to it. You can keep on tinkering with it for ever, so you've got to call a halt somewhere—though sometimes I want to add more stuff to it later. It's weird, but songs impose their own limits—they can only develop into one particular thing. (laughs) No matter how much I try to force them to be something else ... it's weird. Maybe there are people who can plug away at songs, but I tend to choose the path of least resistance.

Listening to "I'm the only one around"⁴² there seems to be a great variety of songs.

Mikami There's a link between all the songs on that record. But it's an industrial secret so I'm not going to tell you. (laughs) It's very difficult to put into words though.

Please try.

Mikami Umm. In general, I've got a pretty malicious streak deep down. In terms of music it tends to come out as an attack. There tend to be a lot of contrivances in my work—contrivances are malicious aren't they? Instead of just playing stuff straight ...

You seem to have a lot of songs in minor keys.

Mikami If I think about it, three or four chords are all you really need. If you try to do too much on the guitar, then your meaning fails to get across. It's a very fine line though. On the other hand, I think that my lyrics don't really need sounds to go with them. If I were to play with some famous guitarist, I think that our worlds would be too different.

Do you think a lot before you make any sounds?

Mikami Umm, yeah mostly.

A lot of people have praised your guitar playing on "I'm the only one around". Do you think of yourself as a guitarist, or as a singer?

Mikami It'd be a lot easier to be a guitarist. But then again, they have to struggle with a lot of different stuff. I suppose I'm both a guitarist and a singer.

What would you like people to describe you as?

Mikami That's up to them. People often ask me how they should introduce me though.

We're getting towards the end of the interview. What do you think was the best gig of your twenty year career⁴³ ?

Mikami The best? Hmm. The Nakatsukawa Folk Festival was great, so was the first time I met and played with Haino. And then there've been two or three times at Manda-la⁴⁴. There were others that were great, but in a different way.There's a different connection between me and the audience now. Now people really come to hear my music, but before there were a lot of different reasons why people would come to see me, like because it was fashionable. Some people maybe came to experience the atmosphere. There's not so much of that anymore. People come to hear me play—they're relying on their own judgment.

So the recent gigs are the best?

Mikami In one sense, the quality of the recent gigs has been good.

Out of all the songs you've written, which do you think are the best?

Mikami The best? I suppose it's just like Kurosawa always says—the next one. (laughs) The best is yet to come...How many would you like? One? Three?

I'll leave that up to you.

Mikami Maybe "Odo"⁴⁵ That's the only song that I've ever taken to perfection—the only one where I've thought that I don't need to sing this anymore. When I played it in the trio in Yokohama with Haino and Aketagawa, it was like I could see the song flying up to heaven. I knew that I'd never be able to sing it any better than that. It'd be fucked up to sing it any more. It was really like a kaleidoscope. People sing the same songs over and over in different places—and everyone wants to sing stuff that isn't going to take it out of you. But I was glad that I kept after that one song, that I kept on putting everything I had into it. It was an amazing experience. I realized that songs really do have a proper end, that they do live their lives and then die. Singers can't suddenly become popular after they're dead, can they? Once you die it's over—that's especially true for musicians.

I don't want you to die just yet though.

Mikami It's all in the sound. A musician dying is the saddest thing of all—because you'll never be able to hear that sound again...

I think it was in an interview in "Riburu" where you said that a musician can't just quit or die whenever he feels like it.

Mikami Yeah. It doesn't matter how decrepit, or how uncool you become, you've got to keep on living. I mean, musicians are representing people and summoning up sound, aren't they? That's why people let us make a living. We've got to be receivers—everything up until you can receive the music is just practice...there's so many Miles Davis records in the world but now he's dead they're all meaningless. It's like they've all vanished.

Let's end on a lighter note. What kind of a dad are you at home?

Mikami Dad? Make that "father"—let's have a bit of respect round here. (laughs) Umm, yeah, I'm going through a lot of pain bringing up these kids. It's hard. I want them to make something of their lives. Doesn't matter what. I don't want to think that I made a mistake in bringing them up. I want to think that I did the right thing in having them. Because it's an immense amount of stress.

Do you shout at them a lot?

Mikami Not recently, but I had to smack them a lot when they were younger. Though you can't do that with girls. Boys come back home with all this stress, give them a smack and they settle right down. If you think about it, kids today have so much data that they have to absorb all the time, don't they? There's probably a hundred times more than when I was a kid. All that data stresses them out, and they get all confused at the end.

You're just about to release your fourth CD for PSF, "Joyu"⁴⁶. Can you tell me a bit about it?

Mikami I've been really interested in the word "actress" recently. Actress and science, actress and time, actress and media, actress and the everyday, actress and discrimination, actress and incidents, actress and era. No matter what word you line it up with, the word "actress" always has this feeling of pride and self-possessed anarchy. For the new album I wanted to approach this concept from a surrealistic viewpoint. My conclusion was that the word "actress" is supported by shit-realism. What I think was my biggest discovery was that "actress" can only interact with true surrealism within this idea of shit-realism. In that sense I think we were lucky that Kei Nemoto⁴⁷ agreed to do the cover for us. The other thing I thought about was, people will here this album and hopefully they'll come to realize that the last one, "I'm the only one around", was super-realism.

And finally, is there anything that you'd like to say to the readers?

Mikami Yeah. I'd like you to remember that the easier it is to get into something, the more scary it actually is. In other words, any one can get into music, can't they? Even without trying it drifts into your ears. But within all that music, and this is really interesting, there are some things that you have to be very careful about listening to, about getting involved with. Compared to music, even the most difficult philosopher is simple, if you really get into it. Food's the same, isn't it? Out of all the stuff that you can eat, you can find so much terrifying stuff in just one egg, can't you? If you start thinking about that one egg in terms of the world economy, or whatever. Music is just the same as that. You can touch on it really easily, but there's so much truth in there. That's what I want to say.

I see. Thank you very much.

Mikami Kan Album Discography

Solo

on Columbia / URC

• Mikami Kan no sekai (The World of Kan Mikami) LP (Jpn, Columbia, 1971)
• 7 tracks on Nakatsugawa Folk Jamboree comp LP (Jpn, URC, 1971)
• Mikami Kan no hitorigoto (Kan Mikami talking to himself) LP (Jpn, Columbia, 1972)
• Hiraku yume nado aru ja nashi (No dreams come true) LP (Jpn, URC, 1972)
  CD reissue available (Jpn, URC, 1996)
• Concert live 1972 LP (Jpn, URC, 1972)
  limited CD reissue (Jpn, Chu Records, 1992)
• Sento kouta—Mikami Kan enka no sekai (The boatman's ballad—Mikami Kan's world of enka) LP (Jpn, Columbia, 1973)
  CD reissue available, 1998
• BANG! LP (Jpn, URC, 1974)
  CD reissue available (Jpn, URC 1996)
• Mikami Kan Best Album CD comp., containing tracks from Mikami Kan no sekai, Mikami Kan no hitorigoto, and Sento kouta—Mikami Kan enka no sekai (Jpn, Columbia, 1994)

on Victor

• Aoi honno (Blue Flame) LP (Jpn, Victor, 1975)
• Kan LP (Jpn, Victor, 1975)
• Yuyake no kioku kara—Aomori live(From memories of sunset—live in Aomori) LP (Jpn, Victor, 1977)
• Mikami Kan Best Selection CD comp., containing tracks from Aoi honno,
  Kan and Yuyake no kioku kara (Jpn, Victor, 1993)

on King/SMS

• Makeru toki mo aru daro (Sometimes you lose) LP (Jpn, Bellwood, 1978)
  CD reissue available (o/p?)
• Mikami Kan Live—Nakatsukawa Folk Jamboree 71 LP (Jpn, SMS, 1979)

on Express/Toshiba

• Baby LP (Jpn, Express, 1981)
  CD reissue available, 1999
• Kono record wo nusume (Steal this record!) LP (Jpn, Express, 1982)
  CD reissue available, 1999

independent/PSF

• Shokugyo (Work) mono LP (Jpn, Johnny's Disk, 1987)
• Ore ga iru (I'm the only one around) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1991)
• 19 years, 2 months, 16 days DLP (Jpn, Mikami Komuten, 1991) fan club only, edition of 100 numbered copies
• Joyu (Actress) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1992)
• U.S.E. CD (Jpn, PSF, 1993)
• Shichigatsu no eiketsu (July's Man of the Month) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1994)
• Go-en (live split with Kazuki Tomokawa) CD/video (Jpn, PSF, 1994)
• Jazz, sono hoka (Jazz, and other things) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1995)
• Sunayama 963 (Dune 963) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1996)
• Toge no shonin (Merchant on the pass) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1997)
• Ame Arashi Ame (Rain Storms Rain) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1998)
• Nanbushiki (Nanbu type) CD (Jpn, PSF, 1999)

Groups

with Keiji Haino & Motoharu Yoshizawa

• Live in the First Year of Heisei Vol.1 LP/CD (Jpn, PSF, 1990)
  first 500 of the LP version came with a one sided 7" containing an extra track
• Live in the First Year of Heisei Vol. 2 LP/CD (Jpn, PSF, 1990)

with Toshi Ishitsuka

• "Anata mo star ni nareru" on Waiting to be old comp. CD (NZ, Opprobrium, 1997)

Vajra (with Keiji Haino & Toshi Ishitsuka)

• Tsugaru CD (Jpn, PSF, 1995)
• Ozaki Palace CD single (Jpn, PSF, 1995)
• Ring CD (Jpn, PSF, 1996)
• track from Tsugaru on Cosmic Kurushi Monsters—Tokyo Invasion DCD comp. (UK, Virgin, 1996)
• "I love you, OK" on How to be big—play for E.Yazawa comp. CD (Jpn, Sony, 1997)
• Shichishiki CD (Jpn, PSF, 1998)
• Shomon CD (Jpn, PSF, 1999)

Notes

1.This interview originally appeared in Japanese in the first issue of "G-Modern", PSF's "Psychedelic, Avant-garde, underground magazine". The interview was conducted by Takuzo Nakashima, and translated by Alan Cummings.

2. Mikami was born in the forbidding far north of Japan. Aomori is the largest city in that part of the country.

3. The nearest town to Mikami's village. It comes up often in his early lyrics.

4. Mikami's home village.

5. Japanese schools and universities have a festival once a year where the students put on various kinds of performances and displays.

6. Radical dramatist and poet. Also from the north of Japan.

7. Famous artist/graphic designer/stage designer whose weird psychedelic ukiyo-e and 1920s nostalgia themes gave many of the 60s avant-garde theatre crew, including Terayama, a real distinctive look.

8. An area of Tokyo—hangout of the underground hipsters in the sixties and seventies. Even today parts of Shinjuku are somewhat less than salubrious.

9. Outside and to the south of Tokyo, near Kamakura.

10. Kansai refers to the west of Japan, the area around Osaka and Kyoto. The Tokyo area is referred to as Kanto.

11. Japan's Bob Dylan (maybe). Famous for dropping out of the music "biz" to go and grow cabbages.

12. Marui department store.

13. Legendary and now deceased free jazz alto saxophonist.

14. Novelist Yukio Mishima's private "army" who assisted in his famous suicide.

15. Japanese terrorist group who became involved in several "incidents" in the seventies. Several of its members are still on Japan's most-wanted list.

16. Traditional Japanese stringed instrument. The instrument of itinerant story tellers.

17. Radical form of dance, "invented" by the other avant-garde giant of the north, Tatsumi Hijikata.

18. Legendary Tokyo drinking area of alleyways,ramshackle bars and disreputable cabarets. Very sixties.

19. Enka is traditional Japanese song also associated with the bleak north. Sentimental and earthy, it has been compared to American C and W, but with more songs about fisherman than about truck drivers.

20. Famous free-jazz pianist.

21. Japan's most remarkable female jazz vocalist. Renowned for always wearing black, smoking a lot and releasing a ton of inspired dark records, some of which have been re-issued on CD.

22. "The broken-hearted motorbike".

23. "The Mikami Engineering Works are walking".

24. "From memories of a red sunset".

25. Aomori festival, where pictures of samurai heroes, folklore monsters etc are painted on huge paper lanterns and carried around the town.

26. "There's times when you lose too".

27. Famous kitsch female idol band of the late seventies.

28. Cool actor of yakuza roles, perhaps best known in the West for his portrayal of the psychopathic gangster in Ridley Scott's "Black Rain". He died of cancer shortly after completing the film.

29. Famous live house in Kichijoji. Home to many folk singers, and other alternative acts.

30. Jazz pianist and owner of the legendary Aketa's Place basement jazz-dive in Nishi-Ogikubo, where Mikami still plays regularly once a month in a duo with Vajra / Cinorama percussionist Toshi Ishitsuka.

31. Jazz coffee-shops were basically hangouts for the avant-garde community in the seventies—as the name suggests the shop had a large stock of jazz records that you could request. Some of them also put on gigs by Japan's minuscule free-jazz community. There were (and are) rock and classical coffee-shops as well.

32. Shack selling grilled chicken on skewers.

33. Jomon refers to the earliest period of Japanese pre-history.

34. Hideo Ikeezumi—PSF / Modern Music founder and boss. It's mainly due to his musical good taste that the world now knows of Keiji Haino, High Rise, Ghost, Kaoru Abe, Kan Mikami etc etc.

35. Big mainstream male enka star.

36. "I'm the only one around" on PSF.

37. Japan has a system whereby each year it designates a certain number of people working in the area of traditional arts and crafts (traditional musicians, actors, potters, weavers etc) as Living National Treasure. The title carries a prize and a stipend each year until that person dies—the title itself also creates a market for that person's works. The recipients are usually in their sixties or seventies, having been practicing their art since their youth.

38. "Cows and long hair".

39. "Crow". A song from Mikami's first album.

40. Here Mikami is espousing the view, popular among many pseudo-science writers and fanatical right-wingers, that Japanese body-chemistry is somehow different from everyone elses'. This reasoning pops up a lot—especially in the popular belief that Japanese are missing some enzyme in their stomachs which means that they get drunk very quickly.

41. Mikami also writes, and has published volumes of modern poetry.

42. Mikami's first album for PSF. Japanese title "Ore ga iru".

43. At the time this interview was recorded. Last year (1995) Mikami celebrated 25 years as a professional musician with the release of "Jazz, and other things" on PSF.

44. Manda-la 2—legendary underground (in both senses of the word) music venue ("live house" in Japanese) in Tokyo's Kichijoji. Recently home to some astonishing performances by Mikami, Haino and Toshi Ishitsuka's amazing new unit, Vajra.

45. Particularly grim and death-soaked song from Mikami's first album.

46. "Actress".

47. Cult cartoonist and illustrator, who designed the cover of "Joyu".