The first highlight? An abomination. Tearing up the town on a Monday night! I didn't do a single scrap of homework during the weekend, and there I was, out 'til midnight. Can you believe that alcohol wasn't involved? The only intoxicant was the presence of our charming new Japanese friend: Yasumori. My roomie and I met Yasumori and his friend Kenji about a week ago, on a Friday night in Shibuya. They were sitting next to Hachiko, smoking and looking bored (but attractive) so we approached them. I opened the conversation with a brilliant pick-up: "Do you like art?" (I know, I know, but I was put on the spot, alright?). Somehow that didn't flounder in awkwardness so we ended up with phone numbers. After a week of texting and failure to make a Saturday night Karaoke date, I invited Yasumori out for Monday night coffee.
A hot cocoa, a little conversation practice---innocent enough for a Monday, right? It could almost be considered homework. However, despite the fact that the conversation was almost entirely in Japanese, the evening somehow spun out of control, into an orgy of fun that included screaming Nirvana lyrics in unison, crooning Beatles ballads, stumbling through a Gaga remix... no wait, I know exactly what happened to my Monday night: ... karaoke!
To our credit we did do about 2 hours of straight up cocoa and conversation---almost entirely in Japanese, and surprisingly fluid. But then we really weren't ready to go home yet, and the karaoke place was right there... And I had never been before! So, it was an important... cultural... experience.
It was a lot like a bowling alley, actually. Everything was made of formica and smelled like stale cigarettes and fried food. It wasn't that gross though---nearly everything's a little cleaner, maybe a little less smelly here in Japan. There was just enough grime to make it nostalgic. Anyway, the complimentary fountain drinks were very bowlingalleyesque. Except somehow classier... So we walked down a narrow hallway---like a cheap motel-- and entered this dark little room that was dominated by a giant tv. And then we belted like broadway. I think I rocked my solo of Sympathy for the Devil, but my roommie and I crashed and burned with our foolish attempt at Blackbird... *shudder.* Yasumori is an A Capella singer, so his solos were really the main attraction. Although, finding out that he knew Smells Like Teen Spirit--just plain wonderful.
So then I could make up my homework between classes on Tuesday afternoon, right? That is, unless I decided to hike across 'the rainbow bridge' instead, once again in the company of a charming new male acquaintance. This time I had no pretenses of productivity: the conversation was entirely in English, with another native English speaker. However, Alan's an art major, so we were able to talk about all sorts of art history things. Great company, amazing vistas. All-in-all I've had worse afternoon excursions.
The art history chatting has been good lately. I spent over an hour yesterday chatting with my (equally endearing) Contemporary Art professor about Yukio Mishima and the aesthetics of nationalism. However, I haven't been back to the Tokyo National Museum yet... but then again, we're going to a contemporary exhibition this Sunday.
As if my day couldn't get better, I saw my first live biwa performance tonight. It was incredible. Sakurai Akiko, a local biwa master, came into our class and performed two iconic heikyoku (songs of the Heike) for us. One of them was the famous opening lines of the epic: "The sound of the gion shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things..." And the other was the moving climax, in which the child emperor Antoku dies in his grandmother's arms.
It was incredible--a totally different experience in person. Ever since I first heard it, I've loved the haunting, dolorous sound of the satsuma biwa. I'm not sure how to describe it. It is shadows and cobwebs and a cold wind, rendered in sound... It is sparse and astringent, a snapping and twanging accompaniment to a voice that at times growls, at times wails... but then there's so much sweetness and nuance in certain notes, such a range of sounds and textures. But the vocals are really the impetus behind biwa--even more varied and complex than the guitar. It was so moving--it was as though the player was weeping for the souls of the dead as she told their stories. There was a wonderful pathos in her singing--each phrase seems too sonorous and nuanced to be a cry, and yet too potent to be 'song,' as we understand it stateside.
The best part was being able to sit four feet away from the performer and observe the precision and elegance of her technique. She also gave a short lecture about different techniques and illustrated some of the brilliant ways biwa players manipulate the strings to get such evocative sounds.
I guess I could try to condense the biwa approach to storytelling: the voice conveys the emotion while the words tell the story, and the string accompaniment illustrates the story. The performer sings a brief passage, then plays a brief passage of biwa. The biwa playing sounds like whatever the performer just described---a wonderful confluence of onomatopoeia, mood, and rhythm that evokes the scene itself.
Ah, an illustration: youtube has an excerpt from the Kon Ichikawa film Kwaidan, which has a performance of that exact passage set to a stylized reenactment-
And another clip-- I think it gives a better sense of the variety of sounds a biwa player might employ, and what it actually looks like.
Fortunately for me, Sakuraisan will play recitals in Ueno Park 3 saturdays this month--free recitals, part of the ume blossom celebration. I cannot wait to participate in my first flower-viewing festival, and to hear her play again.
No comments:
Post a Comment