interview Otomo Yoshihide Post-March 11, 2011 Musical Explorations Showing “The Thing that Isn’t That” (7/7)
interview and organized by Ito Junnosuke
published in Beyond Boundaries: Comparative Civilizations Now 23 (2023)
translated by Suzuki Yoshiyuki and Cathy Fishman(Futarri)
An equivocal person
Q: We talked about hokori, which in English is “pride.” We often hear “pride” in the context of LGBTQ+ parades, for instance, or civil rights movements. I think in places where discrimination is occurring, when residents and other people involved feel they’re being discriminated against, maybe that’s when the issue of pride comes up.
Otomo: If I’m asked about pride in that much detail, I can’t give a very good answer, but I think that’s basically right. I don’t know whether Fukushima people are being discriminated against or not, but I think the point is that they feel they are. In that situation, I really don’t think it would be effective to say, OK, stop discriminating. The reason is that there isn’t any open discrimination at all. It’s simply a systemic problem that’s been going on for a long time. For instance, the fact that someone from the Tohoku region can’t get along in Tokyo
if they don’t get rid of their accent—it’s an issue that’s probably existed since the end of the Edo Era.
Another example—and this isn’t just a Fukushima problem, it’s true of all regional areas—people who get really good grades in school go to university in Tokyo or Kyoto, then stay there and never go back home. This pattern has been repeating itself for a very long time. Over 100 years. So why is that? I did that,
too—even though I wasn’t such a high achiever, I went to Tokyo and stayed. Of course, one factor is that there’s no work [in small cities and towns]. So that disparity, you could call it, has perpetuated itself. The issue of regional areas and central areas. And while I was contributing to that myself, the disaster happened. So when I do these activities [in Fukushima], the fact that I’m complicit in that problem always arises.
Having said that, it’s been ten years since I made the choice to do something anyway. I’m not just saying this to sound good. So when people use pretty words like “bonds,” inwardly I think, oh, fuck. You know the NHK song “Hana wa Saku” (Flowers Will Bloom), right? I really wanted to take an approach that wasn’t like that. But [my approach] hasn’t turned out to be something really strong. I mean, it’s weak.
Q: I also wrote about “Hana wa Saku” in my thesis. The lyrics don’t include any imagery about the disaster, and I think there might be an element of covering up or making people forget in the fact that NHK, a very public media outlet, disseminated this song and the phrase “the power of music” in a set as a
“big story,” so to speak.
Otomo: But actually, I was going to the disaster area often then, and when people gathered at various assemblies, they almost always sang that song at the end. Some people cried as they sang. I mean, I can’t deny that. People would say “Otomo-san, will you sing with us?” and I’d say “I’m a musician, but I’m a bad singer” and always get out of it. The fact that people think everyone will be happy if they just sing that song—I’m really uncomfortable with that. It isn’t that the song is bad or good. I just can’t stand that kind of thing, personally. I’m not saying I dislike the people who wrote that song, although I dislike the way it’s used. But it would be boorish to say that. And I can’t say it in front of the
elderly ladies who cry when it’s sung, or the people who are happy to feel a sense of bonding with others. Since I can’t say it, I sort of hide my feelings and go to the toilet or something.
So with various things that have happened since the earthquake—before that I was always pretty clear about what I liked and didn’t like, and I never had any problem being a difficult artist and saying I’d do something or not do something, but since I’ve been going to the areas affected by the disaster, I’ve come to think that even I’ve become a really equivocal person.
Q: But it’s important to be kind of equivocal or hesitant.
Otomo: For young people I think it’s fine to be straightforward. I think [being hesitant] is something that comes with age. I’m ambiguous. (laughs) I think, well, that’s the way things go. But there are some things I never want to let go of. I’m trying to at least do those things. But now I really understand something. Once you say you don’t like the power of music, you inevitably end up going in the direction of having no power. But there are always a certain number of
people who can’t enter the huge group current called “bonds.” If we lived in a world where there weren’t going to be places for those people anymore, that would be terrible. I think I’m at least showing a survival method for things that aren’t like that.
October 8, 2021
Recorded at Lloyd Hall, Rikkyo University Ikebukuro Campus
Notes
1. Otomo Yoshihide, “Listening Point Ground Zero – Train Your Ears!”
STUDIO VOICE, INFAS Publications, Inc., July 2001 issue, Vol. 307.
2. A music project with over 50 members including people with intellectual
disabilities, improvisational musicians, music therapists and others. The project
was launched with a base in Kobe in 2005 by Rii Numata (who was then a
graduate student) and others.
3. A music improvisation project made up of children attending children’s
centers and elementary schools in Nishinari, Osaka. Established in 2012 as part
of the Breaker Project, a cultural program carried out by the city of Osaka.
4. Otomo Yoshihide, Music They Don’t Teach You in School, Iwanami Shoten,
2014.
5. Narushi Hosoda, “Interview: Otomo Yoshihide – Music going back and forth
between songs and noise on a path in the middle of human history,” Narushi
Hosoda (editor and contributor), AA – Albert Ayler 50 Years Later, companysha
ltd., 2021
6. Group improvisation performance at Festival FUKUSHIMA!, August 15,
2011. (Click link to view.) “Orchestra FUKUSHIMA! LIVE at Festival
FUKUSHIMA! Synchronized Worldwide Events,” YouTube, updated October
21, 2021 (https://youtu.be/k8zkdLKxF5M, viewed November 21, 2022).
7. “Classical Concert Hall – Otomo Yoshihide presents songs by Toru
Takemitsu,” NHK, broadcast August 16, 2021.
8. “Otomo Yoshihide JAMJAM Radio,” KBS Kyoto Radio, broadcast October
2, 2021.
9. Otomo Yoshihide, “The Role of Culture: After the Earthquake and Man-made
Disasters in Fukushima,” Otomo Yoshihide, Naohiro Ukawa, Michiro Endo,
Shinzo Kimura, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Hiroshi Tanji, Chieko Tanji, Kodai Tanji,
Shoichiro Mori, Ryoichi Wago, Chronicle Fukushima, p. 27, Seidosha, 2011.
10. Ryoichi Wago, Poetry Collection, Part 2, Shinchosha, 2018.
Beyond Boundaries: Comparative Civilizations Now 23 (Feb. 2023)
Copyright © The Comparative Civilizations Society of Rikkyo University
