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Kan Mikami

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.


the rest is on here: http://noise.as/mikami