Whatever your preference - the dark complex spaces of Fushitsusha or Kosokuya, the speaker-popping intensity of High Rise, the limpid folk forms of Ghost or Ché-Shizu or the corrosive electronic noise of Masonna and Merzbow - the sounds of the Japanese psychedelic underground have played a key part in recent avant-rock. Defined as much by what they had in common as by what separated them, these artists and their contemporaries share at least a common concern with space. This ranges from the extremes of the annulment of space via sonic density to the creation of new aural spaces from a combination of existing sounds. It's this concern with space along with an interest in improvised or non-composed forms of musical expression that seems to lie at the heart of Japanese psychedelicism.
While psychedelic music in the West was initially defined through association with drugs and altered states of consciousness things are a little different in Japan. Many Japanese musicians producing psychedelic music aim to produce music that will have a profound effect on the listener but they view the music in itself as being powerful enough to achieve this. Some of the most prominent of the musicians are resolutely anti-drugs - Kosugi Takehisa, Haino Keiji, Nanjo Asahito - are all on record with their anti-drug views. For the majority at least it is not an issue that comes up when discussing their music While a few groups make explicit reference to drug culture in their songs or publicity in many cases this seems a calculated image. High Rise is a classic case in point with the band's original title and lyrics chosen as an anti-drugs statement: "The concept was to save the junkies...(the lyrics to our early albums) just say that if you want to take drugs, you're going to have to be prepared to die." (Nanjo Asahito, Opprobrium Issue 3, November 1996). Given the stringent anti-drug laws in Japan and harsh penalties meted out to offenders these attitudes are hardly surprising.
So where did it all begin? The first recorded documentation of psychedelic music in Japan is from the late sixties when various Group Sounds units canny enough to get in on the new sounds reverberating out of the West started copying US psychedelic bands. Names worth noting here include the Dynamites, the Golden Cups, and the Mops. The Jacks followed shortly after with two moody, emotionally intense singles "Karappo No Sekai" (Vacant World) and "Marianne", songs which still sound contemporary today and are probably the best contenders for the first bona fide Japanese psychedelic release. But meanwhile much heavier events were going down throughout the country. This was a time when all sorts of changes were taking place in Japanese society. Economic growth was having an effect allowing freedom and new opportunities as people flocked from rural areas to the major urban zones in search of work or education. There was a growing radicalism amongst many sectors of society, most obvious in the occupation of universities by radical students in protest of the renewal of the US-Japan Joint Securities treaty. People were also demonstrating against the U.S. presence in Okinawa and the Japanese government's position on Vietnam with confrontations between protestors and riot police a common occurrence. One form of this unrest and activism was a blossoming of new forms of expression and art, literature, dance, theatre and music. In the case of music the first major signs of protest took place in the folk scene but gradually spread into the rock world. While the GS bands weren't reacting more underground acts like the ultimate seminal Japanese psychedelic group Les Rallizes Denudes were. Rallizes formed in Kyoto during the student upheavals of the late sixties and shortly into their career became involved with the avant-garde theatre troupe Gendai Gekijo, a short-lived association due to Rallizes' insistence on alienating extremism in their live performances. Successful or not this association with theatrical groups is a common trend throughout the Japanese psychedelic scene right from the Jacks onwards, reflecting the historical relationship of theatre and music in Japan whereby narrative in the form of musical accompaniment is as important as what happens on stage. The fullest realisation of this was in the seventies with JA Seazer's prog-psych arrangements for Terayama Shuji's Tenjo Sajiki theatre company.
Around the time Rallizes were formulating their heavy, dark music Haino Keiji was forming his Albert Ayler-influenced outfit Lost Aaraaff, which lasted from 1970 through the first few years of the seventies, the first group involving this prolific and important member of the Japanese psychedelic world. And while Rallizes where showing their political side with their appearance at the 1969 Barricades A Go-Go concert at Kyoto University and involvement of one of the band in the 1970 Yodo-Go hijacking, Lost Aaraaff took part in the 1971 Genyasai festival held near the building site of the new international airport in Narita protesting against the government's appropriation of land from local farmers. The point being that these groups formed in revolutionary times and contributed to revolutionary events, something which surely had a large influence on the particular philosophies underlying their music and mode of performance. While there was some early contact between the two mainly in the form of concerts they rapidly went in different directions with Haino becoming heavily involved in the Tokyo psychedelic scene and Rallizes forging a path of isolation and mystery.
Although both the Rallizes and Haino are acknowledged influences on the later Japanese psychedelic scene the GS bands' efforts at psychedelia have had little effect on later practitioners. Haino is quite scathing in his rejection of the GS bands and in a rather telling contribution to Studio Voice Modern Music/PSF label boss Ikeezumi Hideo states that the sixties groups weren't true psychedelia. He goes on to list what he regards as real Japanese psychedelia, a list including Haino and Fushitsusha; White Heaven and Ishihara Yu; High Rise; Maher Shalal Hash Baz/Kudo Tori and Reiko; Gaseneta; Musica Transonic; Kosokuya and Urabe Masayoshi; Takayanagi Masayuki...basically a pretty convincing list and predominately of releases from the 1990s.
Which isn't to say things weren't happening earlier. There were some important releases from the 1970s including Sunrise from the West Sea Live from Stomu Yamash'ta and the Horizon, the Taj Mahal Travellers' 1972 and 1974 LPs and The East Bionic Symphonia's 1976 live recording. Rallizes, Taj Mahal Travellers, Acid Seven and Minami Masato all appeared on the 1973 Oz Days compilation while the same year saw the first release from Magical Power Mako, a combination of traditional Japanese folk forms with Faust-inspired ideas. Haino made an appearance on one track here and was active for at least some of the decade - witness Milky Way a 1973 recording released years later. Rallizes too were active throughout the seventies as documented on their CD releases and the Ethan Mousike video. Following a western-inspired psych-prog-blues path were groups like Love Live Life + 1 whose sole 1971 album Love Will Make a Better You is widely regarded as a classic of seventies Japanese psychedelia. Other groups in this scene included Food Brain, Speed Glue and Shinki and the Flower Travellin' Band all who have interesting period-inspired releases available but none of whom left any particularly strong mark on later psychedelic practitioners. Later in the decade Gaseneta and Kadotani Michio were producing inspired psych-punk as documented on their respective PSF releases, both part of the collective music scene based around the Minor live space which included Haino, Kudo Tori, Shiraishi Tamio, Nanjo and Narita from High Rise/Musica Transonic/Mainliner etc, long-running psychedelic band Kosokuya, free jazz bassist Yoshizawa Motoharu, Mukai Chie of the dream-pop psych group Ché-Shizu and more.
As we shall see the Minor crowd have continued to play an important part in Japanese psychedelia, keeping whatever scene there was going and influencing other bands that came along. At the same time Western music was having its effect or had an effect on various performers. The Doors, Syd Barrett, Red Crayola are all groups who are often referred to as formative especially by Haino and Kudo; Rallizes owe a debt to the Velvet Underground; Blue Cheer have been mentioned many times in relation to Haino and the High Rise crew amongst others. White Heaven show a definite West Coast influence in their blazing guitar sound, meanwhile Marble Sheep were deeply indebted to Amon Duul and other Krautrock acts - at least until the Grateful Dead got in the way. Krautrock also had a big effect on Ghost. Overhang Party are obviously going to draw comparisons with the Velvet Underground while Gong and Hawkwind have had their influences on Kawabata Makoto/Acid Mothers Temple and the list goes on.
Rock played its part, but perhaps the major influence here was that of free jazz and improvised music. This seems to have been a remarkably pervasive force behind much of what is definable as psychedelic music in Japan today and its influence is certainly linked to the "Jazzu Kissa". These were coffee shops where for the price of a cup of coffee you could pass hours sitting and listening to all sorts of jazz. Otomo Yoshihide refers to the jazzu kissa as "rich with the youth subculture of the day. Avant-garde jazz, manga, music and culture magazines, notebooks filled with the opinions of young leftists, concerts every one or two months, and 8 millimetre film shows...(for those in the provinces) the jazz kissa opened a window into the cultural scene in Tokyo". (Leaving the Jazz Cafe: A Personal View of Japanese Improvised Music in the 1970s, Resonance, Vol. 4 #2) Importantly they were also venues for the discovery of the music of Japanese free improvisers like Abe Kaoru and Takayanagi Masayuki both of whom are acknowledged as influential on the later psychedelic performers.
Whether or not they were hanging out in coffee shops almost all of the main players in the Japanese psychedelic scene attest to the formative role played by their exposure to improvised music, an experience which instilled in them a willingness to experiment with improvisation and collective music making. Of major importance here is the previously mentioned Minor, a coffee shop ran by Sato Takafumi. In the evenings Minor served as a live venue for a group of young musicians drawn there through their shared interests in new forms of musical expression nurtured by exposure to the above-mentioned Western groups as well as an interest in jazz and improvised forms of music. About the only surviving document from that scene is the Aiyoku Jinmin Juji Gekijo LP on Pinakotheca, a record of a number of concerts at Minor organised by Shiraishi Tamio where various performers would collaborate with one another. But perhaps the major realisation of the Minor scene is in the bands continuing today. Through a shared interest in free improvisation and the development of their music, various performers worked together in different combinations, the varied groupings reflecting different interests but each in their own way influencing the sounds and philosophies of the musicians.
Talking about improvisation invariably leads to Kosugi Takehisa, one of the founders of Group Ongaku the first free improvisation unit in Japan (1958-1962) and co-founder of the collective free improvisation intermedia outfit Taj Mahal Travellers. While much of the music Kosugi has been involved with has all the hallmarks of psychedelicism - witness the pan-Asiatic themes and heavy electronic processing of the Taj Mahal Travellers or the deep drones of his solo Catch Wave LP - Kosugi himself denies his music is psychedelic. In his assessment psychedelic involves illusions or psychological effects, something he does not think he is creating. Whatever his opinion he has definitely been influential on a number of Japanese performers. One example is through the formation of East Bionic Symphonia, a group formed by his students who followed Kosugi's ideas of the rejection of standard Western musical forms in favour of collective improvisation. East Bionic Symphonia included in its ranks Imai Kazu, Mukai Chie and Ozawa Yasushi, all performers who have gone on to help define Japanese psychedelicism.
Given the small size of the whole Japanese psychedelic scene it's possible to identify other individuals who have played a major part in defining Japanese psychedelia. Obviously there's Haino, who through his extensive live performances and to lesser extent recordings over the last thirty years has played with or touched on, in some way, virtually everyone involved in this particular world. Another crucial figure who is credited with helping develop this whole scene is Ikeezumi Hideo, founder of the PSF label and owner of the Modern Music shop: "PSF almost accidentally provided the links between jazz and rock or between folk and rock to develop. But as I see it, the links had already developed in the live house scene, where all these people had been playing in the same places for years. Ikeezumi would go and see everything, so he introducedÖpeople from different genres that might otherwise not have met. Then he introduced the rock people to the jazz people. He became the link for these people..." (Nanjo Asahito, Opprobrium Issue 3, November 1996)
The PSF label and the members of the Minor scene have virtually defined psychedelic music in the nineties. Nanjo Asahito set up his own cd-r/cassette label La Musica to make available dozens of archival recordings from the 80s and 90s. While quality control is an issue here the best of the material - recordings from Kyoaku no Intention, Kosokuya, Ohkami no Jikan, Toho Sara, various of Kudo Tori's projects - were welcome additions to the collections of many psychedelic fans. Kawabata Makoto started his private label to document his various projects on limited edition cd-rs, with the best of the releases seeing a fusing of his interests in Asian spiritual and musical cultures. Then of course there was the flood of Haino and Fushitsusha recordings which for many were the way into the world of Japanese psychedelia.
Of course these weren't the only happenings in the nineties. Developing out of the Tokyo Electronica/Techno scene came such artists as Nagata Kazunao, Dub Sonic, Nerve Net Noise, Hado-Ho - performers influenced by an earlier generation of Japanese noise musicians as much as by old school electronics pioneers. The Sonic Plate, Meme and Zero Gravity labels were the main source for a lot of this new electronic psychedelia though cd-rs played their part here too. From the noise scene the Boredoms took their cues from Techno and Krautrock and recreated themselves as a viable space-rock/trance outfit, as did bassist Hiro's one-time heavy psych unit Hanadensha. But most of the noise groups continued producing their extreme versions of psychedelia regardless of new fashions or trends - even if Akita Masami of Merzbow did shift from analogue synthesisers to a Powerbook G3. But even with the nineties' at-times seemingly constant flow of remarkable recorded works from various psych practitioners, it was on the live front where these artists best defined and recreated their space, as has been the tradition for so many years.