Japan, Sound & Vision

My Voyage of Imagination to the Japan of Screen Dreams

The reasons I first came to Substack are Frame Rated, a film and television review journal which I contribute to, and for the always entertaining and reliably informative Japan Uncovered - this article about how I came to discover and deeply appreciate the audio-visual culture of Japan grew from a conversation with that publication’s editor, Yuri Minamide, who kindly added an informative post-script…

album cover with illustration by Ray Cruz *

For a long time, my portal into the culture of Japan has been glimpses of its media – mainly music and cinema. Sound and vision. The first Japanese music I recall being enchanted by was A Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky, the 1969 album of shakuhachi music by Gorō Yamaguchi (山口 五郎). This was probably the first time I came across the concept of 間 (Ma) in the stillness between notes. I was young and impressionable when my older brother played me the LP he’d borrowed from his school record library. I think it was 1977, when the other track on the record, Depicting the Cranes in their Nest, was selected for inclusion on the golden disc sent out into the depths of space on NASA’s Voyager space explorer. The idea of this haunting, meditative music being preserved for eternity, adrift in the vast silence of space captured my imagination and instilled a lifelong fascination with the culture of Japan and the infinite mysteries of the cosmos.

woodblock prints by Masumi Ishikawa (2018) for the Ukiyo-e Project depicting David Bowie in place of the mythical Takezawa Toji, who could summon dragons and yōkai with magic spinning tops, and Aladdin Sane in place of the character of the Oni Kidômaruin both referencing prints by Edo era artist, Utagawa Kuniyoshi [view image source at Open Culture] *