Kyoto and Osaka are close enough that they can legitimately be considered part of the same basic urban area, but Kyoto nevertheless has a cultural reputation and legacy quite distinct from Osaka in a way that a similar sized city like Kobe doesn’t – or at least not as strongly.
The route I took between the cities emphasised this distinction by avoiding main roads and instead following the Yodo River through a trail of tagged and numbered elderly hikers, past hundreds of families and students having barbecues, through individual daytrippers living out an idyll so surreal that there was actually a girl in a wide-brimmed straw hat and billowy dress chasing butterflies with a net. Adding to the air of aromatic unreality were the frequent signs urging people, “No golfing!” in places where only an insane lunatic would try to play golf. Golf, like any other leisure activity, is only permitted in clearly fenced off and strictly monetised locations.
The main visible difference between Kyoto and a normal Japanese city is that Kyoto retains the rigid grid layout of its pre-modern period, with a complex network of one-way systems funnelling traffic through its narrow streets. It’s not a friendly system for cyclists, but that doesn’t stop the city from enthusiastically promoting rent-a-cycles as a super-convenient way of getting around the city for tourists. Obviously there are a lot of temples and shrines given the town’s historic nature, although the most famous ones tend to cling to the lower reaches of the mountains that ring the city. More significant from the point of view of the music scene is the way that the narrow streets and plethora of old buildings that comprise the loosely defined centre of the city are more congenial to small boutiques and cafés than loud rock venues, forcing many of the actual live houses and clubs out towards the fringes and ensuring that the music scene has no real core in the way Osaka has Shinsaibashi.
For all that Kyoto has a distinct atmosphere from Osaka, the cities are nonetheless very close and there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the music scenes. My first stop is over near Saiin, an area many musicians seem to settle, and where a cluster of venues exists. I’m there to meet Suhara from Osaka’s Gyuune Cassette label – one of my favourite record labels in Japan, which has over the years released a lot of artists that I admire, including early albums by “Kansai Zero-Generation” trailblazers Afrirampo and the slightly later Midori, as well as more recent releases by postpunk bands BlondNewHalf and Otori.
Oboreta Ebi no Kenshi Hokoku-sho
Gyuune Cassette is far more eclectic than that though, and since it was founded in the mid-‘90s has released folk singer-songwriters like Kamin Shirahata, electro-funk seafood collective Oboreta Ebi no Kenshi Hokoku-sho (“Autopsy Report of Drowned Shrimp”), “progressive fast junk” like Himitsu King and lots and lots of psychedelia. Suhara himself was part of the original lineup of Acid Mothers Temple and still performs in various projects (he’s in Kyoto today for a show at the venue Ooh-La-La), and so the social circles he has strongest connections to make it perhaps natural that a lot of the label’s output includes bands like Leningrad Blues Machine which are deeply embedded in the Kansai area’s rich tradition of psychedelia and art junk – a tradition that, in addition to Acid Mothers Temple, also runs through the likes of Zuinosin, through the Boredoms and all the way back to Hadaka no Rallizes (Les Rallizes Dénudés).
Leningrad Blues Machine
Suhara has seen a lot of music come and go in Osaka over the years, but believes the core identity of the music scene there is fairly consistent, telling me, “The bands are different but the road they’re travelling is the same.” One thing that’s changed a lot is how easy it is to physically manufacture music. “Pressing a CD in the early ‘90s might cost you a million, but now you can do it for a tenth of that price.” As the label’s name suggests, when he started out, Suhara was making short runs of tapes, dubbing 200 copies himself. He seems a little cynical about the tentative revival of the cassette medium nowadays, and when I suggest to him that a number of label and record shop people I’ve spoken to on my travels are wary of the cassette format’s potential, he agrees that while some bands might think they’re cool, “The guys who have to actually make them think they’re a waste of time.”
Okachimenko
In the Kansai music scene of the moment, artists Suhara suggests are worth paying attention to include guitar-and-clarinet acoustic storytelling duo Okachimenko, shambolic punk band Byseishi, the “soft psychedelia” of Ikansen Hana Okoshi, and Suppattukalimar, the solo project of a girl who plays drums and keyboards while singing oddball technopop songs, often in Russian.
The show I’m hitting up is across town at Metro, a venue named after its location halfway down a staircase at the entrance to Jingu Marutamachi underground station. The gig tonight is part of the release tour of Tokyo hardcore band Tiala, although pigeonholing Tiala as simply hardcore perhaps does them a bit of a disservice with their music occupying the weirder and more experimental end of the genre while ramping the intensity up to its absolute maximum. They are also an important band in understanding how Tokyo interacts with the rest of Japan thanks to vocalist Kakinuma’s role running the venue Bushbash in Koiwa and the band’s connection with the Less Than TV label. In Eastern Japan in particular, Bushbash and Less Than TV are a key link connecting Tohoku and Hokkaido to Tokyo, and are well known and regarded to the west of the country as well.
Fluid
Opening the show, however, is Fluid, a long-running Kyoto postpunk/no wave band led by Metro’s manager (at least at the time of writing) Ryohei “Jack” Tanaka (I’ve always suspected the nickname comes from what he likes to drink for breakfast). Coming off the back of some dark, heavy club beats that the DJ has been spinning beforehand, Fluid are an unforgiving industrial jackhammer of a band, rhythmically relentless, cutting and slashing their way through the set with brutal efficiency and intensity, Jack’s vocals warped by effects beyond all recognition as a human sound.
Odd Eyes
Fluid and Tiala both contributed to a compilation album I released many years ago of Japanese underground bands covering songs by UK postpunk legends Wire, and while that album is largely forgotten in Tokyo, people at Metro still seem to remember it, thanks largely to the continuing influence Fluid hold over this part of the Kyoto music scene. Speaking to the guitarist of marvellous young art-punk band Odd Eyes, he remarks that remembers buying the album when he was a high school student, giving me a rush of that heady combination of pride and realisation of the unstoppable advance of death. Still, something I helped make actually inspired someone: you can’t put a price on that.
Yasushu Yoshida from Osaka is on the bill again, after seeing him at Osaka Bears last week, while heavy doom band She Luv It, shaking the foundations of the building above through Metro’s already immense PA rig. Tiala, meanwhile, are a force of nature, Kakinuma a taut, straining mass of veins and tendons, tearing through the songs at breakneck pace and earsplitting volume.
Lego Chameleon
Beyond the bands on the bill tonight, Metro’s own staff includes a number of musicians, with Lego Chameleon and Outatbero having close connections to the venue. Meanwhile staff members recommend the goth-edged dub of YYBY, offbeat garage-punk quartet Otoboke Beaver, and point out eclectic young electronic superstar producer Madegg as an important recent act to emerge from the Kyoto music scene.
Otoboke Beaver
Seeing Tiala also acts as a reminder of how I’m gradually moving back within touching distance of Tokyo, with Osaka and Kyoto naturally among the most common destinations for touring Tokyo musicians thanks to their relative accessibility by car (seven hours or so drive), their large, active music scenes, and the reciprocal nature of many of the relationships that see Kansai bands frequently making the return trip to Tokyo as well. In that sense, music scenes in places like Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto aren’t just integrated with each other but noticeably integrated with Tokyo and the Kanto area as well, with touring acts not an exciting novelty so much as a pretty regular occurence and a natural part of the weekly ebb and flow of music.
Madegg
For me, arriving in the area from the more distant west, there’s a mixture of alienation and familiarity in the situation. I’m a normal enough feature of the Tokyo live circuit that seeing me in Kyoto is barely worth more than a raised eyebrow to a visiting band from Tokyo, but after two months away in places like Tottori and Ehime, seeing familiar faces from home is a strangely emotional experience for me. Being in unfamiliar environments that are nonetheless within touching distance of home is the new normal as I move into the final stages of this trip though, so I might as well start getting used to it.
Burn Your Hometown 