Once Ninomiya-san disclosed on a webboard linked to an EY fan site that Toys Factory had approached the band before they released Koritsu-Muen-no Hana on their own Saka-shou label in 1997 and that they helped finance the release and its promotion. Ninomiya-san appeared to be slightly drunk, but he said that he didn't like the hype such as "indy legend" and wanted their fans to be more aware of the realities of the music scene. Japan's so-called band-boom in late eighties had "discovered" and consumed so many "indy" bands in a media frenzy, and then left live venues all around the country nearly empty until Toys Factory started helping Hi-Standard and the like bring back regiments of loyal punk kids around 1995.
The band's relation with the label may not have been always a cosy one, judging from the fact that the band did not renovate their contract in 2002. Yet from a fan's point of view, Toys Factory and its staff were remarkably successful in delivering eastern youth's great music to wider audience, true to their real form and rarely spoiling it with overblown packages. The promotional videos of eastern youth songs, to be released in DVD format as Archives 1997-2001, are an indication of how the label presented the band and their music. Mr. Tetsuo Inoue, director of most of the clips and an obvious fan of the band, interpreted the songs in his own manner and visualized his insight into them, which was often much deeper than half-hearted reviews that appeared in main stream music zines. Thus EY videos had a touch of a low budget art film, with an extremely impressive sound track, and stood out in the lineup of eye-catching visual tricks which could barely cover up the bore that was the J-pop. Mr. Inoue and the band proved that a commercial video of pop music can be a form of art at least in the eyes of some if its creators choose to.
The first track of Koritsu-Muen-no Hana. The song title, meaning "Whither?", is from a novel by Sakaguchi Ango, Yoshino-san's literature icon. Most part of the video switches between two performance scenes: one in color in a typical urban working class apartment house and the other a B&W footage of a live show at Shimokitazawa Shelter, one of the best known indie band venues in Tokyo. By this time, EY's bi-monthly live shows at the venue, Kyokuto Saizensen, had become legendary among the small circle of indie-rock connoisseurs, and regularly sold out within minutes. So the venue is tight packed in the video.
The title roughly translates as "The sky too blue". "Ao", covering both blue and green, often applies to the color of unripe fruits or immaturity. Youth is represented in the Kanji writing system by combination of "blue" and "spring" characters. This medium tempo song, with a distinctively Japanese melody line reminiscent of ol' day student anthems, is performed in the video in a soon-to-be-demolished old building which once housed the dining hall of the dormitory of the First National High School (now part of the University of Tokyo). The hall had also functioned as an underground theater for a long time until the University ordered the close-down of the dormitory house and started meddling with student groups who defied the order by squatting.
This video, which supported EY's debut single on Toys Factory, went on a heavy rotation on Space Shower TV, a pay-per-view video channel closely related to Japan's music industry, and subsequently won the channel's Best New Comer Video Award. EY members made an angry appearance at the televised awarding ceremony and embarrassed the hosts by remarking that the whole event was a spoof that they could not swallow. The viewership of the pay TV was still tiny at that time, so not many fans saw the scene. But I did. B-)
This live version, exclusively aired on the SSTV channel, documents live performance at a Kyokuto Saizensen Show. The venue, slightly bigger than the Shelter, probably On Air West, Shibuya, had just enough space for the audience to move freely in. The image of the moshpit reacting to the band performance shown in this video has long influenced the behaviour of teenage and ex-teenage fans at EY live shows.
The first track of EY's debut full-length on Toys Factory which won the band lots of new fans well beyond the punk rock ghetto. I still remember the week preceding the release when major CD shops in Tokyo displayed the huge poster of the cover design along with the video monitor showing the clip. The cover design, reproduction of a self portrait of Saeki Juzo, an early Japanese painter who committed suicide in Paris at 30, was an ambitious bid claiming that this unknown band had somthing to say about art. The B&W video showing a film sketch of a biker's life in a sleepy fishing town in the outskirts of Tokyo, with the band performance occasionally inserted, convincingly supported the claim, complete with headphones.
Ninomiya-san played the important role of the sole character in the story part of the video but his contribution to this song goes much further. Yoshino-san revealed later that the guitar solo in the interlude, which clearly marked the band's departure from their punk past, was played by the bassist Ninomiya-san. Unlike the older members of the band who embraced punk and hardcore in their early teens, Ninomiya-san had been introduced to the rock music through heavy metal. Recently Yoshino-san further wrote that the song title, meaning "A Summer Day Afternoon", was also taken from the name of one of Ninomiya-san's former side projects.
The second video for the debut album and also the second to cast Ninomiya-san as an unpretentious main character. This time, the main character is a resident of a typical apartment house for single persons in Tokyo, clean, well maintained and much more modern than the sort shown in the Izuko-e clip. Appears contradictory to the title, that translates as a "Dweller in the Mire"? Yet shots of live studio performance in black and white repeatedly intervene, with a minimum spotlight on the singer's challengingly aggressive facial expressions. It's an invitation from the darkness.
A special video clip documenting the band's first extensive national tour in 1998 summer in black and white. The title of the debut album, "Seasons burn down on our journey", is taken from the chorus of this song of "A forlorn journey".
This video, for the band's second single release on the label, is a departure from earlier "day-to-day scenes of city life". In this film with Kurosawa's touch, the members appear in a set remniscent of post-war ruins of Tokyo devastated by air raids as residents of a shack with minimal belongings for subsistence. Still Yoshino-san sharpens his pencils in the dim light, provoking the image of Sakaguchi Ango who survived air raids as a journalist and resumed his proliferate writing immediately after Japan's defeat.
The title is "In the Wind". The wind is shown in the video by rotating sail arms of a crude windmill, which appears to be in use for power generation in the video. You would want to call it a futuristic scene.
The recording of their sophomore album with Eddie Ashworth in LA was so satisfactory Yoshino-san almost expected a red carpet unfolded towards them at Narita Airport, according to an interview. Yet the J-pop media were less than enthusiastic, perhaps because it was not exactly what they could expect. I remember critics using words like "loose" or "slack" both for the sound and the lyrics, even before the official preview of this pre-album single. In this hostile environment, the band recorded a live take of this song and released it as a promotional video. Much more convincing than any review could hope to be.
The opening song of the sophomore album, "May my scream reach the clouds". This song is an homage to Murayama Kaita, a painter-poet whom the gods loved, best known especially among art students for the poem "A tube of garance", starts with the lines "Do not hesitate, Do not feel ashamed, Get the garance (Turkish red) straight on your palette". With red emphasized against the greenish background, the video is a further homage, visualizing another poem by Kaita, Kyuuden Shiji or "Reference to the Palace (of a solitary painter)" in which "a golden kid" runs, runs, runs, and laments over clouds hanging over the poets mind. (More literally, the album title would read May my scream penetrate the clouds.)
If you are lucky enough to be able to read Japanese, you can read some of Kaita's poems here. "Palace" is a killer, with its colors and incredible time signatures. Otherwise, enjoy the paintings.
The fourth single on Toys Factory. The spanish guitar is apparently inspired by Yoshino-san's favorite TV Samurai drama, Onihei, which features Gypsy Kings for the theme. Naturally, this video is a samurai drama, shot in a historical theme park near Tokyo. Yoshino-san plays a part of a rogue self-employed samurai, Ninomiya-san a care-free chess player and Tamori-san a vagrant gambler. The message is simple: the samurai never lets his grip of the sword go until the last moment. Read the samurai and his sword as the musician and his music. All too obvious to those who are regularly killed by the band with each new song.
Ninomiya-san lets go of his "Hyoutan", a gourd traditionally used as a liquor container. Ninomiyasan's current side-project Hyoutan is due to release an album this autumn.
The title is translated by Yoshino-san as "Silence is burning!!". He explains that it refers to the feeling that even the midday calm is scorching you.
The fifth single and a freely intense single version of the song that later made it in the lineup of the third album "Kanjusei Outou-seyo" or "Receptivity, can you hear me". A beautiful video full of breathtaking shots. The footage shows Yoshino-san walking or "sounding his heels" in various places, yet its atmosphere tellingly signals that the journey is an internal one. A masterpiece.
The opening track of the third album. "The dawn song", on dawns following sleepless nights. Yoshino-san often mentioned his insomnia then. The video shows a dawn in Tokyo from various angles, a bird's eye view as well as inside a traditional Japanese room.
The final track of the third album. The title is "The wonderful world". Yet the video shows only close up shots of various body parts of the members. Too emo? The message will be that the world is just as your body perceives, and it can be wonderful if and only if your sensibilities are fully receptive to it. The video may be viewed as an extended version of the album cover.
The bonus of this video is that you will have a glimpse of the tattoo on Yoshino-san's left shoulder. It is the "Black Sun", a replica of the image on the back side of the "Tower of the Sun", a monument by Okamoto Taro.
Quote from Okamoto. "Osaka Expo (1970) came when Japan's post-war economic growth reached its climax and the country was confident in its progress and GNP figure. So, the Expo was doomed to be dominated by a modernist, progressivist euphoria. I wanted something absolute, that transcends time and space. That's why I planned the Tower of the Sun, which simply stands there like a huge fool. It was meant to challenge the inertia of modernity."
A demo track of the DVD Sono-Zanzou to Zankyou-on or "Its afterimages and reverberation", a video document of various EY live shows by Mr. Kawaguchi Jun, cinema director, who has done most of the ey videos including the latest since the band left Toys Factory.
A special clip for a 12-band indy compilation, Kyokutou Saizensen from Saka-Shou. Exclusively aired on a satellite channel which my cable operator doesn't subscribe. Toys Factory apparently helped this indy release despite that Husking Bee was the only other band on their roster. (Later Naht released one album on the label.) Donten means "Cloudy Weather" and Omokage is an "image of the past". This song, especially the chorus "what a vague, transient image, what a sad, transparent whisper", always reminds me of a poem by Takamura Koutarou, sculptor-poet, on Murayama Kaita.