Mario Del Curto/Artwork FLAG

Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Jun 6-9, 7pm, ¥1,000-4,000. Nearest stn: Ikebukuro. Tel: 0570-010-296. www.geigeki.jp/performance/theater027

Detail of The Last Image (2010). © ADAGP, Paris Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, until Jun 30. ¥500-1,000. Open Tue-Sun 11am-5pm, closed Mon. 4-7-25 Kita-Shinagawa. Nearest stn: Kita-shinagawa. Tel: 03-3445-0651. www.haramuseum.or.jp

Keisuke Honda

While Japan theoretically needs a point to confirm their spot in Brazil, they are in such a superior position in their group it would take a miracle to deny them—even if they lose their two remaining matches. Japan sits on top of Group B in the final round of Asian qualifiers with 13 points, a healthy +10 goal difference and two games to play. They are followed by Jordan (seven points, –6, two games to play), Australia (six points, 0, three games), Oman (six points, -3, two games) and Iraq (five points, -1, three games).

Oman definitely can’t catch Japan and Jordan can only do it in the unlikely even that they score 17 goals and concede none in their two remaining games (based on the current table). Realistically, only Australia and Iraq can catch Japan. But it’s almost impossible for both of them to do so. If Australia beats Japan on June 4 and Jordan on June 11, and Iraq beats Oman and Japan on the same dates, then Japan will still have 13 points, Australia will have 12 points and Iraq 11. But in the final round of matches on June 18, Australia will face Iraq, meaning only one of the two teams has a chance of leapfrogging Japan.

Thus, Japan is virtually certain to claim one of the automatic qualifying positions in the group. So the race for second is proving more interesting—and even the third-placed team could get to Brazil via a play-off.
Japan were prevented from qualifying on March 26 by Jordan, who upset them to win 2-1 in Amman. Jordan also proved too plucky for Australia last year. The Aussies have had their usual confidence hit by that loss and by draws against Japan and Oman (twice) and will be desperate not to drop a point in Saitama. They will be helped by the fact that coach Holger Osieck used to work in Japan—in fact, in Saitama for the Urawa Reds—and the dent in Japan’s confidence after the loss to Jordan.

On the plus side for Japan, talismanic attacker Keisuke Honda will return after missing the game in Amman. Honda may not be captain, but he is the de facto leader of the team and critical in scoring and setting up goals. Full-back Yuto Nagatomo of Inter Milan is also likely to be back in the team.
Motivation shouldn’t be a problem for either side. The Aussies need a result to help qualify and they still haven’t repaid Japan for their 1-0 extra-time loss in the final of the 2011 Asian Cup (itself payback for Australia’s 3-1 win over Japan in the 2006 World Cup). But Japan would like to clinch qualification at home and in style, and they need to deliver a positive performance after their tepid display in Amman.
Saitama Stadium on June 4 is sure to turn into a pressure cooker for this crunch game.

Japan vs. Australia @Saitama Super Arena, Jun 4

Photo by Patrick Jelin

“There was no way to study guitar when I started in the ’60s,” he answers. “I started around 13, and became serious about playing guitar after seeing Hendrix—he was my main influence at the time.”

Perhaps because the electric guitar was still so fresh then, particularly in France, Pinhas developed an approach eschewing traditional song forms, a method that flowered with Heldon. “At that time you had to learn by yourself because there was no one to teach you,” he recalls in serviceable if heavily accented English. “I finally learned to read and write music when it was needed to be professional in the ’70s and ’80s. But it was not important for a guy of my era.”

Heldon’s extended, hypnotic jams provided the French answer to the ’70s work of fellow experimentalists such as Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Albums like Electronique Guerilla have come to be seen as landmark works, and brought Pinhas’s music to a new generation of avant-garde music aficionados. “It’s strange that now Heldon is cataloged as noise or postrock,” he admits, “but I keep myself fresh playing with young musicians. Also, I have two sons in their 20s and 30s and they expose me to a lot of new stuff. In France you don’t have a distinction of generations, a guy in his 60s can play with a guy in his 20s.”

Pinhas’s new outing, Desolation Row, is a dark affair where 18-minute opuses surge and ebb on waves of electronic and guitar noise. He says it’s the first part of a trilogy about the effects of neoliberalism on Western countries. “It’s been a very sad time, and I tried to express this in music,” he explains. “Desolation Row is the first, the second will be Devolution, and the third will be The Fall. Every two months we are two times poorer—people sleeping in the streets—we are not used to this. It’s as if we’re living a science-fiction nightmare. You can see something destroying the people, destroying the cities—it’s like a cancer.”

Pinhas, who also holds a philosophy PhD, notes it’s typical for European musicians to express their political awareness in their music. This is perhaps less so the case in Japan—aside from musicians such as noise innovator and outspoken vegan Merzbow, with whom Pinhas will be touring Japan later this month.

“The intelligentsia, musicians, artists have been more politicized for centuries in the West,” he says, “but to be honest I don’t discuss politics with Japanese musicians. Generally they have bad English and are hard to understand. Also, we tour very quickly in Japan and prefer to talk music in the limited time we have. Some Japanese realize which system they are living under, but not in the mainstream.”

Despite his recent collaborations with Merzbow and Ruins’ Tatsuya Yoshida, who will also join the upcoming tour, Pinhas came to Japan late in life. “Japanese culture is very attractive for an old guy like me,” he says. “I suppose it’s the lack of ideology. I discovered Japan in my 40s, and your reaction is different. Japan has fantastic music, there are a lot of great bands making very different music from the USA and Europe—it’s another world.”

SuperDeluxe, May 30; Institut Français, May 31; Tower Records Shibuya, Jun 2; Club Goodman, Jun 6; Pit Inn, Jun 9

Over two decades of clubbing history comes to a close this month when Nizhi-Azabu nightspot Eleven, the recent incarnation of fabled Tokyo club Yellow, shutters its doors this month. Eleven says the closing was due to plans to renovate the building that houses the basement club, and that it hopes to open its doors again in the future. For the moment, Tokyo EDM fans are left to ponder the club’s influence on the annals of dance music history in Japan, and celebrate with a few final bashes. New York house impresario Timmy Regisford, notorious for his marathon DJ sets, has dropped everything and will be flying in for one final Shelter party on May 18. Following him next week is another legend of New York house, Joe Claussell on May 24. Eleven’s last bash takes place May 25, with techno titan Andre Galluzzi providing the soundtrack.

Tokyo’s latest bids for the Olympics have had their ups and downs—more of the latter recently courtesy of Governor Inose. Things were simpler back in 1964 when the capital trumpeted Japan’s rise from the ashes of World War Two by hosting its first summer Olympics. This exhibition at Haneda’s Discovery Museum presents a wide range of graphic design, medals and other artifacts from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, as well as a series of panels by designer Soichiro Yokoyama celebrating the early postwar years of Haneda airport. Just the thing for whiling away some time during a flight delay.

Discovery Museum, until Jun 2

Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Jun 2

Womb, Jun 1

Citadel In Spring

A Novel of Youth Spent at War

By Hiroyuki Agawa; translated by Lawrence Rogers

An autobiographical novel published by Hiroyuki Agawa in 1949, this translation gives you access to “a surprising historical document as well as a moving account of the cost of militarism and defeat” (The New Yorker). Writer Agawa tells in this fictionalized memoir of his induction into the Imperial Navy, his work as a code-breaker in China, and the effects of Japan’s final capitulation.

Kurodahan Press, 2013, 241pp, buy on Amazon, buy for Kindle)

Killing Daniel

By Sarah Dobbs

English writer Dobbs’ first novel is set in England and Tokyo, and follows the separate adult lives of an English and Japanese woman connected by a childhood friendship with a murdered deaf boy. Described as a “cross-cultural literary thriller,” Killing Daniel was launched last autumn at the Unthank Literary Festival in Norwich.

Unthank Books, 2012, 306pp, buy on Amazon, buy for Kindle

Milligan and the Samurai Rebels

By Simon Alexander Collier

At a time of upheaval when the Japanese market has just been opened up to foreign commerce, a young British diplomat named Milligan plies his trade while battling a weakness for women and booze. Collier, a former British diplomat in Japan, wrote this rambunctious historical novel from his home in Tokyo where he continues to reside.

Createspace, 2012, 337pp, buy from Amazon, buy for Kindle

One Hundred Years of Vicissitude

By Andrez Bergen

The narrator, who “suspects he’s a dead man,” undertakes a sake-soaked purgatorial tour through 20th-century Japanese history with a ghostly geisha and a corrupt millionaire. This is the second novel by Melbourne-born Bergen, who is also a journalist, photographer, musician, and DJ.

Perfect Edge Books, 2012, 254pp, buy from Amazon

The 89th Temple

By Charlie Canning

Seven juvenile offenders walk the pilgrim’s route of 88 temples in Shikoku as they consider their future place in society. Billed as “The Seven Samurai meets The Fugitive for young adults,” this is the debut novel of Canning, who taught English for ten years in Japan before enrolling in the creative writing PhD program at the University of Adelaide.

Outskirts Press, 2012, 205pp, buy on Amazon, buy for Kindle

Yamato

By Andrew Clare

Tokyo, 1953. Lieutenant Harvey Brice of US intelligence is found with a bullet in his head, and his discovery promises anything but a routine case for CIA agent Ralph Carnaby. This noir thriller takes in crime and conspiracy during the US occupation in an alternative-history imagining akin to Robert Harris’ Fatherland. Author Clare is a former Royal Marine and works at an international law firm in Tokyo.

Kurodahan Press, 2013, 314pp, buy on Amazon

NONFICTION

After the Great East Japan Earthquake

Political and Policy Change in Post-Fukushima Japan

Edited by Dominic Al-Badri and Gijs Berends

The co-editors both worked for the EU Delegation to Japan at the time of the 3/11 disasters, and brought together this collection of essays to explore shifts in Japanese politics and policy making two years on. Published by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copehagen, the book’s contributors include policy experts and Tokyo diplomats.

NIAS Press, 2013, 192pp, buy on Amazon

Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion

By Shawn Bender

With Japanese taiko drumming now popular around the world, cultural anthropologist Bender looks at the percussive art’s origins in post-war Japan. He explores the activity as a new way for Japanese people to associate communally and observes how practices cast light on national conceptions of race, gender and the body.

University of California Press, 2012, 259pp, buy on Amazon, buy for Kindle

The Arts (1899) by Alphonse Mucha. © Mucha Trust 2013

Mucha provokes the image of flowery maidens, long hair and loose dresses entwining with flowers and stylized foliage. You might even imagine a glass of champagne woven into the design. This exhibition has plenty of that.

The Czech decorative artist epitomizes the Art Nouveau movement, an artistic style that sought inspiration in nature, expressed itself through sinuous, curvy lines; and idealized the feminine in a way that now seems at odds with the more androgynous zeitgeist of the present. Often the female figure is elevated to a symbolic “goddess,” personifying seasons, qualities, or even precious stones.

This ability to symbolize and tastefully sexualize also made Art Nouveau, especially in Mucha’s hands, the perfect medium for advertising. You couldn’t imagine Cubism or Abstract Expressionism being used to advertise biscuits or bicycles quite as effectively—and attractively—as the posters doing exactly that at this exhibition.

While some of the more commercial efforts may look a tad tacky, the posters Mucha created for the theater transcend mere advertising to become works of high art. The best of these are dedicated to the artist’s muse, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, an international superstar around the turn of the last century who is shown here in a variety of her famous thespian roles.

With the full cooperation of the Mucha family, this exhibition is not a mere attempt to cash in on a much-loved name, but takes a serious, in-depth look at the artist—backed up by many of his best works. The show includes drawings, oil paintings and hand-painted poster designs, as well as contemporary prints, many of them of a size and complexity that testifies to the skill of the print art of the period.

One of the reasons Mucha is popular in Japan is that the linear quality and love of nature have obvious affinities with ukiyo-e woodblock-print art. Sometimes these attempts to link late 19th-century European art to the Japanese tradition can become tedious—but luckily this exhibition hardly goes there.

Instead it looks at Mucha’s working methods, including photographs of nude models, revealing perhaps how he got those femininely evocative lines so correct. The exhibition also looks deeply into the artist’s love of Slavic nationalism and myth. This, with its deification of nature, is a more pertinent source of inspiration than anything from Japan.

Mucha’s career was a precursor for Czech independence, an event that came to pass in his lifetime. This clearly inspired him to go beyond the effervescent art of his youth to create works of sweeping emotion for his “Slav Epic Cycle” (1910-28), represented here by several large studies. This show reveals that there is much more to Mucha than flowery maidens in diaphanous dresses—although there’s nothing wrong with that either.

Mori Art Center Gallery, until May 19

Courtesy of Hostess

Yebisu Garden Hall, Jun 8-9

Eleven, May 11

葛飾北斎「冨嶽三十六景　凱風快晴」（太田記念美術館蔵）

Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art, until Jun 26

Courtesy of Bunkamura

Spanish flamenco doyenne María Pagés’s new Utopia takes its inspiration from Brazilian architect and cultural colossus Oscar Niemeyer. “I had to do something about the current state of the world, and I felt that he might have some answers,” begins the veteran choreographer in a Tokyo press visit.

“With the financial crisis in Spain, it’s a very bad moment here. I felt the crisis is not only financial, but a crisis of human values,” she continues. “Then I met someone who told me about Oscar Niemeyer. I knew about his buildings, but when I learned more about him as a person and how his architecture reflects his values, I felt I could learn from him.”

Two meetings in Rio de Janeiro with Niemeyer, who continued to practice until his death last December at the age of 104, provided the basis for Utopia. How, then, does one dance about architecture? “Niemeyer’s architecture is full of curves, and movement is full of curves,” Pagés explains about the formidable Brazilian, who among others designed his country’s capital city Brasilia. “Curves are about transformation, and that’s also at the heart of movement.”

At Niemeyer’s studio in Copacabana, Pagés danced for Niemeyer, and the two discovered how much a dancer and architect can have in common. “When he was a child, he liked to draw,” the prizewinning choreographer recalls. “But even before Niemeyer would take a pen, he would move his hand through the air, and his mother would ask, ‘What are you doing?’ and he would say, ‘I’m drawing.’ I was thinking, when my mother asked me the same question, I would say, ‘I’m dancing.’”

Taking cues from Niemeyer’s curvilinear architecture and humanistic ethos, Pagés created a work that utilizes scenography by Niemeyer’s right-hand man, architect Jair Varela, live music by renowned flamenco composer Rubén Lebaniegos, and poetry by Baudelaire, Neruda and Niemeyer himself.

The sleek, contemporary Utopia upends the stereotypical and folkloric Spanish image of flamenco. Pagés, who’s worked with Baryshnikov among others, says such images are long outdated. “My vision of flamenco is convoluted and modern,” she insists. “I never thought of flamenco as a folk art, because it’s our way to express everything. Flamenco is a living art for us.”

“When I first came to Japan I was exposed to very different kinds of arts,” Pagés continues, “that made me realize flamenco can have a dialog with different cultures and art forms.”

Pagés has been to Japan 16 times and is lionized by the country’s devoted flamenco community. It’s intriguing to learn that the influences have worked in both directions. “If I can bring flamenco to Japan,” she adds, “then flamenco can meet other art forms too—it’s a language with which to express myself, and when I understand another art form I can express my personal ideas about it in flamenco.”

Rather than a brittle folk form, Pagés says, flamenco has specific qualities that allow it to evolve. “Flamenco is one of the richest arts we have in the modern era because it started in a marginal space among poor people, and then step by step it became a professional art in the world’s biggest theaters,” she says. “It’s not academic like ballet—it’s popular and has very different roots: Jewish, Gypsy and African… so many cultures made flamenco an art, and the way they come together is what makes it so rich.”

Two decades since she founded her own company at age 27 following a career as a child prodigy in Spain, Pagés increasingly wants to use flamenco to give something back to the society that she feels gave so much to her.

“There are many things I can do as a creator—I can provide valuable messages and share experiences,” she affirms in a rich Seville accent. “Utopia arrived at a moment when it’s evident we need other messages aside from materialism. My life’s work is to understand how I can contribute to society—I don’t dance only for myself, but to be useful.”

Bunkamura, May 18-19

The global superstar DJ of “peace, love and house music” Bob Sinclair is in Tokyo for a one-off night at XEX Nihonbashi.

The Gallic producer of “Love Generation” has been ubiquitous since 2005 and has remixed for Madonna as well as pumping out collaborations with the likes of Shaggy and Sean Paul.

Upcoming DJ Ben Coda will be flying in from London to blend crunchy techno with smoother sounds of progressive house, and BCBG MAX AZRIA will be putting on a fashion show in the early hours of the morning.

XEX Nihonbashi, May 11, 9:30pm, ¥3,500 (adv; buy here). 4F Yuito/Nihonbashi-Muromachi-Nomura Bldg, 2-4-3 Nihonbashi-Muromachi, Chuo-ku. Nearest stn: Mitsukoshimae. Venue site

Japan’s Rasta tribes gather to show respect to patron saint Bob Marley and Jamaica, the font of their culture, at the annual One Love Jamaica Festival. The organizers are spicing up this year’s event with the Japan trials of the World Reggae Dance Championship, where Japan’s hip-swiveling dancehall honeys will be vying to represent their country on the world stage. A Bob Marley songfest where Japa-rastas pay tribute to The King is always part of the festivities, but this year also offers some authentic talent from Jamaica in the form of Trilla U and John Lucas. An official after-party will go into the small hours at DIX Lounge between Roppongi and Azabu-Juban on Saturday night.

Photo by Yaron Silberberg

With technical mastery and a taste for vintage modern jazz, 25-year-old Yuki Futami is Japan’s belated answer to the late, great pianist Oscar Peterson. Before he heads off to New York’s Julliard, Metropolis got some insight on what a millennial Japanese sees in jazz, and the Yuki Futami Trio’s debut album, Banzai Oscar.

Tell us about your first musical experiences.

When I was three years old, my parents bought a Casio keyboard. I can remember expressing sounds without using a score and dancing. During my earlier years, I played primarily classical and as a teen I listened to jazz, but it wasn’t until after I graduated from high school that I started to play jazz piano.

Why jazz?

When I started the piano, my dream was to become a classical pianist. But I felt I had reached the limit when I was a high school due to the scarcity of jobs. I began to like jazz more and more so I decided to be a jazz pianist and become a professional musician. Now I have no regrets and I prefer jazz.

Which pianists influenced you and why?

Keith Jarrett was influenced by classical musicians and is also a classical musician himself. His music includes classical ideas especially in his intros and endings to his pieces. I feel his music is so spiritual. His piano touch and voicing harmony are sensitive and transparent like a crystal… The more I studied jazz piano, the more interested I became in Oscar Peterson’s piano playing. His style is fundamental to jazz piano and jazz history itself. His sense of harmony, phrase, groove, ability of form…Oscar Peterson has influenced all elements of jazz.

Tell us about your first composition.

When I was 18 years old, I composed my first song, “Bangladesh.” I lived there for a few years when I was a baby. As you may know, there are many compositions using a country name in the title such as “Spain.” “Bangladesh” is mainly composed of D minor blues and I composed this song for a quartet.

Tell us about a few songs on the album.

This album’s concept is a tribute to Oscar Peterson. So on “Cream Pie” I used his phrases, his voicing, and music ideas… Our trio has a wide spanning repertoire but we didn’t have a piece with a Latin rhythm, so I composed “Southern Island.” “Take The 4.5.6 Train” is also a composition I created for this album. My image was a 60’s modal jazz sound, like that of McCoy Tyner. The reason I chose this title is that when I was recently in New York I often took the 4 line from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I felt the New York subway is dark and speedy with an urban taste. The 4 line is marked 4.5.6 and it forks out as you travel north. We have various forks in the road in our lives and my recent experiences in New York gave me inspiration in the next direction I want to take with my life.

What are the difficulties facing a young Japanese person trying to become a pro jazz musician?

Recently there are fewer jobs compared to during the Bubble economy. Even a job performing background music is difficult to get. But actually I think this is a good thing as only a real pro jazz musician can survive. It makes for a good quality jazz world.

Why is jazz so popular in Japan?

Many Japanese adore American and Western European culture. Going back to the 60′s, jazz was the start of otaku culture in Japan as young people really got into spending hours at coffee shops known as jazz kissa. I think many Japanese eggheads also like jazz because it appeals to the intellect. Also, in Japan we are fortunate that music education is quite good in schools as we learn to read music, which is a skill that helps people to appreciate music. Yet there are few people now who realize the influence of jazz in more recent music, and I would like to change that.

What are you looking forward to in New York?

I look forward to meeting incredible musicians, listening to their music, playing with them, and studying at the top music school. I believe going after this opportunity will improve my music.

Body and Soul, May 8; Jesse James, May 21; Sometime, May 25; Naru, June 22. Banzai Oscar is available on T-TOC Records.

Last year’s “Cancellation” parties from kateb on Vimeo.

Rainbow Disco Club will be hoping it’s a case of third time lucky for the waterside festival in Golden Week after the plug was pulled in 2011 following the disaster in north-east Japan and again last year because of torrential rain.

After a trouser-burstingly successful debut in 2010, when organizers brought the mythical DJ Harvey to Japan for the first time in eight years, the gods have conspired to play party-poopers, but Rainbow Disco Club organizers once again tweak the nose of misfortune and return to the Harumi Port Terminal venue on May 5.

Harvey, the Keith Richards of the DJ world, once said “You can’t understand my music until you’ve had group sex on ecstasy”—and perhaps he’ll be back next year to elaborate.

But for this time, feel the sea breeze as another dope line-up of DJ talent including Dixon, DJ Nature, Cottam and Kevin Yost rocks up to 3,000 festival-goers against the stunning backdrop of the Tokyo skyline and Rainbow Bridge until gone sunset.

Then the freaks come out at night in Shibuya as the fun shifts to mega-club Womb and Seco for more squidgy house, disco and electro grooves until early morning noodle time—or noon in the case of Seco. Red Bull will be doing a roaring trade.

A live set from techno duo Barker & Baumecker and an appearance from the Hessle Audio label’s Ben UFO headline Womb while Baumecker leaves his sidekick and scuttles across to Seco to play there too, along with Open Reel Ensemble and other guest acts.

After last year’s washout, when UK underground house star Jamie Jones and Detroit techno icon Jeff Mills were scheduled to appear, Rainbow Disco Club organizers can’t wait for lift-off—and to snap the jinx. It’s been a long road back.

“We had the 2011 disaster and then the bad weather last year and I don’t think you’ll see another festival which comes back for another go after two straight cancellations,” event mastermind Masahiro Tsuchiya told Metropolis. “Last year despite the rain we rushed to arrange parties in clubs and live houses to give people a good time.”

Mission accomplished. Crowds flocked to the “Cancellation” parties, which were a huge success.

Fingers crossed then for this year at the eye-catching Harumi passenger ship terminal with its cutting edge design, opened in 1991 and a popular sightseeing destination where picnickers and “boat-spotters” often mingle with models on fashion shoots overlooking the shimmering bay.

“A lot of care goes into selecting the line-up of artists for Rainbow Disco Club,” said Tsuchiya.

“People can also enjoy lots of other artistic elements—all on the shores of Tokyo Bay and with an unbroken view of Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Tower and the city.”

Rainbow Disco Club has the flashy VJ wizardry and visual treats to match big festivals but the organizers stubbornly refuse to go mainstream.

“We go with artists we genuinely respect,” added Tsuchiya. “We don’t choose a line-up to big ourselves up or simply boost crowd numbers. Lots of festivals these days are cluttered with too many artists. We want to stick closely to our concept.”

Which is?

“To stage a party of consistently high quality. It’s important to keep one long groove going the whole time.”

Killer sounds. Jaw-dropping views. Bring sunscreen. Deckchairs not required.

May 5, 10am-8pm, ¥7,500

Aiia Theater, until May 6.

Courtesy of Billboard Live

Billboard Live, May 20-21.