Reading the air

The idea of "reading the air" sounds absurd.
But Japanese talk about it and do it all the time _ the art of staying so in tune to social expectations that one fits in perfectly without ever being told anything at all.
It's all in the air, to be detected, if you are a proper Japanese.
There is no need for blatant threats, punishment, policing, even instructions.
The person who starts laughing when everyone is solemn, the person who says the wrong kind of joke, the person who doesn't get the joke, the person who is wearing the wrong shoes, the person who doesn't get it, the person who thinks the party is happening when everyone else wants it to end _ those are people who fail to read the air.
They are out of it, no way a proper Japanese, possibly criminally insane, surely a loser because he or she hasn't learned the art of reading the air _ what's invisible but everywhere and so so so necessary if one wants to survive, what's so plainly obvious to those who are aware of that waft, that scent, that billow in the air around us, but otherwise goes over the unknowing's heads like a gust of a thoughtless clueless wind.
Reading the air is crucial in this society that thrives on conformity and is ruthlessly cruel in setting boundaries on who is "in" and "out," seeking to protect its comfortable insularity from the challenges of individualism, assessment by performance and self-expression.
Its rules are so thorough, governing every detail of everyday life, the psyche of its participants, so subtle in its nuances, like a tea-ceremony dance, that no one can really create a manual comprehensible to the humble outsider.
So read the air, my friend, read the air.
There is even a sociological/demographic twist.
Japan is one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, meaning that the birth rate has been so low here (partly because of the role of women, partly because child-care services are inadequate, partly because education costs are so high) for so long the numbers of old people are massive compared to the dwindling numbers of children and young adults.
This has reinforced air-reading.
A kid born in Japan finds him/herself in a world dominated by lots of adults well versed in air-reading.
This is a society where children by definition are a minority, possibly an endangered species.
They are outnumbered.
Pressures on them to read the air are enormous.
And they learn fast.
They figure out how to get over with the more numerous and more powerful elderly.
The young as defiant, carefree, dangerous _ not so in Japan.
Instead, they focus their energies on reading the air, on not doing the weird wrong wild thing, to win their untroubled place in the Adult Establishment.
Air-reading is so crucial chastising people for their inability to read the air is part of the modern Japanese colloquial lexicon.
Being labeled "kooki yomenai (unable to read the air)," like "nerd" or "wimp," is utterly uncool.
As in most such sweeping social trends, there's a backlash, even in Japan.
Those who refuse to read the air are now being seen as brave achievers _ but only if they are true undeniable winners like Kosuke Kitajima, the Gold Medal Olympian swimmer.
"Kooki nanka yomuna!" he declares in an ad for a burger chain.
Don't you go around reading the air!
Having the privilege of not having to run around reading airs, and not having to worry about the consequences, is the ultimate that proves you have truly risen to the top in Japan.

Isaku gets taiko rocking with Hybrid Soul

HYBRID SOUL brings together the West and the East/minyo tunes with rock/jazz fusion with Isaku Kageyama on taiko, Pat Glynn on bass and Chris Young on guitar.
And their music keeps getting better and better as evident at Roppongi Edge in Tokyo May 29, 2009.
They play again at the Daikanyama Loop June 4, 2009 _ their last performance for this series that began in April.
They will be starting up another round of concerts later this year, where they will present their further evolution.
Among the songs they play: "Yagi Bushi," "Tanko Bushi," "Soran Bushi," "Nikata Bushi," "Hachijo" _ and "Dear Prudence."
It's moving to see how these men, who happen to be living in Tokyo and love music, have come together.
Meeting one another halfway, they have created something that's positive _ a new sound that's fun, intelligent, tasteful.
It is moving because everyone knows that kind of understanding is what this divided world needs.
The music isn't smug or insular. It is sincere and unafraid. It doesn't pander. And it doesn't pretend to be anything that it is not, or even really know what it is yet.

A stamp of approval from Ishmael Reed

Photo by Tennessee Reed.
In New York with Ishmael Reed, Carla Blank, Wajahat Ali, the actors of Ali's play "The Domestic Crusaders," and Rome Neal, artistic director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Our reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York is getting approval from the best _ poet and novelist Ishmael Reed officially declared "a genius" as a MacArthur Award recipient.
Please read his May 27, 2009 column in the San Francisco Chronicle called "City Brights," written by Bay Area luminaries.

YURI KAGEYAMA has a book of poems "Peeling" (I. Reed Press). Her works are in many literary anthologies _ "Y'Bird," "Pow Wow," "San Francisco Stories," "On a Bed of Rice," "Breaking Silence: an Anthology of Asian American Poets," "Greenfield Review," "Beyond Rice," "River Styx," "Other Side River," "Yellow Silk," "Stories We Hold Secret," "MultiAmerica," "Obras." She has read with Ishmael Reed, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Geraldine Kudaka, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Russel Baba, Seamus Heaney, Shozu Ben, Al Robles, Winchester Nii Tete, Keiji Kubo, Yumi Miyagishima. Her son Isaku Kageyama is a "taiko" drummer in Amanojaku in Tokyo. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University, and has an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

ERIC KAMAU GRAVATT has played with Freddie Hubbard, Albert Ayler, The District of Columbia Youth Symphony, Roberta Flack, Horiuchi Makoto, Sonny Fortune, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Donald Byrd, Carlos Valdez, Booker Irvin, Woody Shaw, Kenny Dorham, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Kikuchi Masabumi, The Milwaukee Symphony, Jimmy Heath, Donny Hathaway, Sam Rivers, Khalid Yasin, Andrew White, Tony Hymas, Paquito D'Rivera, George Mraz, Ravi Coltrane, Stanley Clarke, Pharoah Saunders, The McCoy Tyner Big Band, Gary Bartz, Bobby Hutcherson, James Carter, Terrance Blanchard, Wallace Roney, Donald Harrison, Charnett Moffett. He tours with his own band Source Code and with McCoy Tyner. Wayne Shorter calls him "The Weather Report drummer who was the all-around hippest one."

TERUYUKI and HARUNA KAWABATA are on their honeymoon. Their band Cigarette She Was performs at the numerous "live houses" in Tokyo. Their hippie-like music scene is part of what inspired YURI to write her story in "Pow-Wow" _ "The Father and the Son." They have been performing poetry together with other Tokyo musicians, including Winchester Nii Tete, a percussionist from Ghana, under YURI's project called The Tokyo Flower Children. Haruna fell in love with not only Teru but also the kpanlogo, a drum from Ghana, during college. The couple also work on films, CDs and posters, and are often featured in art festivals in Japan. Teru also makes cell-phone music downloads, and Haruna works at a major Japanese coffee-shop chain.

Assumptions

Assumptions
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

when people bad-mouth us
sneering in French
assumptions are being made of us
a yellow face is non-literati,
good at math, grunts only pidgin
assumptions are being made of us
we are followers, never leaders,
happy to be hired
assumptions are being made of us
sidekick in "Heroes," never the hero
Kato like Tonto
assumptions are being made of us
we do dishes
we do blow-jobs
assumptions are being made of us
trying hard to be liked, blend in,
do better than the best
assumptions are being made of us
digging with a scalpel
make our slant eyes round
assumptions are being made of us
sneaky and un-scru-pu-lous
prove our loyalty by "going for broke"
assumptions are being made of us

Yoshiaki Tago Film-maker

Film-maker Yoshiaki Tago in his Tokyo office.
Tago and I are working on a film together.
Surprisingly, it's only recently (after reminding from an email from writer and choreographer Carla Blank) that I've realized this is another cross-cultural collaboration that's always been my life/work/identity.
I have a very good feeling about our work in progress.
I love Tago's sensibilities. He is a Japanese film-maker. And that means a certain language, a way of seeing and telling a story.
But we are struggling to connect a divide (gender, generation, genre, cultural reference).
Sometimes we are frustrated because we don't understand what's so obvious to the other.
By being forced to articulate what my poetry is for me, I am learning how my works connect to the past, to music, to the marginality of being caught in between the U.S. and Japan, to sexuality, to my son and his music _ all the things that are so close to me I sometimes forget or choose to forget what they mean.
Certainly, I don't want to talk about them _ in conversational prose.
After all, that's why the scars and tears and shame are all so carefully packaged _ and over so many years since my childhood in my poetry and stories.
To put it another way: If I had become someone who wrote in the Japanese language, I would certainly have become a different kind of person.
I write in English. I am an American minority writer.
I don't want to give the wrong impression.
Tago and I get along great: We both don't like "Elephant Man," or even "The Ballad of Narayama" (though Tago was educated in the school of director Shohei Imamura).
And we both love Kihachi Okamoto.
If that's not enough to keep us going, nothing is.

Film-maker Yoshiaki Tago in his Tokyo office.

poem RE poet

poem Re poet
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

ninja lost in the commuter train
the voice in the urban wilderness
shaman moaning an improvised chant
the word that kills
the thought that heals
being a poet is being told to take a bungee jump
and the rope is "Made in Japan-town"
feeling that fetal taiko-drum beat vibrating from deep within
all the way from my shuddering lips
to my dew-dropping labia folds _ majora and minora
the word that kills
the thought that heals
i don't feel safe:
will the music survive?
standing and sitting and walking and jogging
no different from anybody else
but transforming the everyday into the eternal
adding meaning to the meaningless
connecting with the dead like a radio show
seeing outer space
in the here and now
there is no choice
everywhere
but alone
being a poet
it just happens
the word that kills
the thought that heals