An unidentified man(?) poses with Shinichi Kamijo, Leader of Gishin Gokoku-kai
(Photo by Brett Bull , editor in chief of “The Tokyo Reporter“)

Anyone who lives in Japan knows that  August 15th marks the anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. Every year thousands of people flock to Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni shrine to pay their respects to the war dead interred there, including 14 class A war criminals.

Every year thousands of police and Uyoku Dantai (right-wing groups) turn the area surrounding the shrine into a  finely choreographed pantomime of a riot which is completely unreported in the main stream Japanese media. The  millions of yen of tax payers money it must cost to police the area alone surely enough to make it newsworthy.

It has become something of a ritual for me too and I’ve been every year since I moved to Japan and written about my various experiences, here and here, as well as posting a gallery of photographs over on the main Uchujin site.

But, I digress, a simple google search will turn up numerous explanations and photographs by foreign journalists reporting (at no small risk to themselves, see for example Damon Coulters post from this years Yasukuni here) what goes on.

This year however, was particularly weird for me.

I arrived at the shrine around 11am, sweating profusely in the 35 degree 80% humidity heat.
I had arranged to meet several friends with whom to enjoy the festivities and so made my way into the shrine past the thousands of people – war veterans, cosplayers and right-wing groups protesting about numerous bigoted causes numerous among them.
Once inside I made my way to an area to the right of the main shrine, close to the revisionist  war museum, to meet Brett Bull editor in chief of “The Tokyo Reporter”.
We had arranged for him to introduce me to Shinichi Kamijo the founding member of Gishin Gokoku-kai, a right-wing ultra nationalist group.
(Mr Bull wrote an excellent article on Kamijo san and the Yasukuni riots which you can read here)

Kamijo san is an imposing man, over six feet tall, built like the definitive brick outhouse, wearing a blue jump suit with the Japanese flag on one arm and a nazi swastika on the other and sporting a tattoo that reads “Death 4″ (4 in Japanese is “shi” also the sound of the kanji for death) on the back of his shaven head. The scar leading from the corner of his mouth onto his left cheek completing the visual effect of someone you simply would not like to be on the wrong side of.
I have seen him at Yasukuni and around Tokyo on numerous occasions and he is not easy to forget.

So it was with some trepidation that I offered my politest greetings as Brett introduced me to him and we exchanged business cards.
The first question he asked me ( the most common opening question of the ultra rightist’s) was where I was from. After, that is,  he stopped laughing at my uchujin business card and showing it to the 5 other members of his group decked out in the same blue jump suits. He even found time for a pop culture reference introducing me to one of the other members who he called “Predator” a reference, one assumes to the recent Alien vs Predator movie.
My answer seemed to be one of the correct ones because he then went on to ask me if I was a photographer, if I was married and how long I’d been in Japan, simple friendly normal questions , delivered with a smile.
I was almost speechless at the conversation I was having with this man who wears his ultra right politics literally on his sleeve. I’ve had less friendly chats with my co-workers!

The time for the minute’s silence in remembrance of the war dead arrived and everyone turned to face the shrine with bowed heads.
Kamijo san and the other members displaying a genuine reverance, motionless and eyes closed for the full minute.

The silence over and the meeting and greeting of other right-wing group leaders and various members of the Yakuza completed (including a priceless moment when one of them gestured towards us and asked who we were, Kamijo san replying that we were “his photographers”), Kamijo san nudged me and said “Lets go and have a beer”.
Despite the sauna like heat and my hangover I thought that “No, thanks” would not be an appropriate answer so we moved off towards the outdoor cafe located just outside the main Tori gate of the shrine.
I asked him as we walked if it was really ok for us to drink with him, “You’re not Chinese or Korean, so its fine” he replied.
He politely refused my offer to pay for my beer saying it was “on the company” and added that this didn’t mean I should think they were a gangster organization (a reference to the common practise in Japan of the higher up Yakuza paying for their juniors).

For the next 30 minutes we sat drinking beer and talking with Kamijo san and the other members of the group (who were all drinking water or fruit juice, a much more sensible choice in the heat).
The conversation was so normal, so friendly that it was easy to forget who it was we were talking to. Kamijo san seemed to know everyone and various other scary looking gentlemen stopped by to sit and converse with him not batting an eyelid at the presence of several white boys. Their conversations often turned to politics and my Japanese let me down somewhat as I was only able to catch 50% of what they were saying, probably a good thing.
Only once did Kamijo san ask my opinion, after a particularly heated exchange with another right-winger about Futenma, the U.S. army base in Okinawa.
Luckily my judgement was working well despite the heat and I said I really didn’t have an opinion about it, to which he laughed, understanding full well that I was being diplomatic.

Beers drunk I headed off to explore outside the shrine, where a lot of the action takes place on the 15th, promising to meet with Kamijo san and his group later in the day when he would show me “what we are really here for”.

A few hours later I met up with the Gishin Gokoku-kai again as they waited about 1km from Yasukuni shrine itself for the left-wing peace march to pass by . In the last few years the Peace march has grown in size much to the annoyance of the right-wing groups who along with thousands of police in full riot gear line the route of the proposed march.
A lot of the right-wing groups do little more than stand on top of their large trucks adorned with ultra nationalist slogans and the Japanese imperial flag and shout abuse at the protesters as they pass by surrounded by a heavy police presence.
The Gishin Gokoku-kai and a few other groups however have a different agenda, they intend to do the members of the peace march physical harm.
These more physical groups have always seemed to do little more than make posturing and half-hearted attempts to reach the peace marchers, easily held back by the police whom they seem to have a very friendly relationship with. Attempts by the right wingers to break through the police cordon often ending in laughing and smiles from both parties.
The Gishin Gokoku-kai however seem more seriously intent on breaking through than most of the groups. As I threaded my way through the packed sidewalk trying to keep pace with the group, they made many attempts to break through the police lines often requiring 4 or more officers to hold each of them back, tussles that ended in sprawling heaps on the ground with no smiles or laughing. These were  real displays of violence and palpable hatred for the  peace marchers who they shouted streams of abuse at, Kamijo san even climbing on a barrier to spit at them at one point.
If this was pantomime then these boys need an oscar.

It was a stark reminder that the mild-mannered polite gentlemen I had been having a beer and looking at photos of their children with earlier in the day were not be taken lightly or confused with the reasonable, intelligent human beings that they had appeared to be.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

August 15th at Yasukuni shrine offers a window into a part of the Japanese psyche that is dark and scary, far far removed from the Hello Kitty image Japan would like to project to the world. The simple outnumbering 10 to 1 of right wingers to left wingers and the media blackout  should tell us something that though unpleasant and unpopular to hear we would do very well to pay heed to in our dealings with the land of the rising sun.

Kamijo san and his ilk are in a minority only because they wear their views with pride, out in the open.

As abhorent as their views are at least they have the courage of their misguided convictions, not something that is that common in a people that pride themselves on their two-facedness (建前 – tatemae and 本音 – honme).
It troubles me slightly to admit it, but I respect them for that.

And with that, some photos.

p.s. The “unidentified man” from the lead photo, after much internal dialogue decided it was best to pixelate out his face in the photo. In these days of the inter-webs , probably not the best idea to have a photo of you with a famous right winger floating around out there to be taken out of context.

Even better on Vimeo in HD (highly recommended)

A short film I made, shot in Tokyo.
Essentially a love story, albeit a dark one.

Not much more to say, except that the excellent music is by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a track taken from their excellent  F♯A♯∞ album from 1997. The track is titled “Dead flag blues” and the film contains about half of its full 6 minutes of gloriousness.
The vocal is from an unfinished screenplay by guitarist Efrim Menuck.

As a side note it turns out this is the 100th post on the blog!

From the “You couldn’t make it up” file:-

Me: Those nails are fantastic, can I take a picture?

Girl: No problem

[click]

[click]

Me: How exactly, do you use your phone with those, no problem?

Girl: No problem [laughs]

[Enter Boy stage right]

Boy: Hey, take a picture of me too!

Me: Ok [laughs]

Boy holds out his hand, revealing interesting tattoo

[click]

[click]

Me: Can i get one of the two of your hands together?

Boy and Girl: [laughs] Sure, no problem

[click]

[click]

Me (to Boy): That’s an interesting tattoo, why do you have that?

Boy: Well, when I was about 14 or 15 I really liked those…errr..German guys…..what do you call them?

Me: Umm…the Nazi’s??

Boy: Yeh, yeh the Nazi’s, I really liked them.

Me: Ok, thanks……

[Exit me stage left]

All content ©Uchujin-Adrian Storey]]> http://blog.uchujin.co.uk/2010/08/err-those-german-guys/feed/ 3 http://blog.uchujin.co.uk/2010/07/genetics-well-chimpanzee-that/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=genetics-well-chimpanzee-that http://blog.uchujin.co.uk/2010/07/genetics-well-chimpanzee-that/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:19:27 +0000 admin http://blog.uchujin.co.uk/?p=1082

An interesting tidbit on genetics from a really great Russell Banks book “The Darling” that I’ve just finished reading.
I confess I never realised we were that closely related to chimpanzees, though I do have some acquaintances in whom the connection is clearer than in others ;-)
The photo is also an excellent excuse to plug I Do Haiku You the new(ish) blog from Sean Miles Lotman (that’s him holding the book with the polite finger gesture, you may also recognise him from a portrait I shot of him).
It’s a beautiful pairing of Mr Lotman’s diana photos and haiku’s written to accompany them.
The rss feed should really be in your feed reader.
(By plugging his blog I’m also hoping that he won’t be too pissed at me for using him to illustrate our connection with chimpanzees ;-)

A few weeks ago my Flickr pro account (donated 2 years ago by the lovely motionid) expired.

It was a 2 year period that saw my photography progress dramatically thanks to meeting some amazing photographers and being part of some very interesting and informative groups, there were even 3 or 4 pictures that made it to number 1 in explore, the holy grail of flickr nerds everywhere, and Flickr itself introduced me to almost everyone I call a friend now in this big crazy city.
The love affair is officially over though (not just with flickr), I’ve moved on and won’t be renewing my pro account, in fact I’ll be slowly deleting my Flickr stream.
I am much more interested in posting here on my blog, where I can brand my content in a much more personal way.

So the video above is a look back at one of the most photographically productive periods of my life and a requiem for those heady days of flickr obsession.
It’s quite long,  as it contains 489 images, but it’s quite a fun ride if you have a spare 4 minutes.
(The astute among you may notice some images that you don’t recognise from my stream, this is because the video contains all the images I’ve ever posted to flickr including ones I deleted or ones that were private)

The music is by The Red House Painters (now sadly defunct) the track is Mistress (guitar version) and is used without permission, and that is a whole other conversation.

The last (I think) in the Kenya 2010 series of blog posts:- pictures that didn’t fit into any of the other posts.

My Kenya trip this year was my first real holiday in more than 4 years and the first time I had left Japan apart from to attend my Mothers funeral in the same period. Unsurprisingly it had a profound effect on me, reminding me of some important things about myself that I had forgotten under the weight of living a ‘normal’ life in Tokyo.
The details of those remembrances are too long and boring to anyone else to go into here, but suffice to say the effects will be reverberating through all aspects of my life for some time yet.

I shot, what I believe was, the best photo story I’ve ever shot and am at present still hawking it around to magazines in the hope of getting it published, meaning that it will not (hopefully never) be appearing here.

I also shot quite a lot of other pictures that I am proud of and most of them have appeared here over the past weeks as blog posts.
For this final Kenya blog post a gallery of pictures that were not part of any particular set or didn’t fit anywhere else.

Kwaheri (Goodbye in Swahili) Dark Star, we will be meeting again soon.

As a follow-up to the last post about the free party in Kibera, it’s another video post, also shot at the same free party.
This time it’s those pesky kids again.
Enjoy.

Within a few days of arriving in Nairobi I found myself at a most unusual concert,organised by the Goethe Institut Nairobi, being paid to take pictures.

The Teichmann brothers, a techno duo from Germany who were in Nairobi recording an Album with members of Ukooflani and Jahcoozi a dub/techno outfit also from Germany were playing an outdoor free concert at St George’s orthodox church in the heart of Kibera on a sunny Tuesday afternoon.

The residents of Kibera came to dance, relax and see what the strange Germans were doing out in the (almost) mid-day sun.
Everyone enjoyed themselves, especially the kids, and it really felt like something interesting was happening, the  mixing of different musical styles and the co-operation between the musicians and the residents of Kibera.

Thanks to Katarina from Goethe for hiring me having only met me once, Sam for setting that up ;-), Hasani for driving me there, All the musicians for making me feel so welcome and a special thanks to Andi Teichmann for being a really damn nice guy.

Kibera is the largest and probably most famous slum in Africa.
Over a million people living mostly on less than $1 U.S. a day.
During my Kenya trip I spent a lot of time there, partly for work and partly to hang out with some friends I’d made.
One of the things that stuck me about the place was how happy the children seemed, despite their circumstances.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m firmly in the “Lord of the flies” camp when it comes to my opinion on children, but I will grudgingly admit to their occasional cuteness.

The children of Kibera warmed my heart in ways I will deny ever admitting, so before I ruin my hard faced image even more I will simply present a gallery of  ‘cute little slum dwelling poor African children™’,  go and pour myself a Gin and Tonic and mourn the loss of the Empire ;-)

“Lavosti and Oren, Impromtu jam, Nairobi April 2010″

A few days after arriving in Nairobi, the house where I was staying, legendary for its parties, was host to the birthday party for a very lovely man called Sam Hopkins (Founder of SlumTV).
He turned out to be a ‘diamond geezer’ and was one of the people who made my Kenya trip so memorable.

The outside patio at the party turned into a jamming area with many musicians from many countries,
(Israel, Kenya, Italy and Germany to name but 4)
Yours truly played his thighs as bongos for so long that my thighs looked like this in the morning:-

But I digress, When I heard the guy in the video, Lavosti from the hip-hop collective Ukooflani, start blowing into his hands and this amazing trumpet like sound issuing forth, I stopped slapping my thighs and ran and got my camera…..
The video above is all I managed to capture before the song ended , more beer arrived and the jam moved on.

Lavosti is backed on guitar by Oren from the band Jahcoozi (there will more of them in later blog posts).
I couldn’t believe he was making that amazing noise with just his hands, and boy could he sing too.
He tried to show me how to do it, but I was embarassingly bad and probably a little too far gone to try by then.

I hope you are as amazed by this little slice of musical genius as I was.