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Scott Shaffer Interview Part 1

I met Scott Shaffer a few years ago at Ihara Gym in Daikanyama when he was in Japan to fight Hirono Yu.  We talked a bit before working out, and immediately I liked him.  I liked his attitude and his outlook and the way he approached fighting.  I also have to admit I liked that he was an American (Military at that! Oorah!), because there are so few of us in the kickboxing world that have anything vaguely resembling a clue.

We ended up training together and I helped work his corner for the Hirono Yu fight which he won, totally upsetting and shocking the Japanese promoters who had brought him over to be a red, white and blue tomato can for a former Japanese boxing champion turned kickboxer.  Needless to say shit did not go the way they planned and Scott brought the intensity.  Yu brought a surprised look and a pillow.

Shaffer and I hung out and trained together again when he came back in 2010 to fight Yamamoto Yuya at Krush 6.  The fight was a good one, but Yuya took the win.

The problem with this, is that Yuya should not have won.

It’s Prize fighting. Anything can happen and there are a million excuses, I know, I’ve been in the ring. I’ve also trained others that climbed over those ropes and I know the difference between a prepared, game fighter and someone that has other shit on their mind.  So, when I saw Scott in 2010, when we sat down and talked, the man in front of me was not thinking about the biggest fight of his life, but a hundred other things that a professional fighter should not have to worry about just days before, hours before, knuckling up.

Since then we have talked a lot about his experiences, mine, realities about being a fighter and the state of kickboxing in the USA.  We have also talked, and agreed, that being an American in a sport that has virtually no following in the states, yet is wildly loved abroad, is a good way to find yourself taking fights that no one other than a complete maniac would agree to.  Just like myself and Laura Janjira, Scott Shaffer has done battle, put it all on the line and has some things he’d like to say about it.

1. How long have you been Kickboxing, and how did you first get started with it?

I got started with Kickboxing back ’98 at the Maurice Smith Kickboxing Center in Seattle WA. I had never done any martial arts prior to training but I had always enjoyed fighting.

I used to get into a lot of altercations with other kids running the streets with my friends but I think the thing that really got me to get up and join a gym was after watching a UFC Title fight of Maurice Smith against Mark Colman. “Mo” was the underdog and back-then no striker had ever won against a grappler in the UFC. Mo took Mark the distance and ended up winning the championship in one of the biggest upsets in UFC history. I came to find out at the end of the fight that Maurice had a gym in Seattle. After watching the fight I was hooked and took the bus down to the gym the next day; I was seventeen at the time.

My first day in the gym I was hooked, and for the first time in my life I knew what I wanted to do; I wanted to be a “Kickboxer”. I remember seeing guys like Francisco Filio, Glabe, Satake, and countless other guys that I had seen weeks earlier on ESPN2 and K-1.

The atmosphere in the gym was something that I can’t put into words. At the time I was running the streets, getting kicked out of school, and had no job or money to pay for a membership. Mo made a deal with my mom that if I made some positive changes in school I could train there, if not, I was out! I made the necessary changes and within a year I was instructing classes and fighting.

2. What countries have you fought in? Which country gave you the best experience and which gave you the worst? Why?

I have fought in countries like Japan, Singapore, France, Turkey, all over Canada and the United States. The best experience I’ve had, by far, has been in Japan. It seems, to me, that the Japanese have a respect for fighting and fighters that doesn’t exist any where I’ve been. The events are extremely organized and the fans make you feel at home even though you are a guest in their country.

My worst experience would have to be Turkey and France; but i think it has to do more with the promotion, A-1, then the countries.

Now my whole life, I’ve always been the underdog; smallest, weakest, fighting seemed to be the same story. Every single one my fights, since the beginning of my career has been against some champion in some form of another; regional, state, ect. So, when I started getting fight offers to fight in pro shows overseas against guys with 30 plus fights I couldn’t have cared less. I remember being 16 and fighting grown men on Strikeforce kickboxing cards in stadiums long before anyone gave a shit about MMA.

In 2005 I had just gotten out of the Air Force, and I just started training again after a 4 year break to support the war effort going on in Middle East. Mo offered a fight to me and I accepted. Now, I’m a firm believer that once you get on a fight circuit and start fighting Pro, there is no turning back, there is no “I need to get some easy fights to feel comfortable again” or only taking fights that you know you can win; when you’re a pro you have to act accordingly.

I had been out of the fight game for 4 years but for me, it was nothing; I would have fought anyone they threw at me. The thing that made this fight so hard was that it turned out that the fight was going to happen at 75 Kilos. Prior to the fight I was told that it would be at 65 Kilos. At that time I only weighed about 145, maybe 150 (pounds; about 68 Kilos) on a good day. The fight was against a Turkish Champion Apache Serkan, and if you’ve ever seen his fights, he’s no pushover.

I never thought about it too much at the time but now looking back I must have had a few screws loose to go through with the fight.

I didn’t have a corner man, a trainer, or even any sparring partners to get me ready for the fight but I was so hungry to compete it didn’t matter. I got myself ready the best I knew how, with calisthenics, running and a little help from Pete Sprat who was also fighting on the card with me.

Well, the fight was pretty much one-sided. It mostly consisted of him beating on me for three rounds. I did my best to fight but I just could not seem to get anything to come together. I caught a hard rear leg round kick that broke my left rib in the first round and broke my nose in the second. In the third round the ref paused the fight to have the doc look at my nose. He told me “Your nose is badly broken, you’re loosing badly, do you want to continue”. I told him “I WANT TO FIGHT, I WANT TO FIGHT!”, the crowd was booing me, people were calling me “George Bush!”, but quitting was not something I would ever do willingly. I pressed on, put all the BS to the side, and started making some gains, however, my nose was badly bleeding and the doc decided to stop the fight, despite my will. This was my first time fighting overseas and was a big wake-up call.

The second worse fight was in France, for the same promotion. The year was 2009 and I had already had a few more fights under my belt. At the time I had been running around with Bob Sapp and the “Sapp Circus” (Inside Joke guys!).

I have known Bob for many years, long before his popularity in Japan. I have a great deal of respect for him as a businessman and athlete, however, Bob and I do not see eye-to-eye with regards to the progression of a fighter. Bob believes to take any and all fights in and out of your weight-class. He believes “you” don’t have the luxury to be picky and choosy about taking a fight. I agree with this 100%, with the exception of fighting out of your weight class. I believe weight classes are put in place for a reason and it’s stupid to be fighting guys out of it, unless you can’t seem to get fights, in which case, move up in weight! Besides, it’s not like there’s a shortage of fighters in my weight class.

So Bob offered me this fight, which he told me was 70 Kilos. I still didn’t know who I was fighting, which was a little frustrating because I like to study my opponents. Now, shortly before my first fight in Japan with Hirono Yu, I developed a stress fracture in my hip. I became a little overzealous in my training routine because it had been my dream for YEARS to fight in Japan. Instead of resting after my fight in japan, I continued to train, and run, and further aggravate my injury. By the time my fight in France came around I could hardly jog without feeling like someone was sticking a knife in my lower abdomen. An MRI later relieved that I had done so much running, kicking and situps that my lower abdominals were tearing away from my pubic bone!

Jesus, how the hell does that happen!?

Anyways, I did my best to get ready for this fight with one leg, again with no pad holder, sparring partners, or coaches that know anything about Muay Thai. When I got to France I met my opponent, but came to find out that the fight was going to be at 75 kilos. Aside from the drama I was dealing with, with Bob and his games, I felt confident in my abilities.

My opponent was a French fighter from Lyon named Abderrahman Penda. We talked a little bit before the fight, and even joked about how we are hoping to go first so that we can enjoy the rest of the show, he was a real cool guy. We ended up fighting last after what was supposed to be the main even, Sapp vs. Quateron.

Backstage, Penda was the least of my worries. Bob said he needed my handwraps to wrap his ankles and assured me he would get me another pair after he fought. When Bob was called to the stage, I walked out with him along with Tarek. The fight lasted about 2 minutes; typical length of a Sapp fight. He claimed to have a broken rib and was unable to continue the fight!

I quickly hurried back to the locker room waiting for Bob to come back and get me some handwraps so I could get warmed up but Bob was no were to be found! I was freaking out because My fight was coming up and I had no handwraps and, no cornerman. I managed to get one of Quatron’s cornermen to graciously help me out. He talked with the Thai trainer that was in the other locker room and he agreed to help me out with my wraps. We didn’t have any gauze so I just went ahead and used my training hand wraps underneath and had him tape over it. My corner man didn’t speak much English but we were able to communicate without any problems. When I was called to the ring I didn’t get many cheers, instead I found myself in a stadium packed with a bunch of angry-looking spectators who were looking at me as if I single handidly started the war in the middle east!

The fight again, much like turkey, was pretty one-sided. I wasn’t able to put anything together and got dropped in the first round. I quickly stood up only to see a beer bottle fly by that grazed my head! I don’t know what it is about fighting in European countries but it seems to me that the fight fans in Europe don’t care too much for Americans (Big understatement, I know!). Now ordinarily when you fight you are supposed to be focused on nothing else but the man standing across from you in the ring, but I can distinctly remember what was going on in my head and it had nothing to do with the man trying to tear my head off.

I remember being real angry at Bob for putting me through a bunch of BS before the fight. Dragging me around town to meet his “fans” and eating fast food because “this is how you get your name out” and endless amounts of other bullshit that I don’t have the will to talk about anymore. I remember just being angry and having no real desire to want to fight to win, rather, just get in there and put on a show. I did my best to finish the fight. I had a broken rib, nose, and my face and head were cut pretty bad. In the last round, a few seconds before the bell rang, Penda caught me with a nice combo that had me dazed and capitalized on it with an elbow that took me off my feet. It felt like that man was packing steel elbows because every time he hit me with them I couldn’t keep my legs.  The plane ride home was a long and depressing one, not only was I depressed by my performance, but just angry with my whole situation.

People have absolutely no idea how hard it is to fight on these circuits.

No one gives a shit about an American kickboxer, including the hand full of phony sports writers that keep up with kickboxing and Muay Thai. On top of that, training here in the states is a joke. We may have a few trainers that know what they are doing here but they dumb it down by running these hour and a half seminar classes that don’t do shit to prepare you for a fight against an opponent that is in the ring on a monthly/bi-monthly basis and has a trainer who understands it is his duty and responsibility to prepare his guy that best he can.

All I ever wanted was to be given the opportunity to show that I can compete against the worlds best, because I believe I can. I felt that if I continued to run around with Bob that I would just be another American stooge that promoters bring over to make a name for their guy.

I made it clear that I am not a clown and I am not going to just take fights to get a paycheck. For me, I would have done this for free, that is how much I loved it, and only to see people make a mockery of it by fighting just to put on a show and not to win was/is against everything I believe in. I decided that if I was going to continue to fight it would be on my terms; fuck what everyone else thinks.

Keep your eyes open for part Two coming up in the next week. 

If this wasn’t good enough for you, try these:

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Sceptre productions is the brain child of Rionne McAvoy. Hailing from Australia, he intends to bring a new sensibility to Japanese film and is prepared to do it from the ground up.  His latest project is almost completed and we sat down to knock out a quick interview hitting him with whatever happened to come up.

Answers weren’t the focus, more the voice itself.  Identity is action, and again as with our other interviews, the subjects “Who” is defined by his “Doing-this-Now.”  For some people, “Cowboy the fuck Up” is a daily life style, not just a bumper sticker.  Read on and learn how day dreams can materialize into realities.

1.Why Movies? Why Japan?

Unlike quite a lot of directors, I didn`t go to film school. I also am not a self-confessed film geek like Scorsese or Tarintino. Both these guys are walking encyclopedia`s on the history of film. For me, everything stems from my love of Martial Arts.

I started Karate when I was 7, and except for the period between 16-19, I have been training all my life. I came to Japan when I was 19 to study Karate, but eventually ended up switching to Aikido when I was 21, and also started Kick Boxing around the end of 2008. Growing up, I was always watching martial arts and action flicks. As a boy, it was always my dream to one day become a big action star like Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. These guys, along with the likes of Bruce Willis, Arnie, Stallone and later on Jet Li, really shaped my passion for the action genre.

Although it was always a dream to be an actor, I really didn’t decide to do anything about it until I was well and truly addicted to the TV show 24, which is, and will always be, along with the film Heat, my biggest influence. So in early 2008, with my dream of being a big action star still fully intact, I approached an American director who I was also teaching Aikido to, with a script I had written. Looking back now, the script was horrible, but nonetheless, the director agreed to help me out and suggested we make a trailer to show potential investors.

With this in mind, I went out and started putting a team together. This was the first time that I began to notice that my skills as a producer (and later on director), someone able to put together a team to work on a film project, were far better than my skills as an actor!

After assembling a crew of 5 plus roughly 5 or 6 actors, we had our first shoot, an action scene where I was to chase a bad guy down a street and do an Aikido based fight scene, before finally jumping off an apartment building balcony. I was nervous and excited at the same time, but I really wanted to know what was going on behind the camera. As the shoot progressed, the director quite rightly told me “that`s my job, you concentrate on doing a good performance in front of the camera!”.

The director however, had some personal issues he had to deal with, and quit the project after the first shoot. I was suddenly left the task of director, producer and actor on my very first film shoot. Needless to say, I was completely out of my depth, and made every rookie mistake possible. Nonetheless, this was my film school 101. I learnt how to use a camera properly, how to treat actors properly, how to generate a vision and how to put that vision into pictures, and most importantly, how to see a project all the way through to the end.

In the end, thanks to some great editing by another friend of mine, and the help of my team, who guided me all the way, my first project ended up looking very good. As a first project, I was extremely happy with it.

The biggest problem with it however, was my acting. I sucked. Badly. It was only after showing it to a potential investor, who commented almost straight away just how bad I was, that I decided that acting wasn’t for me. I am usually not the kind of person to give up so easy, but after experiencing the entire behind the camera process, I knew that directing was exactly what I wanted to do. I went on to produce and direct a 42 minute short film called Set in Stone which was my first solo project.

2. Can you tell us a little more about your current project?

My latest film, Reverence, is a feature-length film. We are in the final stages of filming and editing right now, and expect the film to be about 110 minutes long. We started filming on December 6th, 2010, and are still going! The actors all work for free, as do the staff, and because we all have full-time jobs, filming can only be done on weekends.

The film is about two brothers, Kunihiko and Keijiro Kimura, who are hired to kill four specific Japanese law makers who hold the key to uncovering corruption within the Japanese government. When things don’t go exactly to plan and with the Japanese National Police Agency hot on their heels, the brothers are double crossed by their bosses and must find a way to get out of Japan before time runs out.

3. How difficult is it shooting what is essentially a cop thriller in a city like Tokyo?

Extremely challenging at times, yet extremely easy at other times. Japan is a very peaceful society, with very little visible crime, so shooting anything other than a Yakuza film is very tough because the crime stories that are portrayed in film, rarely happen in real life here. My film has a lot of sniper sequences, which is something that is just not realistic in Japan. The challenge, and I guess this goes for any director, is to suspend the audience’s belief and let them enter the fictional world you have created in your film.

The fact that I can pull out a replica sniper rifle on a roof for several hours at a time, on multiple days with no permission from the authorities at all, and not get in any trouble, really is a credit to Japan. Pulling out replica handguns on the street and filming is also fine, people here don`t blink an eyelid, unless its to say “oh look, they are shooting a movie!”.

The biggest challenge to shooting any kind of movie here though is undoubtedly trying to get permission to shoot. Some directors say it is easy, but on my first project, I went through all the proper channels and experienced nothing but trouble. I now shoot everything guerilla style, and make no qualms about it. Hospital scenes, police station scenes, sniper roof scenes and every other scene in my film are all shot guerilla style. I`ve been called “The Tokyo Guerilla King” by other local filmmakers here! I know I cannot go on shooting like this forever, but for the moment, the way I am doing things certainly produces the best results.

4. Up to this point, has anything happened during this shoot that you are really proud of or impressed with?

From a personal point of view, I am proud of my growth as a director. Each shoot we do is better than the last and it really is a thrill to see your vision put onto the screen. I am also proud of having been able to direct, produce, edit, location scout, audition actors, write the script, and coordinate each shooting day (actors, meeting times, shoot length, locations) almost entirely alone. I have had a little help along the way and am extremely grateful for that as well. I am also proud of the fact that I was able to put over US$5 million worth of classic and modern cars into my film, for free! You`ll see a classic 1967 Ferrari, and brand new Ferrari 580, a 1955 Mercedes Benz, a 1969 Pontiac, a brand new Ford Mustang and Bentley, as well as others in the film.

From a team point of view, I am extremely proud of our growth as a production team. The small crew that we have are fantastic, and the actors first class. We are all still learning our trade, but we come together with the same common goal of making a film that is enjoyable for others to watch. It has been a pleasure to meet new people, build meaningful relationships, and make friendships that will surely last a long time.

5. What is the most valuable lesson you have learned while working in the “underground” film industry in Japan?

The most important lessons I have learnt are two very important lessons. The first one is how to network, hustle, and talk. With little or no budget, and no studio backing, being able to make your film look like it has a much bigger budget while in reality it does not, is extremely challenging. It is however, not impossible. With the right mixture of networking, hustling, and the right words, in Japan, you can get almost anything you want.

"No really...almost ANYTHING."

The second lesson is that, in the end, no one will have the same amount of passion for your project as you do. To everyone else, it is understandably, just another project. Thus, I had to learn to be ready when people have to cancel on you. Things happen in daily life, sudden things come up, and sometimes people cannot be there on the day when they had previously promised. Because my actors all work for free, when they get a paid gig, of course they have to take it, and it is up to me to rejuggle everything to fit these problems in. As well as this, actors also have busy schedules, sometimes acting in 3 or 4 projects at one time, so trying to match everyone`s schedules is at times very frustrating.

6. Advice for someone at home thinking about taking a go at making their own film?

Go out and do it! Movie magic happens on all levels, so get a camera, get a script, and go out and shoot! You`ll have a blast, make a bunch of new friends, and who knows where it might take you!

7. What’s next for Rionne McAvoy and Scepter films?

First thing is to get Reverence in the can. Post production is incredibly taxing. Everything from re-recording voices, adding in previously taken location sounds, color correcting, re-editing the edit, takes a long time and I am certainly looking forward to the big wrap party we plan to hold in April.

After that, I`ll be submitting the film to as many film festivals (both in Japan and abroad) as I can. No rest for the wicked however, because my next project is already lined up, a “gaijin” (foreigner in Japan) comedy.

8. Last chance, anything you want to tell the world? Make it not suck…

People have continued to ask me, “Rionne, what can I do to help you and your crew out with this project?”  There are many ways people can help us out! I currently have an online funding campaign, where I am trying to raise money to finish off the film. People can donate as little as $10 or as much as $5000 and we are extremely grateful for any donation given!. We also talk a little bit more about why we believe we can change the face of Japanese cinema on that campaign page. The link is right here, anything any of you can do is a HUGE help. 

The last thing I’d like to say is thanks to the readers here at Gaijinass for taking the time to check my team and I out, and please keep your eyes open for REVERENCE in April!

You love it and we can tell, try these out:

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I just watched Super a movie about a man (Dwight from the Office) who thinks he is touched by God, through a pretty creepy tentacle porn scene.  Through the finger of God he learns that he  should become a Superhero name Crimson Bolt and fight crime.  Along the way he picks up a psychopath sidekick named Bolty (The Lolita temptress from Hard Candy) and they fight various thugs before taking on the film’s crime lord (played by Kevin Bacon).

I was honestly surprised at how good this was considering other movies of the same genre like Defendor and Special. All three movies have basically the same plot:  A simple man leading a boring life decides to become a superhero with no radioactive granting super powers.

Special actually was on the brink of being a great movie until  it ruined the illusion that the drugs were making him seem like he had super powers. I think that one scene in the doctor’s office[highlight to see the spoiler] where the POV was through the doctor’s eyes and instead of seeing him floating we see the hero was just lying on the floor. At that moment I thought the whole illusion was broken. They didn’t need to do it … and then we won’t even talk about the painful, drawn out third act that could have been mercifully edited down  Whereas Defendor was just ehhh, it was OK.

Super though had just the right amount of violence, humor and comic book themes of self doubt, who is bad, etc.  Maybe because the order I saw the three starting with Defendor, then Special and finally Super that the violence and gore in Super that drew me in, due to the lack of blood and guts in the other movies.  Whatever it was it was pleasantly surprising in a way that gore makes a flick realistic … grown up.  Yet the movie still had all the ridiculous elements of a man walking around in a superhero’s suit while dealing with all the moral dilemma’s a superhero goes through. Maybe the contrast of the two like how weird it would be to have a kids show have incredibly visual sex … something is out of place yet fascinating at the same time. Very interesting the way it was done and how it increased as the film went on.

7 Iconic Albums that Rocked my Life

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Sartre said “All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned from books.”

Books are dear to me too and they’ve been there to help me learn, cope, hide, escape and transcend various things at various times in my life.  But, for me, it must be said that all I care to remember about my life, it seems, I have connected with music.

Different people remember moments in time for different reasons.  For some it’s smells, for others textures or sensations.  For me, almost without fail, it’s music and sounds.  Music is so incredibly powerful and moving that it has the ability, almost uniquely, to transform perceptions and shape events in a way that might not have occurred to us.  A particular song can define an entire era or even a generation.  Music can be powerful and majestic, it can also be crap. A lot like people.  Go Figure.

While sitting on my balcony this evening smoking a cigar and looking at the relentlessly bright moon over Tokyo tonight, I decide to “put pen to paper” and work out the 7 most iconic, defining albums in my life so far and the one song on each that have the most drastic impact.

Read on, remember, learn the new or add your own thoughts in the comments.  But this is my list.

7. She’s so Unusual

In 1984 Cyndi Lauper released She’s So Unusual because it was the early 80′s and Girls just wanted to have fun.  And they did.

For all the horror that might have been spawned in that decade, the early 80′s still held onto some of the “innocence” from the 70′s that had all kicked off in the 60′s and everywhere I turned Cyndi was dancing, singing and generally telling everyone to have a good time.

This album had what, FOUR major hits? It was the teenage fan base and the critics that drove this into every home, everywhere.  Did my parents listen to this? Hell no; Billy Joel and Tina Turner reigned supreme at home (hey, nothing wrong with that, generational thing).  But whoever came over to baby-sit did.  Friends older sisters did.  She’s so Unusual was all over the T.V. , the Radio (epic-technology throw back!) and in everyone’s Walkman.

It was also around this time my family and I moved to Germany to help fight the Soviets and guess what? David Hasselhoff wasn’t the only ones the Germans loved.

"Although they really did love him. For obvious reasons."

She was everywhere and so was her music.  Her neo-Punk visage jived so well with what so many young people wanted to express at that time it was almost inevitable.  The only competition She’s so Unusual might have had then for a kid like me would have been Michael Jackson or Madonna but to this day, as far as I’m concerned, Cyndi Lauper and this album ARE the early 1980′s.  Just watch the Goonies, they’ll prove it.

6. Appetite for Destruction

GNR released Appetite for Destruction in 1987 and although I physically ceased being a virgin in 1995, meta-physically speaking, I popped my cherry in the fall of ’87.

I was about 9 years old and although I couldn’t figure out why or how, I knew that this album, this band with these guys and this music had something to do with girls, talking to them, and doing something that would feel really, really good with them.  This appealed to me heavily someplace deep in my Man core it seems.

Poison made a valiant attempt at stealing this mantle from Axl and his boys with their awesome, yet desperate, album Open Up & Say Ahhh but in the end, GNR was simply too cool and their music too heavy.

"It also didn't help that the members of Poison looked like this."

Sweet Child o’mine was/is EPIC.  Welcome to the Jungle and Paradise city are by no means slouches either, but it’s hard to do battle with one of the most well-known Rock n’ Roll ballads of all time.

5. Ten

I think I would have totally missed the entire “grunge” rock thing if it had not been for Pearl Jam and their album Ten. In 1991-92ish there was a lot of different music floating around.  Nirvana was everywhere.  It was obnoxious.  Suddenly people stopped wearing nice clothes and started dressing like me.  Granted, this made my life a little bit easier, but it also really turned me off, once I took notice.  The group I was skateboarding with went from 3 guys to 10 in a week or two, and suddenly, everyone was “full of angst.”  I’d been angry for no logical reason for years and I felt like these posers were horning in on well established territory.

Smells like Teen Spirit sounded like a shitty teen garage band to me and I probably would have just held fast to GNR and their Use Your Illusions efforts or paid more attention to this new thing called “gangsta-rap” a little more if not for this kid Kevin turning me on to Eddie Vedder and Ten. Once I saw them live the deal was DONE.  Intensity personified with music.

For the longest time Jeremy dominated this album with an iron fist for me and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that my opinion changed and a track I largely ignored, Black, took position has head boy for me on Ten.

Maybe that has something to do with getting gulp…older.

4. Let’s Go

So, we defeated communism, tore down the Berlin wall as David Hasselhoff sang on it wearing a jacket covered in Christmas lights; God bless you Knight Rider.  The Soviet threat was long gone and I came back from Europe.  I was not happy about this.

"You thought I was joking didn't ya? On top of the Berlin-fucking-wall he did this. "

1994-95 was a bumpy ride for me.  The culture shock of living in Stuttgart Germany and then moving to small town USA was relatively epic and the kerosene my teenage angst doused itself in sent me careening into the open, loving arms of Punk Rock.  Here, I found Rancid’s album Let’s Go waiting to give me a big sloppy smooch.

I had listened to Punk before.  That, in and of itself, wasn’t really anything new.  Friends and I had hung out in Germany listening to Ramones records on my Dad’s stereo many an afternoon, and The Misfits were standard parking lot music while we all tried not to die learning how to do 180 heel-flips and suicidal nose slides.

But Let’s Go was different.  The tone of the music, the message, it made sense to me.  Not just a dislike of authority but the realization that your decisions are yours to make, and it was very different from some other hardcore stuff I had listened too that seemed to make things about class or race.  It was angry but it was purposeful in a way that worked for me.  It also opened the door for me to look into other more underground types of music, expand my sensibilities and keep an open mind despite what appearances might be.  This was the first time music did this for me.  This was cool.

3. Live at the Roxy by Social Distortion

If you’re a young punk Marine hanging around southern California and need a life soundtrack, you could do a lot worse than Social D’s Live at the Roxy.

I had got a hold of their album Prison Bound years before and although I thought it was “OK” I largely, mistakenly, put the band on my “pay-them-no-mind” list.  Big mistake.  By the time I caught up to Live at the Roxy I was in need of something, someone who had the voice for what I was doing in my life, which was essentially wandering around the west coast and learning to shoot at and blow things up.  The name of the game was be cool even when shit is completely FUBAR, and some how Social Distortion worked for this.

Too many great songs on one perfect live album.  Listening to Story of my life, Prison Bound, I was Wrong and Don’t Drag me Down made me feel like I had found someone who was singing about what I was doing and even stranger; things I knew I would have to deal with in the future.  It was surreal and intense. I spent hours hanging around the barracks just listening to this over and over watching the massive sun set over the mountains.  Whole evenings slipped away driving aimlessly, no destination in mind, through the high desert with the windows down hearing Mike Ness rock on and I’d lose all concept of time as nothingness flew by and I would be completely immersed in my thoughts and the hypnotic act of driving totally alone with nobody but the desert highway and the music.

The one song that stands above the rest, for me, and inspired me to see Social D live twice, after both shows I walked away simply shaking my head in disbelief at how good they were, would be Cold Feelings.

2. The Empyrean

Years ago, when I was a punk teenager, a mentor of sorts told me that “There are these few albums that, like, you listen to them the first time and when the record finishes, you call your friends and cancel your plans because you HAVE TO listen to it again, immediately. It’s that good.”

The Empyrean was the first album I ever found that made me do exactly that.  In 2009 I stayed in my apartment for two days doing nothing really but drinking wine or whiskey, staring at the wall and listening to this album.  A few people mailed and I ignored them. Someone called and I just screeched into the receiver then hung up.  The sun rose and set.  The Empyrean was on constant repeat.

We’ve mentioned this album before here and here and there’s a good damn reason for that.  That reason is called JOHN FRUSCIANTE.  The man is a musical genius. He’s the criminal master mind of Rock and frankly, he makes just about all other guitarists today seem like chumps, hacks and frauds.

Besides what he does with his guitar, his overall musical sensibilities reek so heavily of genuine COOL it’s hard not to drool a little while being sucked into one of the most complex albums ever recorded.

Unreachable is THE song on this album. Sit down, relax and listen to it all the way through and soak up the electric piano and Flea’s unmistakable bass.

1. Automatic Writing

The Empyrean had so totally monopolized my attention since 2009 it was ridiculous.  I had hunted around and moved genres and tried all sorts of dirty tricks but Johns cast iron grip held me fast.

Then about five months ago I broke free, sort of.

I just stumbled upon Ataxia, this experimental rock band project Frusciante had with one other guy from RHCP and Fugazi.  Predictably I guess, it blew my mind.  Automatic Writing is less polished than Johns other stuff but that’s the point.  It was never supposed to be about making a big album but about playing the music and just performing emotionally, sort of simultaneously.

"A lot like this Super Star."

It’s slower, heavier and melancholy as hell.  It’s also awesome.  Particularly Montreal.  So, technically I’m still Frusciantes bitch but…OK…I still am, he just brought his friends home with him. Damn you JOHN!  Anyway listen on and dig it.

The following have nothing to do with anything at all…..

Keeping Bathroom money	Paying the Bribe in Japan	Dudes on the Corner	Hosts in Japan	Build a Killer Robot or….?

Pretty soon we will be coming up on the year anniversary of the triple strike of Japan’s 311 Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear crisis. So thought it would be good to look at some of our posts about Japan’s crisis:

On Fidelity

Nuclear Power in Japan

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Václav Havel died on December 18th.  He was an intellectual, an artist, dissident and despite his own misgivings a popular politician.  He was the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989-1993 and the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.

His views regarding politics, the morality of man regardless of his station and situation and the ability of an individual to make change are legendary.

The following is a slightly trimmed down version of statements he made in 1998 as shared on project syndicate.

The following deserves a place in the mind of every American considering the upcoming presidential election, arguably the most important in the last 20 years, and the general state of the Republic as we find it today.

Prague, Czech Republic - Does an intellectual – by virtue of his efforts to get beneath the surface of things, to grasp relations, causes and effects, to recognise individual items as part of larger entities, and thus to derive a deeper awareness of and responsibility for the world – belong in politics?

Put that way, an impression is created that I consider it every intellectual’s duty to engage in politics. But that is nonsense. Politics also involves a number of special requirements that are relevant only to it. Some people meet these requirements; others don’t, regardless of whether they are intellectuals.

It is my profound conviction that the world requires – today more than ever – enlightened, thoughtful politicians who are bold and broad-minded enough to consider things that lie beyond the scope of their immediate influence in both space and time. We need politicians willing and able to rise above their own power interests, or the particular interests of their parties or states, and act in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity today – that is, to behave the way everyone should behave, even though most may fail to do so.

Never before has politics been so dependent on the moment, on the fleeting moods of the public or the media. Never before have politicians been so impelled to pursue the short-lived and short-sighted. It often seems to me that the life of many politicians proceeds from the evening news on television one night, to the public-opinion poll the next morning, to their image on television the following evening. I am not sure whether the current era of mass media encourages the emergence and growth of politicians of the stature of, say, a Winston Churchill; I rather doubt it, though there can always be exceptions.

To sum up: The less our time favours politicians who engage in long-term thinking, the more such politicians are needed, and thus the more intellectuals – at least those meeting my definition – should be welcomed in politics. Such support could come from, among others, those who – for whatever reason – never enter politics themselves, but who agree with such politicians or at least share the ethos underlying their actions.

I hear objections: Politicians must be elected; people vote for those who think the way they do. If someone wants to make progress in politics, he must pay attention to the general condition of the human mind; he must respect the so-called “ordinary” voter’s point of view. A politician must, like it or not, be a mirror. He dare not be a herald of unpopular truths, acknowledgement of which, though perhaps in humanity’s interest, is not regarded by most of the electorate as being in its immediate interest, or may even be regarded as antagonistic to those interests.

I am convinced that the purpose of politics does not consist in fulfilling short-term wishes. A politician should also seek to win people over to his own ideas, even when unpopular. Politics must entail convincing voters that the politician recognises or comprehends some things better than they do, and that it is for this reason that they should vote for him. People can thus delegate to a politician certain issues that – for a variety of reasons – they do not sense themselves, or do not want to worry about, but which someone has to address on their behalf.

Of course, all seducers of the masses, potential tyrants or fanatics, have used this argument to make their case; the communists did the same when they declared themselves the most enlightened segment of the population, and, by virtue of this alleged enlightenment, arrogated to themselves the right to rule arbitrarily.

The true art of politics is the art of winning people’s support for a good cause, even when the pursuit of that cause may interfere with their particular momentary interests. This should happen without impeding any of the many ways in which we can check that the objective is a good cause, thereby ensuring that trusting citizens are not led to serve a lie and suffer disaster as a consequence, in an illusory search for future prosperity.

It must be said that there are intellectuals who possess a very special ability for committing this evil. They elevate their intellect above everyone else’s, and themselves above all human beings. They tell their fellow citizens that if they do not understand the brilliance of the intellectual project offered to them, it is because they are of dull mind, and have not yet risen to the heights inhabited by the project’s proponents. After all that we have gone through in the twentieth century, it is not very difficult to recognise how dangerous this intellectual – or, rather, quasi-intellectual - attitude can be. Let us remember how many intellectuals helped to create the various modern dictatorships!

A good politician should be able to explain without seeking to seduce; he should humbly look for the truth of this world without claiming to be its professional owner; and he should alert people to the good qualities in themselves, including a sense of the values and interests that transcend the personal, without taking on an air of superiority and imposing anything on his fellow humans. He should not yield to the dictate of public moods or of the mass media, while never hindering constant scrutiny of his actions.

In the realm of such politics, intellectuals should make their presence felt in one of two possible ways. They could – without finding it shameful or demeaning – accept a political office and use that position to do what they deem right, not just to hold on to power. Or they could be the ones who hold up a mirror to those in authority, making sure that the latter serve a good cause, and that they do not begin to use fine words as a cloak for evil deeds, as happened to so many intellectuals in politics in past centuries.

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

Vaclav Havel 1936-2011

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Guest Post by: Stewart
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       I finish my second glass of  Glenlivet single malt, 15 years, at Hobgoblin in Shibuya and then look at my watch and it’s twenty till four and I have almost an hour and a half to kill before I meet Aaron in Daikanyama to, hopefully, get drugs for tonight.

I swirl around what’s left of the drink, smell it a bit and enjoy the deep, robust aromas in my nose before I swallow it all down.  The finish is long indeed and I appreciate it as I check out the girl behind the bar tending to the register.  She’s exactly what you would expect to find in a place like this; one catering to expatriates and the people who want to rub shoulders with us.  Top of her head coming right up to around my chest height, tanned, obviously Japanese, she still has jet black hair, a pretty common trait amongst the types that have gone abroad, they dye their hair less than J-girls that are still on the “native” side of the fence.  She has tits and I stare at her, taking in the curves under her red polo-style work shirt which has a ridiculous looking emblem of a goblin on it, brandishing a dagger and smirking, right over her left tit.  When she looks up and catches my gaze she smiles at me, so I flash a broad, genuine grin back at her and imagine my cock in her ass.

Outside on the street people flow by in the Saturday traffic.  Its cold out but the wind is oddly warm, the remnants of a brutal Indian summer that didn’t end till a-couple-of weeks before.

I turn left into traffic and start walking to no place in particular.  I cross under an overpass and across the street to my right I see Hachiko and the Hachiko exit to Shibuya station and the entire plaza near the exit is nothing but wall-to-wall people.  Despite the warm wind flowing down the streets and alleys and up out of vents on the side walk people are still shivering and I flip the collar up on my overcoat and hunch my shoulders into it as I walk.  At the stop light, I look across the street to the swarms of people waiting to cross onto my side.  Where are you all going?  What the hell do you think the point of your life is?  How many of you have ever had sex with a blood relative?  Can any of you speak English?  Who’s not wearing panties under their skirts? What in god’s sweet name am I going to get Michiko for Christmas?

Inside Tsutaya I look through racks and racks of CD’s.  I pick up and look at a special edition “Cold Play Christmas hits” and I get a bad taste in my mouth simply holding it so, as I turn around, almost without thinking at all I deftly drop the album into some girl’s shoulder bag who is standing next to me.  As the CD disappears smoothly into her bag I notice this general, overall, pudginess about her which for some reason excites me then suddenly depresses and subsequently enrages me- all within a matter of a second or two. Inspecting closer without being too obvious about things I can see it’s clear that her over-ripe puffiness is made all the more obtrusive by the massive, ridiculous, Christmas sweater she has on. I sneer at her and mumble “Dopey bitch” under my breath.  Then I turn and casually walk away from her.

Across the store, still on the first floor, my iphone vibrates and I absently reach into the pocket of my Burberry overcoat and pull it out.  Aaron.  I press the button.

        “Tell me you have Drugs,” I say by way of greeting.

       “Tell me you just didn’t say that on your cell,” Aaron sighs on his end of the, um, “line”?

       “Oh, I’m sorry Agent Aaron.  Is the uh, government or something, tapping your phone there?”

       “If this was a movie, I would tell you to use a land line.  Fucking Canadian.” He says into the phone, his voice somewhat muffled by back ground noise I can’t quite make out.

       “Where are you anyway? Are we still on for four?” I ask realizing now how desperate I am for some kind of chemical adjustment.  Ecstasy, Coke, a fucking bottle of Nightquil for god’s sake, anything to take the edge off.

       I then spot the dumpy girl in the stupid Christmas sweater make her way to the register to check out, an arm full of CD’s with titles I cannot even begin to imagine.  This makes me stop grinding my teeth and inside I start to smile.

       “I’m in Cohiba,” I hear Aaron say and confused I snarl into the phone, still staring at the girl “You want a… Cohiba? Fine, man. We can get you that. That is gettable. Jesus I will buy you a Behike if you can simply hook up some dope for this evening. Hell, I’ll buy you two.”

       “What? No, dumbass, I’m in Chiba. On my way back now.  Jesus, Stew you need to relax.  And stop saying D-words on the fucking phone, yeah?  Use that Finance Manager education and intellect you’ve got and be smart.”

       I roll my eyes and cut him off. “Oh god, spare me Aaron, and don’t call me Stew. I hate that shit. You know that.”   My eyes now closely track the dumpy shoplifter’s movements as she takes her change in one hand and her plastic bag full of shitty music, a Christmas tree emblazoned on the side of it, in the other hand and heads for the exit.

“Yeah, right. Look I’m getting on a train. La Hacienda in an hour. See you then.”

“OK. Hey do me a favor and don’t be late?” I say but the rude bastard has already hung up so I slip the phone back in my pocket, then have second thoughts, pull it back out and click the video option on and as subtly as possible hold it up to record my little victim right as she passes in between the magnetic sensors set up in front of the doors.  She moves to walk through them and a blaring, high pitched alarm goes off and the entire, packed CD store freezes and looks directly toward the exit where the goofy moron has now frozen in place;  a look of utter shock, embarrassment and distress plastered on her face in the most satisfying manner possible.

A skinny, pimply-faced employee in a blue polo Tsutaya t-shirt approaches her carefully and asks to see her plastic bag and checks it thoroughly, noting that all the magnetic security devices have been removed.  He then asks her, ever so politely, to go through the sensors again and yet again the squeal pierces the air telling everyone that this little happy-holiday’s-munchkin is in fact, a criminal.

Awkwardly, with another customer service employee approaching, the zit faced skinny guy asks if there is “any chance” she might have “forgotten” some merchandise in her bag.  The girl shakes her head “no”, and I gradually zoom my video in to capture both of them, chubby the shop-lifter and pizza-face, slowly turning their heads to gaze at her shoulder bag.  They stare at it heavily, intently, like it’s going to jump off her arm and prance around the store doing a jig at any moment.

I move the camera from her round face with the deep red blush creepy up her neck, to his skinny, zitty face with the lock of greasy hair hanging over one eye and then to the bag. Then I zoom out slightly and wait, holding them both in the frame.  A full, heavy, uncomfortable minute passes, and finally the girl hands her shopping bag to the guy and unslings her shoulder bag, glancing inside. Next, the look of abject horror that slams onto her mug is one of a kind. Obviously she sees the stolen album in her bag now, and I hold the video on her steadily, barely stifling a surprise giggle.

I zoom in on the bag slightly, and carefully film her trembling, chubby hand, as she pulls the album out and holds it up in front of her face. “Cold Play Christmas hits.” It no longer matters if she stole it or if some evil fuck slipped it into her tacky bag.  In the eyes of the shop staff, both staring at her but not, in the eyes of the other customers all pretending not to look at her, in the eyes of the world, she is a dirty little thief.  She knows this now. We all know it.

Tears.  They start by pooling in her almond shaped eyes and sit their momentarily glistening, almost puppy-like before freefalling down her burning red apple cheeks.  The video loses its focus as I aggressively attempt to zoom in to the maximum level to capture her emotional collapse and this technical problem upsets me and I curse under my breath.

It’s then, that I realize I am leaning forward, almost over a rack of Inca CD’s, camera out, breathing erratic and heavy-completely invested in my little project and that two girls, fairly hot looking early 20-somethings with dyed hair, in jean shorts and black tights and Ugg boots and mismatched “hip” scarves and sweaters, are both staring at me with uncomfortable, slightly disgusted expressions.

I look sideways at them, then quietly snarl “Go fuck yourselves, whores,” as I save the video on my iphone. Then, I walk straight up toward the exit with the Christmas criminal at it, actually smiling and winking at her as she looks toward me (For some kind of, what? Help?), stunned, her face wet, red and swollen and then I push by her rather roughly with my shoulder and walk back outside into the crowds of people as I aggressively hum “Deck the Halls” to myself and stride purposefully up Dogenzaka.

With their eyes open to the fact that there was a whole other world outside of their little island the Japanese rushed to modernize their primitive feudal society. Anxious to be with all the “cool nations” Japan quickly dropped cultural habits that it had practised for centuries in hopes that it would get picked to go to the prom with all the Western countries. Over the years these Japanese cultural habits that were outlawed became unmentionable in Japan but in recent history they have become popular in the West but are still taboo in Japan.

Tattoos

Called “Irezumi” in Japan, Tattoos used to be very popular in the land of the rising sun. Japanese society in the Edo period ( basically the 1600s until Japan was cracked open by Perry) was very conservative with the samurai and their honor based society ruling the land. Wealth was seen as almost disgraceful and merchants were placed at the bottom of society’s totem pole to be shit on by everyone else. Laws passed by the ruling samurai class were in place to protect this order to the extreme result that people weren’t allowed to flaunt wealth through clothes with designs, jewellery, etc. But people are people, and those that have it want to show their bling. Over the years the Merchant class got around restrictions against flamboyant clothing but the working class, the 99% of Japanese population, got around the restrictions by inking themselves with elaborate tattoos all over their body.

After the rulers of Japan saw the shock of the first white visitors looking at their tattooed population they quickly banned the practice and it lay dormant and over time became associated with Yakuza gangsters and criminality. So much so that now people with tattoos in japan can’t get life insurance, buy a house or even enjoy one of Japan’s most favoured past-times jumping naked into a steaming hot-spring.

Ohaguro = Grills

Before the white devils came to Japan for almost two thousand years the highest of fashion was Ohaguro or the practise of painting your teeth black. Women, and men too, would dye their teeth twice a day with a smelly, tar like substance.

Throughout the ages in Japan the sections of society who blackened their teeth changed and by the time Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor it was married women, unmarried women who were older than 18, prostitutes and geisha.  As a bonus the blackening agent would also prevent tooth decay. The practice died out when European fashion looked down its giant foreign nose at the custom, only to have getting decorations on your teeth through grills, or jewellery on your teeth, explode in urban America.

Homosexuality in Japan

Gay men in Japan face intense discrimination. They can’t come out to their co-workers for fear of being ostracized or even fired and often marry into loveless marriages just to satisfy societies’ expectations. But it didn’t always used to be like this. Japan was an intensely macho society and like other macho-macho cultures around the world were seriously into man-on-man action. The Spartans, as well as the infamous all gay Greek army, the Sacred Band of Thebes, and of course the Japanese samurai, all encouraged their warriors to look down upon the weaker sex as nothing but baby machines and look at their hard bodied warrior brothers with lust. After Japan opened up it tried to stamp out sodomy in Japan. Which of course just went underground and is presently actually experiencing a kind of renaissance in Japan, a few decades after the rest of the world.

Japanese girls are easy … or they were

Before Perry pried Japan open, exposing it to the world the population lived a feudal life style.   A fraction of the population were the samurai and they, like the European knights of old, owned all the land. The majority of population were peasants who then worked that land. Since only one section of society, the samurai, owned all the land it was only their own women who were expected to have a clear lineage.  Their daughters couldn’t have sex with whoever they wanted as they might get pregnant and then cause problems with passing down the land to the next generation.  These maidens were known as otome  and lived by the standards similar to puritan Victorian England women.

The rest of the population lived by a different enlightened set of rules, it didn’t matter if they had kids before marriage as there was little chance they could own land anyway. So throughout Japan there lived a very liberal society were women were expected to be sexual experienced before settling down into marriage.  Until the western inspired civil code of 1898 women could own land, had equal rights and could divorce as they pleased .  After the 1898 civil code was passed all these rights were striped away and women found themselves treated as minors by the law, totally at the mercy of their male husbands and relatives.

Even though Perry came along bringing all of his western morality with him as the Japanese government discovered a population’s sexuality is hard to stamp out.  Through-out the 1870s and 90s there were a number of books, journal articles and other printed media that espoused the western, virgin worshipping, oppressed sexuality of Victorian Europe, but it didn’t quite take hold in the rice fields of Japan.

For centuries the peasant and urban lower classes followed the Japanese custom of yobai.  Yobai was a culture where a women’s sexuality ruled.  Yobai allowed a women living with her parents to have numerous lovers with no social stigma attached.  Any pregnancies that resulted were looked upon as an indication of a woman’s fertility and were often raised by the girls’ parents as their own.  But as the population moved into the cities of Japan Yobai was slowly beaten out of the population by western Morales and the desire of the Japanese government to turn everyone, outside of the prostitute class, into otome or Virgin Marys.

But laws spawned by western prudish standards couldn’t totally stamp out the Japanese view of sex.  Right up to 40s a common punishment in Japan for out of control daughters was to sell them to a brothel.  After a few, months, or years, they would be bought back, lesson learned and still illegible for marriage.

Marijuana

Marijuana or cannabis has been in Japan for thousands of years and was widely farmed because of the superior hemp fibres found in the plant stem. Hemp production was a major part of Japan’s economy until cotton was introduced from foreign suppliers. Cannabis and hemp were still grown as a recreational drug and farming product until the American occupation. American General Douglas MacArthur and his colleagues rewrote the Japanese constitution in 1948 and included the Taima Torishimari Ho, the Cannabis Control Act.

Drugs that were thought of as “normal” in Japanese society before the occupation, were after the American occupation demonized. Demonized to the point were a situation like infamous fall from grace of “Talento” Noriko Sakai can produce anti-drug hysteria for what was a government sponsored drug 65 years ago.

Vegetarianism

As a nation of Buddha lovers the Japanese before Perry shunned flesh for reasons similar to India’s Hindus, they believed in reincarnation and didn’t want to kill Uncle Sazuki’s reincarnated soul that came back to this world as a cow. Japan’s rulers since the 600s A.D. actual banned the eating of flesh (although rural areas used to sneak some wild game here or there). Once Japan’s policy of seclusion ended the Japanese were dismayed that their vegetarian habits were looked down upon by the white devils. Not wanting to be seen as backward the government overthrew the anti-meat laws and promptly started slaughtering animals for the cooking pot left and right. The Emperor signalled this change, in 1872, when he ate a nice big juicy steak.

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As I’ve talked about before as a part time job I do some background extra work on Japanese TV dramas and feature movies.  Commercials are where the real money is but they are hard to get so I am hired whenever they need a gaijin face to stand in the background for a bit of foreigner “atmosphere”.   Most of the stuff I do is historical reenactments that pays peanuts but you get to do cool stuff like wear military uniforms and play with historical weapons.  Recently I just did scene where they bused me out to big manor house in Gunma, about two hours from Tokyo.  The place was called Lockheart Castle and is a real Scottish Manor that was shipped brick by brick to Japan from Scotland during the height of the bubble.

Now it stands in the middle of nowhere as background for marriage parties and TV productions.

Just as we were leaving I noticed a small plaque tucked away to one side. According to the plaque in 2002 the tree next to the plaque was planted to commemorate the 100 years of friendship between Japan and the UK since the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance January 30, 1902, by Lord Lansdowne (British foreign secretary) and Hayashi Tadasu (Japanese minister in London). Which is great. Way back when the Alliance was very strong between Japan and Britain, hell during World War I the Japanese Navy protected Australia and North America from German raiders.

But the plaque was just leaving one little thing out … WORLD WAR TWO! 100 years of friendship are you serious! Ya hundred years of friendship if you ignore Japan and Britain fighting a brutal war against each other and the total slaughter of British and commonwealth POWs in South East Asia and Hong Kong.

But at this point I wasn’t too surprised as almost every project I’ve worked on has been a war story that tries to twist Japan’s military history. I’ve dressed up as an evil American occupier or fighting GI countless times and each time the movie or TV drama has tried to victimize the Japanese people. One movie focused on an “innocent” fictional POW who was on trial for killing POWs another focused on the Japanese internment camps in America and I was a Russian solider in another where the godly Japanese army, dressed in white, protected the Chinese people from slaughter at the hands of the Russians in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. Sure the events are real but the movie was obviously made to distract from the Japanese horrors in China like the Nanjing Massacre of the Chinese people on the end of Japanese bayonets.

Maybe its just my steady diet growing up of Canadian-o-dramas that go over every injustice the Canadians did, EVER. But it’s just shocking sometimes to see how far the Japanese will twist and spin things to come out as the victim and smelling like roses.

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Yamato said this to me as I stared at his eyes, or the place his eyes would have been had he not been wearing those sunglasses and I tried to figure out if he was bullshitting me because as always, his ever-present smile was wide open and the festival was completely packed with people.  Women and men, old and young. Office workers and spouses, hookers and thugs.  Hanazono Shrine had done it again and the “Torinoichi” festival was alive.  People flowed through the lanes of stalls and vendors finally arriving at the massive red and gold shrine that sat at the top of the steps like a heart, pumping blood rhythmically through the body.

“Are you serious?” I asked him.  Again searching his mask of a face for some indication of what exactly I had walked into.

“Of course I’m fucking serious.  Look, just be cool, like before, and don’t jump unless I do,” he said as he turned away and walked into the brightly lit pavilion.  The smell of grilled meat, beer and cigarettes engulfed me and as I saw the table we were inevitably going towards, I considered just walking away from this.  I don’t do this anymore.  I don’t know you people anymore and it’s better like that.  I can just walk away and it won’t matter.

Then I nearly laughed out loud realizing the slick bastard still had my phone in his hand. Ten minutes earlier “Hey let me use your phone my battery is dying,” he had said.  He had spotted me in the crowd and I had been genuinly happy to see  him.  I had to admit Yamato looked well.  Very slick dark blue suit, pink collared shirt with the top open and mid length black hair slicked back.  He and I joked and caught up as the people streamed by us in the crowd and stared hard at us, dressed like hit-men out of their respective countries B-movies. So sure, happy to see my former boxing coach, friend and trouble maker so why not- I passed him my phone.

Well played Yamato.

In the tent approaching the table in the next instant I felt my chest expand and my muscles flush with juice as my adrenaline slowly started to build.  Out of the entire group at this table we approached, the three potential problems were clear enough.

The tent we had gone into was one of the many erected on the grounds within the shrine for the festival.  This one in particular was a tent selling beer, shochu, grilled beef and chicken and fried noodles.  About 14 long folding tables were set up inside the tent behind the grills and coolers for drinks and at the farthest table in the back right hand corner were 13 people.  This is the table I followed Yamato to.

We got the attention of  everyone seated immediately.  8 men and 5 women.  Five of the men were older, easily in their sixties with gray or black loose-fitting suits and oddly colorful cashmere scarves around their necks.  Each one of them had salt and pepper hair, tightly slicked back over their heads and to a man they all wore very dark hued Gucci or Prada sunglasses with gold frames.  These men turned to look at us, first Yamato, then me, then back to Yamato, but none of them stood.  They remained seated and slowly sipped their beers and sake while watching us make our way past the other tables and chairs and laughing bodies of people having a celebratory style Friday night.

The three men that did stand up as we neared the table were not older, but younger than both myself and Yamato.  Mid 20′s as far as I could tell.  All three of them slighter in build but with a taught smoothness that reminded me of big cats.  All three of them wore jet-black suits and white shirts with large collars, opened up wide so I could see shiny gold and silver medallions, the slim tightness of athletic collar bones and chest muscles and then, just where the shirts started, the colorful patterns of tattoos that I knew ran off their pecs, to their shoulders and down the arms and backs of these men who had already proven themselves in numerous fist fights, beat downs and likely prison time.  They had already earned the spot here, with the bosses and were trusted to do what needed to be done when the time came and the way they stood to meet us was not one conveying welcome, but was one filled with hostility.

These guys were the reason Yamato had tricked me into walking over here with him.  Kindness can in fact, be a weakness.  Particularly when you deal with men that spend their lives walking the tight rope.

Yamato bowed when we reached the table.  I stood two paces behind him and one pace off to the left so that I could see everyone.  This position also put me within equal distances of all three of the bodyguards.  The one closest to Yamato began to snarl at him before the older man sitting in front of him raised his hand for silence.  He then greeted Yamato, almost warmly,  mumbling in that very distinct way that these men communicate when they are older.  Yamato kept bowing, very deeply, showing his respect for the mans position and they conversed quietly for about a minute.

I stood there, both hands folded in front of me and looked at everyone without looking directly at anyone.  Noted where I was in relation to everyone else.  Asked myself some questions: “Can I jump over the table to hit that guy with this women sitting there? She’s sort of in the way,” and “Can I get this folding chair up in the air without it getting caught on something?” then “If we have to burn the hell out of here, do I go right to the nearest exit or left into the crowd?”

Nobody at the table, including the women all of whom were in their 30′s and pretty, said anything.  Then somehow and rather suddenly, between the two of them, things were settled and Yamato stood up straight to his full height, at least as tall as me so about 6’3 and nearly as broad across in the shoulders, and he looked directly at the younger man who had tried to start a problem with him and suddenly broke into a big smile and jokingly told him in a booming voice “You need to relax son! Here, let me get you a drink!”

The table laughed, except for the three bodyguards, still standing and Yamato raised a hand for a waiter.  At this the young soldier, clearly offended and in possession of some beef with Yamato, tried to push past a folding chair to stand directly in front of us.  I instinctively moved up a pace to be between Yamato’s back and the bodyguard on our left who then slowly reached one hand up to his shirt collar and pulled it open showing off a large tattoo of a bright red Cherry Blossom with a Dragon dancing around it emblazoned on his chest.  He did this and leaned his head back giving me his best menacing, wide-eyed “Fuck OFF I’m connected,” look.

I know this game though, have played it once or twice before and what you learn quick is that the only thing you can’t do, ever, is back down.  That’s what gets a folding chair crashed across your face.  Weakness incites a predators malice.  So I cocked my head to the side slightly then pulled up the sleeve of my black suit jacket enough for him to see the beginnings of the ink on my right forearm.  Then I blinked slowly a few times and shrugged my shoulders….”So What?” being the message.

I have no doubt now that these three young gangsters would have tried very hard to beat the living shit out of Yamato and I had their Boss, two of them actually, not told them to “Sit the fuck down it’s all finished now,” because men like them, living that lifestyle don’t care.  It’s what they do. I know this from before.  That having been said, between Yamato and myself we probably weighed as much as all three of them.  Also, between the two of us we have over a hundred fights in the ring, I have been in and out of that over the years, the ring and the cage, and Yamato was at one point a Light-Heavy weight boxing Champion who I know from experience has very fast hands and hits like a freight train. Aside from that, both of us had done these types of dances before.  It’s not something I want in my life now, but to some degree at least, once you’ve been there, you can’t forget what you know.

The math in my head said they couldn’t have been armed with anything beyond a small knife, a gun would be out of the question here with all the police and people, and there were loads of easily improvised weapons at the ready on all sides.  Shit, I can give a man a concussion with a magazine if that’s what I happen to have. It would be embarrassing to get your teeth knocked out with a rolled up edition of “Elle”.

Finally, Yamato and I weren’t playing king of the mountain I knew now; he had to squash a beef with this old guy and only needed things to be cool long enough for him to have his say.  He tricked my overly kind-to-friends-ass into backing him up hoping my presence would keep things copacetic by throwing everyone off-balance; massive white guy, dressed like he is going to a funeral with the black suit, white collared shirt and black tie, black wrist watch and a few silver rings. If it went south, we would cause enough damage to give ourselves a few seconds and then be gone into the waves of people.

What’s more is that he knows me, and knows about me and has seen some things.  He knew that I wouldn’t go with him if he asked plainly because I don’t do that anymore, but he knew if he got me there, I would know what to do, when to do it and when to go wheels up and flee if necessary.

By the time I meandered back to my friends across the shrine at another stall, maybe ten minutes had gone by but my hands were shaking heavily from the adrenaline dumping out of my system and I did the mental math realizing how bad that could have been.  A few beers down the hatch (courtesy of Yosomono who was lining them up) and the atmosphere of the festival and all was good.

Until he called me back. “What the hell? Get your friends and come drink with us! Yeah bring everyone and don’t forget the blond girl.”

I can tell you this much, when you drink with these people, no matter what you drink, eat, order or do; nobody expects you to pay.  They don’t even bother asking.

Later on, after many beers, loads of sake and a train of gangsters, hostesses, pimps, boxers and even a monk had come and gone Yamato pulled me aside and in his fashion, still wearing the sunglasses and smiling, slightly hunched over vaguely resembling a Japanese gangstered out John Wayne he said by way of thanks, his arm around my shoulders, “OK.  Tonight was lucky.  I got the drinks next time…but that was fun though right?”

Fun?  No.  Memorable? Oh yes.

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