March 1
Just one day after finishing the April issue of Shincho, I get up early to catch a flight from Haneda Airport to Yamaguchi. My final destination is the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), where Ikeda Ryoji’s new installation "datamatics" is on display. It turns out to be even better than I expected. The creative spirit of this internationally active artist is surely not much different from those of Ferdinand Cheval (a mailman who spent half his life building a palace in France in the 19th century) or Henry Darger (who kept illustrating fictional stories in word and image in America in the 20th century for many years). Ikeda has been doing his thing isolated and uncompromisingly. Later in the evening I check out the "datamatics [ver.2.0]" concert. This an awesome experience too. He works with "data" ranging from super-micro to super-macro, from proteins to star signs, speculated and calculated into sounds and visuals. Overwhelmed by the spectacle, I leave the venue sighing and find myself under a clear and starry sky. It was a good decision to travel to Yamaguchi.
March 2
After having a quick look at some displays at the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Museum, I jump on a Shinkansen to Kyoto, in order to see Watanabe Moriaki’s " Taema - from Origuchi Shinobu’s 'Shisha no sho'"at Kyoto University Of Arts And Design. Two of the three performers are Kanze School Noh actors, but Umewaka Shintaro in the role of a young boy doesn't wear a Noh mask most of the time, the every now and then the music switches to Bach. It’s a dizzying shift from Ikeda’s electronic, accelerated presto that challenges the senses, to the lento of Noh gestures. After the performance I attend a symposium with Watanabe , Matsuura Hisaki and Asada Akira, and drop by at the party that kicks off later in the evening. Watanabe, who turns 75 this year, is one of Japan’s leading experts in French literature, and his tenacious, independent work on the stage definitely puts him on a level with Cheval and Darger as well.
March 3
In the afternoon I check out of my hotel, and go to witness a conversation between critic A. and artist/musician B. on classical music (including contemporary forms). Why classical music in a literature magazine, one might ask. When B. initially proposed this series to us, I thought instinctively that it was worth a try and asked him to go ahead. I did so without being able to explain the reasons for my decision in words, but now that I hear him state, "I feel that 'experience' has lost its value these days", I begin to see it more clearly. After the talk I join B. on a record shop tour around Kawaramachi. Record shops in Kyoto aren't the biggest, but they're crammed with analog records ranging from vintage jazz recordings to the latest electronic music and sound art, which makes this tour great fun. I end up buying about ten records that I intend to listen to at my seaside residence. I have a last coffee with B. before boarding the bullet train back to Tokyo. I change at Shinagawa station, and catch the last train to Misaki. Give me two hours away from the harbor and I begin to feel some kind of deficiency symptom, a bit like a fish without water I guess, but as soon as I enter my house I'm mysteriously recharged in an instant. I read some manuscript wile listening to Ikeda Ryoji’s new CD "test pattern" CD (released on the German raster-noton label) . The text that C., a young artist in his twenties, is now in the middle of writing is a story about the reality of Tokyo and its people, written from a refreshing, "post-Google" kind of perspective. C. is a rather slow writer who gets just a few pages done per month, but what he delivers is dense enough to convey the Cheval/Darger mentality and lifestyle he calls his own. From reading this I get a lot of motivation to keep going with my own magazine.