This story comes from our BOOcast segment “Song Stories” You can read it below or watch the video here:
In 2011, our band Battery Operated Orchestra didn’t even have a name yet. We had only recorded one song together, a cover of The Crystals’ He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss). Chris had a few demos kicking around on his computer and shared some of these with me. They had all been composed with various soft synths in Making Waves on his clunky old DELL laptop. One in particular immediately transported me. It was called Diagram of a Human Eye, after a poster he’d seen on the Northern Line for some London museum exhibition.
Listening to the dusty blooping arpeggio and skittering percussion cantering over those warm chords, it spirited me away into two parallel tales. One of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, about to venture into the wider world, but also of the empire of Japan at the turn of the last century, once cloistered but suddenly facing inevitable intrusion from Western culture.
This song taps into my deep love of Japan through history, poetry and legend. To tell the story of this song I have to share some of Japan’s history with you.
Sixteenth-century Japan was gripped by civil war. The old hierarchy of power was torn apart when the shogun, appointed by the emperor and based in Kyoto, lost influence over the daimyo, or local lords, and they began fighting between each other for control over Japan.
At this time Japan was very active at sea. The daimyo used piracy and free trade to consolidate arms and power, while battle-worn ronin and exiled Christians sought new lives abroad, even founding Nihonmachi or “Japan Towns” in other countries.
This all changed once Tokugawa Ieyasu reunified Japan under a single shogun rule. After his historic victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, he established a new capital in Edo (now Tokyo) marking the beginning of a 200 year period of peace and prosperity for Japan.
To help maintain his power, Tokugawa introduced a foreign policy known as “sakoku”, which translates as “locked country”. Sakoku was a series of policies that essentially cut off contact between Japan and the rest of the world.
1636
No Japanese ship … nor any native of Japan, shall presume to go out of the country; whoever acts contrary to this, shall die, and the ship with the crew and goods aboard shall be sequestered until further orders. All persons who return from abroad shall be put to death.
Sakoku had many benefits for Tokugawa. It restricted the ability of the daimyo to trade, which ensured they would never become powerful enough to challenge the shogunate. It hindered the destabilising spread of Christianity and colonialism from the Spanish and Portuguese, and lastly it enabled him to control commerce between Japan and other nations, collecting taxes and levies on the limited trade it did make with the Dutch and neighbours Korea and China.
So for over two hundred years, visitors to Japan were generally either turned away or executed, while it’s own culture flourished in peace.
This lasted until 1853, when US Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his kurofune (Black Ships) into Edo Bay. These four heavily armed steamships made an intimidating display of Western technological advancements and naval power.
Calling himself an admiral, Perry refused to obey Japanese orders to leave and sent word that if Japan did not accept delivery of his letter from the President via an envoy, he would deliver it by force if necessary. Japan had no choice but to accept his letter. Within 15 years ‘unequal’ trade agreements were made with the US and other countries, forcing an end to Sakoku and to the Edo period, with the eventual restoration of the emperor Meiji.
To me, this tale of Japan hiding from the rest of the world to nourish itself and develop, echoed the quiet preparation of a girl, alone in the country, growing into adulthood, becoming ready to explore the city and the world beyond. There is a certain excitement but also trepidation at the unknown. Once the knowledge of that wider world is uncovered there is no going back.
With all this swirling around in my head, the lyrics for the song came to me quickly. I wanted to include some Japanese lyrics at the beginning, something of the girl’s thoughts drifting around. I knew basic Japanese but I couldn’t say much more than ‘how are you?’ So I searched for something appropriate and discovered Rin Ishiki’s poem Plucking Flowers.
I plucked wildflowers at Marunouchi in Tokyo.
At the end of the 1920’s
I was in my mid-teens.
On my way to work
To the Bank
The hem of my kimono-trousers flapping
Just a dash up the embankment beside the footpath
Before my eyes an open field.
Clover
Dandelions
Philadelphia fleabane
Wildflowers too poor
To decorate my desk at work.
Its been about half a century since then
Days came when the buildings blazed in the flames of war,
Around the postwar Tokyo Station
Just like a graph of the economic boom
Tall skyscrapers bloomed.
I retired at the mandatory retirement age,
I don’t suppose any firms are left which take
Girls straight from primary school.
Even women are questioned about their market value
And ranked accordingly.
Women bloom in competition
But the day has finally come when they cannot possibly be wildflowers.
Farewell Marunouchi
Now no open fields anywhere
The thin green stem that I once squeezed
Was my own neck.
It perfectly encapsulates all the promise of the future before the destruction of war and disillusionment of adulthood.
I didn’t want to focus too much on the latter part, for me this song was all about that feeling of a liberating and untold future about to begin after being isolated and locked away in childhood for so long. She yearns for freedom, in her mind she’s already gone.
The final piece of this song is a reference to a favourite childhood book of mine, the legend of Urashima Taro.
It’s a Japanese legend about a man who rescues a sea turtle from some cruel children who are torturing it. The turtle takes him to an underwater palace where he is entertained by princess Otohime. After spending what he thinks has been just a few days there enjoying the wonders of the palace, he tells the princess he must get back home to care for his elderly mother. The princess doesn’t want him to leave but lets him go, giving him an ornate box to protect him, telling him that he must never open it.
When he returns to his village he discovers that over a hundred years have passed and all he knew is gone. In his desolation he opens the box and is flooded with all the experiences of his magical visit to the palace, the taste of peaches, the colourful dancing fish, the exquisite rooms of the palace, and as the memories ripple through him he ages all those years that have passed and crumbles into dust.
“If you look back you’ll forget what you said” is a direct reference to that tale and to not looking back once a decision has been made, because it could corrupt your resolve, or even destroy you completely.
A song can be like that box that Otohime gave to Taro. It can unlock a complete sensory experience connected to a lifetime of history and memory. Great songs do this even when you don’t know what they’re about, but you feel their riches unfold through you like magic.
Sparrow’s Dance was the first BOO song I remember experiencing that with, and it still does this to me today.