The Tree that Blooms the Flowers of Love

"Aijyou No Hana Saku Ki(愛情の花咲く樹)"　Shuki & Aviva
The tree that blooms the flower of love,
this was a hit in 1973 in Japan.

Shuki & Aviva were from Israel,
I think they released only this single in Japan,
and I heard they sang in France after that.
Shuki composed this song
and the very famous Japanese lyricist,
Yu Aku(阿久悠) wrote the lyric.

"The Tree that Blooms the Flower of Love"

We met again under the tree
with the flower of love in full bloom
There was her standing, whom I loved when I was younger
Rushing to her side and holding her hands
Staring at each other without saying anything
Ahhh, her unchanged beauty moved me to tears
Ahhh, I still loved her, I just kept telling her that

Both of us still remembered of the season
that the flower of love bloomed
No matter how many years have passed by
Both of us still remembered it
We will never part again
Holding each other, living together forever
Ahhh, her unchanged beauty moved me to tears
Ahhh, I still loved her, I just kept telling her that

Ahhh, her unchanged beauty moved me to tears
Ahhh, I still loved her, I just kept telling her that


In 1973, vacationing to the foreign countries
were still beyond dreams for most of Japanese.
In early '70s, Japan achievd to creat the world #2 economy,
only second to U.S.
Yet still many people, especially in country side, were poor
and the exchange rate was
$1 = 360 yen
now $1 = 90 yen
which means $ was four times stronger agains Japanese Yen.
But around 1980, it became like
$1 = 250 yen
So some Japanese started to go abroad.
And in mid '80s, it suddenly became like
$1 = 125 yen
Then, finally average Japanese started to enjoy
vacationing in everywhere in the world.


In early '70s, when going abroad was still
beyond their dreams for most of Japanse,
this kind of song reminded them of
a scene of romantic European cinemas,
especially French or Italian.
And they just dreamed about a romantic fantasy world
with beautiful exotic scenaries and beautiful white people.

Yes, this kind of song was a fairytale for Japanese
who had to work hard and live boring lives
and had a strong yearning for the American & European
White glamorous cultures.

What is really Enka?

Shinjuku no Onna(Woman of Shinjuku) Keiko Fuji

Even if I could transform myself to a man
I would stick to being a woman
For a butterfly who lives in a town of neon lights
Those words were too sweet to resist
What a fool
What a fool I am
To be tricked like that
This night is too chilly
I'm a woman of Shinjuku

How many times did I cry over you?
Yet, I was still stuck on you
'Cos I believed someday you would understand me
If I kept devoting myself
What a fool
What a fool I am
To be tricked like that
This night is too chilly
I'm a woman of Shinjuku

Being teary as I dreamed of You
Sitting by the lonesome bar counter in late night
Even you are the guy who just threw me away like a beer tap
What a fool
What a fool I am
To be tricked like that
This night is too chilly
I'm a woman of Shinjuku

*Shinjuku is one of the biggest night life districts of Tokyo,
and they got tons of bars, cabarets, clubs
and many different types of establishments
where women provide some sort of sexual services.

"A butterfly who lives in a town of neon lights"
means a woman who works in a night life industry,
which is called "Mizu Shoubai(水商売 Water Business)."
She is most likely a Bar maid or a Bar hostess,
or can be a prostitute as well.
Generally speaking, women who work in night life districts
are considered to be the lowest rank of the society.


This is the first big hit of Keiko Fuji
who was a very popular Enka singer in early '70s,
and now she is also known to be
a mother of very popular J-pop singer, Hikaru Utada.
Enka is a traditional Japanese popular song,
most of them are sad ballads lamenting over lost love,
in which a woman almost always have to endure
the egoism of men, the sadness of love-relationship
and the hardships of life in general.

When I was a kid, I hated Enka
as musically and lyricwise they were too old fashioned for me.
Whenever Enka singer appeared on TV,
I wished he/she/they would have finished
his/her/their song as soon as possible.

But now as I have grown older
I can dig this song and understand
why Japanese have supported songs like this
for a long time even I still do not like Enka much.

After War, Japanese economy recovered in a miraculous pace,
and within 30 years, Japan's GNP became #2 in the world,
only second to U.S.
How could they do that?
Everybody was starving and all major cities were burned down
to the ruins at the end of War.
Well, men who had been educated
to be loyal soldiers to their country
became a soldier-like workers for their employers,
and for the Japanese economy in general.
What they had to do was to suppress themselves as a individual
and devote themselves to their employers
by working harder and longer as they could.
And after a long day's work, they went to small bars
where women welcomed them to have a couple of drinks
and lament over their lives like a beast of burden.
Those men loved Enka.

I think the reason that most of Enka songs were
about a woman having a hardships was
that men were supposed not to cry
or even rant about their hardships.
When men listened to Enka,
they could relate themselves
as people with small, insecure, hard and exploited lives.
In a traditional male-oriented society like Japan,
women were always exploited.
Yet, men felt they were exploited too,
and unlike women, they even could not cry.
Enka provided an emotional outlet for those Japanese men,
small soldiers of the economic war.
I think I can say Enka was a blues for Japanese until like '80s.

The very first two lines of the lyric of "Shinjuku no Onna",

"Even if I could transform myself to a man
I would stick to being a woman"

This means that
I do not want to be a man,
even though I know a woman have to be exploited
and have to endure a hard life in this society,
because I still do have a pride as a small human.

This pride was what Japanese called "Iji(意地)."
Many Japanese tried to be stuck on this IJI
whenver they felt they were overwhelmed by their own lives.
And that small pride kept many Japanese alive.

Many Enka singers told their own hardships to their audience.
I remember the story I read about Keiko Fuji
on the kids' magazine when I was like 10 years old.
As she had many siblings
and her parents were traveling entertainers,
they usually left some rice and some money to kids
before they took off to their travel.
So kids cooked rice everyday
and bought something like croquets from stores near by.
However, money always went out before parents came home,
and after that kids had to put some soy sauce over rice
and that was their meals for the last few days to few weeks.

I remember I gasped when I read this story.
My family was not wealthy
but still the life like that was unthinkable to me.

As I grew older and have learned
one or two of hardships of life,
Enka sounds more familier to me now.

What a fool
What a fool am I
To be tricked like that
This night is too chilly
For a stray cat like me in New York

Japanese who love Gaijins & Americans who love Japanese

Now it seems that we have more people who are interested in Japanese cultures because of the rising popularity of anime, manga and other Japanese pop cultures.
However, in '80s & '90s those kinds were much fewer.
Vast majority of Americans had, and still most of them have, a very little or no interest in Japan, Japanese people or Japanese culture, which meant that they might have been a little different when I met some people who said that they were very into Japanese or any other Asian cultures.
Frankly speaking, some of them were, and probaly still, sort of weirdos.
I do not want to offend any Japan loving Gaijins,
but again until like '90s, vast majority of average Americans had 0 interest in Japan, then people who did a lot could be a little "strange."
They were definitely very different from average Americans by the fact they liked Japan alone.

I still speak crappy English
but during my first few years here, my English was really really bad.
Who wasts to make friends with an Asian who speaks crappy English?
Nobody but those Japan/Asia loving, a bit different people
or guys who think Japanese girls are easy
and hungry for White and/or Black guys.

I started to avoid those Japan/Asia loving people
as soon as I started to speak half way decent English.
I do not say those Japan loving people were bad people,
many people are a little different, including me,
and still can be very nice.
However, I felt like becoming a catalogue of Japan
when I talked with them.
Those people wanted to talk to me not because of
my personality, my talent or my thought
but simply because of me being a Japanese.
I did not like that.

If you go to Japan, and if you a Caucasian
including a Caucasian looking Hispanic or an American born Black,
you get some or lots of attention from Gaijin loving Japanese.
They love to talk to you because they see glamorous images of
American and/or European cultures behind you.
Eventually not all but some of you may feel the same way that I felt,
"Do these Japanese like me only because I am a White/Black?
I do not represent entire America
nor I am not a catalogue of American cultures either."
But unfortunately if you speak only crappy Japanese,
usually those are only Japanese you can make friends with.
Or some Gaijins seem to be addicted to the attentions they get
from Gaijin loving Japanese.

But one thing you should remember,
do not generalize Japanese only by hearing from or looking at
what those Gaijin loving Japanese say or do.
they do not represent majority of Japanese
though much more Japanese like Gaijins
because Japanese love American/European cultures
compared to the number of Americans who are into Japanese culture.
So Japanese who are really into Gaijins are not strange
as American who are really into Japanese cultures, I guess.

Interestingly it seems that it could be much easier for me
to make Gaijin friends in Japan than in U.S.

Are Japanese perverts? #2

Now the new stereo type about Japanese is "Kinky."
Probably those "Hentai" videos(adult anime) have conributed to that,
something like a girl is raped by an incredible monster.
However, I also remember seeing lots of bootleg copies of
Japanese S&M porn films at New York porn shops in '80s.



During '60s and '70s, Japanese major film studios lost their audiences
to TV and Hollywood films so much that they were threaten to be bankrupt.
One of them called Nikkatsu decided to make a drastic change to survive
that they allowed their young directors to do anything
as long as they put several sex scenes in their low badget films.
At that time and still now, Japan has the strict law
not to show any genitals on any media.
therefore those Nikkatsu films were soft core porns,
or even less than today's standard of soft core.
However, young directors tried so hard to be creative
about how to provocative sexually and artistically.
Those films were called "Nikkatsu Roman Poruno(Romantic Porn)"
and one of their specialties was S&M.

At that time, I was a kid in a rural area of Japan,
but still I saw lots of posters of them with bare boobs of women
on my way to school every day
which could never happen in the U.S., I guess.
And those films were so controversial that TV asked
their actress to be on the talk shows very often.
However, until recently I had never seen them.

I bought a DVD box set called
"Masaru Konuma: Debauched Desires" a while ago,
and it contains four films of one of the most famous
Nikkatsu Roman Poruno directors, Masaru Konuma.
And one of the film "Wife to be sacrificed" caught my attention.
It is a very very disturbing film, very S&M,
lots of humiliations and even some suggesting elements of
child sex abuse without showing actual scenes.
Yet this is a beautifully photographed film
and made me think about this kind of human sexual behaviors.



In Japan, generally speaking, the awareness of
any kinds of social or political issues are very low,
including feminism.
Therefore nobody protests about the films contains lots of scenes
of abusing, tormenting, torturing and raping women
shown in the neighborhood theatres,
which is unthinkable in the U.S.
However, I do not think that means the rate of raping women
is much higher in Japan.
Probably the reality is the opposite
though I cannot say I am sure because rape victimes
tend not to report about incidents especially in Japan
to avoid further humiliations.