The American Dream: East

The affable Japanese teen-ager wearing the Tokyo Giants baseball cap was sitting with two pals in Steve’s American ice cream parlor and looking fondly at a compact disc by Run-D.M.C., a New York rap group.

Keizo Sakamoto, 18, had just bought three rap albums across the street at Tower Records, local flagship of the U.S.-owned chain.

Sakamoto doesn’t speak English comfortably, even though he is fascinated with the rapid-fire wordplay of American rap. Rather than stumble through English in front of foreigners, he--like many Japanese--prefers to simply say he doesn’t know the language.

When he was asked by an American in the ice cream shop if he liked rap music, he merely nodded politely and smiled.

But then the American identified himself as a reporter who has interviewed the three members of Run-D.M.C.--and the boy’s eyes brightened.

“In Tokyo . . . in Tokyo?” Sakamoto asked excitedly. He put down his hot-fudge sundae. “Run-D.M.C. in Tokyo (now)?”

“No, no,” the reporter replied, speaking slowly. “Interviewed . . . Run-D.M.C. in . . . New York.”

“Wow . . . Wow!” Sakamoto said. “ New York! You from New York?”

No. Los Angeles.

“Wow! Wow! Los Angeles! “

Now the boys were so eager to talk about pop music and America and that they were willing to struggle to communicate. They conferred hurriedly in Japanese to search for the right English words.

Yes, they said, they would l-o-v-e to go to America.

They want to go to New York to see real rap bands, not just dance to the records at the Hip Hop Club in Tokyo. They want to go to Los Angeles to see the real Disneyland, not the mini-version in Tokyo. And they want to go to San Francisco to see the real baseball Giants, not the Tokyo Giants.

But no, they said, shaking their heads furiously: They wouldn’t ever consider living in America.

“Too much crime,” Sakamoto said firmly. His friends invoked other negative images of America--violence and unemployment.

Sakamoto struggled to find the right words. He huddled again with his friends, then said, “We feel Japan is . . . better place to be.”

American Yesteryear

When the conversation was mentioned the next day to an American business consultant who has lived here for three years, he nodded knowingly.

“There is a lot about Japan today that reminds me of America in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” said Patrick Sullivan, sitting in a Victoria Station restaurant in the trendy, Westernized Roppongi section of town.

(Among the elements that makes Roppongi’s an American “ gaijin heaven”-- gaijin being the word for foreigners--is “Beverly Hills Square,” complete with its restaurant/fast-food row: Spago, Hard Rock Cafe and Tony Roma’s right alongside McDonald’s and Mr. Donut.)

“Life was a cakewalk then in America. No one could compete with us and there was this great sense of optimism. It was America’s time and young people were preoccupied with pursuing their own personalities and dreams.

“Those same feelings are now shared by young people--which is a radical concept in country where the group has always been more important than the individual.

“That eagerness for greater independence is one reason there is such a strong identification with America and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Agreed a second businessman who has been traveled here frequently over the last decade, “I don’t know if there’s a Japanese phrase to describe it, but sometimes I feel the American Dream now lives in Japan. The dream may not be the same as it was in America but there is a sense of destiny.”

Where It’s Happening

Walking the streets of such varied Western rock ‘n’ roll tour stops as London, Dublin, Paris and Vienna, an American is invariably charmed by the culture and tradition of the cities.

At the same time, it’s hard for the visitor not to feel that America has passed those cities by--that America is now where things are happening. It’s an attitude that is freely shared even by residents of those cities.

Identify yourself as an American and people usually want to talk. They mention relatives who have moved to America and reveal how their dream is to visit the States themselves--maybe, if they are lucky, even live there.

It’s different in Tokyo.

Stand at night on one of the busy intersections in Ginza, a shopping area patterned after the famous Regent Street in London, and you can see bright new buildings with dazzling neon signs that seem to spread out as far as the eye can see.

The signs proudly proclaim brand names--like Sony, Panasonic, Nikon, Nissan, Fuji--that have become as much a part of the international commercial vocabulary as Coca-Cola and Ford.

Stand in the glow of those signs for a while and you wonder if the future isn’t here.

The Rise and Fall

It’s not only the signs that raise the question about Japan vis-a-vis the United States.

It’s also the conditioning back home in America: The news reports about the umpteen-billion-dollar U.S. trade deficit that you hear repeatedly on your Japanese TV set or on your Japanese radio on your way to work in your Japanese car.

Or last month’s New York Times Magazine, with its familiar headline: “Is America in Decline?” Inside was a profile of Yale historian Paul Kennedy, whose best-selling book, “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,” summarizes with unsettling precision the argument that the U.S., like every other great power, will fall. It’s not a question of If, he suggests, but When.

While America worries about its future, the land of VCRs and sushi bars is blasting ahead, robust with all those export profits.

The Japanese now own six of California’s dozen leading banks, an estimated half of major downtown Los Angeles office buildings and--for music fans--CBS Records, the world’s biggest record company and home of Bruce (“Born in the U.S.A.”), Bob (“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”), Barbra Streisand and Michael Jackson.

The decline of the dollar vs. the yen has made prices here shocking for visiting Americans. Everybody’s favorite example, invariably, is the $7 cup of coffee.

Dazzling Affluence

Ginza is far from the only source of bright lights and dazzling affluence in Tokyo.

Among the other must-stops on even the shortest Tokyo itinerary: Roppongi, with its discos and night-life; Shibuya, alive with trendy, youth-oriented fashion shops and movie theaters--a sort of Westwood with its streamlined subways and powerful yen, and Shinjuku, another shopping and entertainment center, frequently compared to Times Square.

Beneath all the glitter and reports of the yen revolution, there is another reality in Tokyo: a workaholic devotion to job, and a demanding life style that is complicated by a horrendous housing problem and semi-gridlock traffic.

The problem in urban areas is space. Imagine 120 million people living on a group of islands with a land mass smaller than Montana.

Keith Cahoon, general manager of Tower Records stores here, estimates that most of Tower’s employees live in apartments no larger than 200 to 300 square feet. “Even if you are making $40,000 to $50,00 a year, if you are in your early 20s, there’s a good chance you are still living with your parents in a small apartment.”

This situation leads couples, in an occasional search for privacy, to check into one of the city’s many “love” hotels for a few hours--hotels that aren’t to be confused with the “Love” hamburger chain. (Such a hotel provides a key romantic setting in “Tokyo Pop,” an engaging film about East-West culture clash, which just opened in Los Angeles.)

Housing is so expensive--$800,000 to a $1 million for even the smallest house in the metropolitan area--that a huge percentage of the Tokyo work force lives an hour or more train ride from the city.

Cahoon, a former Californian, said, “You know what I miss about California? I used to think Highway 5 was the dullest stretch of land in the world. Now, it’s like paradise to me. I sometimes dream about driving down Highway 5 and being in the midst of all that open space.”

Life style sacrifice isn’t limited here to housing and traffic. There is such a fanatical emphasis on work that even the Japanese are amused by jokes about all the hours they devote to their jobs.

Constant Pressure

Western observers speak of the “constant pressure” of the Japanese life style. “The only real vacation time you have in Japan is college,” said Patrick Sullivan, who advises American businessmen looking here for joint-venture capital. “Your future is largely determined by which college you go to . . . not so much how you do at the college, but which you you attend.

“So, kids, from kindergarten through high school, have to work like hell to get into the right school. Then, there is four years of play. Once they enter the company, there is no free time again.”

Increasingly, it appears, young people are questioning the tradition and resisting the pressure.

That’s part of the fascination with rock ‘n’ roll and other Western attractions.

Whatever the negative aspects of life in America, the country itself represents an image of freedom. Imagine to a society whose whole tradition is based on sacrificing self for the group, a way of life that suggests you can do what you want to do.

And what says that more explicitly than rock ‘n’ roll?

American Mystique

If the Chinese and Japanese lettering on signs make it difficult for gaijin s to find their way around Tokyo, Western pop music serves as a reassuring sound track for any excursion.

The formality of the taxis (drivers wear chauffeur gloves and the seats are invariably covered with clean white linen) may remind you that you are in a foreign land, but the music playing is usually familiar.

The same is true of many businesses. Sales clerks in a small boutique may have trouble figuring out what you are asking for, but the chances are they are listening to Elvis, Jackson or the Beatles while they try.

But music isn’t the only sign of Japanese infatuation with the West. Turn on the television most days or nights and you will to find a baseball game (baseball has passed sumo wrestling as the biggest drawing sport here) and Hollywood movies are all over town.

“There is a mystique about America,” said a businessman who has spent considerable time here. “When it comes to fashion, America is just automatically cool. For some reason, the big thing among teen-agers these days is World War II military jackets-- American jackets.

“Look at the TV ads or magazine ads or even subway ads, and the faces are often American. The same is true of cartoon shows here. The characters are speaking in Japanese voices, but the faces are American.”

Demand for Music

The Tower Records store in Shibuya is a hang-out for fans of British and American rock. To find the store, just follow the trail of bright-yellow Tower shopping bags. If someone is walking west in the area with a bag, it’s safe to assume he has just come from Tower, so you head east until you see someone else with a bag. If he, too, is walking west, you keep going east. If he is walking north, you turn south. Sooner or later, you will be at the front door.

The first thing you notice about the store--which only carries British and American albums--is that it’s as crowded as everything else in Tokyo. You have to wait your turn to get to the right record bin. Then, you have to look in the right place.

Instead of filing albums by the artist’s last names, the practice here is to file them by the first name. Thus, Carly Simon is near Cher, not Paul Simon, and James Taylor is near James Brown, not George Thorogood.

Otherwise, it’s like being in the Tower store in West Hollywood. The Billboard charts, listing the week’s best selling records in America, are on the wall and the same releases found in the States are in the racks: adventurous newcomers like Jesus & Mary Chain and Thelonious Monster to glam-metal heroes like Guns & Roses. One difference: the cost. Albums that cost about $8 in the U.S. bring $15, CDs even more.

For the Japanese acts, you have to go to a “domestic” record store like the huge Wave in Roppongi. Unlike the bare-bones atmosphere of Tower, the Wave is a fancy, high-tech operation that covers four floors. Besides records and videos, it features listening booths, a cafe and a mini-movie theater offering select foreign films.

The separation between fans of Western rock and Japanese rock used to be strict, with young teens normally turning to the domestic product (much of it fairly lightweight, sing-song pop--usually delivered by sparkly young girls), while older, high school and college fans preferring the Western rock.

But there has been more of an overlap in recent years. One reason frequently cited here: steady improvement by the Japanese rock bands.

Part of the Action

Masa Yamada, 38, still remembers the night almost 15 years ago when he saw his first Western concert.

“It was Grand Funk Railroad and it felt like something from another world,” said Yamada, now deputy general manager of EMI Records. “When I was in high school, I watched the Beatles’ concert here on television, but no one else had come for years--until Grand Funk. That was the beginning of American rock in Japan. We talked about that show for months, and about other bands we wished would come here.”

Sitting in a conference room at the modern Toshiba-EMI Building, Yamada speaks of a growing interaction between Japanese and Western pop music.

“I think both the listeners and the musicians both feel more a part of Western pop culture than before,” he said. “All the big acts tour here now . . . Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger. . . . and the sound of the Japanese bands--the use of the guitars and so forth--is much closer to the American or European music.

“Young people today are less intimidated by the West. They grew up on hamburgers and lots of other (aspects of) American culture, so they feel closer to it than the older generation in Japan. Old people used to think America is very different people, very different country. Now there is a sense of people in America being more ‘like us.’ ”

Rock and Country

Western music, of all styles, is easily found in Tokyo. Walk a few hundred feet in one direction from the Roppongi subway stop and you can join the crowd--mostly in suits and in their 30s--listening to a band playing Beatles songs at the Cavern Club.

The bass player on this night in the room--which was opened on Dec. 8, 1981, the first anniversary of the death of John Lennon--plays with his right hand rather than his left, the way Paul McCartney does, but the audience doesn’t seem to mind. After all, the voices do sound a lot like John and Paul.

Walk the other way from the subway stop and you can listen to country music at the more rustic and informal Mr. James, a club named after country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers.

Though the band on this night, the Honky Tonk Brothers, is Japanese, the lead singer is singing a Hank Williams gospel number in English with enough country phrasing that he could fit in at the Grand Ole Opry.

A few doors away is the Body & Soul, a compact, but elegant club that specializes in jazz. Stevie Wonder is among the dozens of signatures on the walls of the club whose motto is “The World’s Famous Jazzy Spot” and was opened 10 years ago.

For more contemporary action, there’s the Hip Hop Club, an upscale disco that features American rap and dance music, and the Ink Stamp Factory, a chic contemporary rock-and-soul club in a Tokyo warehouse district.

But the real energy and passion are in places like the gritty Rock-May-Kan club or, on Sunday afternoons, Yoyogi Park.

The Hard-Rock Scene

Rock-May-Kan is a small, but intense room on a nondescript commercial street. The name is some sort of local play on the term Rock American and the heavy-metal band on stage on a recent night had all the volume and outrageous instincts of an aspiring young band at the Troubadour, the heavy-metal launching pad in West Hollywood.

From a tiny VIP area upstairs, the dance floor at Rock-May-Kan looked at times like a Mixmaster as fans bounced back and forth, reminiscent of the body-slamming pogo style of punk’s early days.

The bass player sported a colorful, foot-high Mohawk that could have been plucked from a passing peacock, while the lead singer--in black leather pants--sang in Japanese beneath some startling red banners with black swastikas.

Though a visiting reporter assumed the swastika was typical of the gimmicks heavy-metal or punk bands use to gain notoriety, a Japanese fan suggested the swastikas are not really any big deal in Japan.

“I just like the (beat),” the fan said, pounding her fist in her open hand to suggest the heavy rhythm. When the fan, who was wearing a black leather jacket and fish-net hose, learned that the reporter was from Los Angeles, she asked, “Oh, you live near Motley Crue?”

Peeved Parents

If the banners don’t outrage parents, the band’s appearance does.

Asked what his parents think of his look, one of the members of the evening’s headline band shook his head and said, through an interperter, “They hate it, especially the hair.”

The reporter smiled, having heard similar comments from heavy metal and punk musicians back home. But Keith Cahoon of Tower Records later explained that such rebellious behavior and attire is a far more serious statement here.

“In America, a parent might look at a kid in a heavy-metal band and go, ‘What a jerk,’ but the parent would probably get over it,” Cahoon said. “Here, a parent may well disown the kid. In many cases, being in a band like this is like divorcing yourself from your family.”

Rock in the Park

Yoyogi Park, an open space (massive by local standards) near Shibuya, is filled most Sunday afternoons with lots of musicians who seem to be courting divorce.

Hundreds of young people show up at the park--formerly the site of the Tokyo Olympic Village--to dance to ‘50s rock records or to listen to rock groups that simply set up equipment on a patch of open land.

Even though there was a trace of rain on a recent Sunday, more than a dozen bands were lined up in one stretch, playing everything from Sex Pistols-influenced punk to electronic hip hop.

Fans strolled the area, stopping to listen to one band for a while, then moving on to the next band. Some bands handed out circulars, detailing their background and listing their next, paying gigs. A few even offered recorded cassette tapes of their music for sale.

While some bands--especially the ones which blend heavy metal and punk sounds and attire--were quite acceptable by U.S. standards, they all seemed terribly reminiscent of established U.S. and British bands. There was no hint of special Asian sounds or influences.

Jon Kabira, marking coordinator for CBS-Sony Records here, agreed the bands are derivative, but suggested that is no different from beginning American bands.

“We frequently hear (Westerners) complain that the bands here are ‘copies’ of American or British bands . . . that there’s nothing ‘new’ in what they are doing.

“But that’s the same thing you’d say about a new band in America or England. They all start out playing their influences--and the influences of these bands are from America and England. The important thing, to me, is that the bands here are getting better.”

A New Ambition

CBS-Sony’s Jon Kabira said local bands have made considerable advances over the last decade, enough so that--like EMI’s Yamada--believes that a few Japanese bands will soon begin to find their way to the United States.

“That’s not something anyone would have even dreamed of here 15 years ago,” Kabira added. “The new (ambition) is partly because of the success of a group like Loudness (which has released three albums on Atlantic Records in the United States) and the fact that they see Japan competing successfully with the United States and Britain in other areas.

“If Japan can compete in these areas, they think it is possible in rock, too.”

A Japanese Band

“Do you like this music?” a teen-age girl asked the reporter who was watching one of the energetic bands at Yoyogi Park.

When the reporter suggested that the music sounded a lot like the Sex Pistols, the fan said, “No, more Aerosmith. We like Aerosmith.”

The reporter asked if there aren’t any bands here that sound more original . . . more Japanese rather than British or American.

“ This is a Japanese band,” the fan replied, pointing to the group, whose leader had flaming orange hair and wore black leather pants and a studded leather wrist bracelet. “We like Aerosmith, the same way (fans) in America like Aerosmith. Maybe someday (America) will like this band.”

Like Keizo Sakamoto in the ice cream parlor, the fan spoke about visiting America, maybe even living there for a while. But she said she couldn’t imagine not coming back to Japan.

“America is . . . wonderful place,” she said. “But it is scary. . . . I think Japan is safer place to be. Maybe we just bring more of America here.”

Keith Cahoon of Tower Records, Tokyo:

“In America, a parent might look at a kid in a heavy-metal band and go, ‘What a jerk,’ but the parent would probably get over it. Here, a parent may well disown the kid.”