He’s a Real ‘Nowhere’ Man

Dean Kuipers’ article indicates a new creativity emerging in Japanese popular music (“Made in Japan,” March 31). This is both a welcome sign and perhaps no big surprise. Although I am an artist living in Tokyo (and previously a New York-based electronic music composer), I am not familiar with this music. But I found it significant that with both Buffalo Daughter and Cornelius, the word “nowhere” figures prominently, ostensibly in the sense that their latest music is not borrowed from other music from anywhere in particular, that it is more original (and that this is newsworthy).

Painting may reveal a deeper significance to this reference. Traditionally, Western art has always been about somewhere, pioneering such “realisms” as Renaissance perspective, chiaroscuro’s dramatic solidity, or Impressionism’s naturalistic light and color. Japanese painting traditionally has never felt obligated to defer to “reality” in such a sensible, imitative manner. The featured “subject” might just as likely be the part of the paper the artist didn’t touch. But more than being merely blank, such areas could more accurately be characterized as a dynamic void, a nothing that is charged with creative possibility.

Japanese artists arrive bearing music from nowhere, and critics laud the originality. That much of modern Japanese culture is imitative is not news. That the Japanese are a creative, highly unique people shouldn’t be news. Much labeled as “imitation” is symptomatic of a general westernization of the world. And while this globe is becoming smaller, more the same everywhere, it also feels less complete, less balanced in its predominantly outward focus. Right about now, music from nowhere sounds pretty good to me.

DAVID ARZOUMAN

Tokyo