One of the things I love about making mixes is that they allow me to explore certain works or ideas that inspire me. This time around, with summer upon us, my mind kept circling around how we experience time and place. It kept returning to a few concepts—gleaned from a few spaces—that I feel I should really have a conversation with you about. They placed me in a location I’ve only known personally from a distance.
When I hear the music in the two mixes I created, I keep thinking about how a show like NHK’s Document 72 Hours captures something totally unique to its world. It offers a glimpse into people’s lives—Japanese lives in this case—simply by staying in one location for 72 hours and asking people to share the story of what brought them there.
With episodes centered around seemingly mundane places—a midsummer service area on Awaji Island, a 24-hour Chinese restaurant in a Tokyo suburb, or a Niigata drive-through in winter—viewers are invited to take a closer look at a small slice of life. Just by staying still for 72 hours and listening to everyday people share why they’re there, the show captures moments and stories that run the gamut from uproarious to truly sublime. It’s that quiet but powerful storytelling that makes such a show special.
Shows like these shape the way I think about memory. It’s through visiting and revisiting certain places, through gathering our thoughts among others who experience those same spaces at different times and in different stages of life, that we start to understand something deeper.
So, to cut a long story short, I asked myself: how can I recreate something like this with whatever it is that I do? For that, I looked to further inspiration from the “iyashikei” genre—healing-type works found in Japanese culture.
I pieced together fragments from iyashikei stories that spoke to the emotional weight of immersing yourself in a peaceful place: the manga and anime Yokohama Shopping Trip Log (ヨコハマ買い出し紀行), and video games like My Summer Vacation (ぼくのなつやすみ) or Bokura no Kazoku (ぼくらのかぞく), all immersive works that perfectly capture this idea of mono no aware, a nostalgia for the ephemeral, by simply presenting you a slice of life. In the end, somehow all of this guided me toward creating an imagined soundtrack for one such place plucked from my inspiration: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’s Café Alpha.
These two mixes—one for the day and one for the night—try to make a gentle counterargument to T.S. Eliot’s famous line: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” The same quiet satisfaction we get from simple things—brewing a fresh pot of tea, opening a window to that first crisp breath of morning air—nourishes that wistful feeling of mono no aware. In the end—it seems to me, we’re all key parts of each others memories and fleeting mysteries, in these third spaces that seem too far and few…worryingly, increasingly so…in my side of the world.
You see, at a train station in Yokohama, I once looked out at Tokyo Bay in the distance and thought: “There must be a way to keep this image in my memory.”
For now, this is my attempt to do so.
Moonlight Yokohama
Tracklist:
Tomoko Tane (種ともこ): ブルーライト・ヨコハマ(Ambient Version)
Rose-Unlimited (ローズ・アンリミテッド): Hurricane In The Nonsense Valley
Gontiti (ゴンチチ): Cafe Alpha
Mutsumi Inoue (井上睦都実): 夢で逢いましょう
Mie Kitabatake (北畠美枝): PoPo
Lisa Ono (小野リサ): シ・ア・ワ・セ
Unisonair (ユニゾネア): Interlude (Tropical Paradise)
Iria (イリア): 安心でき Night (Can’t Feel Safe at Night (He’s A Bad Boy))
Key Of Life (キー・オブ・ライフ): Night Wind
Risa Hirako (平子理沙): 「MAGIC」
Nahki (ナーキ): Do What You Want
Yow Okazaki (岡崎 葉): 子猫と宝石と…
Unisonair (ユニゾネア): Midnight Jazz
Naoko Gushima (具島直子): 今を生きる
Aya Hisakawa (久川 綾): ストーリー いるかのすべりだい (Excerpt – Narration + BGM)
DOWNLOAD: NIGHT/DAY
Yokohama Sunrise
Tracklist:
Weffer Cruis (成田真樹): ふたり
Manikyua-Dan (まにきゅあ団): 忘れない
Gontiti (ゴンチチ): Cafe Alpha
Bokura no Kazoku (ぼくらのかぞく): Sound (BGM 038 040)
Electric Satie (鈴木光人): Gymnopedie #1 – Universe
Harumi Kitagawa (北川春美): Hello Again
Lisa Ono (小野リサ): Travessia
Pacific 231 (パシフィック231): 空のことづて
Rose-Unlimited (ローズ・アンリミテッド): Last Trip To Ibiza
Hi-Posi (ハイポジ): あと何日
Calm (深川清隆): Journey To The Shadow Of The Earth
Boku no Natsuyasumi Portable 2: Nazo Nazo Shimai to Chinbotsusen no Himits (ぼくのなつやすみポータブル2 ナゾナゾ姉妹と沈没船の秘密!): Track 5 BGM
Unisonair (ユニゾネア): Interlude: Jonathan-Only You, Girl
Maya (林マヤ): Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Fruity: Okashi Daisakusen (Under The Sky Mix)
Naomi Araki (荒木尚美): 神様の Dub Song
Key Of Life (キー・オブ・ライフ): Asayake (の中で)