When, or if, someone would ask me what kind of album I think perfectly encapsulates the promise of ‘80s music in Japan, I’d say look no further than Macoto Tezka Presents Reiko Okano’s Fancy Dance (ファンシイダンス). As before, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and state: “If you’re looking for someone who is knowledgeable about Japanese anime, manga, and/or video games, you’re asking the wrong guy.” What I do know is music and in this I know that if you want someone in the know about everything, one who can thoroughly capture the zeitgeist of that time in Japan, you have to look at the work of Reiko Okano.
As her bio details elsewhere, Reiko was born in Koga, Ibaraki in 1960. Just as soon as Reiko graduated from high school she parlayed her studies in graphic design as leverage to start creating her first manga, 1982’s wonderfully titled: Esther, Please serialized in a monthly girls-oriented manga mag called Petit Flower, one of the few places where female mangakas could present their work. In that first work, one touching on magic and fantasy, one could sense Reiko brought a different sensibility to manga.
Just 22 at the time, for her next work Reiko wanted to capture something that could touch on the burgeoning Japanese New Wave scene and also on Japan’s connection to its traditional past and music. What came out of her rumination would be her next manga, 1984’s Fancy Dance.
Unlike other Shōjo mangas, Fancy Dance may have shared certain design aesthetics with — the big eyes, pale faces, and slim angular pretty boys — it differed by using the story of its protagonist, who I believe was a monk discovering a love for Japanese underground music, as means to present topics that touched on ideas of self, metaphysics, and spirituality. As you can imagine, its 6 year run must have been something to behold.
I believe, at the height of its popularity — just one year removed from its eventual live-action adaptation — Fancy Dance the manga was given the “image album” treatment. Escaping the trappings of conventional commissions, Fancy Dance the image soundtrack would be conceived differently. First, Reiko’s husband, live-action movie director Macoto Tezka, would work in collaboration with Reiko to both write and gather musicians who would create music apropos for the kind of manga she designed. In a way, they were trying to produce a musical version of the manga itself.
Macoto Tezka Presents Reiko Okano’s Fancy Dance (ファンシイダンス) presents a far more insider view of Japan’s next wave after New Wave. Groups like Phonogenix, musicians like Daisuke Kume, BAnaNA, and Vagabond Suzuki would be asked to contribute. Others like ex-FILMS founder and future Chakra and Imitation contributor, Chūji Akagi, would come out of the woodwork to update what they only had moments to begin, earlier in their career. I’m looking at the guest list — Shinobu Narita, Kenzo Saeki, Mick from Everything Play, Saeko Suzuki, and so on — and my eyes can only widen, imagining what these sessions must have been like.
Reiko spoke of her love of gagaku, something she would grow to be a contemporary expert at, of informing her contribution to this record. It’s this idea of presenting very elemental ideas, ideas that would divide the album in two: the A-side dedicated to earthly desire and the flip side to discipline and the ascetic practice, that would allow her to write lyrics and partition off songs that caught the bleeding-edge of Japanese music.
On the “Desire” side, songs like the titular track, “Coup De Grace”, “Cada Tortuga Con Su Pareja”, work their way up to songs like Chūji’s crowning stroke “Mercury Impulse”. In this arc you can actually witness the way early New Wave would mutate (when informed by electronics, tradition, and a heavy dose of introspection) into environs that became more leftfield and unique further down that decade. Shoji Kokami (of all people!), who some might know from NHK’s Cool Japan, works with BAnaNA to create something approximating the clattering electro of urban America and once again, it’s a burner.
Of course, the more fascinating (depending on your taste) might be the “discipline” side. You hear this side kick off with a collaborative work by Haniwa All Stars leader, Kiyohiko Semba and Daisuke Kume. “間名謝滅之境” of “Mana Apocalypse) is the clearest connection we can see of Reiko Okano’s influence with that of the Gagaku tradition and her spiritual past. An interplay between shamisen, gong, and electronics controlled ex-Syoko programmer, Eishi Segawa, heightens the change in tone of the album, one you could audibly sense was coming at the end of “desire”.
The following track, the haunting “轉相牽入火坑” or “Inverted Into The Fire Pit”, features the same duo now aided by an unlikely rap written by Reiko and sung by Japanese playwright Keralino Sandrovich. Venturing past using traditional instruments, here they link them with drum machines and samplers to present a harrowing vision of the darker side of Buddhist beliefs. Then Phonogenix and Macoto Tezka join in on the surreal musical passion play with “瞽人見空中華” writing a piece of music at the intersection of Jon Hassell, Buddhist tantric chants, and truly out-there almost Residents-like or Belew-like guitar/animal sampler mashups. For it to be weirdly funky, is still a wonder to me.
We finally get to hear Macoto and Reiko on the same track on “百尺竿頭進歩十万世界全身”. Here they’re joined by Shinobu Narita, once again, as helps them by contributing a sparkling/sprawling art rock epic begun by Phonongenix as they provide atmosphere for Reiko to recite Chinese poetry and Keralino Sandrovich to morph into the glam god we never knew he was meant to be.
The album will end with its real coup de grace, “踏破澄潭月穿開碧落天”, a special reunion by the Colored Music duo of Ichiko Hashimoto and Atsuo Fujimoto that quite literally picks up where they left us in 1981. A mystical thing of clangorous traditional Japanese percussion meeting creepy, impressionistic piano played by Ichiko and dynamic art rock accompaniment by Atsuo, of course, could only have been sung by cryptic Japanese psychic Masuaki Kiyota — which it was. And in doing so, slams shut an album presenting a hybrid vision where the promise of that culture Reiko saw personally and drew, personally, could commune with a spirit (or spirits) one is still trying to picture however many years later.