“I’ll play my own rock. You play your own Rock and Roll.”

Reading Yuichi Jibiki’s Street Kingdom, a memoir documenting the Tokyo Rockers and the birth and of Japan’s independent punk/rock/new-wave scene, director Tomorowo Taguchi felt that only he could turn this memoir into a feature film. More personally, he felt not only the need to evoke how this period influenced him – motivating him to start his own band Bachukaburi – but to introduce this profoundly influential period to audiences who knew little about it yet reaped the rewards of its cultural repercussions.

While Yuichi Jibiki immediately agreed, the project took more than ten years to realize. While Taguchi, first, wanted to create a quasi-documentary and avoid fictionalisation as much as possible, the process of writing and rewriting ultimately led Taguchi and his screenwriter Kankuro Kudo to embrace the idea that the truth can only be told through the structure of fiction (General-note 1).

Tomorowa Taguchi’s Street Kingdom begins two years after Johnny Rotten’s shocking choice to quit The Sex Pistols after their final performance of their US tour. Yuichi Hibiki (Kazunobu Mineta), camera in hand, is documenting the thriving punk-rock scene in Roppongi, Tokyo, with the aim to capture Japanese punk sounds that can only be birthed within Japan.

One day, a performance of Dissection Room, a group led by the eccentric Michio Ando (Taiga Nakano), at a university event completely goes off the rails and an officer of the law is called. As Ando and one of his fellow members are asked by the officer to give their statement at the nearby koban, Hibiki promptly distances himself from the transgressive performance with an excuse: he dislikes (this kind of) punk. Yet, what kind of sounds is he trying to capture? What kind of punk constitutes his ideal?

Street Kingdom is a narrative that, by taking Hibiki as anchoring point, seeks to introduce the spectator into the world and atmospheres of indie-punk, rock and new-wave. It does not merely trace the seemingly ‘contradictory’ relation of Hibiki, as subject, to the underground indie music-scene and what punk represents, but also takes great care in staging the birth and the structural struggle of Tokyo-punk, of what Hibiki dubs street kingdom. In other words, Taguchi takes the spectator along on an atmospheric trip to ‘visit’ defining events – i.e. the Kansai-tour, the mainstream interest in the collective Tokyo Rockers, Jibiki’s Drive to ’80, a multi-day event and precursor to the festival-concept where the all-standing gig was born, the establishment of indie label Junk Connection, the legendary transgressive stage antics of Michiro Endo of The Stalin, the formation of Telegraph Records. 

The narrative of Street Kingdom begins in the closing years of the seventies, at the very moment when the continued failure of political rebellion and revolutionary action (i.e. Anpo-protests, the counter-culture excesses, the Sanrizuka Struggle, … etc.) has caused an ‘infectious’ spread of a subjective emptiness and instilled a sense of disenchantment that pushes youthful subjects back-in-line – accept their position as mere cogs within the machine.

A chance encounter with the crude brutality of the Sex Pistols’ song God Save The Queen enables Hibiki to spark his dying flame of rebellion and resist the pull of the mundane societal system to inscribe himself in the patriarchal demands. Yet, it is the accidental discovery of a handwritten ad for Rockin’ Doll, an underground indie magazine, during a discussion with one of his friends from university, that provides him the gate through which he can enter Tokyo’s budding underground indie punk-scene and the fuel to keep his flame alive.

However, what pulls the spectator into Tomorowo Taguchi’s Street Kingdom is not so much the tracing out of Hibiki’s entry in the budding underground indie-scene, but the rather shocking contrast between the transgressive performance of Dissection Room, Hibiki’s confession that he dislikes the punk-scene, and his initial attraction to punk as site of freedom. To make further headway into the narrative – and the message it aims to formulate, we must analyse this contrast a bit deeper.   

First of all, what Michio Ando, the frontman of Dissection Room, performs on the stage is nothing other than what the societal Other seeks to repress: the crude sexual nature of the human animal. His act of pissing on one of audience members – his expression of love – takes not only the piss at the ‘conforming’ demands that structures the space of the university, but also to those who sheepishly repress their sexuality. His subsequent refusal to put on his pants in front of the police officer re-affirms his refusal to align himself to the repressive decency of the authority figure, the representative of the Other that seeks to bury sexuality and sexual jouissance – “Grow up and act your age”, and his aim to agitate the societal field.

Yet, is it such transgressive radicality that Hibiki dislikes? How should we read his confession that he dislikes the punk scene – this cultural field of long hair, marihuana, high-heel boots, and so on? We must take him by his word and read in this performance the echo of the past’s ‘revolutionary’ failure – “They claim to be free, but they’re not”. This sub-cultural space does not merely constitute a crude replication of the conservative Other they claim to attack – “A conservative hierarchy rules by tough guys and loudmouths” – but results, ironically, in a re-affirmation of the symbolic law. The punk-artist needs the symbolic law, the conservative Other as it is, so that he can cross the limits it imposes.

Funny enough, it is Hibiki’s discontent with the failed activism of the past that pushes him to underground rock and punk-scene. The confrontation with The Sex Pistols, beyond re-igniting his rebellious flame, sets him on a search for something that is not merely a mendacious intimation of British punk but a form of music that, by being born within and by politically responding to the Japanese Other, presents itself as completely and genuinely uncategorizable – “An otherworldly realm full of freedom and raw energy” called “Street Kingdom” (e.g. Tokage with frontman Momo (Ryuya Wakaba),  Atsureki fronted by Deep (Shotaro Mamiya), Robotomaia with lead signer Kayoko (Sena Nakajima), Gokutsubushi by Hiromi (Shido Nakamura)) (General-note 2). 

To know what kind of freedom Hibiki values and what he calls (the ideal of) punk, one merely has to listen to the signifiers he utilizes to formulate his own experience. Reading these signifiers closely, one can surmise that he values, above all, musical spaces where subjects can take momentary refuge from the demands of the patriarchal Other, from the oppressive insistence to act in accordance with the flow of the mundane collective – “No one was forcing anyone to clap”; Everyone was acting unburdened by others and the Other’s expectations. The jam-like moments during the events in the studio of S-Tora (Nao Omori) form, in a certain sense, an epitome of such freedom – the creation of a space where subjects can fleetingly lift the weight of the Others of their shoulders by not merely letting new sounds vibrate their body but also take part in the creation of such ‘liberating’ sounds. Is the idea of one’s own dance, a dance that surges from one’s inside, an idea introduced by Hiromi, not a different way to conceptualize such moment of ‘freedom’? 

Yet, for the punk-rockers, the signifier freedom also constitutes a continued resistance to being integrated within the mundane societal field, a refusal to be subjected to the machinery of profit and capital, a radical embracing of DIY. Their refusal to sign with record companies as well as their conscious choice to hold events and release records without relying in capital aims to remain independent from the Other’s commands and safeguard the singularity of their musical expression – they only want to do that stays true to themselves.

Street Kingdom takes its time to stage the negative impact of merely collaborating with a Record Company. The mere grouping of bands under the name Tokyo Rockers within a system that seeks to create fame and generate profit sorts all kinds of destructive effects – jealousy, frustration, and so on. Tomorowo Taguchi utilizes Momo’s subjective struggle to stage how the element of popularity – the push towards becoming mainstream – inaugurates an irresolvable tension between art as a form of singular expression – “I have my own ideal and visions.” – and art as a social commodified product, an object that, by circulating among subjects, generates profit – “Make records that sell, if not, they’re crap; I feel like I’m fighting alone. Dealing with fans and the label”.

And is it not this ‘destruction’ that Tomorowo Taguchi evocatively refers to with his opening sequence. If we return to this inaugurating moment, can we not state that Hibiki’s dismissive enunciation following Dissection Room’s transgressive performance foreshadows that any space of ‘freedom’, when it turns into main-stream culture, ultimately shapes and consolidates itself as a kind of reflection of the societal Other? Does the search for freedom from societal constraints not produce a similar set of constraints reminiscent of what is supposedly being refused? And does Street Kingdom not also stage that the subject, subjected to the signifiers and the acts of others, not ultimately runs against the wall of his own neurosis – those complexes and fixations that render him, as being of language, as essentially unfree? Is the futile search for freedom from the Other as societal field and the indulging, however fleeting it may be, in the loosening of the weight of the Other not made possible by our enchainment by language?

Yet, these questions might give the reader a wrong impression. This film does not lament the failures that plagued the Japanese punk-scene, but seeks to affirm the importance of having a space that, by staying out of reach of the machinery of capital and mainstream consumption, grant subjects the ability to create their own sounds, their own dances. Street Kingdom is not merely a celebration of what we call nowadays the indie-scene, but a subtle affirmation that one must fight to keep such space-of-freedom viable within the societal field.

The pleasure Tomorowo Taguchi had in bringing the punk-performances visually to life is evident in the way his compositions ‘venerate’ the performances, the atmospheres. The music dictates the compositional rhythm, from nearly disorienting fast-cutting to more subdued moodier rhythms, from rowdier forms of dynamism to more subdued compositional movement. What makes the framing of these performances even more visually interesting is the variety of visual decorations (e.g. slow-motion, …) Tomorowo Taguchi interweaves within his visual fabric to evoke something of the unruly chaos that defined the Japanese punk scene, of being present within a space of anti-authoritarian performance, where the moral decency is challenged to question the repressive nature of the societal Other.

The use of real archival pictures and video fragments taken by Jibiki within the composition does not merely function as a reminder that Street Kingdom is based real events – a fictitious narrativization of a subjective experience within a certain social space – or as a mere celebration of his photographic work but also infuses realism into the fictionalization (Cine-note 1). In our view, by echoing the dimension of the memoir in the narrative’s framework, Tomorowo Taguchi succeeds to breathe cinematic life into fictionalized subjective experience of Jibiki and the somewhat forgotten punk scene.

There are also many moments within the composition where the fourth wall is broken, where Jibiki address the spectator. This stylistic choice is, in our view, not merely a playful reference to the memoir on which the film is based, but also seeks to keep the spectator invested into the punk-rock atmosphere, the variety of moods within the punk-scene.  

Street Kingdom is not punk cinema made by fans for the fans, but punk cinema for those who never knew they needed the spirit that fuelled it. Tomorowo Taguchi delivers an inspirational experience that will not merely arouse interest in these forgotten bands, but will reveal to audiences the very need to have their own spaces where they can produce their own sound. Highly recommended.

Notes

General-note 1: Street Kingdom does not utilize the real names of the bands and relevant persons but introduces the spectator to fictionalized versions of the bands and their creative forces. The main motivation behind this choice seems to have been the desire to signal that, despite being based on real events, the film is fiction and offers a radically fictionalized adaptation of Jibiki’s memoir on the silver screen – the factual nature of his memoir meant that the conversations and the dramatic situations had to be invented and phantasmatically reconstructed.

The fictionalization of names and bands emphasizes that they did not seek to reproduce the past, but to create their own sound out the Jibiki’s photographical material and fictionally stage the significance of certain events and moments.     

The band TOKAGE is the fictionalized version of LIZARD (リザード) led by Momoyo. Kiretsu (軋轢) represents FRICTION (フリクション) fronted by RECK (レック). The real-life counterpart of Robotomeia (ロボトメイア) is    ZELDA with Sachiko Kojima and Sayoko Takahashi. Kaiboshitsu (解剖室) is none other than THE STALIN (ザ・スターリン) with Michiro Endo as frontman. Gokutsubushi (ごくつぶし) represents JAGATARA (じゃがたら) and Edo Akemi. NO NO BAND is none other than the NON BAND / ノン・バンド by NON. And S-TORA   is S-KEN.

General-note 2: The inclusion of different languages in the performance’s signals that the birth of indie-rock and punk did not happen within a vacuum – there are foreign influences, catalysts to search for one’s own sound.

Cine-note 1: While archival footage is generally utilized to support the diegetic narrator, those transitions where Hibiki, as narrator, contextualizes and guides the shifts within the narrative, Tomorowo Taguchi also interweaves such footage to signal that the moment staged in all its colourful glory is a radical re-fictionalizing of a reality that Jibiki documented. In other words, Tomorowo, by signalling the documented reality, seeks to amplify the impact of his re-fictionalized presentation of Hibiki’s trajectory and the story of Tokyo’s indie punk and rock scene.