Connections / Media diary / Wakamatsu Koji’s Endless Waltz (1995) backwards to Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia (1988)

[This is writing to mimic flicking through things across a day, from one point—rewatching Wakamatsu Koji’s Endless Waltz (1995)—to another—a 1975 to another, to another, to another. And so, Endless Waltz → Jusan nin renzoku bokoma (1978) (because it has an Abe Kaoru score) → to Hino Mayuki’s post-film noise career in a Wisconsin basement (because she plays the blind girl in Jusan nin renzoku bokoma) → a show in Shimokitazawa → and so on.]

①①① If you asked me today, I might name as my favorite film Wakamatsu Koji’s Endless Waltz. Machida Ko plays the saxophonist Abe Kaoru. Hirota Reona plays the writer Suzuki Izumi. It’s based on a novel by Inaba Mayumi, but Wakamatsu Koji knew them both—Abe Kaoru and Suzuki Izumi—when they were alive. They appeared in his films. □ It’s wrong to care what anyone thinks about your taste. I won’t feel self-conscious saying that I love it. It’s obscure—a Japanese art house film that can only be seen on Russian streaming sites—and underappreciated, but its charms are easy to explain: it’s a romantic melodrama shot by a pornographer. ▤ Machida Ko’s Abe Kaoru is a drug addict, an adulterer, and a violent creep. Hirota Reona’s Suzuki Izumi is a promiscuous vamp, a neglectful mother, and a misunderstood genius. But they are in love, first. They destroy each other. Until they get it, this is what everyone wants. This makes a good story. He dies foaming at the mouth after an overdose of Bromisoval. She dies by her own hand, leaving their daughter behind. □ I would like to write an appreciation. I would like to say that Hirota Reona in Endless Waltz is the most beautiful woman ever captured on film, if I don’t count Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978). ▤ I would like to reveal something about myself. I would like to say that there is something relatable about the scene of Suzuki Izumi severing her toe in the couple’s dingy kitchen, the conclusion of a fantasy that begins with murder and ends with self-destruction, related to Abe Kaoru after they drain a bottle of whiskey. ▤ I would like to recall how I felt the first time I put it on, mindlessly calling up Wakamatsu Koji filmography entries that I hadn’t seen. It begins with Hirota Reona stepping into a noose. Her young daughter looks on from a bunkbed. ▤ I would like to explain the strange effect produced by all of Wakamatsu Koji’s low-budget period pieces—the peculiar dislocation that comes from inexpensive costumes and set dressing… It is set in the 1970s, and there is some attention to making interiors authentic, but exteriors are untouched. So, the radicals of the era, eternally young, are marooned in clearly 1995, still rapping about long-dead struggles as if they were still hot. When Suzuki Izumi walks in Harajuku, she is wearing a costume a few generations back from what is being hawked in the thrift stores in the background. Abe Kaoru plays to an audience transplanted from The Year Punk Broke. → → →【ABE KAORU 1 [PLAYING RECORDS ON YOUTUBE]】②②② You can’t hear it, but I’m playing a live recording of Abe improvising at Aoyama Tower Hall in 1975, taken from Mort à crédit (maybe it’s been reissued, but it doesn’t matter, since I will listen to it today on Youtube and forget about it). □ No, I must have switched off. I hadn’t noticed. □ Let me play it again. □ There is no need to understand what free jazz deconstructs. There’s no need to understand what Abe Kaoru does that nobody else could. Let me enjoy the bleats and whistles. There is a trill that Abe Kaoru plays on his saxophone that remind me of suona. I remember the tofu seller’s whistle, which I last heard walking to the station from the beach at Oiso last summer. Noise breaks down into riffs that could be familiar. My mind is blank. My response is simple. □ I hate Wakamatsu Koji. I hate free jazz. But that’s why I watch. That’s why I listen. → → →【ABE KAORU 2 [CAMEO IN WAKAMATSU KOJI 1978 FILM]】③③③ Here is Abe Kaoru in Wakamatsu Koji’s Jusan nin renzoku bokoma (1978), standing on the banks of a river in Tokyo, blowing his horn, watched over by the film’s unnamed serial rapist, played by Umatsu Tensan. I only called it up to see Abe Kaoru’s cameo. Its his score, too, with saxophone and harmonica. □ Unlike Endless Waltz, there’s nothing in it for me, except for the landscapes. It was intended as pornography. It’s a series of violent rapes and murders. Rape is staged as something erotic and disgusting. Women resist but then twist and scream in ecstasy. The rapist gets no apparent pleasure from the attack. It’s another Wakamatsu Koji collaboration with Adachi Masao. It’s about the meaninglessness of violence, I suppose, at least in the context of modern Japan. Even the most revolting acts won’t move anyone, except maybe the vigilante that guns down the rapist at the end, except maybe the men that masturbating in adult cinemas…. It’s not the ugliest of Wakamatsu Koji’s films. He has made many about rapists. It’s not as unsettling to me as Mizu no nai puru (1982). The meaninglessness is a comfort (and I mean the emphasis on the meaninglessness, since sexual violence is often presented in Wakamatsu Koji’s films in the same way—bored, disaffected young men preying on women because they no idea how else to pass the time). It might be the most artless of Wakamatsu Koji’s films, although I have probably only seen a dozen or so.

→ → →【WHAT HINO MAYUKI DID AFTER [A BASEMENT IN WISCONSIN]】④④④ There are two noise artists in Jusan nin renzoku bokoma. □ Near the end of the film, the rapist meets a blind woman played by Hino Mayuko, credited as Yamashita Emi. The rapist is perplexed that she doesn’t seem to fear him. (There is some ambiguity about this—whether or not she is playing along, putting on an act—but it’s unpleasant to speculate about, so let’s say that) he rapes her, too. They lay together on the riverbank afterwards. She says that she can smell blood and gunpowder on him. He admits to being a killer. She asks him why he kills. He doesn’t answer. They fall asleep together. When he wakes up at dusk, she’s gone. □ I haven’t seen her in any other roles. If I did, I didn’t notice her. I had heard her name only because I read music magazines when I was a boy. She is more famous now as a noise artist than as a pink film actress. □ I am moving forwards, trying to spin out connections, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. □ She must have known Abe Kaoru, or she must have met him. She believed in Wakamatsu Koji. They must have moved in the same scenes. Maybe that is how she met Hiroshi Hasegawa, whose improvisational performances she joined as a vocalist. I’m not sure. □ There are videos on streaming websites of Hino Mayuki’s 1992 tour in the United States. She was billed not as a founding member of C.C.C.C., but as the "1970's S+M Porno Queen of Japan," along with a promotional image from the 1980 film Gekisatsu! Nihon no kinbaku. She played in the basement of O'Cayz Corral in Madison, Wisconsin. She played in Los Angeles. I have watched both of those performances (the Madison set in full, Los Angeles only clips cut from Performance at Club FUCK in L.A., issued as a VHS by Endorphine Factory in 1993 and reissued on DVD by CX Records four years ago). In the Madison performance, she is dressed in a kimono. She messes with gear on the floor, rattles an oven rack into a wrecked microphone, and shakes dice in a box. While a rock band plays, she dances and shrieks, then slowly strips nude. In Los Angeles, she is nude and bound. In a free hand, she holds a candle and pours wax across her arms and chest. It is unclear whether or not she is trying to burn away the knots. □ It’s easier to write these performances off as uninteresting, then to move onto the next connection. I don’t want to say what I really think. I believe I could guess why Hino Mayuko disappeared from the scene. → → →【A BASEMENT IN WISCONSIN LOOKS LIKE A BASEMENT IN SHIMOKITAZAWA [BEAUTIFUL WOMEN MAKING NOISE]】⑤⑤⑤ 前几天我在那个entry里跟提到的"electric guitar in a concrete box"那段，应该就是那晚跟朋友在下北泽看A VIRGIN的演出。She played noisy rock music on a Flying V, wearing a Lycra bodysuit that showed off the tattoos on her thighs. 她吉他和大腿其实我当时看不见，人太多，后来在Instagram上看到。演出结束后，我和朋友已经上到地面，站在街边抽烟聊天，看到她依然穿着那件Lycra bodysuit，提着guitar case消失在下北泽的夜色中。没过几分钟，■■■■■■就催我们走，要去新宿找个酒吧（好像还有人要上台，但他只对A VIRGIN感兴趣，还特意带了お土産给她，搞得好像专程来看她似的）。我回家看她两天前upload的MV, admiring her long legs spread out on a bench in a station of the Metro, studying the makeup on her brow, 不过现场演出比看视频更能感受到狂野、震撼、刺耳，确实更好。There is a separation between the visual and the music. This is something like grain. This is something like Hino Mayuko in her kimono at O'Cayz Corral in 1992 ■■ ■ ■■■■■■. ■■■■ ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■ (so, let’s put the responsibility on them, and say they are intentionally making us uncomfortable ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■, ■■■■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■■■■■ or the precarious model, shopgirl waif, collecting art on her inner thighs).

→ → →【A FILM RECOMMENDED BY A VIRGIN IN AN INTERVIEW WITH A JAPANESE FASHION MAGAZINE】⑥⑥⑥ Madame X – Eine absolute Herrscherin (1978). → → →【ANOTHER FILM BY ULRIKE OTTINGER】⑦⑦⑦ A surprising number of Chinese state organs, institutions, and arts bodies collaborated with Ulrike Ottinger on Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia (1988), a story about Inés Sastre being kidnapped and falling in love with a Mongolian princess (it is an immense film, so has space in its first half to be a satire about Westerners voyaging by train into the Orient). I had never seen it before. There are too many things left out there to distract me.