Harajuku Sunday (27 page)

Anna isn’t so important, I suppose.
 
Neither are, I guess, the rumors of Julian’s decline—the alleged bottles of urine stacking up in his dorm room as he scrambles to edit his work; the hours he may have spent in the G-CANS storm system.
 
Maybe he really does go a little nutty; maybe it’s just the wire speaking, adolescent drama springing into existence and washing away in the next rain.
 
Gustav’s group has energy; numbers; but the output, three minute films, isn’t exportable to a gallery launch.
 
Julian has invested years of his life in the group; but he may think he owns it; he may be a little too obsessed with his commitment to things.

“So we're just sitting there in the car minding our own business...”

(A flurry of giggles informs me this is not the whole truth.)

“Can we trust him?”

“Yeah, Ritchie's cool...”

“But maybe Julian wants...”

“It's common knowledge...”

“Guys, you can just tell me.
 
What's up?
 
I was like, gone for two weeks, and it's like everything's fallen to pieces.”

“OK OK.
 
So we were filming a bit all weekend and on Sunday afternoon we decide to take a break.”

Now Gustav speaks up, in his slightly breathless, edge-of-laughter sort of way.
 
“Well I light up a joint to share with everyone.”

The kids all laugh.

“We're sitting there hiding a spliff in the car taking a break in some quiet little neighborhood.”

“Well it's because Gustav decides to take a photograph of people...”

“No, no it's because we're just hanging out there, a bunch of foreign kids in a white Japanese car...”

“It's because what?
 
What's because what?
 
Guys, you're telling me the story all out of order.”

“Well basically, a bunch of cops starts walking and biking past us.
 
Not like literally right past us, but in the T of the T-intersection we're facing.”

“So Gustav gets all paranoid.”

“Oh shut up, I saved us all.”

“No, Gustav starts yelling that we have to get our asses out of there 'cuz we're going to get busted.”

“And we can't lose our visas, you know...”

“My mother would kill me...”

“Fortunately, I'm a good driver.”

“Yeah!
 
We almost hit a bicyclist!”

“Almost.
 
And then Gustav is panicking, and a cop sees us, 'cuz we're right in front of the neighborhood post, one of those koban things, you know?
 
We like drive right to it and almost run over a cyclist.”

“Please... we just had to brake hard is all.”

“And the cop tells us to pull over.”

“Gustav is like, 'hit the accelerator!' 'hit the accelerator!' but there's, like, seven cars in front of us.
 
So I can't hit the accelerator.
 
He's being a nutjob!
 
Actually what happens is that I save the day, 'cuz I pretend like I'm pulling over, but I'm just slowing down until the light changes...”

What's clear what happened is that he and his film crew are almost arrested by the police, with their license plate almost certainly noted, and everything apparently can be hushed up, except, of course, this is art school, so actually everybody internal knows before the sun has set twice.
 
Even, apparently, Julian finally gets wind of it, and, being the law-and-order type that he is within his own organization, he pushes for Gustav to be let go.

“Julian marches into the administrative office at Aoyama Studios, and if it had been any other person, any other employee there except the new girl, Shiori-”

“She's such a sweetie.”

“Any other girl than Shiori, probably he could have gotten what he wanted completed.
 
Instead, Shiori, being new to Aoyama, decides to actually look up the rules on how to handle this sort of situation and she discovers--”

The crowd excitedly presses closer.

“That Julian is not actually a member of Aoyama!”

At this news, I am shocked.
 
“Wha--?”

“No, exactly.
 
He was on the Fellowship twelve years ago, but technically, he shouldn't even be addressing any formal meetings of any kind.”

“But I thought he basically ran the thing?”

“Yeah, he does, but it's all informal.
 
Totally based on his relationship with Roshi-sensei.
 
And Roshi-sensei's daughter has actually started handling more of the administration lately, so she's going to start enforcing rules a bit more strictly.”

I clear my throat.
 
“You know, I'm not without some bitterness about this development.”

“Why not?”
 
The crowd is generally surprised.

“Well a few years ago, before you guys arrived, Julian basically turned this entire organization against me, and I thought that he actually had some right to because he was the senior person here.
 
But now it seems that he shouldn't even be part of the organization at all.”

Gustav makes a contemptuous expression and nods.
 
“See this is exactly what I'm saying about Julian.
 
He just does all this rude stuff to people and they accept it because they think he's the genius or the boss.
 
We just have to say no whenever he orders anything.”

Other stories come out, apparently some karaoke fiasco where somebody is trying to input in their song, and Julian forcibly stops them.
 
Sentiment against the overly-controlling director is quite evident.

“Ritchie,” says Gustav, “why are you even hanging out with him?
 
He lost his actress, he lost his film, I heard Melanie is leaving him.
 
There's no point in hanging out with this loser.”

“Well...”

“You can hang out with my crew.
 
We have a lot of fun.”

The kids nod in agreement.

“Well, it sounds very tempting….”

Ladies and gentlemen, patrons of art, generous benefactors, assembled guests.
 
Twenty years ago today Murayama Roshi-sensei had a vision.
 
In a
Japan
that had just recently “learned to say no,” Roshi-sensei realized that the relationship between the re-emerged world power and the outside world could go in one of two directions.
 
Either Japan would continue to develop its independent identity and emerge as an alternative to the Soviet-U.S. dialectic of the time, or it could engage the world that it was inextricably a part of and enrich and enliven the culture, expression, and knowledge of that world, not as a political power, but as a cultural entity, a treasure-chest and aesthetic partner to all the varied family of the world.
 
He wanted the latter and founded the Aoyama Fellowship,
Japan
’s answer to the
UK
’s Rhodes Scholarship, the
U.S.
's Fulbright program, Comintern's International Youth Congress and so on, but the first--and only--program that sought art as a means of international communication and a building block for peace.

Today, we have reached an important milestone in the fulfillment of that vision.
 
Although the Soviet Union has collapsed and the U.S. has emerged as the world’s sole superpower, today more than ever it is the medium of art; the manipulation of symbols; the study of semiotics and hermeneutics; structuralism, existentialism, post-modernism and intercultural understanding that dominate the intellectual life of our earth.
 
In twenty years over a thousand young artists from the West and Eastern bloc and former Eastern-bloc nations have been invited to Japan to work side-by-side with Japanese masters and young artists, exchanging ideas, methodologies, visions, and forging bonds of friendship that extend far beyond the nation, and creating many lasting and meaningful works of art.
 
During this time, moreover, countries have grown closer together and new bonds have been built between organizations, institutes, schools, and studios of many kinds.

A great artist once said, “true communication can only occur through the fiction of art.”
 
Perhaps so.
 
As an artist and film-maker myself, I am ever conscious of the ways in which film both distorts and accesses reality itself; I am conscious of the impact my decisions have and of the forces in immanent reality that have inspired and inflected my vision.
 
The advice given to aspiring young film-makers is “don’t ever talk about your work!”
 
[general laughter]
 
But unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of following that rather excellent piece of advice: I am, after all, a scholar on Fellowship; and I am speaking to you today as a duty—a duty for the generous support the Fellowship has extended me; a duty for the honor of having my work be the centerpiece for the Gala launch, and a duty for the mentorship the Aoyama Fellowship has given to me through all these years.

So today, I will speak first about ‘Shibuya Grey,’ my MFA thesis submission for the
Gakuin
School
, and the movie you have just seen.
 
Following these remarks I will review some of the history of the past twenty years of the Aoyama Fellowship, and I will end, briefly, with a set of further benchmarks and goals that we might achieve with your continued financial support.
 
This—all of this—was only possible with your support and we are sitting here today in these superlative surroundings only because benefactors as yourself have understood the importance of art in human life and perpetuated its creation.
 
Artistic output is an excruciating, painful, time- and resource-consuming process, so much must be invested for the creation of just one piece of work—this we all know—but its rewards are ultimately the advancement of civilization itself.

Okay, may I have slide one please?

Let’s start our discussion of the film by acknowledging the obvious.
 
‘Shibuya Grey’ is first and foremost a movie about the Amy Blair murder.

[audience gasps]

All of us are of course familiar with the circumstances of Amy Dolores Blair, the first-year Aoyama Fellow of the seventh year of the program, a sculptor and aspiring potter, who was murdered by her boyfriend, a fellow Aoyama Fellow, during those early, unfamiliar years of the program.
 
The criticism made about those early years, of course, still rings true today: that it was simply ludicrous to bring over a bunch of young artists and assume that somehow, magically, art would be produced; that the creation of art could somehow be ‘purchased;’ and we are all familiar the stories of the first few years: Fellows simply hanging out in cafes or even disappearing for weeks at a time to Thailand.
 
Even the one legendary Fellow who simply never even showed up, but was paid his full grant on-time and in-full, quarterly installments arriving in his North American bank account never to be recovered.

These criticisms, of course, were misguided.
 
After the crisis of the Blair affair, we have grown beyond, far beyond that nadir to become one of the world's preeminent cultural exchange programs.
 
But, I found myself, as the years passed, more and more interested in the Blair case not because I wanted to learn any more of the details (the media has been quite efficient with that responsibility), but because I wanted to know more about Jim Wolverham, who was, after all, also a Fellow, also one of our own.
 
Slide two, please.

Jim Wolverham, 26, was in many ways an unusual acceptance to the Aoyama Program.
 
A little older than the average, he was nonetheless an accomplished graphic artist of his own right and his background, the years of service in the Marine Corps, the service in Operation Desert Storm, gave him experience and life knowledge that many young Aoyama fellows lacked.
 
According to the conventional story, he was a troubled, dark soul, one inclined to morbidity and violence, and we have all seen the last unfinished comic he was working on; its images have been disseminated across the world.
 
In my research with Jim’s classmates of the time, however, I have heard only that he was a kind, gentle person, one who always had time to listen to a friend’s problems and who could be counted in during times of genuine need.
 
So which was he?
 
Was Jim the nice boy who inexplicably, without any apparent warning sign, went berserk and killed his young girlfriend?
 
Or was he a dark and evil individual, one who had been discharged from the Marines for unknown offenses, and who wore a mask of normality and meekness only to cover a foundational identity of psychopathic insanity?