Harajuku Sunday (28 page)

Slide three.

I did not know Jim.
 
I don’t feel ashamed to admit this.
 
We were Fellows together at the same time, but aside from some distant sightings, I never interacted with him; I never had a conversation with him, nor did I know, for that matter, Amy Blair.
 
The obvious claim to make, of course, is that not having known him personally, I am now engaged in a sort of aesthetic exploitation: I am creating a work of art that plays upon feelings upon which I have no genuine claim.
 
To this I reply: guilty as charged.
 
I didn't actually know Jim; I didn't actually know Amy.
 
But, as the beginning of the film makes clear, I was in the end affected by these events, and further, as we can see on the slide—all of us were.
 
For some reason that I can't quite fathom even today, on that first day when the news spread through the dorm, I felt compelled to take a picture of the scene.
 
I remember distinctly one of my classmates giving me a look of absolute horror; we were caught up in the moment, now was not the time for representation.
 
But I did so, for whatever reason, and we can see here the impact of that Saturday; we can see why things would take so long to return to normal.

Slide four.

The next question of course is 'why change the characters?
 
Why is Jim a Marine officer AWOL and Dolly a foreign hostess girl?
 
Well, legal questions aside, I made this film this way in part to examine the particular interplay between genuine experience and the creation of art.
 
All of us have already heard the rumors and stories about Jim's military experience; but none of that, really, concerns me.
 
What I see when I look at the Aoyama Program is a large number of talented, idealistic overachievers and go-getters, people who have done great things already and will surely go on to do even greater.
 
But, that being said, in a sense we are a disappointment; there have been internationally renowned graduates of the Fellows program and people who are quite appreciated in their field.
 
But there still is no universally-known graduate; there still is no 'artist who revolutionized the world' former Aoyama Fellow, with some minor exceptions who are more a matter of degree and definition or of previous accomplishment predating their Aoyama years.

Why is this?

Well, much of this has to do with youth of course.
 
A twenty-year old program is not going to generate a list of illustrious alumni in the same way that a school or institution existing for a hundred years or more might.
 
For its size and scale, Aoyama has been quite impressive—accomplished even.
 
But what this brings us back to us is that fundamental criticism made of our brave little endeavor: the fact that an Artistic Fellowship program is itself a contradiction in terms—we cannot build an artist; we cannot produce art on demand.
 
An individual has to be born an artist—to some degree—and he or she must live first and then create—or all we have are the lineaments of the cage in which we imprison him; all he can do is paint the bars of his cage.

It was for this reason that Jim Wolverham intrigued me.
 
Unknown to me in person, in death his story became to me a fixation and an obsession.
 
For years after my first work I brooded over his case, torturing myself to bring out draft after draft of unsuccessful treatments of the subject matter.
 
It was only after a fateful encounter of my own—details which must alas remain private—that I realized that I had been going about the project in entirely the wrong way.
 
There was never any reason to make the work true to life; Jim's story never had anything to do with Aoyama.
 
What if I reimagined the story as taking place had the Fellowship never existed at all?

It is for this reason, that Shibuya Grey begins in Naha Marine Corps base and opens with the glimpse of
Mount Fuji
.
 
I am a visual artist, after all; I deal in images.
 
Amy, as we now see her, is not the scholarship recipient and talented young potter, but the hostess girl who makes 3000 yen an hour pouring drinks to Japanese businessmen.
 
Here, in short, is the perfect intersection of two worlds: the battle-weary young Marine officer; the Western girl fallen and Easternized.
 
Add to this mix an understory of a past romance, and we have all the ingredients of tragedy; we have all the ingredients of art.

Jim, of course, seeks to “rescue” Amy.
 
But is Jim not the one who is truly fallen?
 
In flashbacks we see the story of his own life; the domineering father, the older brother's who deformed arm prevents him from carrying out his father's overwhelming obsession for his sons.
 
But at the moment of truth—at the film's opening—this path is seen as not Jim's own, and the drive up to Tokyo is itself symbolic of a rejection of one's past, a complete break with history.

Artistic output cannot be created by those who have not lived; those who have lived are not inclined to speak needlessly.
 
Therein lies the crux.
 
By abandoning the outside pretense of “attempting to create art,” now we better understand Jim; now we see the story of his failure as the story of a individual who cannot escape his own circumstances; one who is, in a final sense, a victim of his own.

[The crowd stirs.]

Ladies and gentlemen I know this is not a popular opinion.
 
There is no question that Jim Wolverham was a murderer; we have no doubt that he committed a grave crime.
 
What I was attempting to say with 'Shibuya Grey' was that if we look carefully at his circumstances, if we see what his father is on record as saying; his mother--

[Angry voices, once imperceptible, are now distinct.
 
'He was a murderer!
 
There is never any excuse or explanation for homicide!']

Ma'am, please.
 
I beg only a little more of your time...

[At least several people get up to leave the gala.
 
Julian is flustered, but attempts to continue.]

As an artist and a creator, it is my duty to tell uncomfortable truths.
 
The media has protrayed past events as a simple opposition of good and evil, but what this obscures is a certain darkness inside Amy herself, and a certain lightness inside the character of Jim Wolverham...

[Hara is booed off the podium.
 
With much embarrassment, the management takes over.]

He had retired, flustered, to the upstairs studio where I find him, going up there only to pick up my book bag.
 
In fact, I don't even know he's in the room until he coughs, lightly, and I see the ever-present red ember of his cigarette; the little glow intensifying as he inhales.

“Oh, Julian!
 
Oh my god, people are looking for you.”

“Yeah, to hang me.”

“Ah, no.
 
I mean like Melanie and stuff.
 
Nobody hates you.”

I think the reaction against Julian is so negative just because of how know-it-all-he-is, all the time.
 
Even if he hadn't gone where he did, there still would have been an undercurrent of resentment; that strange curly-haired nerd head perched now on evening formal-wear, the bowtie untied and raggedy, but with none of the air of savoir faire it would have on anyone else.

“Well, Julian, I'm not a Fellow; I don't have a stake in any of this.
 
But I guess the idea was for you to have done a fund-raising speech.
 
And now half the donors are never speaking to Aoyama again!”

“They're going to fire me.”

“Wha-?”

“They're going to let me go.
 
Shibuya told me five minutes ago.”

“No way!”

“Yeah.
 
This is the last straw.
 
After all the years I spent building up this place.”

“Well...”

“Well what?”

“Well I think this is not necessarily bad for your career.”

I return to my donors’ table after that last conference with Julian, and I know the situation is already over.
 
Everything in the end had come down to Hisako’s choice in the matter, and although the broker is looking at her with a greedy eye, she is wearing a sarcastic expression and indicating by body language that she wishes to go.
 
Obviously there is little need to play it out longer.

“Ritchie, Ritchie, Ritchie.”

“Mmm.”

“You invested several years of your life, you called in all remaining favors, and put all of your personal funds into one shot against the Establishment.”

“Yes.”

“But of course I’m not going to do this.”

“I suppose not.”

“Why?
 
That was a total waste of three years’ of effort?
 
Or actually in another sense, far more than three years since you called in all the assets of ten years.”

The situation, in the end, presented even further layers of absurdity.
 
Somebody senior, very senior, was involved in a sexual harassment suit against the broker, a suit involving millions upon millions of dollars, and so all hands were tied even further than one might think possible.
 
If Hisako had read the dossier; if she indeed had even been willing to read the dossier, we could have pulled things off far more lickety-split than can be dreamt of.
 
The future of the current LDP government; the future of the US-Japanese alliance—all in the hands of a frivolous twenty-four year old Kabuki-cho hostess, my girlfriend; such is the subject of such extreme amusement that even the bodyguards, the social observers, the stafflings and researchers and underlings could not help but bump into each other, a comedy of errors, quantity being actually a drawback compared to such simplicity of effort.
 
I didn’t revenge myself on LeFauve.
 
It was all just a pose.
 
Although this—all this—only constitutes some dimly half-felt tableaux of semi-memoirish understanding, what it also illustrates is our modern, selfish existence of pointless love games and ultimately futile strategizing resulting in no net change to the universe.
 
Hisako, passive, feminine, untalkative, dissolved into sluttishness as a direct reaction against her oppressive father.
 
Eventually I came to be seen as part of the oppression and she slept again with someone else in Kitakata, putting up fake drama games and crying scenes to get us back to the
Tokyo
she adored and adored her back.
 
I invested years of effort in a pointless threat exercise against the corridors of power because I thought it was absurd.
 
And the artists, as recorded, were ultimately driven off as having no real talent and unable to produce on a limited scale.
 
There are acres upon acres of experience to be covered.
 
The circle of middle school teachers trying to pull her back into normality offered perverse metaphor.
 
I was high on MDMA, ketamine, THC, cocaine, methamphetamine when I first met her and knew in the secret corner of my heart that all else was just drama.
 
Eventually I would have to stop; I too would be thrown into the dustbin of history, but
Japan
, high on drugs, was finally understood.
 
The B-25s were still flying; the bombs were still raining down.
 
I was completely faithful to the girl and that offered my sole chance for redemption, because now all females of
Japan
opened their sympathies to me, and Julian shot and killed Melanie later that night.

This was the moment to be remembered: a half-formed girl, possibly sixteen, closing the sliding door while kneeling down in deference.
 
The old but polished sword, brought out of hiding, shown to a private audience.
 
The kill teams raging across
North Japan
, existing only in imagination, but also real, too, unforgiving.
 
And hearts inflamed as something was brought into oneself and purified; refined; left as legacy for those that would follow.
 
My Hisako, possessed, ravaged mercilessly, was mine, and held within her breast knowledge that was ancient and painfully gained.
 
Compared to the loud, petulant, annoyed voices of Western girls, she was infinitely more feminine, graceful, unpreprosessing and undemanding.
 
Had she half a millimeter’s difference in temperament, we could have made a success of our northish expedition; we could have turned Tawada Lake into a reason for existence itself, its pure waters drinkable, effervescent.