Kawakami Forever

Digital - 354x241.5mm - 2018

At the start of 2018 LiFe were touring Australia. I was hanging out with Nori at their Melbourne show and mid conversation he got really excited and asked Abe something in Japanese, Abe nodded, then Nori asked me if I would draw the artwork for the 2018 Kawakami Forever show. I very humbly accepted. Inside I felt I’m nowhere near d-beat enough (or even punk enough) to be doing artwork for a show dedicated to the D-Beat Master. I never understood the culture of worship a lot of punks have to Kawakami. I do however understand punks wanting to do a show in remembrance of their departed friend, and to show how much they loved and cared for that friend.

I wasn’t sure what to draw so I started drawing the Disclose logo in my style, but I felt that wasn’t conveying any emotional weight. I was looking at my collection of Kawakami postcards and thought of drawing the man in action but I’m not great at drawing humans and it wouldn’t have ended up looking like him. Then one postcard has a shot of Kawakami with his back turned showing one of his Discharge jackets. That gave me the idea of not being able to see a friend’s face again once they’ve died and how much that hurts. After drawing it I felt the addition of a back turned Kawakami gave the drawing a longing somber feel that had the emotional weight I wanted to show in the art.

I was beyond stoked when I saw how positively the artwork was received.

I made the artwork during a period when I was dealing with Buddy (my best friend/dog) slowly dying of multiple cancers. I think a lot of what I was feeling for Buddy ended up in the drawing. With Abe’s permission I printed a small run of t-shirts through my friend Tom, the intention was to help pay for Buddy’s medical expenses but I’m a terrible salesman and I think I only sold 3 or 4 and the rest I either gave away or traded after Buddy passed. Tom also printed me out some backpatches because he is a GC. One of the patches ended up at Kawakami’s shrine at his mothers home.

I’ve travelled to Japan a few times, during those times I’ve had a few Kawakami related adventures, and I thought I’d share those stories here. Not for any kind of cred, I haven’t studded anything in my life and I’ll openly admit how lacking I am in punkness. The stories are more happy memories that make me smile at their silliness.

During my first visit to Japan I became friends with a man named Junkichi. I won’t delve deeply into my friendship with Jun here as it’s a long story, that deserves its own dedicated write up on how important his friendship is to me. At the tail end of my month and a half first stay in Japan, I had dinner with Jun and he invited me to go along with him on a business trip through Shikoku island with him to visit Masuda from Effigy in Takamatsu and Hiro who was the last drummer from Disclose. I was stoked to meet Masuda because Effigy is my favourite band but I was apprehensive of meeting Hiro due to me not being much of a Disclose fan at the time and figured it would be a bit awkward. I didn’t hate Disclose or anything, I just never gave the band any listening attention among the endless amount of music to catch up on.

During the dinner Jun also spoke of his friendship with Kawakami and how kind a person the D-Beat Master was.

When I met Masuda, it was at his apartment. In his lounge room (it’s more like a punk museum) Masuda has a tiny shrine for Kawakami. There are some photos of Kawakami including a bottle of Kawakami’s preferred cologne. Masuda while drunk put a little bit on my Axegrinder hoodie so I could smell like Kawakami. Masuda spoke highly of Kawakami and told me about their friendship and how supportive Kawakami was of Effigy. Masuda played a Gastunk live video that has a montage of punks walking into the venue, briefly shown is Masuda in his Anti-Sect vest. Masuda put on his Anti-Sect vest and wanted me to take a photo of him next to the paused video of him on TV. As Masuda had finally found the right moment to pause the TV cut out. We all laughed and Masuda said that it was Kawakami’s ghost playing a joke on him.

When I met Hiro for the first time, I spent most of the dinner talking to Hiro’s former partner Dana from USA, I was so beyond stoked to be able to speak non-broken English again and then a fellow named Boo-chan about manga and anime, which I knew way more about than Disclose. Hiro pointed out that I drink a lot, I replied that I’ve been drunk since I got to Japan, he smile and said he likes that. Hiro gave me a brief history about his friendship with Kawakami and how Hiro’s main band was Insane Youth and Kawakami’s Disclose, but from time to time Hiro would play in Disclose and Kawakami in Insane Youth. I eventually realized that Hiro was more than just a sometimes bass player/drummer in Disclose, he was one of Kawakami’s best friends. The next day Jun had to work, so Hiro and Boo-chan offered to hang out and show me around Kochi. It was a fun day and ended with Hiro and I enjoying a beer and talking about how much we both love The Skeptix.

Also a side note you should listen to Hiro’s other band AGGRESSION. Aggression are excellent motorcharged-punk.

My second time to Japan I went for the 2015 Kawakami Forever shows. I was more going to see the bands that were playing. I still hadn’t listened to Disclose much by that time but thought it would be in poor form to go without giving the band a dedicated listening. So, I got drunk and listened to Raw D-Beat Assault Volumes 1 and 2 back to back in their entirety. By the end of the CDs I was a Disclose fan. And drunk.

The gigs were all killer, I wrote little stories about each night but I won’t put those in here because this write up will already be long enough. Junkichi had organised the exact same Shikoku road trip as the previous year, with one additional stop. We visited Kawakami’s mother’s home.

First stop was Takamatsu to see Masuda. Mad Max Fury road was coming to cinemas in Japan around that time. Masuda was telling me a story of how an old friend he hadn’t seen in a very long time came to an Ulcer show, and that friend did the Japanese writing (I don’t know the proper term) for the local promotional material and gave me a Fury Road brochure as a gift. I also had the good fortune of visiting Masuda while he was taking care of Kawakami’s guitar as it was on the way back to Kochi. Masuda got me to hold the guitar. I kinda didn’t want to hold it, feeling I was a bit undeserving, but Masuda was quite insistent.

After the photo shoot and Masuda talked about how Kawakami would tattoo in Masuda’s apartment whenever he visited Takamatsu, and Masuda could feel Kawakami’s presence in the apartment. Namiko brought out some sake and Masuda got me to pour some sake for Kawakami, I placed the sake in front of a framed photo of him. As Jun and Masuda tell Kawakami ghost stories Masuda said he feels Kawakami would have liked me. As Masuda said that I noticed a piece of paper slowly falling in front of me that landed gently on my lap. The piece of paper had some cartoon drawings of the members of Ulcer, Masuda explained that his friend who did the Japanese writing for Fury Road had drawn that for me. We all laughed and said it was Kawakami trying to show me it. I like to say that was the second time I experienced a Kawakami haunting. Matsumoto from Effigy rocked up a little later in the night, I found out afterwards that it’s quite rare to see him and I was exceptionally lucky, and I got one of my favourite photos.

The second meeting with Hiro was very casual, a very pleasant dinner catching up with friends. I would make up for the lack of story the next year…

During the drive Junkichi stopped to buy a mango and an ice coffee. Jun explained that whenever Kawakami would return home he would bring a mango and an ice coffee, and that Jun had bought them to place on Kawakami’s shrine. On the drive there I was DJing for Jun. One aspect I absolutely love about friendships is the sharing of music. I played my favourite song, Fire Inc – Nowhere Fast, for Jun. He immediately got a wide eyed wonderous happy look on his face saying he knows the song! We both ended up all giddy over the fact that we both knew a loved the song. Sounds really dumb, but it was a nice bonding moment for me because I think not a lot of people know the song.

Shizuka (Kawakami’s mother) accepted us into her home, and she was very gracious host. Jun did most of the talking, I barely said a word. I caught on that this meeting was a bit more formal because Jun was bowing up and down a lot, repeatedly saying thank you in very polite Japanese. I’ve rarely seen bowing in the 4 times I’ve visited Japan so I figured things were a little on the serious side. I kept quiet and took it all in. Admiring all the D-Beat artifacts on display. Shizuka gave me a bunch of The Cranks Dis-ography CD/DVDs to give to my friends, some Kawakami postcards. She also gave me a Kawakami Forever towel that she had been holding onto for a few years for one of Kawakami’s friends, but the friend had never come to collect it so she gave it to me. We took some photos and visited the grave.

Jun recommended as we were leaving that I should draw a picture of Kawakami for Shizuka as a thank you. I didn’t disregard the suggestion, but drawing humans isn’t a strong ability of mine so I thought it would most likely never happen. Happily, I was proven wrong. Sending over the back patch of the screened Kawakami artwork gave me a feeling of reciprocation to her generosity. I thought about sending a print instead, but a big patch of the artwork had a nice punk charm to the gift.

My final little Kawakami related story takes place when I visited Japan in 2016 and went to Kochi to see Zay play. On the night of the gig my stomach wasn’t feeling great, and I just brushed it off as a fleeting aberration. Little did I know…

Anyways back to the gig. Zay were amazing and a happy surprise was discovering the band Povlacion and forming a bunch of new unexpected friendships. During the after party my stomach was really feeling not good and I knew if I let slip a fart, I would gas out the entire restaurant. Not wanting to disturb anyone’s good party vibes, I held it in. After the afterparty we all headed to Dana’s apartment where Gori, Povlacion and myself where staying. Unable to hold in my death fart anymore I slowed my walk to trail behind the pack. After getting to a safe distance, I unleashed. Instantly I recognized it was at the upper echelon of my stinkiest farts, I don’t think I’ve produced a stinkier gas since. Half a moment after farting, Hiro stops, then says ‘Oh! Kawakami’s Apartment!’ and turns the group around who walk right through the thick of my lingering noxious cloud so he can show them Kawakami’s old apartment.

I thought maybe I could escape blame. When we got back to Dana’s apartment, I had a smoke out the front and when I returned Dana (assuming I had been taking a dump) asked me if the toilet was still in working order. So, I’m guessing they figured out I was the stinky bandit. They definitely figured it out when I woke up the next day to a poop raging to get out. It was horrendous. I heard a lot of cries of agony from the lounge room with my name being said among Japanese. Dana was nice enough to translate, “Xavier they say that you’re killing us”. I thought that the worse was over after the poop… I was wrong. But the rest of that story another time!

That’s enough stories.

I made a Disclose collage poster out of postcards, whatever album covers me and Blake had, a photo Hiro provided of Kawakami’s guitar case and a photo I had taken of Kawakami’s guitar. Feeling so fortunate to receive so many Kawakami\Disclose postcards, posters and gifts I thought it would be nice to give a little something to Disclose fans. So the high resolution poster is free for whoever to print out and have a cool Disclose poster (I didn’t really figure out a way to distribute the file properly and I probably missed a few peoples messages requesting it, apologies for that, I’ll figure it out one day). The collage was inspired by a Discharge collage in Crust War Zine #7.

It was a nice feeling to be able to make a piece of art in tribute to a person, that even though we never met, he influenced my life by being apart of so many happy memories and friendships that I hold dear. Even after death he brings punks together. I’m stoked I could make a piece of art for his friends who still champion their love for him so strongly.