Ryuichi Sakamoto

Tong Poo Refreshed

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Following the special edition of the Yellow Magic Orchestra track for Junya Watanabe’s recent show, Ryuichi Sakamoto will release it later this month as a limited-issue vinyl

A single track from the B side of a 43-year-old record has just been re-released. Tong Poo by the seminal Japanese electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) is now a two-track vinyl that features the acoustic version of the original, played and rearranged by band member Ryuichi Sakamoto, who wrote the song. This new version debuted last month at the spring/summer 2022 show of Junya Watanabe. According to reports, Mr Watanabe had reached out to Mr Sakamoto for the latter to re-imagine the song in order for it to be used as soundtrack to his fashion show. It was a song that apparently impressed the designer in his younger days. The musician agreed, and Tong Poo for Junya Watanabe was born, a version quite unlike what was first released.

Tong Poo (東風) or east wind in Japanese was the first composition written by Mr Sakamoto that was used in the eponymous YMO album and the only track of his recorded by the band for their debut. At the time, YMO’s electronic sounds, coming in the wake of the likes of Kraftwerk, married arcade game e-blips with melodies that could be considered Oriental kitsch. Tong Poo was, according to Mr Sakamoto, inspired by Chinese classical music and the cultural revolution in China. He told the media around that time that when he wrote it (concurrently with songs for his own debut One Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto), he was imagining the Beijing Symphony Orchestra playing it! In Tong Poo for Junya Watanabe, the BSO might actually be tempted to do so.

In the original version on vinyl, it appears as the first track of the B side, an almost lyric-free song, except for the short sing/speak of singer-songwriter Minako Yoshida that appeared in the US release of the album. Rather unusual for the time, Tong Poo seems to prelude the song that followed, the joyful La Femme Chinois, as the former flows rather seamlessly to the latter. Tong Poo was very much a part of the YMO setlist during their live shows. Similarly, it was a staple for Mr Sakamoto’s own live performances. Among the YMO inner circle, Akiko Yano, wife of Mr Sakamoto (and part of YMO’s live shows), recorded Tong Poo with Japanese lyrics for her 1980 solo album Gohan ga Dekitayo (ごはんができたよ). Her version, with her distinctive high-pitch vocals, sounded more Japanese than Chinese. Interestingly, an SOTD reader told us that he once heard a bootleg version as soundtrack to a porn film!

Although, Tong Poo for Junya Watanabe is arranged for a fashion show, it bears little semblance to what is often played at such staging: it’s not beaty. While not sounding quite like Mr Sakamoto’s film score, it does have a cinematic quality about it, although there would be those who thinks it is more akin to the music he created for Yohji Yamamoto’s shows. Listening to this largely piano interpretation with some synthesizers, we miss the input of band mates Yukihiro Takahashi on drums, percussion, and vocal, and Haroumi Hosono on bass. Alternating between the latest version and that from the original album, as it was for the Junya Watanabe show, seems rather cool to us. Past and present in a happy mix.

Unfortunately, Tong Poo for Junya Watanabe is only available in Japan. Photo: Ryuichi Sakamoto

East Meets East Meets West

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Junya Watanabe explores the farther reaches of a continent he is part of, and the result is spellbinding

How much of our own front and backyard can we explore without trampling on the same patch of grass or knocking into the same row of trees? For designers, how often can they revisit Orientalism without ending up using the mandarin collar? Or, putting out yet another wholesale repeat of the qipao? Or, escaping into the folds of a sarong? For his spring/summer collection, presented as an audience-less phygital show, Junya Watanabe discovers the farther reaches of Asia that is not necessarily on the east of the continent in which he is based. And he did not have to use a single qipao ling (旗袍领) to say something about the aesthetical and creative wealth of the region. The designs, while recognisable for their Eastern sensibilities and cognizant of the minority ethnic group they seem to come from, bear the distinct Junya Watnabe way with fabric mixing, texture pairing, asymmetry and draping. In each outfit, a collage of contrasts—a Ming-vase-as-scull meets school-girl prim-and-proper, calligraphic graffiti meets deconstructed denim, sari-like drapes meets negligee-sheer. And those are just the first three looks!

For most of the collection, it is part II (or the feminine expression) of an exploration that began with the menswear shown in July. Mr Watanabe once again looks at the work of British photojournalist Jamie Hawkesworth. These are photographs from 2019 that were shot in (mostly) northern India, as well as Kashmir and Bhutan. The designer told the press that he then “became nostalgic for Asia” and saw “the pure heart of people”. For others (Westerners, for example), this casting of sight on a region some six thousand kilometres away may arouse what, for them, is exotic, but to Mr Watanabe, the images associated with the land and people so far away from him serve to find synergy in his own sense of what is mixable and what is pairable. Against the unplugged version of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Tong Poo from their 1978 eponymous album—specially rearranged for the show by co-founder of the group Ryuichi Sakamoto—the clothes look delectably serene and light, like pray flags of the Nimalayas, swaying in the gentle breeze of tranquil mountains.

But that is not to say that Mr Watanabe does not exoticise the looks at all. In fact, the styling seems to cater to a more Western perception of what is Eastern exotica. The hooped hair on the sides of the head, for example, is evocative of the pierced and stretched ears of the women of the Karen ethnic group of the Myanmar-Thailand border. Peculiarly Asian, too, are the wigs in the shape of the Vietnamese non la rice hats (or 斗笠, dou li in China) and the unadorned liangbatou (两把头) headdresses of Qing Chinese women that could be homage to the Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略). Even the platform sandals have a whiff of the cunzi shoes (寸子鞋) of the ancient Manchus, in particular those with 元宝底 (yuanbaodi or ingot bottom) soles. Perhaps these are to augment the Asianness of the clothes, which are, in themselves, less derivative, and more in tandem with Mr Watanabe’s penchant for montaging shapes, patterns, and textures.

And to strengthen the connection to Asia further, collaborations with Asian artists—as seen in the men’s spring/summer 2022 collections—continue. There is the abovementioned calligraphy of Wang Dongling (王东龄), the Hangzhou-based zihua (字画) master and director of the Modern Calligraphy Study Center at the China National Academy of Arts, as well as two from the July show, Ang Tsherin Sherpa, the California-based Nepalese artist and Phannapast Taychamaythakool, the Thai illustrator now trending in her native Bangkok and much of the fashion world. Ms Taychamaythakool’s floral prints recall those of Chinese blankets, but they are made fantastical by the inclusion of Thai mythical beasts, gaudily coloured like tourist-friendly tuk-tuks. This, perhaps, sums up the collection: there are no creative boundaries, just as, in an ideal world, there are no territorial borders. ‘Asian’ does not have to mean looking at your fast-changing backyard. And it definitely does not require going to a kampong that is a mere shadow of its former self, sarong or not intact.

Screen grab (top): Comme des Garçons/YouTube. Photos: Junya Watanabe