Disciplined Listening in Tokyo: Onky and Non-Intentional Sounds Author(s): Lorraine Plourde Reviewed work(s): Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol.

52, No. 2 (Spring/Summer, 2008), pp. 270-295 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20174589 . Accessed: 17/05/2012 13:22
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Vol.

52, No.

Ethnomusicology

Spring/Summer 2008

Disciplined
Onky?
Lorraine
Music or not ?Otomo When on you noticeable. small -?Clive

and Non-Intentional
/ Columbia

Listening

in Tokyo:

Sounds

Plourde

University
what sounds are deemed as music

is not determined is left up Yoshihide are present The music on that you can

by its performers; to the listener. (2004) at an Off

is, let's face almost

stools

a concrete

listening

this intense is highly listening a picnic for the audience. Sitting it. This is floor, they listen like they mean in the room like colored see, suspended light. it,hardly

Site concert,

Bell (2003:42)

Introduction the mid to late 1990s, the international avant-garde electronic to music world was distinguished by a variety of new approaches During sound performance, many ofwhich were influenced by techniques ofmini malism, free improvisation, and the rise in popularity of sound art. This moment is seen by some scholars as indicative of an "auditory turn in con which questions temporary culture" (Cox andWarner 2004: xiii), a period in of listening and hearing were foregrounded by media theorists, historians, In Japan one such genre that and anthropologists, as well as musicians. this time is referred to as onky? (sound)?an emerged during extremely minimal, improvisatory musical style and performance approach that pays particular attention to sound texture, gaps, and silences. One of onky?'s most distinctive characteristics is its seemingly utter lack of any discern is often ible musical structure?rhythmic, harmonic, or otherwise?which performed at barely audible levels. Because of onky?'s minimal sonic pres ence, the role of the listener came to occupy the site of various discourses and debates inTokyo, including modes of listening, or ch?shu (audition), as well as the presence and/or necessity of background or extramusical

2008 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

Plourde:Disciplined

Listening

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271

sounds. The genre itself is inextricably linked with the now defunct Tokyo which was opened in late June 2000 performance space and gallery Off Site, by musician and artist Ito Atsuhiro and his wife ItoYukari,1 who curated

sensorial and social experience of listening at Off Site through ethnographic description and analysis. Iwill also unravel the disjuncture between the musicians' attempts to create a free (j'iy? na) and seemingly uncontrolled listening environment, and the audience's concrete experience of awkward tension and overly strict rules of spectatorship. As I argue, the discipline re quired of the listener in order to properly comprehend onky? is dependent on the recognition and usage of specific listening strategies. Such strategies are a learned bodily technique highly contingent on public knowledge and discourse, which, in turn, facilitate "proper" understanding and appreciation of onky?. Listeners in this community are dependent on the constant pro

the gallery exhibitions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted inTokyo from 2004 to 2007 and participant observation and regular attendance at Off Site during its final year of operation, from 2004 to 2005, this article will convey the

duction and circulation of such knowledge?in the form of public talks and and handouts at concerts, special issue journals and performances, pamphlets
magazines, musicians'blogs and everyday conversation?in order to achieve

so-called proper listening and comprehension. By highlighting the listener and their physical and intellectual relationship to sound, this article seeks to contribute to the growing body of literature on practices of listening and their relationship to the urban soundscape.An ethnographic approach to well as "underground"?aesthetic formswill understanding localized?as
nevertheless reveal themes and issues that

realities, public rhetoric and private thought, ideology and practice" (Born 1995:7). While the historical trajectory and practices of the Euro-American musical avant-garde are well established (Born 1995; Kahn and Whitehead 1992; Kahn 1999; Nyman
on

gation and experience of everyday life in contemporary Tokyo and itsurban soundscape. As Georgina Born notes in her discussion of the crucial role of ethnographic analyses ofWestern institutions?in her case, the French takes a method such computer music and research institute, IRCAM?"it as ethnography to uncover the gaps between external claims and internal

speak

more

broadly

to the navi

[1974]

1999) there has been

contemporary

little ethnographic
music com

research

conducted

non-Western

avant-garde

munities, particularly in the domain of listening. This articlewill also consider the spatial and material conditions of onky?'s origins, in this case the cramped, urban landscape of Tokyo. As a form that could have only emerged from an urban environment, how might the soundscape themusical style known as onky?? of Tokyo imprint itself on

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Modernity

and Aural

Culture

looked dimension ofmodernity, which is often characterized by a regime of visuality, or ocularcentrism (Bull and Back 2003; Erlmann 2004; Sterne 2003). Modernity can also be defined as a change in bodily experience, due to radi cal disruptions in the sensory experience of the everyday (Benjamin 1977). New technological developments Gunning 1995;Schivelbusch
nineteenth-century such as the railway and cinema, generated

In recent years, various academic disciplines, including history, anthro a resurgence of interest in pology, and ethnomusicology, have witnessed as a critical and often over questions of auditory perception and listening

1968; in the

those generated by urban machinery. Following the processes of urbanization was radically and industrialization, themodern soundscape of everyday life Other recent works raise similar arguments, including the role reconfigured. in early twentieth century of architecture in creating urban soundscapes America (Thompson 2002), and a cultural history of listeningwhich focuses on the shifting role of classical music listeners in nineteenth-century Paris (Johnson 1994). This article builds upon this recent scholarship on listening, yet extends the analysis to focus specifically on the auditory experiments of the con
temporary the Italian avant-garde Futurists in Tokyo. in particular, This who is crucial, seized these for itwas the avant-garde, noises, and new sounds,

assaults on the body, both psychological and physiological. Central to this change in sensory experience was the shock of new sounds, particularly

ever-increasing

manifesto,"The Art of Noises," Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo

readers to "cross a large modern capital with our ears more

sensations of the early twentieth century modern soundscape?especially those generated by industrial machinery and the sounds of warfare?and adopted them as explicitly modern musical aesthetics. In his infamous 1913 (1986)
attentive

implored
than our

eyes."2 This manifesto, in fact, is generally seen as the first explicit attempt to engage with the concept of noise as music. Consequently, Russolo is often positioned as the forefather of not only contemporary Noise music, but also a critical historical figurewithin the genealogy of postwar avant-garde music
such

In order to make
Euro-American

as musique

concr?te.

these linkages between

with the contemporary

the early twentieth-century

avant-garde in Tokyo, the

avant-garde

notion of coeval modernity is crucial. Historian Harry Harootunian argues that the Japanese experience of modernity must be understood as coeval, or co-existing with global modernity Rejecting the categorization of moder modernity highlights "the experience of sharing the same temporality,"how ever he follows thiswith the critical statement that,"what co-eval suggests is
nity in Japan as an "alternative modernity," Harootunian notes that coeval

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273

For example, foreignmedia coverage of Off Site has a tendency to elide the material conditions of Tokyo housing, architecture, and the everyday urban soundscape at the expense of linking onky? with "a Japanese tradition of stillness stretching back to themedieval Noh theatre" (Bell 2003:44), a link age many of my informants vehemently denied. While acknowledging that onky? performed in Japan was embedded within a larger,global network of musicians in the United States and Europe in the late 1990s with shared aesthetics, this article however, examines the development of onky? within Tokyo and focuses on the local inflections of the genre's performance and reception. Despite the frequent musical collaborations with international musicians, the local discourses surrounding the Off Site community, and the nese. Here, such discourse refers to regularly occurring music-themed public talk events, as well as concert handouts, free papers, journals,magazines, and and critics' blogs, all ofwhich continues to be regularly produced, circulated and avidly consumed by Tokyo's listening public. as Term, Genre and Performance
avant-garde music community overall, were, not surprisingly, largely in Japa

contemporaneity yet the possibility of difference" (Harootunian 2000:xvii). This approach is crucial in order to avoid cultural essentializing moves such as the interpretation "that things that are not obviously modern orWestern are rooted in Japan's cultural or historical deep structure" (Inoue 2006:5).

musicians'

Onky?

Style

The word onky? is composed of two characters; the first,on (read as oto in Japanese), meaning sound, and the second, ky? (read as hibiki in Japanese), indicating reverberation or echo. It should be noted that onky? isnot used as an everyday term for sound in Japan; instead the term oto ismost commonly used. The word onky? isprobably most known for its linkages with the high end Japanese audio equipment manufacturer by the same name. Because the question of listening and the consciousness and percep tion of the individual listener are so central to the genre itself,the acoustic dimensions of the character compound are worth lingering over. As a genre

Onky? has been explained by musicians and music critics in Japan as a which the primary emphasis has shifted fromproducing or performing style in sound, to that of concentrated and attentive listening (mimi wo sumasu) (Sa saki 2001:221). The term onky? is linked to the field of acoustics (pnky?gak?) thus highlighting the centrality of tonal color (timbre) and reverberation and itsphysiological effects on the listener as a crucial component of the genre.

that emphasizes the listener's conscious recognition of the reverberation of sound (pto no hibiki), onky? has thus been described by itsmusicians as a genre specifically for the listener. The listener's auditory perception was nevertheless challenged by onky?'s subtle and often faint presence, which

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further complicated by non-intentional sounds occurring within the performance space or filtering in from outside. A reviewer of a 2004 onky? recording writes:"It is absolutely impossible to judge whether the individual listener's perception of the seemingly imperceptible shifts [bisai na henka]
is based on the listener's own consciousness or an actual

rence"(Unami 2005:217). Onky?'s emphasis on the listener has subsequently prompted numerous local debates within Tokyo's experimental music scene concerning proper modes of listening, physical conditions of performance space, and the nature of sound/music itself.Taking into consideration what

physical

occur

ment, yet such openness on the part of the performers contrasts with the tense atmosphere within which onky? isperformed and heard. As an impro visatory genre putatively for the listener and their individual interpretation, onky? nevertheless unwittingly enforces certain modes of both listening and spectatorship in its live performance context.

as John Cage referred to as non-intentional sounds (non-musical sounds?such or traffic a door opening?that accidentally occur within the live performance space), onky? directly confronts the largerquestion ofwhat constitutes music The acceptance of such non-intentional sounds by the performers and itself.3 listeners is seen as one of the hallmarks of onky?'s live performance environ

improvisatory musical style,which foregrounded the role of the listener and their perception and interpretation of the sounds generated by this music. This particular coterie of Tokyo-based musicians came to be cited as onky?-ha, the suffix ofwhich designates them as a specific musical school, When Off Site opened in 2000, a small bound together by stylistic affinity. of Tokyo-based musicians converged around the performance space group and began to hold weekly or monthly improvisatory music series, often led

The history of the genre of onky? has several versions. It is often said that the termwas firstused by an employee of theTokyo-based record store, Paris-Peking Records, in the mid-1990s (Otomo 2001:62). Onky? was later adopted as a descriptive term in the late 1990s by one of itsmain propo nents and performers, Otomo Yoshihide, to refer to a specifically Tokyo-based

Most musicians who were included in the category of onky? by the to this genre and its media were quick to reject any connection whatsoever

in the popular music world. For example, the mid-1990s electronic music genre exemplified by such bands as Cornelius and popular Pizzicato 5 emerged in the Shibuya district ofTokyo and came to be referred in themedia as Shibuya-kei. and is often used

by Otomo Yoshihide. These musicians eventually came to be inextricably connected with Off Site, to the extent that their style, in addition to the label onky?-ha, became interchangeably known as Off Site-kei, thereby linking the style known as onky? with the geographical location of the space. The suffix -kei denotes a stylistic, and in this case, geographic and spatial affinity,

Plourde:Disciplined

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presumed sense of community. Otomo himself later came to regret his coin ing of themoniker, as the termwas eventually picked up by themedia and circulated regularly throughout the experimental music world inJapan aswell as the U.S. and Europe. That musicians would actively reject such categoriza tion of theirmusic into a fixed genre and/or community is not particular to the avant-garde. IngridMonson's ethnomusicological study of jazzmusicians inNew York City revealed thatmany of them prefer the termmusic, or "the music called jazz" as a rejoinder to the implicit association of the termmusic with Western classical music, an association which relegates jazz to a lower status (Monson 1996:101). In the case of Tokyo's experimental music com

therefore, such facile pigeonholing goes against the knowledge, discipline, and concentration that thismusic demands of its listeners. In addition, many musicians and Tokyo-based music critics critique the use of theword onky? as an ultimately meaningless term. For example, music critic Sasaki Atsushi

munity, however, themusicians' rejection of the term onky?-ha confronts a different set of issues. The artistic output by avant-garde musicians labeled as onky?-ha necessarily defies categorization and immediate comprehension;

notes the fundamental strangeness (kimyo) of the term onky?-ha, arguing that the suffix -ha denotes a coherent, bounded community of members most so-called onky?-ha musicians sharing common aesthetics, yet, in reality, denied membership in such a community (Sasaki 2001:165). He persistently further detects a tautology within the term itself,arguing thatmusic (i.e.,

sound) always already indicates the reverberation (hibikt) of sound, there fore to term a music genre in thisway is repetitive and tautological. Many of these so-called onky?-ha musicians preferred instead the putatively neutral
term, sokky? ongaku (improvised music), though over the last few years in

Tokyo, the term improvised has itself come under scrutiny. The notion of improvised music has been explicitly rejected by some musicians, who view the aforementioned onky? community as a sect thatmany choose to avoid. Musical performances at Off Site often occurred as part of weekly or monthly regular series, such as the "Meeting at Off Site" series, the live re cordings ofwhich were later released by the Improvised Music from Japan label. This label began in 2001 as a counterpart to thewebsite by the same name created in 1996 by Suzuki Yoshiyuki. This website provides up-to-date information, including tour schedules, profiles and discographies of Japanese

onky? and otherwise. In fact, thewebsite and its accompanying yearly magazine was a critical source of media for listeners to gather infor mation such as interviews with onky? musicians. Performances at Off Site often ranged from varying permutations of a small group of Japanese musi musicians,

cians occasionally supplemented by touring musicians from Europe or the United States. Most live performances were composed of two sets, generally minutes each, interspersed by an intermission lasting twenty-five to forty

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between the sets that usually lasted fifteen minutes. Instruments used at Off Site ranged from acoustic, such as guitar, trombone or saxophone, to electronic, including the sampler and turntable.What is notable here is the were employed, which often involved particular instrumental techniques that modified, or extended techniques, such as circular breathing or using using foreign objects as additional implements. Guitars were often performed as which the instrumentwas laid flaton a small table in order prepared guitar, in to coax awide breadth of sounds from the instrument. When performing on such as clips or bent-up cards,were often attached prepared turntable, objects

One of Off Site's regular performers, Sachiko M, performed using a sampler. However, instead of drawing on and manipulating stored samples, the sam pler was empty; her palette instead drew from the test tone sine waves that are built into the machine. Although most sets at Off Site were improvised, compositions, often using graphic scores, were also performed at Off Site. In the case of improvised group sessions, many musicians did not react or respond to one another during the performance. Duration was often the

to the needle as well as placed directly on the empty turntable as it spun. Such techniques often produced intermittent static, hums and glitches that occurred with each revolution of the turntable. Cyclically recurring rhythms, however, would rarely develop or unfold during performances at Off Site.

only factor agreed upon prior to the performance. Instead of relying on eye contact in order to end a set,many musicians at Off Site, especially during
composition sessions,

synchronized period of time. and

employed

stopwatches

set

to a pre-determined

and

Noise,

Onky?,

Stoicism

Japan ismost frequently invoked as the primary inspiration and source a genre in of the contemporary genre of Noise music (noizu myujikku), which sound isproduced through the extreme distortion, manipulation, and

period when avant-garde music and art in general flourished amidst Japan's thriving bubble economy. During the 1990s, Japanese experimental music more generally, including Noise music, was circulated and consumed on a transnational level throughout the US and Europe (Novak 2006). which inflicting aural pain on the listener is a Although Noise music, in crucial component, appears to be completely antithetical to the extremely quiet sounds generated by onky?, some Tokyo-based critics and musicians
have argued that the sheer masochism and excessive nature of Noise music

often deliberate misuse of technology, including guitar pedals, microphones and, more recently, laptop computers. The first-generation of Noise practi tioners in Japan, such as Merzbow and Hijokaidan, began creating noise in the late 1970s. Noise became consolidated as a genre during the 1980s, a

Plourde:Disciplined

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cate a sense of asceticism and its usage is heard within the experimental music world as well, often in reference to Noise musicians. For example, Akita Masami, whose project is known as Merzbow, and Haino Keiji, are two longstanding musicians who are frequently described as stoic within Tokyo's experimental music scene.4 It is believed that both genres, Noise music and onky?, reflect opposite polarities of this aesthetic extremism. InNoise music

draws on a similar extreme aesthetic of stoicism. In contemporary Japan, the term "stoic" (sutoikku) is frequently used as an everyday term to indi

the listener is assaulted by excessive volume, while in onky?, which draws on often barely audible sounds and the silences between them, the listener is assaulted by the virtual absence of sound. Although listening to onky? is not physically painful as in the case of listening to Noise music, the sheer brutality and subtletywithin which such extremely minute sonic development occurs necessarily places particular and

have experienced as full of tension. The conditions of onky?'s listening environment are a critical factor to the specific process which I refer to as "disciplined listening," amode determined in part that some listeners and musicians

strict demands on the listener?such as straining one's ears. The discipliniza tion of the listeners' bodies and ears is furtherrevealed by the strategiesmany listeners utilize in order to adapt to onky?'s rigid listening environment. In addition, the space of Off Site itself,as Iwill show, creates an atmosphere

which onky? by the architectural space?including Tokyo's soundscape?in is performed and heard, as well as the social dynamics of the performance space. Here, the listener is expected to attend performances already possess ing the knowledge and manner of onky? and the proper mode of listening
to this music. Possession of such knowledge and implicit rules of listening

necessarily creates certain exclusionary boundaries within the listeningpublic, adding further to the demands that regulate this particular social experience of listening. at Off Site: Ethnographic Reflections

Listening

served on the second floor by ItoYukari, Ito's wife and Off Site's co-owner. Tickets are typically 1,000-1,500 yen, considerably cheaper than tickets for live-house performances inTokyo, which can run upwards of 3,000 yen.5 Inside the performance space, the audience sits on narrow aluminum-backed folding chairs that force one to perch uncomfortably close to one's neigh bors, evoking a form of bodily tension akin to a subway commute during

Immediately upon entering Off Site, audience members encounter the owner, ItoAtsuhiro, seated at the back of the stark,ground-level performance space, selling tickets. As is customary inTokyo, one drink, often beer, wine, soda, or oolong tea,must be purchased, along with the ticket. Drinks are

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silence) aswell as certain bodily cues or gestures, such as limiting eye contact with others and avoiding unnecessary collisions with other bodies despite confined, narrow physical spaces. This tension is inherent to onky?'s tense

refers to the disciplinization of rush-hour in Tokyo. This tension (kinch?kan) the body?for both music spectator and rush-hour subway commuter?and its attendant social mores, including maintaining a sense of decorum (i.e.,

performance environment at Off Site, inwhich listeners must strain their ears (mimi wo sumasu) in order to grasp traces of onky?'s barely audible
presence.

Those already familiarwith Off Site's specific ambience and exceedingly cramped conditions often arrive early and claim seats in the first row.At most avant-garde performance spaces inTokyo both performers and listeners are seated throughout the performance, thus imposing a sense of order on the spatial dimensions of the live space. In addition, this arrangement perhaps imparts the listeners' demeanor with an air of detachment or aloofness.6 Seats at Off Site are arranged in neat rows of four to five seats per row, and are

which has been slowly accumulating over thewaiting period, now becomes visibly apparent. As is customary at experimental music performances inTo kyo, several audience members have set up personal recording equipment, such as MD or DAT recorders,which are placed discreetly on the floor.Aware that the musician(s) will invariably generate a negligible amount of noise

limited visibility. Listeners wait in somewhat eerie silence, mostly limiting conversations to soft,hushed tones.Most sit rigidly in their chairs, often times with their hands folded in their laps, quietly waiting for the performance to enter the perfor begin. After lounging on the second floor the musician(s) mance space, often ten minutes or so after the official start time,which is usually 8:00 p.m. A hush falls over the room and an almost palpable tension,

separated by a narrow, barely passable, aisle. Maximum capacity is between thirtyand thirtyfive, though it is not uncommon for a performance to draw fewer than ten listeners. Because there is no stage and the seated musicians perform on the same level as the audience, sitting in the back often means

by shifting around equipment or setting up just prior to the performance, many listeners take advantage of thiswelcome rustling, however minute, to clear their throats or take a final gulp of their drink before gently pointedly placing it on the floor underneath the seat in front of them. They do this begins, the listeners must follow unwritten codes of etiquette, including maintaining silence and concentrating closely on themusic while avoiding any outward reactions. The tension is particularly heightened at Off Site because, unlike most music or theatre performances, because the performance once

the boundaries thatmark the beginning of a performance at Off Site are not as readily apparent?the listeners cannot simply sit back and relax. There is a thick atmosphere of uncertainty and perhaps unrest, as the audience's

Plourde:Disciplined

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silence is intensified by its confrontation with a performance by minutiae, sparsity, and long spatial gaps.

that ismarked

contrast to the notion of livemusical performance as visual spectacle?Pete Townshend's guitar windmills would be the antithesis of onky??there is sometimes so littlemovement at Off Site performances that listeners often look anywhere but at the musicians.7 Many listeners even close their eyes during the performance making itunclear as towhether they are listening intently or simply asleep. Performance and Gallery

instead giving a simple nod of the head to the owner, should they request the lights be dimmed. The spectator is immediately struck by the seemingly inactive musicians, both physically and sonically, to the extent that the lis tenerwonders whether in fact, the performance has actually started or not. This ambiguity,which serves as one of the many layers of tension present in the live performance space, is further accentuated by the fact that there are often very fewmovements or visual cues of any sort by themusicians. In

Musicians at Off Site typically begin their performance without address the audience's immediate physical presence, ing or even acknowledging

Off Site as Experimental

Space

According to its founder, ItoAtsuhiro, Off Site was to be an alternative toTokyo's rental gallery system,which has been the predominant system of art exhibition and music performance in Japan. InTokyo's music world, most
live music, whether rock, pop, must punk, rent etc., operates according

(noruma)
"pay

rental space system, in which

and operate on the premise of a guarantee. If the audience does not reach a predetermined amount, then themusicians must pay the live space owners for any potentially lost seats. Off Site's oppositional stance towards Japan's primary economic system undergirding live music and art exhibitions is reflected in the naming of the space, which is,as ItoYukari explains, a cross between offside (hansoku) and site (Jichi),and conveys Off Site's distinct and deliberate intermingling of art exhibitions and livemusic performances (Ito 2002:88). Conceiving of Off Site as an experimental space (jikken kaij?) through which performers could reassess and reconfigure the performance and lis tening environment, Ito primarily selected musicians from his own group of

to play." Musicians

the performers must quite literally,

space, called live houses,

to a quota-based

the performance

acquaintances. The result of thiswas thatOff Site had the feel of a tight-knit community, yet could also give the air of an exclusive group of insiders that was difficult for outsiders to enter casually. Located near the east exit of To kyo's Yoyogi subway station and within striking visual distance of the impos tower,Off Sitewas situated in a small residential alley filled ingNTT Docomo

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with detached wooden houses. Some of themore common types of housing structures inTokyo are ap?to (apartment), referring to older stylewooden apartments that provide very little sound or heat insulation, and manshon (mansion), which simply denotes an apartment building reinforced by a steel or concrete

fact, that outside sounds such as traffic, pedestrians' footsteps or traces of conversations, would inevitably filter in and often overpower or commingle with the sounds of the performance itself. The music performance and art exhibition space occupied Off Site's extremely spartan firstfloor with itsbare concrete floors, blank white walls and neat rows of small stools. In conceptualizing Off Site's spatial layout, Ito chose to retain the original design of the building's previous owners who used the first floor as an office and the second floor as a living space. Itowanted the first floor gallery and performance space to be as neutral and modest
while retaining the lived-in quality of the previous owners' oc

most striking characteristics of Off Site thus lies in itsparticular spatial and was located in a detached house, Off architectural conditions. Although it Site nevertheless placed certain demands on themusicians and listeners, in order not to disturb the neighbors who lived in very close proximity. All of the live performances had to be at an extraordinarily low volume, so low in

structure and retains none of the lavish connotations of the term.Off Site itselfoccupied a small two-floorwooden house,with English similar noise restrictions to that of apartment buildings (ap?to), inwhich sound easily penetrates the adjoining houses and apartments. One of the

cupancy on the second floor. A narrow staircase led up to the second floor which featured a small bar, CD and book shop, couch, and several chairs and
small tables.

as possible,

upstairs to gather and mingle with the musicians or browse the book and CD collections, often featuring recordings by regular performers at Off Site. This casual bar or caf? atmosphere of the second floor was seen by some musicians as a salon or haunt (tamariba), wherein the informalness of the space itselfgave impetus to aesthetic exchanges between a close-knit group ofmusicians and friends. Ito ultimately envisioned the second floor space as a refuge forboth themusicians and listeners to linger following performances, in contrast tomost gallery spaces in which after viewing the artworks on display. the spectators leave immediately

Following

performances,

many

audience

members

would

head

Ito is quick to point out the contingent factors between Off Site's devel wasn't a opment and onky?'s emergence as a definable genre. He notes that it situation where certain musicians gathered together and consciously decided to create a form ofmusic using only small,minimal sounds. Ito, in fact, largely credits Off Site's neighbor's constant noise complaints for indirectly creating this new form of music. Music performed at Off Site was often half-jokingly called by some as oyaji (old man music), referring to?in a slightly deroga

Plourde: Disciplined

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281

person living adjacently who made these complaints, in torymanner?the addition to voicing opinions about the physical presence of audience mem bers loitering and smoking outside the performance space. As previously mentioned, Off Site's extreme sound restrictions required thatmusicians comply with such performance rules. According to those involved, however, these restrictions were not felt as limiting at all, and in fact offered themusi cians a surprising sense of freedom not possible in a typical performance space. As Off Site's owner, ItoAtsuhiro, explained: "Musical instruments can always produce a large amount of volume but they can also produce small sounds. So,what happened at Off Site was experimenting with what kinds could be found within 17 November these small sounds" (p.c., ItoAtsuhiro, 2004,Tokyo).8 to Tokyo's Outside Sounds

of possibilities

Listening

Soundscape:

media. This phrase inJapanese can also be used to indicate that one is listen ing attentively, a connotation that suggests the aural discipline required on the part of the listeners.Yet despite this physical and aural stillness within the confines of onky?'s live performance, the listener is inevitably confronted by the intrusion of the aforementioned sounds of everyday urban life aswell as sounds from the audience seeping into the performance space. Despite
its status sounds as a performance their co-existence space with with extreme sound performances restrictions, came outside to be seen and the musical

Much of the criticism of onky? circulated withinTokyo describes the pro cess of listening to onky? as mimi wo sumasu (straining one's ears). Indeed, this compulsion to strain one's ears is crucial to Off Site's overall aesthetic and is a phrase commonly affixed to descriptions of Off Sitewithin Japanese

as one of Off Site's distinctive and inimitable listening conditions. Accord ing to Off Site's owner, these sounds were integral to the live environment serving as accidental events that are inevitable and impossible to control or

regulate. Referring to them as hapuningu (happenings), Ito described their to themusic performances at Off Site: "Sounds that penetrate relationship
the performance space, such as people passing by, ambulance sirens, fire

trucks, etc., these sorts of happenings [hapuningu] are inevitable; such as a or someone walking by loudly; actually, the loudest drunk person walking by, (and most common) sound is people kicking cans. But it'sfine, I think, these kinds of sounds are good" (p.c., ItoAtsuhiro, 25 May 2005,Tokyo). The term hapuningu
or unexpected

is an everyday term in Japanese which

event.

indicates an accidental

The notion of non-intentional or outside sound happenings was a topic that regularly emerged within Tokyo's experimental music community, via
such domains as print media, everyday conversations, as well as musicians'

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blogs. Some musicians and listeners I interviewed, many ofwhom are directly involved in the onky? music community, expressed openness to the penetra tion of outside sounds into the performance environment, but with certain limitations. For them the notion of outside sounds was a more restricted? thatdid not extend to include sounds though ultimately subjective?category from the bodies of audience members, such as those who drew originating attention to themselves by breathing heavily or accidentally dropping a beer bottle. Both listeners and musicians at Off Site drew distinctions between

sounds. One listener, who regularly attended acceptable and unacceptable performances at Off Site, admitted he had a particular taste formusic that was influenced by environmental and/or ambient sounds but clearly added that the very category of outside sounds had limits.He went on to compare Off Site, describing it as a space where "pleasant city noises entered the Tokyo that featured non-intentional sounds of a radically different nature. Situated below a Japanese style bar, the sounds of old men singing karaoke constantly filter in and ruin the experience. The issue according to this lis tener is not that the sounds themselves are inherently uninteresting sounds, but the fact that they completely wash over and obscure the sounds of the
performance. performance space," to Art Land, another avant-garde performance space in

ItoAtsuhiro, on the other hand, was more amenable to outside sounds that emanated from the listeners, referring to these often unpredictable and
reactions

uncontrollable

penings
Ito, are

(ningen no hapuningu).
crucial to the live context, as such

during

onky?'s

These
and by

human happenings,
extension, never to

live performances

as human

hap

according

to

For him, the ephemerality of the live improvisatory context was

Off Site's atmosphere, occurrences could be

improvisation

itself.

central to
or occur

again. He also recalled how during the early days of Off Site,when audience members were perhaps less disciplined, listenerswould often fall asleep dur ing a performance, and at the sound of applause, jolt themselves awake and literally fall out of their seats, causing aminor commotion and even laughter. These all a part of the show. to designate intermittent sounds?outside, This idea of happenings its origins in the Fluxus group. Fluxus happenings human, or other?has originated in the U.S. during the early 1960s and became an international random acts were

repeated

movement, with participation by European and Japanese artists in particular, including Yoko Ono and the composer and student of John Cage, Ichiyanagi Toshi.9 By itsvery nature, Fluxus as a multimedia artmovement necessarily defied simplistic definition; one of its essential characteristics, however, was an emphasis on reconfiguring the relationship between performer and audience?a relationship similarly disrupted and reconfigured in the genre of onky?. As Ito explained tome, onky? allowed the performer and audience

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to be situated on the same level: "Previously, in livemusic performance, it was unidirectional, moving from performer to audience; the performer was the presenter \happyo suru gawa]. However, in the case of onky?, both performers and audience are equally receptive to the sound and both listen [mimi wo motsuY (p.c., ItoAtsuhiro, 17 November 2004,Tokyo). While this statement might serve to represent the ideal?that both per former and listener theoretically co-exist on the same level in onky?'s per formances?the human happenings, or accidental events on the part of the

reveal the limitsof tolerance regarding such sounds. More acceptable forms of outside sounds, however, were viewed quite favorably bymusicians and had a dramatic impact on both musicians and listeners at Off Site, to the extent that many claimed that their hearing had dramatically changed over the course of itsfive year existence. Soon afterOff Site's closing in 2005, Otomo Yoshihide was five years ago, Iwould never have heard noted on his personal blog:"If it the subtle sounds which I'm now constantly aware of" (Otomo 2005). A regular listener at Off Site similarly noted how his hearing has radically shifted since attending performances at Off Site, and he is now able to hear much more
delicate sounds (sensai no oto). He explained: "Before, I didn't appreciate

experiencing a sense of shared space and time.Yet listeners are expected to sit and listen quietly throughout the performance while refraining from emit ting outside sounds of their own. These sounds that stem from the listening public, were in factmore often than not met with disdain by musicians and

listeners, often served to dismantle thisperceived equality between musician and listener. In contrast to livehouses where musicians and audience members are explicitly separated by a performance stage, the performers and listeners atOff Site are physically close to one another with no demarcation, seemingly

sounds that had no connection tomusic, such as a clock ticking.At the very least, I didn't understand the condition of these sounds. But perhaps now, I still hate violent sounds, such as people's voices, especially patronizing or nagging tones, aswell as the announcer's voice inside the subway. Aside from these sounds, I'm not bothered by any other sounds now" (p.c., 23 October 2005,Tokyo). This notion that onky? itself is believed to have generated new modes of hearing and listening is further linked to the notion of place?in this case, more specifically Off Site. Here,Tokyo's soundscape cannot be Tokyo?and

jijy? (Tokyo-esque). With its attention to silence, stillness, and gaps, onky? is often explained in foreign media coverage as a quintessentially Japanese aesthetic, particularly in itsputative adherence to Zen. Most ofmy informants inTokyo however, strongly rejected this notion, arguing instead that onky?

disengaged frommusic performances, and for many musicians these outside sounds have become an integral part of the performance. Furthermore, these conditions are often cited by participants in this community as Tokyo teki

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determined in part by Tokyo's specific housing conditions inwhich residents typically live in cramped apartments largely uninsulated from their mirrored in neighbors. This functionalist, rather than aesthetic, explanation is in which she discusses small-scale variety theater Marilyn Ivy's ethnography engeki) in Japan features extremely loud musical interludes.When questioned as to the reason for such high volume, the primarily middle-aged (taish?

importance of these outside sounds at Off Site, there is perhaps an implicit call for the r?int?gration of artwith daily life. The musicians' acceptance of non-intentional sounds has a limit,however, which does not necessarily extend to the listening public. In fact,one musician admitted tome that the ideal performance situation at Off Site was achieved when the room was complete dissolution of art as lifeor lifeas art. This fullynoted that the best acoustics occurred during of timewhen only the performer and owner were Site sounds the best when absolutely no one else
rehearsal time, when sounds no audience members are completely empty, i.e., without listeners present?art for art's sake, or the

members did not distance and isolate themselves emphasizes the point that its from society as is often claimed, but rather, vehemently and aggressively strove "to reintegrate themselves and their art into life"(Burger 1984:xxxvi). In the case of onky?, given that musicians, listeners, and critics unanimously cite the

and elderly audience members explained that it is necessary simply because the audience is generally hard of hearing (Ivy 1995:225). In his analysis of the early twentieth-century avant-garde, Peter Burger

musician

somewhat wist the sound check, a period present in the space:"Off is in the room. During the
is the best time. Once

people
lessens

start to arrive ... there's the (loud) sounds of people breathing, which
the of the performance .. .When no one is in the room, the

there,

echo and reverberation is great" (p.c., 15 July 2005,Tokyo). Not Moving a Muscle

Disciplined
While amidst

(mijirogi shinai)

Listening:

sitting on thin floor cushions, an atmosphere of tension. Hiromichi (2005:71)

the audience

enjoyed

the performance

?Hosoma

For Adorno, themusical avant-garde was synonymous with the designa tion of "new music," forms that demanded new modes of listening to cope with the "shock of its strangeness and enigmatic form" (Adorno 2002:127). The process of listening to this new music is characterized by contempla tion,which operates in contrast to the regressive and infantile listening habits of the mass audience. Here, the new is linked with the necessity for art,particularly music, to be complex and thought provoking, in contrast to the patterned, standardized, and pre-digested commodities produced and

Plourde: Disciplined

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new music promoted by the culture industry. The more incomprehensible more social cites the work of Schoenberg?the is to the public?Adorno relevance it will attain, and thus become even more socially meaningful and progressive (ibid.: 131). This question of difficulty and incomprehensibility is central to the notion of the avant-garde and one that both permeates and the exclusive nature of the Off Site community, while at the perpetuates same time, attracting new listeners who onky?'s esotericism and obscurity. are allured by the very nature of

Many listeners I interviewed referred to the process of listening at Off Site in pedagogical and disciplinary terms using such phrases as concentra
tion, comprehension, endurance, tension, and awareness or consciousness.

What

is interesting here is the crucial impact ofwritten discourse concerning onky? on the listeners' reception and listening techniques. Some listeners I which he spoke with sought out musician Otomo Yoshihide's personal blog in a regular series to the topic of listening and onky?. Several audience devoted members explained tome that they continued to come to Off Site because theywere unable to comprehend themusic. One listener noted thatOff Site was interesting specifically because he couldn't fathom what was going on; he couldn't figure out how to listen to and enjoy (tanoshimeru) the performances, he returned numerous times.Yet another regular audience member explained that he enjoyed the first shows he attended, but could not articulate or comprehend why he enjoyed it,so he decided to attend more shows. For other listeners, however, the incomprehensible nature of onky? because

or stimulating experience for the performances was not a thought-provoking One listener spoke of the first few concerts he attended: "When I spectator. firstwent to Off Site Iwas bored [akichatta]. There's very little change or development in the music, which would be okay, except the sound wasn't good either [kimochi ga yokunat]. But then I saw Otomo's homepage where he wrote about onky? and listening [ch?shu] in various essays, and I read those and thought,'Ah, so that's what it's all about' [laughs].And I realized that I could now understand it in this way" (p.c., 5 February 2006,Tokyo). He further explained how after reading Otomo's blog he also became aware of the outside sounds, which he didn't notice or hear when he first attended Off Site. Such discourse concerning onky? was regularlyproduced and consumed in Tokyo, and served a vital pedagogical function towards facilitating listeners' comprehension and listening practices at Off Site.

the Cabaret Voltaire caf? duringWWI often erupted in a cacophonous battle was desired by the art between the performers and spectators, a reaction that was driven by theiruse ists (Kahn 1999:52). This interactionwith the spectator

most ostentatious and significant features of the early twentieth One of the century European avant-gardewas theiroften violent attempt at oppositionality and confrontation with the audience. Dadaist performances of sound poetry at

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audiences became silent (i.e., the social roots of silence) with the rise of the bourgeoisie and related notions of etiquette and respectability. Here, maintain ing silence during a public performance was also a display of one's social mores and such forms of etiquette were regularly circulated in etiquette books:"The emergent code of silence during performances was more than an innocent and unreflective consequence of a certain work ethic. Audiences reasoned on some level that ifpoliteness was necessary to succeed, its absence signaled Policing manners thus became an act of self-reassurance" (Johnson inferiority. 1994:232). Dada performances blatantly attacked these societal mores and

of shock and was utilized as a productive forcewith which to both alienate and defamiliarize the viewer from theirmiddle-class sensibilities. In his history of listening in eighteenth century Paris, James Johnson equates the period when

hoped to shake up theirvery foundations in acts of sheer nihilism,with often no apparent goal other than to cause chaos and disruption. In the case of onky?, the enforced silence and demands of listening are so amplified as to become reflexive. The audience member becomes aware

point that they give up any self-control. The atmosphere and subtleties of the performance become oppressive to the point that itproduces a heightened awareness of space and the sensation of time. The shock of onky? as a new
and unfamiliar form

of his/her own body and the demands placed on it.Listeners are expected to concentrate and listen carefully to the performance as well as the outside sounds, yet they themselves must not outwardly react to the music to the

garde techniques of shock and defamiliarization take the form of detached listeners, in contrast to the Cabaret Voltaire. Some yet highly disciplined listeners described the process of listening to onky? performances as a test
of endurance. One listener

is completely

internalized.

Here,

reception

of

the avant

my ear has really changed" (p.c., 21 March 2006,Tokyo). By using the frequently uttered Japanese phrase gaman suru (patience) to describe his experience as a listener,he indicates a sense of perseverance that the spectator of onky? must tolerate. Here, the idea of "grin and bear

for his lengthy periods of silence as part of his performance, explained: "In Sugimoto's performances, theremight be tenminutes of silence so you have to really be patient [gaman suru], but of course during those times, Iwould start to focus more on listening to the outside sounds. And because of that,

in particular,

in referring

to a musician

known

it" is relevant, for gaman suru also indicates the importance of enduring displeasure or sufferingwithout complaining. Initially thismight appear to be an odd choice of wording to use for describing one's experience as an audience member, for live music performances should be enjoyable and for the listeners. In the case of Off Site, onky? performances
not presented or experienced as casual "entertainment," as one might

pleasurable
were

expect at a live house performance.

Instead, the music

demanded

rigorous,

Plourde: Disciplined
concentrated in order for audience

Listening
members

in Tokyo

287

listening,

to "enter

the music,"

(p.c., 12 November 2004,Tokyo). explained One listener explained the impossibility of listening to onky? recordings at home as casual background music:
When I listen to this kind of music, completely I'll hear a gorgeous melody I'll focus such as Wagner, about the meaningless. When on it's I try not to do anything else, otherwise at home I listen to classical music for example, or dignified chords. Or if I listen to opera sounding

as one Off Site musician

tome

20 March 2006,Tokyo)

improvisation you listening. But when the sound, so you know, I really can't

the flow of the story. If I listen to jazz, I'll think I'm musicians while exciting interplay between to listen to is all you have listen to onky?, absolutely and do anything else while I'm listening."(p.c.,

Along these lines,most musicians, critics and listeners agree that onky? is a genre thatmust initially be directly and physically experienced (taiken suru). One recent review of an emblematic onky? recording by a musician who performed regularly at Off Site notes that attempts at an extremely

simple description will never become a true explanation of the artwork, because "such a challenging work can only exist as a concrete and material experience, to be directly and intimately experienced within its live context" (Unami 2005:217). Textual analysis of onky? such as in recording reviews or criticism is a nearly impossible task, inwhich any attempt to pin down and ascribe meaning to such an elusive and abstract form?described by one critic as a genre that "exceeds hearing" (kiku koete) (p.c.,Hatanaka Minoru, an ineffable process, and one which seemingly 25 March 2005,Tokyo)?is

significance. This condition speaks to the centrality of the unpredictable live experience, including outside sounds filtering into the performance space which, in turn,engage with the sounds of themusic and serve to trouble the tenuous divide between music and non-musical sound. As stated earlier, within the category of outside sounds are sounds gener ated by the listeners themselves, which thus raises the issue of the intention ality regarding outside sounds. While street sounds are certainly random and carry no intent, the human element opens up a completely different set of contingencies. Onky?'s live performance context provokes its listeners to

scribe it, you know? I'm genuinely moved by thismusic, but ifI try to explain it to people, they'll laugh. Ifyou try to explain the sound of 'piiii' [imitates the sound of a sine wave] or a hissing sound to someone, it's like a joke! [laughs] For me, that's the ultimate mystery of music" (p.c., 20 March 2006, Tokyo). Although onky? musicians release studio and even live recordings, it is the (anti)sensuality of onky?'s live performances that are of the foremost

defeats the premise of the avant-garde. One listener grappled with the inher ent difficulty in evaluating or judging onky? performances:"How do you do that? I don't even know myself, but I continued to listen.You really can't de

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both create and adopt individual bodily techniques. One listener explained to me how he made sure to not drink any alcohol prior to the performance, to avoid falling asleep during the concert. Such preparation reveals the extent audience members have consciously absorbed certain modes Another listener adopted different strategies to stay awake: etiquette.
Even gum with

towhich

of

I always have the show, I tend to fall asleep. At live shows if I'm enjoying start chewing the performance. But me, and Iwould gum right before I the gum starts to get hard about midway the performance, because through would end up making became sound, so I think that I actually unintentionally one reason to not for chewing of the performers gum was [laughs]. The main was also to help with fall asleep. On a certain level, the purpose concentrating on the performance If I forget to bring gum with me to a show, I real [sh?ch?]. a big mistake?it's ear plugs. to a Noise ize I've made like going show without (p.c., 5 February 2006,Tokyo)

During this same interview he explained his particular listening techniques, influenced by reading Otomo's blog essays: "Iwould try to keep my mind ni suru] and cease any kind of thinking, so I completely empty [karappo
wouldn't have

listening to sound.' I tried not to think or react at all to the music"

any

sort

of

awareness

or

consciousness

that

'I'm

currently

(p.c., 5

February 2006,Tokyo). Another listener explained the appeal of closing one's eyes during the performance by likening it to a dreamlike and otherworldly state, and noted
that itwas easier to concentrate on the

one's eyes were closed (p.c., 15August 2005,Tokyo). If the listeners' eyes are open, as she explained tome, the performance is not as interesting and italso becomes difficult to focus and concentrate on the subtle sounds of the perfor mance. Similar to the previous listener, she had also read Otomo's blog, which facilitated her listening experiences and techniques at Off Site. She referred

"incredibly

delicate,

small

sounds"

if

close my eyes I try to get rid of these types of associations, such as 'this is the sound of a chair,' etc., as much as possible" (p.c., 15August 2005,Tokyo). For both of these listeners then, the discourse and knowledge surrounding onky?, as gleaned fromOtomo's writings, often preceded the performance itselfand provided themwith listening techniques that are crucial in order tomeaning

sound of a car."As she noted: "He [Otomo] explained that in this exercise the listener clears their consciousness as much as possible, then gradually sound When I begins to dissolve. I think by closing my eyes, there's a similar effect.

to a particular entry inwhich he discussed listening techniques he learned in a workshop, wherein the listener attempts to clear their consciousness (ishikt) and actively sever connections between sounds and their referents, for example, hearing the sound of a car and consciously thinking "that's the

fully enter the music. This movement reveals what Georgina Born referred to as the "pedagogic and prescriptive mission" (Born 1995:42) of the avant

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Off Site's live experience. In his analysis of habitus, Pierre Bourdieu describes the unconscious techniques of the body, such as sitting up straight, as the "cunning of peda gogic reason" (Bourdieu [1977] 1992:69). I discussed the topic of Off Site's listenerswith amusician who performed regularly at Off Site for all five years

garde inwhich listeners are challenged to approach themusic discursively, rather than simply attending live shows as sheer entertainment, in the case of a live house performance. By learning to hear in this way, listeners at Off Site retrained their ears in order to perceive such outside sounds fundamental to

of Europe and the U.S. Here, the social etiquette and bodily comportment necessary to navigate through everyday urban life inTokyo signifies the polite, disciplined, and most importantly, learned aesthetic conduct demanded of onky?'s listeners as Japanese citizens. She noted:"Japan is a cramped country, so you've always got to be moving. We're naturally trained [kunren] to be
aware of this. For

down and listening quietly And they learned this at school from a young age" (p.c., 25 July 2005,Tokyo). In that same interview, she interpreted Off Site's disciplined listening environment as a microcosm ofTokyo, which she views as radically distinct from and ultimately irreconcilable with the social context

of itsoperation. This musician attributed the disciplined nature of Off Site's audience?and Japanese audiences more generally?to Japanese pedagogical and schooling techniques. She explained:"I think you can say theirmanners [ogy?gi] are good. Imean, Japanese people are the best at properly sitting

make

sure to not bump into the person next to you" (p.c., 25 July 2005,To kyo).Her usage of the term kunren implies training or discipline on the part
of the Japanese citizen, particularly pedagogical discipline and recalls Mauss'

example,

if you're

in a small,

narrow

space,

you've

got

to

via training and education. For this regular Off Site musician, the cramped performance space at Off Site is ametaphor forpublic urban space inTokyo,
such as the

notion of body techniques,"the ways in which from society to society men know how to use their bodies" (Mauss [1950] 1979:97). These techniques, such as walking, running, dancing, and jumping, among others, are learned

their neighbors. They are able to avoid such awkward collisions due to their training from a young age, as she explained to me. Moreover, because the space itself is so cramped and the audience is sitting so close to the performers, there is a feeling of inescapability, experienced by some of themusicians as well. This same musician explained tome that the tension and anxiety some musicians felt performing at Off Site was partially due sions with to the extremely close proximity of the audience. A regular listener at Off Site also experienced this sensation, explaining that part of the tension she originally felt at performances was because the listeners sat so close to the
musicians. However, after she became personally acquainted with many of

subway,

where

people

must

attempt

to avoid

unnecessary

colli

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Off Site's regular performers, primarily by hanging out on the second floor caf? space in the period following shows, she began to feel less tension (p.c., 8 August 2005,Tokyo). The performance and reception of onky? ultimately relies on the cre

ation and maintenance of a disciplined listening public inTokyo. The kind of disciplined listening found at Off Site may be partially traced to listening practices at Japan 's jazz kissa (jazz coffee shops), which served as social, if cramped, spaces during the 1960s and 1970s for jazz aficionados to gather and listen to jazz recordings and obtain information regarding the music, such as magazines and handouts. The experience of collectively and intently listening to jazzwas central to the jazz kissa experience. Eschewing the typi cal background status ofmusic at caf?s inJapan, the volume at jazz kissa was deliberately and provocatively loud, rendering any conversation between neighbors difficult, ifnot impossible. Patrons were generally expected to be

group are often made visible at performances, inwhich new listeners? to onky?'s performance conditions?question and critique unaccustomed the structured environment within which onky? is heard. Although many musicians at Off Site proclaim to be open to these outside sounds, they also which ultimately drives certain listeners further away from the performers and reinforces exclusionary boundaries. Such boundaries furtherconsolidate the insularity of the Off-Site community, to the point where certain Tokyo based music writers or listeners make a deliberate point of avoiding perfor mances at Off Site so as not to participate in this community. During Tokyo's typically muggy summer months, for example, the air conditioning is often turned off during music performances as the constant
expect and demand absolute silence and stillness on the part of the audience,

quiet. In his history of jazz inJapan, E. Taylor Atkins brieflymentions the role of listeners in jazz kissa, who must often agree to the establishment's rules of maintaining silence (Atkins 2001:4). In the case of Off Site's listening public, the boundaries of this social

drone of the air-conditioner overpowers the sounds of themusic performance and creates a distraction in the listening environment. I attended one such concert during the summer where the air-conditioning had been turned off, which quickly caused the windowless room, filled to capacity, to become The airwas soon thick and heavy with humidity. During intermission, stuffy. one audience member inparticular, revealed their outsider status by directly confronting the musician and questioning their choice to shut off the air conditioning. After themusician explained the necessity of a silent listening

environment free from the sonic distractions of machinery humming in the background, the audience member stormed off angrily and leftbefore the second half resumed. Such visceral reactions by certain audience members signify the exclusivity of Off Site's community, by revealing the gap between

Plourde: Disciplined

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ingmembers of the tight-knitcommunity ofmusicians, critics and listeners, would never outwardly or publicly question the unspoken rules governing Off Site's specific listening conditions. These unforeseen events,which inevitably occur at onky? performances, ultimately contribute to the highly disciplined and tense listening environ ment?one which is seldom acknowledged as such by the performers.10 Ifat first glance audience members attend livemusic performances as an escape

expectations of proper listening and improper listening. Here, proper listen ing at Off Site, and other similar avant-garde performance spaces inTokyo, is contingent on the inculcation of certain modes of behavior?knowledge ofwhich only regular attendees would be aware. Regular attendees, includ

with

environment and into the urban accidental

from the rapid-fire repetitions of capitalist life, then onky? performances, their inevitable penetration of the quotidian soundscape, ironically act as a reminder of the banality of urban existence. This eventfulness jolts the listeners and performers out of the repetitive high art/classical music realm of the everyday.

Beyond

Off Site: Post-Onky?-ha?

The final performance at Off Site, on 30 April 2005, perhaps not surpris was marked by certain accidental events, or happenings, the aftermath of ingly, as which soon began to circulate through public talk-forums, well asmusicians' and critics' blogs in Japan.Word quickly spread throughout Tokyo regarding Off Site's impending closure, and the final performance was guaranteed to be well attended. Although tickets forOff Site performances could usually only
be purchased at the door, in this case, advance reservations by e-mail were re

quired. A second show on the same nightwas even added due to overwhelming demand to see the final show. By thispoint, five years afteropening, most were well aware ofOff Site's extremely cramped performance space, aswitnessed by a sizable group already lined up thirty minutes prior to the doors opening for was during the second show of Off Site's final performance better seating. It that something occurred which threw off not only the other listeners in the room, but the performers as well. Soon after themusicians began amid a typi cally silent audience, those in the room heard the faint sounds of breathing, which was soon followed by light snoring. As one of the performers thatnight explained tome:"This was our absolutely final performance atOff Site, so we were concentrating incredibly intensely and this heavy breathing [neikt]was was our last per louder than the sounds of our own performance! Because it there ever, I decided that I simply did not want to perform alongside formance such noise, so I asked the person sittingnext to theman sleeping towake him up" (p.c., Sachiko M, 25 July 2005,Tokyo). Ito noted how thiswas actually the first time he had ever heard thismu

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contradictory. For the listeners and performers who hear the performance as music, snoring becomes a disturbance or distraction \jyama)" (p.c., 23 October 2005,Tokyo). If music is that which must be heard (kikakeru beki mono), then onky?, as barely audible sound, is meant to privilege listeners' ears and their percep

in this final performance:"The musicians at Off by the audience aswitnessed Site were receptive to these outside sounds that entered the performance was heard as noise, which I realize is space, but the sound of snoring itself

sician speak during the performance and address the audience. In reference to this incident, one local musician, who attended shows at Off Site regu larly,admitted the incongruity between the musicians' purported embrace of such outside sounds and their control and regulation over sounds made

At placed incredible demands on the body that at timeswere stifling. the same time however, the allure of this incomprehensible and seemingly inaudible itsdisciplined and strained listening environment?led many music?despite listeners to attend repeat performances at Off Site. The contradiction that was the attraction of Off Site isperhaps best described by Otomo Yoshihide, "The limits of Off Sitewere not really limits but total freedom" (p.c., Otomo

public talk events and inprint media, was crucial in order for audience mem bers to learn how to listen in a particular way. Off Site's specific spatial and material conditions generated new modes of listening and performing, and

tion and judgment ofwhat is constituted as music or non-music. This shift in emphasis from reception to the sense of hearing requires the listener to undergo disciplinary techniques that affect both mind and body, and as such, the listener becomes integral to the experience of live onky? performance. The discursive construction of onky?, as consolidated on musicians' blogs,

Yoshihide, 8 June 2005,Tokyo). Within this confined space and concomitant genre was the potential forminute transgressions that jolted the listener in such a way thatwas perhaps not the Cabaret Voltaire, but something much
quieter.

Acknowledgements
This article is excerpted from a chapter inmy forthcoming dissertation. Research is based on in Tokyo between fieldwork conducted 2004 and 2007, and was supported by ethnographic research funding from the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship Field Research Fellowship Program of the Social Sci Program and the International Dissertation ence Research

Council with funds provided by theAndrew W. Mellon Foundation. I am indebted to all themusicians, listeners, and critics at Off Site who generously allowed me to conduct such Ito Atsuhiro, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M and Akiyama Tetuzi. extensive interviews, especially comments provided by Finally, this essay benefitted greatly from the critical and productive

David

editors Timothy Cooley and Barbara Taylor, the two anonymous readers, as well as Marilyn Ivy, welcome Kim, Lauren Meeker, and Jennifer Milioto Matsue. I J. regarding correspondence this article. I can be reached at: lorraine.plourde@gmail.com

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1. Japanese names are represented with the family name first followed by the given name or artists who use their given name first, such as Sachiko second, except for certain musicians M andTetuziAkiyama. of Futurism in Japan, the scope of this article to discuss the genealogy 2. It is beyond of Italian Futurism's reception in Japan. however, it isworth pointing out the contemporaneity The

founding manifesto of Italian Futurism, written by Filippo Marinetti, was translated into inMay 1909 by novelist and critic Ogai Mori, just three months after Japanese and published in Paris. its original publication of 1962 at the 3. John Cage, along with David Tudor, first performed in Japan in October SogetsuArt Center (SAC), which served as one of themost important sites for avant-garde activi ties in the 1960s. Cage's performance caused a huge sensation within Tokyo's avant-garde music and art community, to the extent that the aftermath was dubbed "Cage shock" (k?ji shokku) by local music critic Yoshida

Japan was ultimately of avant-garde music environmental silence evidenced

sounds within

This shock of Cage's encounter with Hidekazu (Galliano 2002:255). seen as productive and one that indirectly transfigured (henyo) the state in Japan by sparking debates over indeterminacy inmusic and the role of

and non-intentional

performances.

in pamphlets live and handouts distributed at contemporary At the same time, however, Cage's legacy remains divided within Tokyo's avant garde experimental music community. For some, Cage signifies theWest's misunderstanding of Japan. During an interview with Tokyo-based music and film critic KishinoYuichi,he argued: or American "You have people

by the various as continued reference to Cage

context. John Cage and his philosophies of the live performance in contemporary Japan, a fact sound remain a formidable presence and journals, as well special issues on Cage inTokyo-based magazines

4. It is perhaps not coincidental that both Akita and Haino are staunch vegetarians/vegans. a strong proponent a philosophy of the animal rights movement, Akita has recently become that he has begun to fuse with his musical output. His forays into animal rights activism and its in his recent 2005 book, Watashi linkages with experimental music and noise is documented no saishoku seikatsu and critics I spoke with inTokyo agreed Many musicians [cruelty free life]. that in the case of Akita and Haino, their stoicism was partly attributed to their strict vegetarian musical and uncompromising aesthetics. lifestyles, in addition to their extreme (kyokutan) at Off Site, the exchange rate of one US dollar averaged ap 5.At the time of attendance

like John Cage and Allen Ginsberg, they all loved Zen, right?When European is unknown to people encounter Japanese avant-garde music, as something which them and difficult to comprehend, they always explain it as Zen. This is just too simple." (p.c., 1 February 2006,Tokyo).

105 Japanese yen. proximately 6. For a fascinating discussion of the impact of the introduction of chairs into the Javanese 1987. gamelan performance setting, see Pemberton mance

7. In her ethnographic analysis of recent South Indian (Karnatic) classical music perfor discusses the importance, and almost purposeful staging, conventions, Amanda Weidman of uneventfulness within the live context. She explains that "the more classical the music, the less there is towatch 8. All interviews were author. 9. Prior to first attending shows at Off Site, one listener explained his musical forays during this time as a period inwhich he avidly sought out CD's of Fluxus and minimalist music, among others. on stage" (Weidman 2003:135). in Japanese and have been conducted translated into English by the

10. Not all musicians reacted negatively to these outside sounds on the part of the listeners. at Off Site, I overheard an audience member apologize to the owner for After one performance her coughing fit during the performance. His response was quite amiable; he pointed out that her coughs had perhaps become a part of the music.

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Spring/Summer

2008

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