Mikomai·Iro: Tamafuri

Mikomai·Iro: Tamafuri

Iro are a Kawasaki-based shamanic noise improvisation duo, consisting of husband and wife Toshio and Shizuko Orimo. Toshio, born in 1946, plays drums and percussion, while Shizuko (born in 1944) handles guitar and vocals. The group have a lengthy history – founded in 1981, they have been making music together for twenty-eight years. As early as 1984 the inherent quality of their “energy free music” was recognized by Ken’ichi Takeda of A-Musik, and the group was widely reported in the media, gaining coverage on Tokyo FM and in both the specialist music press (Music Magazine, Fool’s Mate) and mass-market publications like the Asahi newspaper and Takarajima magazine. But in spite of this recognition they have remained largely neglected by the Japanese underground music world. This neglect partly stems from their complete rejection of commercialism in their music, partly from their deep commitment to unfashionable anti-nuclear, anti-war and human rights causes.

The roots of their music lie in ethnic music and 1970s free jazz. Their earliest works could perhaps be described as ‘Ornette Coleman meets Kazuko Shiraishi with Patti Smith’ – a shamanic combination of free jazz-inflected improvisation with vocal stylizations that suggested poetry reading. They later moved into areas of harsh noise, and this album Tamafuri(Moving Souls) (originally released in 1985) is basically a sixty-minute noise improvisation with full-on destructive vocals. At the time, their high-energy noise improvisations felt intensely dangerous, like a nuclear reactor-core going into meltdown, throwing out waves of radiation and intense heat.

As well as this album, they released several cassettes on their own Shaman Label, including Anti-Heroism Sengen(Anti-Heroism Manifest), Shamanism Rock, Vagina & Penis (all released in 1985), Kurobaba(Black Shit), Shio(Salt), Kaku(Nuclear) (1986), and Ryūki Jinari(Spirit of Dragon and Sound of Earthquake) (under the name Iro Orchestra, 1987). All of these works extend the paradigm first explored on Tamafuri, but from around 1987 their music began to become more deeply colored by ancient Shinto and ethnic music. In 1989 the group’s performances underwent a radical change of direction, with Toshio playing stone flutes and ethnic instruments exclusively, while Shizuko danced wearing a mask from the Korean Tal-nori mask-drama. This new incarnation of the group was known as Mikomai•Iro (Shamaness Dance Iro).

The group abandoned completely the dark, harsh atmospherics that so characterized their sound as Iro. Musically they could now be classified as closer to ambient than noise. But perhaps their activities since 1989 need to be considered less as music and rather an investigation of esoteric Shinto ritual, of the kind practiced by Deguchi Onisaburō of the Oomotokyō new religion or Kanai Nanryū of the Shinri Research Group. To this end Toshio and Shizuko travel throughout Japan to Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples and other locations rich with supernatural energies, where they attempt to unlock this power. I attended one performance of this type, described as a demon exorcism, in the Seya-ku district of Yokohama in 1992. In one corner of a forest, participants were asked to ritually cleanse themselves with water bubbling up from a spring, then a stone flute was blown to purify the space itself. The duo then performed a ritual similar to gut rites conducted by Korean mudang shamen.

The noise incarnation of Iro and the recent Mikomai version may seem at first glance to be polar opposites, but I believe that they in fact come from the same place. Both reject modernity, and through the medium of exposed human emotionality both attempt to return to a state that predates to modern rationality. Their rejection of rationality is thus a rejection of the monotheistic worldview that supports it. Their attempts to revive an animistic and pantheistic Weltanschauung could also be read as being connected to neo-paganism – those beliefs that popped up in Europe and the US in the 60s and which continue to be spread worldwide through the medium of the internet – and the multitude of expressive forms associated with it.