For the book release of The Song About Green – Gather the Wind this past May, Happy End member Takashi Matsumoto and Haruki Murakami wrote the blurbs for the first and second volumes, respectively. This collaboration demonstrates the power of culture that transcends time and borders.

What did Gao entrust to Midori, who is also her alter ego, and what did she try to depict through the character? How did this story come about, and how did it grow to be what it is now? Musician Haruomi Hosono plays an important role in Gao’s work. Yusuke Monma, author of the definitive biography of Hosono, Haruomi Hosono and Their Era (Bungeishunju, 2020), conducted a Zoom interview with Gao, who lives in Taiwan.

The Song About Green’s origin story: Encountering Haruomi Hosono’s music while in Shinjuku to purchase Happy End’s Kazemachi Roman

– The first thing I’d like to ask you is about the inspiration for this book. In the afterword, you wrote, “The birth of The Song About Green dates back to the summer of 2017.” How did the story come about that summer?

Gao: As mentioned in the afterword, I visited Japan for the first time in the summer of 2017, when I was twentyone. Japan was filled with things I couldn’t find in Taiwan, and I already had a fondness for Japanese culture because I grew up watching Japanese anime and reading manga.

The one thing I wanted to accomplish while in Tokyo was to buy Happy End’s album Kazemachi Roman. The rest of the story is as told in the manga. Coincidentally, Haruomi Hosono’s music was playing at the Shinjuku Disc Union I went to. Once I worked up the courage to ask a staff member what was playing, I found out it was“Koi Wa Momoiro” from Hosono House. That led me to purchase both Machikaze Roman and Hosono House. I later realized that Haruomi Hosono was a member of Happy End after looking at the lyric sheet.

It felt like I instantly fell in love with Mr. Hosono, and I did a lot of research on him once I got back to Taiwan. He was still making music at seventy, and was on tour in Japan to promote his new album. I wanted to go see him play, but I was a college student who had classes to attend and no money, so I decided against it. A mixture of that feeling of wanting to go but unable and Midori Kobayashi’s “strawberry shortcake theory” in Norwegian Wood is what led me to start writing a journal series titled “The Song About Green.”

Then one day, someone I had a crush on told me that Mr. Hosono was coming to Taiwan. I used that momentum to ask if he wanted to come with me. He agreed to go, and my “The Song About Green” journal series became something of a prophetic dream. I wanted to write a manga based on this strange experience, which is how this came about.

— So the story in the manga is basically the same as what you actually experienced?

Gao: Yes, although it’s a bit embarrassing (laughs). It’s basically 90% a personal essay.

Reasons behind feelings of nostalgia when listening to “Kaze Wo Atsumete.” Why music, movies, and literature are referenced in Gao’s work

— The song “Kaze Wo Atsumete ” from the album Kazemachi Roman plays a significant role in The Song About Green. Upon her initial listen, protagonist Midori wonders “why it feels so nostalgic, hearing the song for the first time.” Did you feel the same way when you first heard “Kaze Wo Atsumete”?

Gao: I first heard “Kaze Wo Atsumete” when I was in high school. The song was featured on Inio Asano’s A Girl by Seaside, a manga I was reading at the time, which then led me to look up the song on YouTube. But I wasn’t a music fanatic back then, and only casually listened to popular Taiwanese music. I was still young and didn’t understand Japanese that well, so to be honest, even though I thought it was a good song when I first heard it, I didn’t immediately obsess over it or do any deep research.

Just like Midori in the manga, I was unfulfilled with my high school environment, and had high hopes for a new life to begin in college. However, my expectations were completely different once I entered university. There were points when I couldn’t even draw the things I loved, just like Midori. I decided to challenge myself to do something new, because I knew I couldn’t keep going like that. I started focusing my unused energy on listening to Taiwanese indie bands. Just like Nanjun in the manga, I made friends with people around ten years older than me, and became interested in their favorite books and music, including Haruki Murakami’s novels.

The time I spent going to live shows, reading books, and taking film photos probably exceeded the time I spent at school. When I came across the song “Kaze Wo Atsumete” again, it sounded different than it did before. There was a new nostalgic feeling to the song, maybe because I was in a completely different state of mind than when I was in high school. It was strange to experience such a dramatic shift when listening to the same song. That experience led me to become interested in Happy End.

I’m part of a generation that was born in the digital age, so I have an admiration for the pre-Internet era, when people would go to record shops to choose their records. Back then, you couldn’t test out a record or look up reviews online. You had to rely on the cover art to choose records. I find that way of choosing very romantic. When I became interested in Happy End, I knew I wanted to buy the record that that song was on in Japan.

– Norwegian Wood was also an important influence on The Song About Green. Haruki Murakami’s novels often reference music and novels like you do in your manga.

Gao: Perhaps I was subconsciously influenced. I would often look up songs and authors and listen to the tunes I didn’t know that were referenced in Murakami’s novels. It’s nice to be able to encounter new works of art through another. I don’t do it on purpose, but I draw my favorite works in my manga, too. Some of my readers may encounter new works and worlds through that.

– In The Song About Green, there are many books and records on Midori’s bookshelf and in the room of Nanjun, who she falls in love with. Are those books and records that you personally like?

Gao: They are. But because it was a while ago that it was serialized in Monthly Comic Beam, I went back and read it again before making it into its own book. Upon reading it over, I thought Midori, who is a 19-year-old still in search of her goals in life, would like different books, so I secretly revised the titles of the books on her bookshelf (laughs).

Gao’s feelings towards Taiwanese culture and what she wants to express to Japanese readers

– That makes me want to compare the two (laughs). You also touch on Director Edward Yan’s Yin Yin (Japanese title Yanyan Natsu No Omoide) in your work. Japanese films have been heavily impacted by Taiwanese cinema, just as Hirokazu Kore-eda was influenced by Hsiao-hsien Hou. Many audiences like Taiwanese films, and I myself have long been a fan of directors such as Hsiao-hsien Hou, Edward Yang, Ming-liang Tsai, and Yu-hsun Chen.

Gao: Yu-shun Chen is fantastic! Actually, I gifted him a copy of The Song About Green.

– Is that so? In The Song About Green, you express your thoughts on Japanese culture. How do you feel about Taiwanese culture, on the other hand?

Gao: I’ve always thought of Taiwanese people as lacking self-confidence, even now. If someone tells them that they’re “very Taiwanese,” many people may interpret that negatively. Recently, due to the efforts of the government, more people have become interested in their surrounding environment, but many Taiwanese people still don’t think of their culture as a culture.

I fell in love with Japanese culture as a child, and grew up watching anime and reading manga in that environment. I think my whole generation in Taiwan had a similar experience. Since we didn’t consider our culture to be culture, we valued cultures that were imported, and absorbed that instead. Before we knew it, it became a part of our culture, and grew up alongside it.

On the other hand, and this may come across as condescending, as a foreigner who’s witnessed Japanese culture since a young age, I feel like many Japanese people don’t appreciate their own culture. It’s the exact opposite of Taiwanese people, who have tried so hard to search for outside cultures because of their lack of confidence in their own. What’s depicted in The Song About Green is a Taiwanese town, Taiwanese atmosphere, and a Taiwanese story. But the new world the protagonist in the story discovers is Japanese culture. I wanted Japanese people to understand how fascinating their culture is through this manga, and wanted to share with those Japanese people who had never left Japan that there’s an interesting world outside of Japan, too.

On the contrary, I wanted to tell Taiwanese people to be more confident, and that works by Taiwanese creators can be interesting, as well. With this in mind, I decided to first present this work in Japan and then again in Taiwan. Though the process may have been roundabout, I thought gaining recognition in a foreign country first would help with its acknowledgement in Taiwan.

– I see. When I read The Song About Green, I felt like I could actually hear the music and feel the breeze and sun on my skin. What aspects of your work do you think makes your readers feel those things?

Gao: The type of manga I seek to create is a sensitive and essay-like one. I want my readers to feel like they’re watching a movie while they read my work. My manga includes a lot of monologues and simple compositions, which may be different from the expressions of mainstream Japanese manga. I tried my best to figure out how to use my brush and paper to express sounds, wind, sweat, and complex emotions to my readers. I think I researched more films than manga while thinking about how to best express those thoughts through my drawings. I watched many movies and used the transitions between cuts in a movie as inspiration for my sketches.

The Song About Green’s journey from journal, ZINE, to long-form manga

– The Song About Green was originally a journal, then made into a 32-page ZINE, and was finally made into a long-form manga over 500-pages long. I’m sure you made various efforts to try and properly express what you wanted throughout that process.

Gao: I did. I already wanted to rewrite The Song About Green into a longer version when I initially presented it as a ZINE, because there were some parts I couldn’t express the way I wanted to due to my lack of ability at the time. As I mentioned earlier, I have a habit of keeping a journal, and The Song About Green was based on events I experienced between the ages of 19 and 23, inspired by my past diaries.

I had already decided on reconstructing the short story as a 500-page book in two volumes. That  required a lot of creativity because I needed to include all the experiences I had between the ages of 19 to 23. The process was also quite painful because there were a lot of memories I never wanted to relive. I had to figure out how to convey the sensibility and memories of my youth through manga in a sophisticated, cinematic way.

– As far as expression goes, The Song About Green possesses its own unique rhythms and pauses. There’s a scene in the book where Nanjun shows Midori a post-rock album and explains the beauty of the pauses in the music. The lulls in The Song About Green have clearly been influenced by those in post-rock music.

Gao: This is the first time someone has described my manga as being like post-rock music. That

comparison makes me very happy. I often think of nature and the sounds that derive from it when I listen

to post-rock, like wind, rain, thunder… Similarly, rhythms and pauses are something that exist in nature.

I’m honored that you felt as though you were listening to post-rock while reading my manga.

– You mentioned that you had decided from the beginning that this would be a two-volume book. Does that have anything to do with Norwegian Wood?

Gao: Yes, the two-volume format is a tribute to Norwegian Wood (laughs). The reason why the first volume is pinkish and the second volume has a green-ish color is also because I wanted to pay homage to Norwegian Wood.

Inscribing important memories that would have eventually been forgotten

– Right, because Norwegian Wood is known for its first volume cover being red and its second volume cover being green. One line in the book that was particularly moving was when Nanjun says to Midori, “It’s not because of me/It’s because you were brave/You found them on your own and fell in love.” The Song About Green fully affirms the stance of loving something unconditionally and fearlessly. It also communicates how wonderful it is to love something. Perhaps that was one thing you particularly wanted to convey through your work.

Gao: That line actually has an interesting metaphor. For Midori, the figure of the man she accidentally witnesses on the beach – who we don’t know committed suicide or not – continues to haunt her to the point where writing becomes impossible. She regrets talking to him, imagining if things would’ve turned out differently if she hadn’t approached him.

But that’s not the only reason why she has trouble writing. She wanted to escape from herself, and from her surroundings. She thought her life would change once she was in college, only to find out nothing had changed even after moving to Taipei. In other words, the man on the beach had become a metaphor or an excuse to justify why she was doing poorly.

The only way to get out of her writer’s block slump was to face herself. Nanjun didn’t save her. Meeting him and falling in love with him made her come to terms with herself, which I think is a very pure and beautiful emotion. Just as Nanjun tells Midori that it’s “not because of me,” she is able to get out of her slump through finding songs like “Kaze Wo Atsumete” and through Mr. Hosono’s music. She becomes a stronger person by liking someone, which only happens because Midori herself was brave. Nanjun’s kind words personally resonate with me, also.

— Perhaps those were words you wanted to tell your 19 to 23-year-old self. It felt like you were affirming your past self through this work.

Gao: That’s true. Maybe they were words I needed to tell my old self.

– Finally, I’d like to ask about how The Song About Green is filled with a sense of anticipation of loss, amidst this sense of affirmation. How did this sense of loss emerge?

Gao: The Song About Green is a manga based on my own encounters and experiences, all of which may not have been remembered if I hadn’t recorded my thoughts in my journal. It’s strange how something so seemingly important when you’re young can gradually be forgotten about as time goes by. But forgetting is not always a negative thing. I believe it can also be a symbol of growth.

I wanted to express the important things you experience as a young person that are eventually forgotten about through The Song About Green. For example, the anxiety you feel riding an airplane to go abroad for the first time, reading your crush’s favorite book to feel closer to them, actively listening to music, among other things. I know the process of growing up is different for everyone, but I’m sure we all share the complex and very sensitive emotions during that time in life. If my readers can remember their experiences during their youth through reading this book, I’d be very happy and honored as an author.

Gao Yan
Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1996. After graduating from the National Taiwan University of Arts as a visual communication design major, Gao participated in a short-term study abroad program at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts as a painting major. Gao’s first manga series The Song About Green was published in Monthly Comic Beam (KADOKAWA) from June 2021 to May 2022, and was published as a book in May 2022 as The Song of Green – Gather the Wind (KADOKAWA). Other works include binding and illustrations for the Haruki Murakami novel Abandoning a Cat: Memories of my Father (Bungeishunju).
Twitter：@_gao_yan
Instagram：@_gao_yan

Photography Kazuo Yoshida
Edit Takahiro Fujikawa
Translation Mimiko Goldstein

The post How Happy End and Haruomi Hosono’s Music Prompted Taiwanese Manga Artist Gao Yan’s Stories appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

From “music as a job” to “music as an extension of daily life”

――When did you get the idea to make a solo album?

Yuma Abe: Maybe around two years ago. After we finished Never Young Beach’s 4^th album, STORY, I guess there was part of me that felt suffocated. Like I had to make a certain kind of music as Never Young Beach, or if I liked a certain kind of music, I’d feel bad if I was at all imposing on my bandmates. I used to be able to be more selfish about making the kind of music that I liked. My bandmates tell me not to worry about that kind of thing. But after being in the band for five or six years, there are times when I feel a bit of pressure about various things. I started to have the vague thought that if I were solo, I could do whatever I wanted without worrying.

――So you felt a kind of external pressure, and at the same time, you were going through an internal change where you felt like you wanted to be more true to your feelings.

Yuma: That was a big part of it. So when I started making music by myself, I didn’t feel at all like, “I want a lot of people to listen to this.” I felt like the act of singing to people itself was a bit forced. So I figured that it’d be nice if people could just listen like, “Oh, I didn’t know this sort of thing was out there.” That’s how it started.

――Ultimately, your first solo album, Fantasia, is quite a leap from your band’s sound.

Yuma: I had some time on my hands during the coronavirus, and at first, I thought I’d write some songs for the band. But I wondered what I could sing about with the band. This is something that I feel about the world as well—but I feel like there are too many optimistic songs. I feel like everything has become positive, like “Do your best!” Of course, that’s fine, but I’m tired of it, so I wanted to make something that was more like a soliloquy, something that only my friends would listen to.

――So you imagine this album to be something personal, like a “soliloquy” or something “only your friends would listen to.”

Yuma: It’s a bit introverted—or I guess, it’s not as open to the outside world as our band is. I can’t even imagine doing this with the same energy as our band, like, “Woo!” (laughs) I became interested in all kinds of things, and that’s reflected in the album. I also wanted to do this like I was just having fun with friends, in a casual way that felt closer to everyday life like, “If you’re free, wanna play bass for me?” And that’s because I’ve been working with my bandmates for years now. Maybe it’s the difference in the sense of responsibility, but with my band, I say stuff like, “That’s no good” or “Let’s change that take.” With my friends, I can naturally just let things fly. (laughs) Even if the bass and drums are out of sync, I feel like that can be interesting.

――Were you trying to return to music as an extension of your daily life as opposed to music as your job? 

Yuma: Yeah, that’s it. Just like the listeners, if I thought a song was cool, I’d listen to it over and over again and make my own song, and I’d just create based on that feeling. It was purely fresh and fun.

Don’t force things and resist being “easy to understand”

――I listened to your first song, and it immediately won me over from the moment I heard it. One of the major changes in this album is the vocal style. The songs feel like you’re just plopping your voice on top of the melody or singing without exerting all your energy.

Yuma: Actually, there were songs that I properly recorded and corrected the pitch on, but I felt it wasn’t right for this album, so I re-recorded almost all the vocals at home. I didn’t have enough power at home, so there are a lot of hissing noises on the tracks. But that’s on a lot of the old music that I love, so I didn’t want to worry about it too much. Someone said that although there’s a tendency to eliminate noise from music these days, there’s no such thing as silence in any environment. It’s true that even in everyday life, we can hear the rustling sound of the wind and leaves. So when I heard what that person said, I thought, “That’s right.” But I was born in 1990 and grew up in an era where it was normal to eliminate those sounds, so the task of leaving them in was really scary. Even now, I have this weird feeling where I’m wondering if it’s actually okay.

――But maybe because of that, I can hear the atmosphere in the sound. In the song and the performance.

Yuma: I did want to record the atmosphere as much as possible. So I felt like something would be destroyed if I raised my voice too much. I love Devendra Banhart, and Shintaro Sakamoto’s solo work, and of course, Haruomi Hosono…I feel like their music has an atmosphere. I think that’s quite hard to do with the band…I do think it’s a positive thing to make music where you belt out singing about things that anyone can relate to. But when that goes too far, it becomes an exchange of emotions rather than music. When someone knocks their emotions up against yours, you want to respond, right? So I think it was like returning that to a neutral state, creating some distance, and just having a chat. I wanted that distance to come out in the sound. Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of Takeshi Yoro’s books, and he says that people try to get rid of things without meaning. For example, we use herbicides to get rid of weeds. But I was talking about how much richness meaningless things can bring about—and this might be different from what Yoro wanted to say—but overall, I made the album with a feeling of: I don’t have to know what it means, and I’ll just include that stuff for now.

――So without judging whether there’s meaning or thinking about it with your head, you just made it with your senses.

Yuma: I thought I shouldn’t think about it. With the guitar that Devendra contributed to this album, if I thought about whether he’d be able to play the same phrase again, I don’t think he’s calculated it like that.　It’s intuition and an accumulation [of experience] from his everyday life. I can’t do that sort of thing without intentionally aiming for it, so I still have a long way to go.

――When I listened to this album, I noticed all the songs didn’t feel forceful. Even when you look at the world, for example, there’s a system where so-called influencers blatantly show their influence, and no one can escape their power. But Fantasia resists power. The performance is really simple, and the number of notes is thoroughly cut down.

Yuma: I want to cut down the number of notes in the future. I think I’ve come to appreciate the merit of that. Recently, I’ve started listening to ambient music, like Mother Earth’s Plantasia by Mort Garson. Even though it [ambient music] doesn’t include personal thoughts, or words to convey them directly, somehow, they come across. I think it might be because they appeal to human imagination or other people’s feelings. Nowadays, everything gravitates towards being easy to understand. But I feel like when I was a kid, there was a little more fun in wanting to gravitate towards what you don’t know and research it. Today, people won’t look at something if it isn’t easy to understand, and it won’t become a hit unless it’s easy to understand to some extent. I think I have a longing for things that aren’t like that.

――That could be said of lyrics, too. Compared to your band, I feel like the songs have fewer words, and in turn, that makes them more abstract. On the other hand, some of the lyrics are very specific.

Yuma: With a band, especially if you consider live performances, I think that to some extent, it’s good to have lyrics that are relatable for everyone. But this time, I felt like it was fine if only I could understand the lyrics, or if I wanted to say something more directly. In the song, “Suteki na Bunka,” there are lyrics about how I was making mochi and I felt like, How did I even sing that? (laughs) If I sang about the same thing with the band, I feel like the audience might be confused. But with this, I felt like it was okay, and it was fun to be able to write like that, so I’d like to keep at it in the future.

――Does that mean you were prepared to leave it up to the listener?

Yuma: It might be more like “leaving it as is,” rather than “leaving it up to them.” (laughs) It’s like, I’m just going to make this and leave it here, and if anyone wants to eat it, they’re welcome to. If you aren’t interested, you don’t have to touch it at all. This might be idealistic, and it’s realistically close to impossible—but I want listeners to suddenly encounter my music when they’re not thinking about anything, without being exposed to social media or announcements. Wouldn’t that be the best? This is true of when you make plans too. Aren’t there times when you make plans to hang out with a friend, and then on the day of, you feel like it’s sort of a pain? It’s the most fun when you’re like, “Are you free? Let’s hang out!” I was hoping to bring out that feeling of unexpected fun in my music.

Collaborating naturally with Devendra Banhart and Haruomi Hosono

――Maybe it’s difficult these days to have unexpected encounters with music. It’d be incredible if this album could break through that barrier. I’m curious to see how people who haven’t had that kind of encounter before react when they stumble upon this album.

Yuma: I’m curious about it, but it’s fine if people say it isn’t for them, and I feel like, Isn’t that kind of distance nice? (laughs) But one breakthrough I had as a result of making this album was that even though I started it without deciding anything, before I knew it, Devendra was playing guitar for me, and Hosono was mixing for me. I’ve made attempts to collaborate with Devendra previously through my staff, but it didn’t work out. And then it just somehow happened when I contacted him directly. So I realized that if I gravitate towards what I find fun, I may make mistakes, but it might just work itself out. I thought, so this is the “spontaneity” that Hosono is always talking about (laughs). There’s something carefree about the people I admire, including Hosono, and there are a lot of people who are like, “What? I’m not thinking of anything in particular.” I guess that must work better for them. This gave me a bit of confidence too, and making this album with that part of me was a moving experience—or I guess, I discovered something new about myself.

――Going forward, how do you think this solo work will be reflected in your band?

Yuma: Hm, that’s difficult. I’d already thought about doing something like this with the band, but trying probably made me tired. Like if I make a song with just synths, what will happen? Or if I think about the live performance, I want the song to have a bit more energy. Maybe it’s okay to have different styles in different places.

――Maybe you’ll have this kind of space in the future, different from the space you have with the band.

Yuma: Yeah. With this album, I realized how much the sound changes when you play with different people. If I were able to make music in different forms depending on the situation, I might be able to keep making music for the rest of my life. Music is probably more fun in the long run if you have somewhere to “escape” to, don’t you think?

Yuma Abe
Yuma Abe was born on September 4^th, 1990 in Tokyo. In 2014, he started his career as the vocalist and guitarist of Never Young Beach, combining native Japanese sounds with influences from American indie music. He writes all the band’s songs. Yuma has also performed at many music festivals in Japan such as Fuji Rock Festival and Summer Sonic, and with international artists such as Devendra Banhart, The Growlers, Mild High Club, and HYUKOH. He has also gone overseas to tour and perform at festivals across Asia, including Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Taipei, Seoul, and Bangkok. He has written songs and sang for Tomita Lab and Neconemuru, as well as participated in a cover song for an NTT Communications promotional video. Since around 2017, he has had conversations and been on the radio with Haruomi Hosono, one of his greatest influences. He also performed at “Yellow Magic Show 3,” an event commemorating Hosono’s 50-year career. In addition, he wrote a commentary for Hosono’s 2019 book, Tomatteita Tokei Ga Mata Ugoki Hajimeta.
Instagram : @_yuma_abe/
Thaian Records : https://thaianrecords.co

Photography Mikako Kozai

Translation Aya Apton

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