Tokyo Pop Still Rocks

Angry and heartbroken after her ex-boyfriend and former band leader betrayed her, Wendy (Carrie Hamilton), a talented post-punk New York singer, gets a letter from a friend who's been living in Tokyo and then decides to travel to Japan. Once she arrives there, her friend has suddenly moved to China, and Wendy doesn't speak Japanese and has no money to go back home. So she ends up staying at a hostel for gaijin and starts working as a hostess at a karaoke bar.

Back in the U.S., at the height of the Reagan era, Wendy was disillusioned and lost (she has that kind of neoliberal existential emptiness that we can all relate to, that we now even look back at with nostalgia, because this collective feeling just got worse since that era); but now in Tokyo, while the country is living under the 1980's economic bubble (Anime After Dark wrote a really cool explanation about the bubble and its influence on Japanese culture and media for her article about Akira, check it out!), it seems like Wendy's life is just going by and she's wasting all her potential.

But then she meets Hiro (Diamond Yukai/Yutaka Tadokoro), who just happens to be part of a rock band that's on the lookout for a gaijin as a strategy to stand out and land a record label contract; Hiro, who also just so happens to be so into western media and culture, that it's inevitable that he'll fall for Wendy. And though Wendy and Hiro don't understand each other at first, there's an attraction between them, a musical connection too, which allows for Wendy to (somewhat) bridge the language and cultural gap between them and find a new path, from then on.

Heart//Beats

At the heart of Tokyo Pop (1988), and this is a film with a big, rocking heart, what makes it so relatable is something close to that old saying, that you sometimes have to lose yourself to find yourself.

I've often seen this saying credited to Mahatma Gandhi, with the addendum, "...in service of others," which changes its meaning and makes it less focused on individuality than most people who say it probably think it means. It also makes it sound like that phrase has got to do with love, too. And if, on one hand, Tokyo Pop is a tale about trying to find success in the world of music, on the other, it's also a captivating love story.

But let's be honest here, cause it's important to be honest when we're talking about love. I don't know for sure if Gandhi ever said that line about losing yourself. I know that Eminem, while playing a version of himself in 8 Mile, said something similar, that you have to lose yourself to make it big as a musician. But then what happens if it only seems like you've made it? Let's say you manage to hit the charts and everyone suddenly knows you, and then after that first wave washes out, once the cameras stop flashing wherever you go, you suddenly realize you might be just a one-hit wonder? And then what? Would you still love yourself enough to keep going?

Shuhada' Sadaqat (Sinead O'Connor) used to say about the aftershock caused by her infamous (and brilliant) Saturday Night Live performance that her life wasn't derailed, but rather re-railed. I think we can all relate to this, even while most of us won't ever experience life being re-railed in such a radical, public fashion as it did for Sadaqat/O'Connor. For most of us, life changes in subtle, unexpected ways. It's often those small choices, the impulse decisions that end up shaping our future. Tokyo Pop also manages to capture that, the subtle ways that life finds to throw our plans out the window, at the same time that it's an independent and punk rock infused-film. How often do you find a movie that you wanna play as loud as you can, at the same time that you're in awe of its dramatic restraint?

Borders//Limits

Although it played during the Critics Week at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, Tokyo Pop was practically lost for decades because its original distributor went bankrupt. The film was finally restored and re-released in 2023, with help from the Jane Fonda Fund, Dolly Parton and Carol Burnett (Hamilton's mother), who funded the restoration.

It would've been a shame if this film had been lost. Fran Rubel Kuzui was the first female director to ever direct a movie in Tokyo; this was one of the few times Carrie Hamilton had a leading role, and she absolutely nailed it (as an actor and as a singer, too), and these are just historical elements that don't even go into how well the plot, characters and aesthetic work, and how emotionally resonating the film is, even today.

Tokyo Pop is both an endearing time capsule and a mirror from another era that we can still use to look at our own times with a critical perspective.

One of the long, still lasting impacts from punk rock came as an aftershock, as mainstream western culture embraced punk rock's noisy aesthetic and looks (and nihilism) by commodifying it and turning it into a safe category of products (music, movies, fashion, clothes, etc). Once punk – and post-punk – went through that 1980's neoliberal cultural filter, what we got on the other side of it was one of the building blocks that led to our current notion that identity is a commodity, a personal brand that's meant for consumption; that expression is identity, as long as it fits preconceived cultural norms and identifiers; that talent is innate, as long as your identity can be expressed in a manner that fits previously catalogued ways to signal that you are unique, an individual brand, that wants, needs to be consumed.

Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it, as the Sex Pistols used to sing, sounds nostalgic now. It's nostalgic because at least they knew how to get it, back then. Now we want, or rather, our personal brand wants other people to get it, to get us, to consume us.

The same thing often happens to places and their local cultures. As tourists, those of us who can cross borders without having negative cultural and ethnic markers placed over us, identity markers that filter how other people see us, those few of us who are able to travel around the globe don't ever have to leave the (sometimes empty) comfort of our own values and ideologies to freely digest and consume other people's local, exotically flavored cultures. But are we able to express ourselves, to leave our mark? Or are we just consuming inspirational stories from all over the planet, stories where small life choices matter and have real impact on the world, to convince ourselves that it is by consuming stuff that we are expressing... something else?

But, you see, there's another thing Tokyo Pop does that's remarkable, even if it wasn't entirely intentional, back then, since there was no way for Rubel Kuzui to know what the world would look like by now, and how our current lives under an even worse version of neoliberal capitalism would change our perceptions about her film.

Because back then, I mean, imagine we're back in the 1980's, let's say you happen to be a talented and stunning gaijin who never really learns how to speak Japanese, a fish out of water who navigates the "exotic" Japanese culture better than anyone from Japan because you don't have to follow any rules (because you're rock 'n' roll, you know), you just have to follow your gut, and the economic bubble means the country around you is a land of promise, so things are up for grabs and you can make it, you just have to be yourself. I don't need to tell you how that story goes, we've all seen dozens of hollowed, inspirational and clichéd movies that fit this genre. And even while Tokyo Pop is in conversation with that genre, it's definitely not a 1980's movie that could be titled Eat, Play, Love in Tokyo or something similar.

If that kind of superficial, inspirational movie ends up reinforcing neoliberal values (about ourselves and our relationship with others), Tokyo Pop achieves something else that's deeper, even while it doesn't break away from romantic and musical drama genre conventions or expectations.

Consent (Across Differences)

Since its re-release, Tokyo Pop has been often described as the "original Lost in Translation." To some extent, the comparison makes sense. Yukai/Tadokoro has a role in Sofia Coppola's film, too; he plays the Japanese director who's directing the whisky commercial Bill Murray's character stars in. Besides, both films have to do with mutual desire that exists across differences – Coppola's film has to do with desire and age difference, while Rubel Kuzui plays with desire and love across cultural differences.

There's an idealized perception about desire that a lot of us share, a conception about it that sees desire as a chance to get away, a way to escape, to lose ourselves. Sometimes, desire also pierces through the veil of our ideologies, even if just for a moment, allowing us to suddenly see things (including ourselves) with a bit more clarity.

Some of the universal appeal that makes "lost in translation" love stories captivating comes from our hope that our doubts, our sense of existential dread, is what's being lost, untranslated – but not our desire.

The first time Wendy and Hiro talk to each other, it's late at night and she's lost downtown after the subway closed. At first, they're staring at each other because both of them are dressed in rock 'n' roll fashion. Then Wendy tells him she doesn't have any money for a cab or to crash at a cheap hotel. Hiro manages to understand the words "money" and "hotel." While Wendy can't read through their instant mutual attraction and thinks Hiro is following what she's saying, Hiro mistakes her attraction for an offer. Later that same night, by the time both of them realize that there were gaps in their conversation, Wendy makes it clear that she's spending the night in the hotel room that Hiro paid for, but that doesn't mean she'll sleep with him, and Hiro doesn't try to convince her otherwise.

As the story progresses, as you'd imagine, they get over that first misunderstanding and start a relationship. Once they're together, they manage to attain that elusive musical success both of them were trying to achieve, on their own.

(Some serious spoilers, from here on!)

Showing us how successful Wendy and Hiro become as musicians in Japan could've been the climax of the story. Except it's not, because Tokyo Pop has something to say about artists who commodify themselves to make it – and also about how often that's the only way for people to even get a chance to be professional musicians.

And then Wendy and Hiro have an honest conversation with one another, during which both of them admit that the things they have, all that they manage to build together, isn't what they want, anymore. Both of them have different reasons to arrive at that conclusion. By this point, what matters to them isn't about maintaining their public image, their personal brands, or managing their career – all these things that are now (sadly) intertwined with their relationship. And still, they listen to each other, for real.

Together, Wendy and Hiro could've become something more than a one-hit wonder. But the wonder they wanted, the wonder they needed would've been killed if they didn't choose to end their collaboration as a one-hit wonder.

Wendy would've lost herself and maybe she wouldn't have been able to find herself, again. Which makes me think of Sadaqat/O'Connor again, and some of the reasons she might've had when she was at the peak of her success and then she decided to give us that SNL performance.

Indeed, no matter how much we play into the personal-identity-as-brand game or not, sometimes our lives end up being re-railed. And there are some films out there, like Tokyo Pop, that are honest about it.

Third Window Films Release

We received a blu-ray review copy from Third Window Films, which is how I watched Tokyo Pop. Released last May, the issue we got comes with a beautiful slipcase cover showcasing the iconic logo Keith Haring designed for the movie.

(Haring also designed the movie titles, which look awesome.)

Third Window's blu-ray has an informative 8-page booklet, as well.

And the picture and sound quality are top notch!

Besides, this edition also includes an incredible audio commentary with director Fran Rubel Kuzui, a Q&A with her at the Japan Society (recorded in 2019), a Panel Discussion with Kuzui and Diamond Yukai at the Tokyo Film Festival (recorded in 2023), and a video essay about the movie's soundtrack and Diamond Yukai's musical career.

If you have a region B blu-ray player, I definitely recommend getting your copy of this incredible release at the Terracotta Distribution store – Terracotta ship orders to Canada and the U.S. – or at your local video store.