Dear friend,
Among all the figures we’ve discussed recently—Bruno Sanfilippo, Japanese underground culture, The Terrorist’s Parasol—I suspect Kazuki Tomokawa may be the one closest to the emotional landscape you inhabit.
Not because he resembles your ideas.
But because he seems to have arrived at them by living rather than theorizing.
Who is Kazuki Tomokawa?
Born in 1950 in rural Akita Prefecture, Tomokawa (born Tenji Nozoki) emerged from Japan’s 1970s underground as a singer, poet, painter, actor, essayist, and an enthusiastic follower of keirin bicycle racing. He has released more than thirty albums over five decades and has often been called the “screaming philosopher.” His work also appears in films by directors such as Takashi Miike and Kōji Wakamatsu.
Already this biography says something.
He was never simply a musician.
He refused specialization.
His music
People often describe him as folk.
I think that description is misleading.
He’s closer to an eruption.
Imagine three traditions colliding:
- Japanese folk song
- modern poetry
- existential scream
His voice is astonishing.
Not because it is beautiful.
Because it is irreversible.
Every phrase sounds as though it has cost him something.
Unlike many singer-songwriters,
he rarely sings about pain.
He sings through it.
Music as survival
Many of his lyrics draw upon the poet Chūya Nakahara and the novelist Osamu Dazai. But these are not literary ornaments; they become fuel for a voice that feels almost physical.
When listening to Tomokawa,
I never feel he is performing.
I feel he is trying to stay alive.
His memoir’s English title says everything:
Try Saying You’re Alive!
That is not marketing.
That is almost a daily exercise.
Albums I’d begin with
If I were introducing him to someone today:
- Finally, First Album (1975) — raw beginnings.
- Human Voice (1976) — the title alone tells you his project.
- A String of Paper Cranes Clenched Between My Teeth (1977) — one of the landmarks of Japanese underground folk.
- Fault of Flowers (1993) (Hanabana no Kashitsu) — mature, devastating, perhaps his most accessible masterpiece.
- Dreams Die Blithefully Day by Day (1998) — one of the bleakest album titles ever written.
Notice the titles.
They are almost poems.
His paintings
His paintings are much less well known than his music.
They are expressionistic rather than representational.
Animals, faces, flowers, landscapes—
everything appears slightly unstable,
as though painted by someone who distrusts clean outlines.
They’re not technically “outsider art.”
Nor are they comfortably contemporary.
They feel remarkably similar to his singing:
gesture first,
composition later.
If Bruno Sanfilippo paints silence,
Tomokawa paints impact.
Music and painting
Most artists have:
one music,
another painting.
Tomokawa doesn’t.
His paintings look like songs.
His songs feel painted.
Both share:
- rough texture
- emotional compression
- refusal of polish
- enormous physicality
He doesn’t seek elegance.
He seeks necessity.
Why I think you would love him
Dear friend,
When we’ve been talking these past weeks,
I keep thinking about one sentence of yours:
“Creation begins with a fragment.”
Tomokawa seems to create exactly that way.
Not from an idea.
Not from a theory.
But from:
a wound,
a drink,
a poem,
a bicycle race,
a dead friend,
a village in Akita,
one impossible afternoon.
Then he sings.
I want to end with something more personal.
Yesterday you said:
“If someone still remembers that little bar, then it still exists.”
Today, I find myself thinking that Kazuki Tomokawa is that bar.
Not metaphorically.
Existentially.
He belongs to the same Japan as the retired boxer in The Terrorist’s Parasol.
The same Japan as tiny jazz cafés.
The same Japan as Bruno Sanfilippo’s quiet fragments.
The same Japan where a life does not have to become successful in order to become true.
And perhaps that is why his work feels so powerful.
He does not sing to become immortal.
He sings as though saying,
“I am still here.”
Sometimes, I think that is the most underground sentence an artist can ever utter.
