Chuck Clenney

Music: Inesuri Bushi 稲すり節

Artist: Maeyama Shingo’s Amamism Band  Island greetings – Shima no aisatsu!

This is Dr. Evangelia Papoutsaki, SICRI’s co convener [1], co-editor of Horizon online magazine, and the host of Island Conversations Podcast Series. The aim of this podcast is to promote the Amami islands’ rich culture and nature and to highlight the work of the people who make a significant contribution to the islands’ arts and cultural landscape.

In our inaugural podcast, we will be hearing from Chuck Clenney. Originally from Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky in the United States, Chuck moved to Amami Oshima in August 2018 and has been living on the southern side of the island since, teaching in Setouchi Town at 12 elementary and junior high schools between the main island, Kakeroma, Yoro, and Uke islands. In addition to teaching English, Chuck is also very involved with the Amami music world as a drummer, a DJ, and as an event planner. He also hosts a radio show on Setoraji in Setouchi called “World Chuck Melody” and recently started Good Music Japan to try to help Amami and Japanese artists promote their music outside of the islands. He also works with local museums and historians to translate vital information into English in lieu of Amami’s recent World Natural Heritage registration. And that’s not all! Chuck is also known for his chili peppers on the island. But more on that later!

Chuck, welcome to Amami Conversations Podcast Series.

Thank you so much Valia. It’s great to join with you today on this discussion.

Before we talk about what brought this Kentuckian to the Amami islands, let us start on a more personal note. Would you share with us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and what were some of your early engagements with the Japanese culture and language?

I grew up in Northern Kentucky, in the Cincinnati area, which is in the Midwestern United States and is kind of a convergence of all the different facets and cultures of America. You get a little bit of the Manifest Destiny adventurousness of the West, kind of the industriousness of the New England area up north, and a little bit of the agrarian South, people who are working with the soil every day, and it all kind of slams together in Cincinnati and in Kentucky as well. You get these really unique characters like Muhammad Ali or Abraham Lincoln, Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson. It’s kind of a fertile ground for unique people. I’m really happy to have grown up in that kind of environment and it really exposed me to a lot of different cultures, especially Japanese culture. I first encountered Japan when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. In Dayton, Ohio, there was a late-night public access channel that we barely were able to get in Cincinnati. They had a “Japanimation” show that was on at 2 or 3 in the morning [that] I accidentally found one night, and they were showing the anime Fist of the North Star. I’m not a huge anime fan, to be honest. That’s not really why I got into Japan, but I remember watching that and just being completely blown away, like, “Wow! Japan is making cartoons like this! What’s going on over there!?” That was probably my initial touching of Japanese art and culture. And then, of course, I grew up as a Nintendo kid, playing video games. So, the “gross national cool” of Japan definitely affected me in those ways. Initially, I enjoyed all those things but never in a million years thought that I would be studying Japanese and be living in Japan for almost a decade, but here we are. That’s how I initially got into it. Then I went to school down in Lexington, Kentucky, which is about an hour south of Cincinnati, and, while I was there, I decided to learn Japanese, [although] I was studying German at the time; especially a lot of modern Japanese art was really blowing my mind and got me really interested but none of the information was written in English. I kind of bit the bullet and decided to quit German and go with it. I started studying Japanese so that I could read more about these artists and that’s kind of how I ended up here.

After I graduated, I did the JET Program and that was my initial step into living in Japan. Before that, I came and studied abroad for a month and a little bit of change. That was a good chance to get a taste and get accustomed to living in a foreign country, because this was the first time I’d ever been outside of the United States. It was a vastly different experience. That’s how I came to know and be interested in Japan, mostly through studying modern art and music and just trying to understand what’s going on here and how it can create such unique art.

Chuck Clenney at Kakeroma no Mori Marsa on Kakeroma Island

That must have had an impact on you, because in 2018, you were awarded a fellowship by the International Center for Journalists, the prestigious ICFJ, to come to Japan and study Japanese hip hop. Tell us about it.

You know, being from Cincinnati, hip hop is pretty integral there. There is a huge hip hop scene. I grew up loving music and listening to music, and especially my older brother was always introducing me to a lot of cool bands. I used to go to garage sales with my mom every Saturday and Sunday. While she was shopping around, I would get really interested in people’s records and their collections. And so, at that time, there wasn’t really any interest in vinyl records at all. So, I would just go up to people and say, “Do you have any records? How much do you want for all of them?” And I would just buy their entire collection for US$20 or 2000 yen or so, and then take it home and listen to every single record and just kind of figure out what I liked and what I didn’t like. It was really interesting to get to know those people through their music collection in a way. Through that, I learned a lot about music and I loved it and was always listening to the radio. And when MTV came out, I was watching MTV a lot. Music was a big part of my life, so when I moved to Lexington, I discovered that there was a radio station as part of the University of Kentucky, WRFL 88.1FM Radio Free Lexington and accidentally stumbled upon it. At the time, I didn’t realize the general manager was DJing in the station. I walked in and we got to talking about music. I ended up running the station there for a long time and worked as the hip hop director. And through my experience at the station, too, I learned a lot about different hip hop from local DJs there. And then, [at the same time] I was studying literature and writing. I was writing a lot at the time [about music], and I kind of delved into journalism a bit and, obviously, was reporting a lot of my work on the radio. So initially, when I left the station and graduated, I moved to Gunma prefecture for two years. While I was there, I improved my Japanese a lot and went to Tokyo on the weekends to hang out and play. And through there, I discovered the Tokyo hip hop world, which is a very vast and complicated place. At the time, my Japanese wasn’t good enough to really understand what everybody was talking about, unless, you know, there was a lyric sheet that I could go home and slowly translate.

It was nice to get that initial taste of what was going on and try to figure it out. After those two years, I went back to the US and worked for a Japanese company. The whole time, I was still DJing at WRFL. I was working in journalism a little bit in Kentucky and writing about music and the local music scene and different things and I saw the opportunity for this fellowship to write about unique parts of modern Japan. There’s an MIT professor named Ian Condry, who wrote a book on hip hop Japan a few years ago, that’s pretty great [and] very thorough. But you know, as with any music scene, things change weekly, monthly, yearly, the culture changes, venues closed, opened up, old artists retire, new artists come up. I thought maybe I need to take what Ian did and update it a bit and delve into different sections of what he didn’t cover or covered. but not in detail.

I applied for this fellowship and I received it. I went to Japan and I spent about a month and a half traveling around. Three articles came from that: One was an article about University of Kentucky themed restaurants in Osaka and Hyogo, which was really interesting and a weird connection to Kentucky, to my hometown, and my university. The second one was about 20 female Japanese MCs changing the world of hip hop. I got to interview a lot of them and that was really fascinating because they highlighted the fact that, because hip hop is a Western art form, it was kind of a vehicle that women in Japan could empower themselves with and show their own independence and be truly who they are. Because, if you use like enka, or a Japanese genre of music, it has a lot of baggage attached to it, so you can’t really let go. So hip hop was an amazing vehicle and there are all kinds of female artists in Japan doing really cool work with that as well. The third piece was the hip hop article about Yellow Magic Orchestra and their influence on the early era of New York hip hop, specifically Afrika Bambaataa, Planet Rock, and this interplay that’s been happening over the last number of decades between Tokyo and New York, constantly influencing each other and pushing each other to be better. That article took me five years to write after I went out there. It ended up being pretty complex but it allowed me to see the Tokyo hip hop scene and that world again, with better eyes, and a more educated ear. I loved it, it’s incredible. I discovered so many amazing things during this time.

DJing at Cafe Ceol in Naze, Amami

It seems that music really has been part of your life from very early on, and it has really played an important role in your life in Amami. Can you tell us how you ended up in Amami?

Music is a universal language, with no words, but we all understand it; we can feel it. When I was living in Gunma, I went to an all-night music festival called Metamorphose in Shizuoka, at, like, a go-kart track, I think what it normally was. At the time, I went because there was a band, Yura Yura Teikoku, who I really loved and I wanted to see. I was walking through a field in the middle of the night and came upon this DJ, Nujabes, who came to be a pretty famous Japanese hip hop legend after he passed away [soon] after that event. He was playing an Asazaki Ikue song, who is a famous singer from Kakeroma island here in Amami. I heard her voice carrying across a field and I had no idea what she was singing, I don’t think anyone else did either because she sings in Shimaguchi 島口 (Amami island language). But you can feel the emotion, the experience in her voice, and it just completely blew my mind. So afterwards, I went back and searched to find out who it was and discovered it was Asazaki-san (who I work with now). Then, through that, I discovered where Amami Oshima was. I researched about it a little bit in English [and] became fascinated because she wasn’t singing in Japanese, but I could feel her, her passion, her emotion. It just blew my mind.

That’s initially how I found out about Amami Oshima. And then I moved back to America. I was working at the radio station and also translating for a Japanese automobile company because the Japanese automotive industry of Toyota, Honda, and Denso are pretty heavily operational in Kentucky and Ohio. That helped me improve my Japanese a lot. After four years of working with them, I quit and helped start two LPFM community radio stations in Lexington. Once I got those going with the NGO job, after two years, they were finally at a stable place, and I decided that I needed to go back to Japan. I wanted to explore an area of Japan I hadn’t been to yet. So, in my application for this job, I said Amami Oshima seems very interesting. When I was in Gunma, I had visited Yakushima as well and was very impressed by the nature there and the depth in the mysteriousness of it all. I thought, the Nankai islands, I really want to explore them. I applied and luckily I ended up here in August 2018. So happy about that!

You came in through the JET Program, is that so?

I did, yes. There aren’t really too many options as far as teaching English in Amami. It’s basically either JET or Interac, but JET is definitely the better of the two as far as their stability and salary, and the support system. I was very lucky to be able to do that. Initially, when I got here, I knew about Amami on the surface level but I didn’t really know too much about the music world. I only knew about Asazaki Ikue, who is living in Yokohama, so she wasn’t even on the island. I thought, well, there must be a traditional music world, but I don’t know what’s happening there, there might not be anything. I mistakenly sold all my DJ equipment. I got rid of most of my records because I didn’t want to carry them all the way from Kentucky to Amami. And I was wrong, there’s a thriving music scene here! Since then, I bought a lot of those same records again and bought new DJ equipment. It was a good thing to discover, but I really had no idea. Not a lot of information is written in English about Amami, particularly about the music world. It’s a little hard to access, but once I got here, I realized I shouldn’t have sold all of those things.

Teaching English on Yorojima Island

It seems that music is one aspect of the island life that stands out for you, not only because you have that personal connection to music, but, I guess, also the island music is very special, and in what ways?

That’s a great question. Historically, when I think about Amami Oshima, people have lived here since the Jomon Era. There’s Jomon pottery found here from 6000 BCE. And until 1466, when the Ryukyu Kingdom conquered Amami, this was a completely independent country. I think in a lot of ways, it still is. I mean, it’s Japan, but it’s not Japan for me.The era of the Edo period, when Amami was under the Satsuma Domain rule, and basically being enslaved, being forced to grow sugarcane to fund the modernization of Japan, during that time, almost all of the records and history of Amami were destroyed by the Satsuma people. And so, Shimaguchi, the island language, was the only way to convey to future generations this kind of ancient knowledge, these ancient stories, and this oral tradition. It’s very complex and very mysterious what they’re talking about or what they’re trying to convey, and nobody really knows who wrote the songs, nobody knows what they’re specifically about; there’s a lot of theory. For me, that’s fascinating. And it reminds me a little bit of Kentucky. I mean, we have a long history of bluegrass music as well and conveying oral history, oral tradition, through to future generations and of course, additionally American blues music, and work songs, and soul, and Mississippi blues. I think I related to that a lot and initially felt that these are not just songs, but people saying ancient knowledge, transferred from generation to generation. The depth of that really was fascinating to me and caused me to want to learn shimaguchi and try to understand what the songs were about. I think, learning shimaguchi, and learning what some of the songs are talking about, really allowed me to connect with the Amami people on a much deeper level than I ever imagined, not just as a foreigner coming from the outside. Really, the ability to speak Shimaguchi lets people know that I actually care about learning what the real Amami island is, not just the Japanese surface level stuff of keihan and whatnot. I think music gave me that doorway to really get to see it intimately. And also, because I’m a teacher, I get to see in the schools where people will come and teach the children shamisen, and the kids are all learning Ikkyunyakana and different shima-uta songs. I get to see that direct generational exchange of information firsthand. It’s really a beautiful thing to see.

Interviewing singer Miyata Tomoko on Setouchi FM and meeting Asazaki Ikue at Amami Bunka Hall

Live painting event with Marin Naruse at Art Jazz Cafe BSB in Ashitoku

20:11

It seems that the Island language became a vehicle of sustaining the island identity in so many other ways that were destroyed because of the Satsuma influence. How long did it take you to learn the local dialect?

Oh god, I still am! I mean, the tricky part of Amami shimaguchi is that every shuraku, every village, has its own way of speaking and sometimes it’s an intonation, sometimes it’s a completely different word. Sometimes, if I use Shodon-style, I mostly studied with a person from the south of Kakeroma, and I go to Naze and use those words, people are like, “Chuck, you’re doing it wrong, you got it all wrong”. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s just not yours. That makes it a little tricky. And so, when I’m translating shimaguchi, especially music, I try to think about where the singers are from, and then try to work with people who speak shimaguchi fluently there, and translate each individual word to understand the nuance, so that you can have a fuller translation.

So, it took me a long time and I’m still learning a lot. It’s an ancient language and a lot of it is hidden. And a lot of it, people can listen to and understand, but they can’t speak it. That also comes down to being Kagoshima [which] had a not-so-nice approach to education around the turn of the century. People I know, in their 40s and 50s, if they spoke shimaguchi at school they would get yelled at by their teachers, who were coming from mainland Kagoshima, and they would have to wear a sign that said, “I spoke in shimaguchi” all day. It was looked down upon very much, so they never got to learn the honorific shimaguchi and they never got an opportunity to speak it with their elders, because they didn’t want to disrespect them. So that’s the big problem, there’s a gap. Right now, if I want to find someone who speaks fluent shimaguchi at the honorific level, I have to talk to someone who is at least 65-70 years old, as they’re the ones that really know it properly. There’s a few people who study Shimaguchi and Shimauta music here, and some of them can speak pretty fluently, but it’s very few. It’s an endangered language, no doubt.

Manakan Music Club in Koniya

It is and your work in translating, interpreting the work of Amami musicians is extremely important. For instance, the very beautiful work you’ve done with Asazaki Ikue’s songs where you provide not only the Japanese translation, but also English translation. And you also have the Amami dialect version. That takes a lot of work and a lot of passion and love for what you do. How do you translate these old songs?

It’s an elaborate process. I want to do it justice. So often, I will go through the lyrics and I will figure out the words that I know and the words I don’t. And then I will go around and ask. For her music, because she is from Kedomi on Kakeroma Island and I know that she is singing a lot of  music from there, I work with people from Kedomi or Shodon and ask them individually, “what does this word mean? What level of respect does this word have? Are there any other connotations with the word?” Then I’ll go and ask other people, so I’m not just asking one person and taking their word for it. I’m asking six or seven people what they think this word means and then taking the sum of those discussions and making a decision based on that. That’s how I’m translating each individual term. Because what I found is that a lot of the shimauta song translations up until now are just summaries of the song. Like, Yoisura-bushi is about a group of men leaving on a boat and a bird is flying after them, and the women are praying to the bird to look after their sons and fathers. And that’s great, thank you for that, but it’s not the nuance of the words, it’s not the poetry of the language. So, I want to do that justice. That’s how I go through and do each of the words. I do a shimaguchi to English translation first, then from the English I’ll translate it roughly into Japanese. And then my friend Miyata Tomoko will usually take my Japanese translation and compare it with the English translation and try to make it smoother, more poetic, and easier to understand. So, it’s not just me doing the translation, it’s kind of a whole village offering their knowledge and gathering it. I think there is an urgency to do it now before those people who can speak fluent shimaguchi go away, so it’s critical.

Teaching about American New Years at Ikomo Elementary School on Kakeroma Island

I feel that it is definitely a labor of love. When I was reading the translation of some of the songs of Asazaki Ikue, I could feel that it wasn’t just a translation, there was a poetry in it that only a musician can convey. And you have that connection with that.

My background is also in poetry as well, with literature specifically. As a person that loves music and poetry, I understand that nuance is the key, it’s the flavor of the meal, so you can’t get rid of it.

This, I understand, is part of your Good Music Japan work, through which you have translated, interpreted, and worked with a multitude of different musicians, artists, government entities, and companies. We just mentioned Asazaki Ikue, Takashi Takaoka, Peter Barakan, who recently came to Amami through your latest event, Amami City Museum, Amami FM, the Asivi live house, just to mention but a few. What are some of the challenges but also opportunities the islands are facing right now in terms of their cultural landscape?

26:57

That’s a great question. I think as far as the recent registration of Amami Oshima, as a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, all eyes are on Amami right now. A lot of people are asking questions and want to learn more about it. A lot of that information is in Japanese, but not a lot of it is in English. There’s a lot of information on the Horizon magazine site and they are doing a great job to explain it. Ai Ai Hiroba in Naze now has the Amamikke blog, which has an English section. So, there’s a few people doing some work, especially recently, and trying to get that information out there. But I just think it’s so complex, it’s not easy to understand, and easy to convey, because Amami is this microcosm of influence from Japan and China and its own indigenous ancient culture. It’s a complex flavor and you really have to do some research to understand the depth of it before you even begin to explain what something means. I think having that context takes a little while but doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I’ve tried to do my best, while teaching English here, to work with historians and with local people, translating documents to explain that. Because I know that people are going to get here and, I’ve met tourists firsthand who are like, “hey, can you tell us what this is?” When I first got here, I had those same questions and, if I wasn’t able to speak Japanese, or translate it, I would have had no idea. I know that information, the craving for it is there. I’ve done my best to work with all kinds of different entities to try to convey those things and make it easier for the English speaking world to come to Amami and understand how beautiful it really is, how complex, and historically, and culturally important and unique it really is. I think it has been an adventure for sure.

I’ve been translating shimaguchi and there is a lot of “Oh, what is this?” People give me completely different answers. Who do I believe and what’s the real answer? It’s fascinating work and a lot of trailblazing and groundbreaking.  [For instance] a lot of the animal names [here in Amami] have no English common name, so you have to make a choice whether to use Latin or Japanese or just a completely new name. So you deal with those choices, which are really exciting. I guess Amami was a little bit hidden, not a lot of people knew about it, but also the people who did were maybe intimidated by the depth required to really explain it in a simple way to the rest of the world. So, it’s been an incredible journey. And it wasn’t easy but it’s very rewarding.

Recording a radio show at Amami FM with Peter Barakan, Fumoto Kengo, and Nishi Keigo

I bet! I remember the first time I came to Amami, there was hardly anything in English, I thought if I find something in Japanese, I can get it translated but there was very little online, even in Japanese. The only thing that was well translated in English was the Habu brochure. I guess this was a life and death piece of information, so they had to have it done! When I discovered this whole world of the Amami islands and how unique each part was, I thought, “how come there isn’t enough information, even in Japanese, about these islands?” The danger here and also the opportunity with a UNESCO heritage registration, is that the island is now visible, but through a particular lens, that UNESCO lens that makes it appealing to visitors to come. How can the island prepare best to present itself to the outside world while also retaining that agency of deciding how their culture should be presented? Nature also, as you mentioned, about the language, what words you use to translate the animals and nature of the island, but also how there is a danger of not making it static, like when you preserve something so well, that it doesn’t breathe and grow. In your work through Good Music Japan, it is telling me that there is so much happening on the island, that it’s bubbling with creative expression. How do we get the two together happening?

When I think of the history of Amami, an island isolated deep out in the Pacific, it’s in its own world between Okinawa and Kagoshima on the mainland, isolated for a long time which allowed those cultures to ferment and become so unique. Even the culture within Amami, you have the shuraku concept of the village, the island within the island. A lot of the songs in shimaguchi, or shima-uta songs are different in each village, there’s different lyrics, different ways of singing it. As there used to not be roads that connected them, you had to go by boat, and you’re basically landing in another country when you go to the next village over. I think there’s this long history of isolation. And there’s also a culture here that, if we can let people in Amami know what we’re doing, and they love it and celebrate it, then we don’t need the praise of Tokyo, we don’t really need the rest of the world, like, we have our own thing going on and that’s enough. So, I think there’s a big cultural…I wouldn’t call it a barrier, it’s not really a barrier, it’s more like a cultural phenomenon, like, if we’re big enough on Amami, then we’ve made it, and we don’t really care what anybody else thinks. I love that kind of self-sustaining mentality.

With that in mind, with the World Heritage application, I think a lot of it was pushed on Amami from the Prefecture, “We want to become another world heritage Island, we want to showcase their unique nature, we really want to show off the islands”, but I think the feeling here is kind of mixed. I think a lot of people are excited about opening up to the rest of the world and showing it but a lot of people are really scared that it’s going to permanently change Amami and it might become like a Kyoto overtourism type situation, or you might destroy the nature itself in the process of bringing people to come see it. So it’s this catch 22 situation.

Playing drums at Manakan Music Club in Koniya

For me, the best way is to do what Ogasawara did to some degree: once they got the World Heritage registration, they decided to slowly allow people to come in and limit that growth so that you can make responsible decisions in the process and not show the nature, and represent nature, and the unique culture of Amami, in a way that isn’t fully respectful of the depth of it. I think everyone’s doing a pretty good job so far, as far as really explaining what’s going on and not allowing too many tourists to come to overrun the islands. There’s only one main road that runs throughout the island, so if you have a traffic jam, you’re not going anywhere. There’s no other way to go.

I think a lot of people are trying to be mindful of how to explain Amami. But again, it’s being respectful, like you said, to show that it’s still evolving and that Amami in this modern context is very different than the Amami of 200 years ago. It’s a fascinating place to try to explain, but it’s a major challenge because when you look at it on a map, it looks like a tiny island, but really, it’s far more complicated, as you know.

The contribution Amami FM has made to the revival of Shimauta and also the Asivi live house in reviving and also contributing to contemporary island cultural expression is notable. You have worked with them. Can you tell us a little bit about the most recent work you have done in Amami through Good Music Japan?

I think, especially Kengo Fumoto-san (who runs Asivi/Amami FM), he is probably the hardest working person on the island. He is the glue that binds the music world of Amami Oshima together at the Asivi live house, which is the only real proper live house on the island and serves a critical role as a motivational force for the artist here. It’s a great stepping stone.

I think being in Naze, traditionally the center of the island as far as culture, as far as restaurants, food culture, is good because it’s kind of not really a shuraku, but it’s a neutral place where people from different areas will come. It plays a critical role and so I think Asivi, and Amami FM, which is located on the second floor of Asivi, really plays a critical role in media too, as far as preserving and representing Amami’s unique culture. And so, if you think about it, when you drive around the island, there aren’t a lot of places where you can see signs that are written in shimaguchi. You might find it on a menu, or you might find it in one or two kind of cheeky posters or things, but there’s not a lot of the language written. I mean, not in a way that Māori is in New Zealand, or even Ainu language is in Hokkaido; there’s not that visual representation. So, I think what Amami FM does, and what all the radio stations do, Tatsugo FM, Setoraji in Setouchi, and Uken FM as well, is a great job in listening and recording and capturing the audio, the oral tradition and playing it on the air. And for me, having a background in radio, I know that radio is the most democratic form of media; you don’t need money, you don’t have to go out and buy it, you just buy a radio and you can turn it on and listen to it, and it’s free. And so I think being able to have that here allows all of the islanders, whether they’re in the middle of nowhere or on a remote island, to still feel connected to what’s happening in Naze, what’s happening in the center of Amami City. I think it allows everyone to be unified, and allows everyone to celebrate their own unique culture in a way that Spotify or internet radio just can’t quite do. So with that being said, of course, we wanted to work with them for our first Good Music Japan show, our Work Songs of Amami and The World event. You know, being the center of Amami and having Peter Barakan come from Tokyo, we really wanted to show him the world of Amami music. This was his first time here and, having been a music journalist and DJ and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s manager for 45 plus years, he knows about music, maybe more than anyone else in Japan. He’s definitely in the top 10 and, to have him come here and have his first experience hearing Amami music and being blown away by it with us was amazing.

We had to work with the most critical people doing that good work on the island, which was Asivi and also the live music bar Mayasco as well, and the owner Nishi Keigo. You know, it’s funny because we did an interview at Amami FM with Peter, that should be broadcast sometime in these next few weeks, and Nishi-san called Mayasco an ongaku batake, which means, like a “music farm”. So, he’s farming musicians at Mayasco and I thought, that’s the most beautiful and also the most Amami way to explain, like, how they’re fermenting a music culture here in a place that is so rich in agriculture. Of course, music is being treated the same way. So, yeah, I think they play such a critical role. And so with the work songs event that we did at Asivi, because Peter is such a, you know, voluminous and talented music journalist and knows a lot about blues music and soul, I thought, no one ever really dove into the work songs part of Amami shima uta. There’s party songs, celebration songs, sad songs, there’s songs to sing to children while you’re taking care of them; there’s all kinds of different categories, but no one’s really dealt specifically with the work songs, the songs that were sung when people were building boats or, you know, growing rice, or during Amami’s black sugar slavery period. And so, I thought, it’d be great to see if there’s any mutuality between blues and soul music and shima uta, because as a Kentuckian, I already knew that bluegrass music has a lot of similarities to shima uta. It’s not a shamisen, but it’s a banjo; it’s not sugar, but it’s coal; and so on. I figured if I’m seeing the similarities, surely someone like Peter Barakan would be able to see even more. I thought, if he’s coming, let’s do a work songs event where we can celebrate music but also have the discussion and see if there’s any similarities [in these labor songs] and it was a tremendous success. Of course, the Asivi staff and all the musicians from all across Amami that came brought their own perspective, their own history. And, again, none of this is written down. It’s oral language and oral tradition. That exchange of information is the only way we’ll know about it. I’m so happy that we had it and we recorded it. It was a tremendous success.

42:40

What a tremendous contribution to the island culture! We spoke about culture and music, and I’m curious now to hear about those chili peppers.

My background is in music, but also, I love farming. I love growing my own food. I think there’s nothing more revolutionary that you can do than taking control of your own food supply. I wanted to do a lot of organic farming and my friend Sato Tomoki, who is a shima uta singer as well, [helped]. I had been looking for farmland and I had one too many planters on my veranda here and I think people were getting worried because wildlife was starting to show up. I was asking around about finding land and his grandfather had recently passed away and no one was using his farmland. So, he said, you can use it if you can show me how to farm as well. We started going to work and every day I was out there. I would finish my job around five and go there until it got dark at seven or eight. I just farm on the weekends and grow a lot of things.

 

Making Amami hot sauce from Tankan oranges, red habaneros, passionfruit, and Kokuto sugar

I think through farming is really how I got close to Amami people. The people here touch the soil everyday and so that interaction with nature, whether it’s microbial, whether it’s psychological, I’m not sure, but I think that connection to nature, and the connection of working in nature is really what connects Amamian people to each other. And so, I started growing all kinds of different things. I wanted spice and all that I couldn’t find was Shima-togarashi, just these tiny Tabasco-like peppers. Those grow everywhere and people will put them in vinegar and kind of have a spicy sauce, but the spice level just isn’t enough for me. I brought some habanero seeds from America and I planted them and turned out they were a huge hit. Turns out Amami’s environment is perfect for it, similar to Mexico, where they originated. After growing habanero and passing them around, and slowly finding people who love spicy food just as much as I do, I realized there’s a huge kind of niche for this. I bought a bunch of other seeds that I found from other people in Japan that were growing different pepper varieties and started to experiment and grow Carolina Reaper, Ghost Peppers, and different types. I would pass them around and people love them because, when it’s hot in the summertime, you think you don’t eat spicy food, but actually, if you think about it, all the hottest places in the world have the spicy food because when you eat it, you get the endorphin rush and the capsaicin also makes you sweat, which cools you down. In the middle of the summertime, I started passing them around and finding people who loved them, and it became a huge hit. So, I got to be known as the pepper guy here! I decided to make a hot sauce completely out of Amami ingredients. I use the combination of ginger and garlic that I grew myself, sometimes garlic chives from the garlic, Kakeroma kibisu, which is an Amami kokuto black sugar vinegar, my peppers, and that was pretty much it. Also, a little bit of Amami sea salt from Kakeroma and a few other secret ingredients, but I was sure all of them were from Amami. Also I would experiment with local fruits too like Tankan oranges, passionfruit, guava, dragonfruit, and make all kinds of different hot sauces, which was really fun. [Sharing them was] just a unique way to connect to local people and also figure out new ways to use the complex variety of agricultural produce here on Amami.

A couple of harvests from the farm in Seisui Village, Setouchi Town

It seems to me that your relationship with the island, nature, land, soil, music, culture has evolved over these five years that you have been in Amami Oshima, and also your relationship with the islanders has evolved to the point where they know you for who you are and your contribution. And I would say perhaps now you have a hot and spicy relationship with Oshima, literally speaking, and metaphorically. You have made an amazing contribution.

You have been teaching in schools for many years and also on those smaller islands, Yorojima, Kakeroma, and Ukejima. How is it to go to these islands and teach or how is life on the smaller islands?

Well, I think life there is, compared to the mainland, so interconnected. Everyone is pretty much living in a self-sustaining way. They’ll order their groceries from A‐Coop supermarket, and they’ll get delivered on a boat once a week. Everyone has a freezer that is stocked up just in case a typhoon comes through, or the boat doesn’t come for a while. I think everyone there is very humble. The more I think about it, the more I realize that, because everyone is living in nature, rather than with nature, there’s a humbleness that many people have and I think on the really remote islands, like Yoro and Kakeroma especially, that humbleness knows that at any moment, nature can destroy all of this. That realistic approach to living in cohabitation with nature, I think, is what makes the Amami people so generous, so kind, and so real.

Ishikawa’s Frog photographed in Sekko Village, Setouchi and my postcard art of an Amami Jay

Over the last five years, I’ve discovered that initial kindness, and then thought, “Oh, is that just being kind because I’m not here all the time”, or, “Do they think I’m just going to be here for a short while, so they want me to come back?” After five years, I realized now that the [shimanchu] kindness is just genuine kindness, there’s no ulterior motive, and there’s nothing anyone really wants underneath that. I think it’s just, “Hey, I’ll help you when you need help.” On those remote islands, nobody lives on their own. It’s surviving and succeeding because they have the help of other people. You can’t grow kokuto sugar by yourself. You can’t grow rice on your own. I mean, you can, but in a very small amount. And so, whether it’s building a house, whether it’s going fishing, you need other people to help you and I think Amami is just kind of this almost utopian idea of cooperation and working with nature and being already ready to survive if the boat from Kagoshima never comes. It’s like, we’ll be okay, we’ve been here since 8000 BC or before that, and we figured it out. This resilience is more omnipresent on those remote islands, but it’s still there on the main island, and I still see it quite often.

Teaching kids about Halloween at Ikomo Elementary School on Kakeroma Island

I think there is this word in Amamian, “yui” (lending labor), which is exactly what you’re saying is that without it, you can’t really survive [on your own].

Totally, the kind of interconnectedness in the shuraku is not necessarily like a village of just houses isolated from each other. It’s like a family and everyone’s looking out for each other.  Maybe sometimes looking a little too closely and privacy might be an issue, but, I think that’s just part of the cultural contract that you sign when you join the village. It’s like living with your family, they’re gonna ask you about the details of your life, because they want to know, they genuinely care, and they want to help you when they can. I think that’s really beautiful.

Being interviewed by Watari Yoko on Amami FM and DJing for a live painting event with Chaz at Setouchi Shuhan in Koniya, Setouchi Town

Have you noticed over the last five years that you have been teaching in the smaller communities, in the more peripheral islands, in the Amami archipelago, any population decline or any other issues?

51:25

I think in general in Japan, the population has been in tremendous decline. I see it on the remote islands, too. I’ve seen one of my schools close in Kakeroma, just because there were no children to go to the schools. I think there’s a push for a lot of people to leave and go elsewhere, whether it’s in Setouchi or Naze for work. A lot of those remote areas are being closed. But at the same time, because of World Heritage, and because of the increase in tourism, I also see a lot of people moving here from Tokyo, or Osaka, or different places who want to start a bed and breakfast or a guesthouse, or they can do remote work here, and they just want to get out of the urban jungle and come to a place that’s quiet. At the same time, you see this flight of people that are leaving for work, who are from here, but also you see this influx of people who want to genuinely come here and help create a new culture. I think of all the places, Nishiamuro village on Kakeroma is the most indicative example of a lot of people coming from outside, from different areas, whether it’s Chiba, or Tokyo, or Osaka, and kind of bringing their own skills, their own talent, and coming here, and not necessarily imposing it on other people, but working with the local elders and people to like, understand and learn about the local culture, and then figure out the best way to kind of fuse the two. How can we all win, how can we celebrate the history of our ancestors, and our own unique culture, but also bring a new energy, a new passion?

You’re also dealing with this kind of crux of analog, ancient Amami Oshima with this new digital age, of being interconnected with the world in ways it’s never been before, and more information available than ever before. There’s a lot of adjustment that needs to happen and a lot of evolution that’s happening right now to figure out how to respectfully continue along with that. It’s fascinating. And I think initially, all in all, they’ve done an amazing job with that, as far as [considering] how do we cater to tourists but not sell ourselves short? Not offering a kind of JTB-style cookie cutter, Japanese tourist experience; there’s no “Let’s go see Kinkaku-ji, take a picture, and go home” kind of tourism like that here. It’s more of “Let’s come here and really try to understand how complex it really is”.

These are tremendous opportunities. As well as areas where one needs to make a concerted effort to maintain the island culture, but not only maintain that, but cultivate for, you know, a new expression.

It seems to me that you have been very intimately connected to the island life in so many different ways, from the young children and the schools of the small islands to the music and the land. And on that deeply personal level, what do you think Amami’s contribution has been to you personally, not just professionally, because professionally, we can see all these things that you have been engaging with, but at a deep, deep personal level?

Well, I think being a foreigner in Japan is sometimes tricky, because there’s the gaijin concept of you’re either in or you’re out, and often we are out. I’m a white guy, so of course, my face, I can’t hide, I could maybe be half, but I don’t look that way, my eyes are bluish green, I have a big curvilinear Irish face. So, it’s a little hard to even pretend to be Japanese. Being a foreigner in Japan, sometimes you feel that hesitation, that isolation, especially on first meeting, that you probably don’t understand what’s going on here. And then if you speak Japanese, people put that wall down a little bit and let you in. I always feel when people tell you that you’re using chopsticks well is just a compliment, but when that initial kindness goes away, and people are real with you, that’s when you know you’re in. When I lived before in mainland Japan and working for the Japanese company in Kentucky, I felt that a lot. You know, mainland Japanese, it’s like there’s a wall, it’s an onion, and you’ve got to peel the layers back for years before you’re on the same level as everyone else. And even when you are, you could be the most astute Japanese literary scholar who has lived here for 75 years, but when you walk into a McDonald’s, they’re still going to flip the English menu over. So, no matter what, you just have to accept you’re not Japanese, which is fine, of course. I think sometimes on the mainland and working with mainlanders, when we offer advice, sometimes, if you’re not at that intimate level, it’s difficult [for them to accept] and sometimes falls on deaf ears, because there’s this assumption that you don’t really understand what’s going on. And I never felt that in Amami ever, and I don’t know whether or not it’s historically the fact that it’s an island and it’s kind of this convergence of ancient Japan and China, and Malaysia, and Indonesia, and all of these people kind of coming and going.

I think it’s a little more open minded to outsiders coming and offering new ways of thinking, new advice, adding to the mosaic that is the history of the island. I never really felt like this isolationism of “you’re not from here, so we don’t want to hear your opinion” that I felt more with the mainlanders.

With the surprise engagement crew outside of Hata-san’s plant shop in Koniya, Setouchi Town

Personally, I met my wife here, by accident. Speaking of agriculture, I was planting gobou, which is burdock root, and as I was pulling it up, I ran out of soil to replant more, so I went to my friend’s plant shop, and I accidentally met there the woman who would become my wife, through a mutual friend that worked with him. And so, I met my wife there through the mutual connections with people that I met here. Also, here, I decided that I want to start a company to try to help promote Japanese musicians abroad, because when I was working at the radio stations in the US, I never got music from Japan. And I realized it was just a language barrier and no one here knew how to do it. I think, personally, Amami also offered me a lot of direction, as far as ways to farm sustainably.

I met my wife, which obviously changed the entire trajectory of my life. And, I was able to figure out what I wanted to do as a career and how to contribute my ability and my skills and my experience best to help Amami in Japan. So, I think those are three main things, but overall, it taught me to be patient, and that the speed of nature is slow, and all good things happen at a very slow, sustainable natural pace. I think the rat race of Tokyo, living there is a little chaotic, so everything feels a little artificial and surface. Whereas here, everything is happening at that natural pace. You get to see the deep layers build up over time, in a very organic way. Culturally, Amami has given me so much and I just want to do what I can to give back as much as I can, as much as it has given me.

Watching the sunset from Setosaki Lighthouse in Tean Village, Setouchi Town

It seems to me that it’s been a mutually intimate relationship to both of you. I hear that you are relocating to Kyoto in a few months.

I am, yes.

So, this new Amamian is taken out of Amami, but can you take Amami out of you? How do you plan to continue your connection with the island?

Well, my wife is from Kyoto and so we’re moving back to live with her grandmother. I’m really hoping that when I get to Kyoto I can [maintain the connection] because I know, all across Japan, there are all these Amami-kai groups in Tokyo and Osaka, this huge concentration of Amami people who live there. I’m sure there must be people in Kyoto living there from Amami, whether it’s through the Oshima Tsumugi connection or music. Even Saigo Takamori’s son, who was from Amami, became the mayor of Kyoto. As far as academics, you know, within all the different universities in Kyoto, I know there are people there studying Amami culture. So, given fate and the way that life has turned out so far in my five years since I came here, and literally knew nothing, and now I’m about to leave after five years, my life has completely changed. I have so much more direction. I think fate will turn me back to coming towards Amami.

We’re really just going because of my wife’s work. But I don’t think my work and my connections with Amami, they’re too deep at this point, will ever subside. I will go to Kyoto, and then will gravitate and u-turn my way, slowly back to Amami. If I could do both, live in both places, that’s the ideal situation; that’s what we’re working towards. I think there are people all across Japan who’ve had to leave Amami for work or school or whatnot, and then have made a great place for themselves and also haven’t lost their ties to Amami. I plan on doing that as well. And I don’t plan on leaving mentally, anytime soon.

1:02:48

No, is it too soon, you are so intricately connected with what is happening on the island. I think that’s one part of the beauty of islands is that they let you go. Because that’s part of the nature of the island, to go and explore and see the world but you always feel welcome to come back at any time. The island is always there.

Absolutely, there’s a whole subsection of Shimauta songs specifically for that purpose.

Chuck, it has been a total delight talking to you. I feel that we could have been talking for a few more hours, because there’s so many other aspects of the island life that I feel you have such great insights to share. But perhaps this would be a great opportunity to have some more podcasts, with you or with others and you as a host. Thank you very much for your time, and thank you for the wonderful work you have been doing for Amami islands.

Well, thank you so much Valia. It’s been great to talk with you as well. And, as we say in Amami, arigassama ryouta!

Sunset from Toenfureai Park in Yamato-son

 

 

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[1] SICRI is also hosting the AIIRN initiative, Amami Islands International Research Network: https://www.sicri.net/copy-of-initiatives