Embedded Files
There are endless debates about the origins of punk rock but, as a global starting point, let us take 1977, which saw the success of the Sex Pistols single "God Save the Queen" and subsequent album Never Mind the Bollocks. Perhaps more so than the music from the New York punk bands, international media coverage of the London Punk scene influenced Kyoto’s early punk bands. Reports of the supposed sensational behavior of UK punks in Japanese men’s magazines inspired the first wave of punk groups in Kyoto, notably the SS who played their first show at Seibu Kōdō as part of the Tokyo Rockers Kansai Tour in October 1978. However, New York influences would be prevalent too: the official Tokyo Rockers' tour title "Blank Generation" was ripped directly from New York City group Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
Record Stores and Punk in Kyoto
Record Stores and Punk in Kyoto
As with other scenes, record stores were the lifeblood of the punk network in Kyoto. In the words of Kyoto’s preeminent punk historian Kato David Hopkins, record stores selling foreign magazines were "a physical and psychic space to escape to" (Hopkins 2015, 17). There were many stores in Kyoto but the one that perhaps had the biggest impact was Jūjiya (ジュージヤ, often written Jeugia), which still exists today in the middle of the city on Sanjo street.
In the 1980s, often the first introduction to an overseas band was not their music, but simply coming across the record sleeve while browsing in stores or seeing it printed in a magazine. Import records were also expensive, so often all a young Kyoto punk could do was merely gaze at an LP cover and guess what the band sounded like. Just as for many others, Kyoto youth created a mental image of a group or a scene often before hearing any of the songs. Record stores such as Jūjiya, which mainly stocked imported records and magazines, were a portal allowing connection to places like New York or London, "where things happened" and where you felt at home, away from the dreariness and social conformity around your particular geography (Hopkins 2022). Jūjiya focused in particular on British imports, giving Kyoto’s citizens access to the weekly British music press, such as NME, and the burgeoning British punk scene. This is perhaps part of the reason that the first overseas punk/new wave bands to play at Seibu Kōdō were British, such as the Stranglers and the Police. Hirakawa Shin (平川晋), a staff member of Jūjiya and musician, is perhaps responsible for curating much of the sonic scape of Kyoto hi-fis in the 1980s, introducing new bands and taking orders for import items.
Above advertisements and reviews from Pelican Club (ペリカンクラブ) magazine
Add your own soundtrack to Kyoto's Streets. Advertisement for Toshiba's Walky, in Pelican Club (August 1983)
The Cassette Revolution
The Cassette Revolution
Cassette tapes were an important medium to share music: unlike records, they were inexpensive, easy to record, and fit neatly in an envelope. Affordable blank tapes became widely available in Japan by the mid to late 1970s, and by the early 1980s, the arrival of the Sony Walkman made portable listening possible, transforming how music was experienced and shared.
Cassettes were not only a local phenomenon and tape sharing across continents became common. The feature sections in music magazines commonly held appeals for tape sharing, particularly from North American fans looking for Japanese music. This enabled Japanese punk bands and fans to connect with international scenes, exchanging recordings of live shows, demos, and rare releases with networks in the UK, US, and Europe.
The combination of cheap cassettes, portable players, and new networks for recording and performing, such as those created by the Beat Crazy Collective (who ran the punk scene in 1980s Kyoto), and alternative venues fuelled the scene that evolved around Seibu Kōdō in the 1980s. Unlike older spaces such as Jazz kissa or, to a lesser extent, record stores — where the “master,” usually an older male figure, exerted authority — , cassettes could be freely taped and circulated without mediation or hierarchical knowledge. The portability of the Walkman further amplified this circulation, allowing music to travel physically and socially in ways that vinyl never could. By enabling both local experimentation and international exchange, cassettes helped foster a more decentralized, and globally-connected punk culture. Many interviewees recalled exchanging cassettes, whether recordings of live shows by Japanese bands or imported punk and post-punk music, as a vital part of the scene. These exchanges allowed knowledge, styles, and influences to circulate across generations and geographic boundaries, forming a global punk community connected through tape.
A Note on Drugstore
A Note on Drugstore
David Novak’s analysis of Japan’s noise music scene dedicates almost a full chapter to a little known cafe/listening space in Kyoto: Drugstore. Drugstore differed from the traditional listening cafes that were popular in Japan from the postwar era, which were spaces where one would go and listen to a record, mainly of the cafe owner’s choice. Rather, Drugstore was run on a communal basis, being maintained by user donations and also accepting user submissions for what to listen to. This subverted the owner/customer relationship as, increasingly, customers brought their own record collections to share in communal listening sessions.
Over time, the sounds available took a detour from heavy rock tracks as customers began sharing field recordings of various noises created or heard around the city using cheaply-available tape cassette recorders. It was only a short step from sharing music to creating it: Ishibashi Shōjirō (石橋 正二郎), along with Fujiwara Hidenori (藤原英智, or Bide), created the first performance at the Drugstore, mainly a free-jazz mash up of various genres using instruments or other tools and utensils that were at hand. Here we see the birth of the noise scene in Japan — a sonic assault that would lead to and incorporate confrontational, and often violent, live performances in other venues, and invite collaboration with members of the growing hardcore punk scene (see here for more).
As well as record stores and cassette exchanges, live shows continued to play a central role in punk, of course, but seeing bands in the flesh was only one of the avenues venues offered for learning about the scene: after parties often featured a screening of videos of live performances of other, mainly overseas, bands. This was, as David Kato Hopkins terms it, a proto-MTV.
The SS, appearing on the bill of Tokyo Rockers (October 1978) in what would be their their first show, gained national coverage by appearing in an accompanying documentary. Their music stands out from the other acts in the film as they power through their set (they play a version of "Blitzkrieg Bop" that is notably faster than the Ramones original). It may not have been their intention but, on the basis of these performances, they have been credited as one of the first hardcore punk bands in the world. The SS never officially recorded any material, and the only way to hear them now is via one of the few live bootleg recordings that exist. Perhaps, like their Kyoto predecessors Les Rallizes Dénudés, the lack of studio albums or singles only added to the mystique and DIY credentials so important to the punk scene. Not bad for a band that only ever played eight live shows.
Detail from Beat Crazy Press, featuring the group Zelda. Reprinted in Pelican Club (April 1983)
Kanhō (April 1980), reporting on the Police "Incident"
The Police "Incident," Seibu Kōdō (March 1980)
The Police "Incident," Seibu Kōdō (March 1980)
On March 20, 1980, British band The Police hit the stage at Seibu Kōdō. The hall was packed and the show seemed to be another success. But halfway through the set, chaos erupted. Members of Seibu Kōdō’s Liaison Association, Seirenkyō, stormed the stage and mixing desk, furious that the concert had violated the venue’s unwritten rules. Security dragged them out, fists flew, and yet the show went on. The band had no idea what was happening; Andy Summers later shrugged it off, saying only that “there were a lot of crazy people there.”
For Seirenkyō, though, it was no laughing matter. They accused organizers of lying about the show, bringing in outside security guards, and shutting them out. The fallout forced a reckoning over whether Seibu Kōdō should be part of the commercial music industry at all. After the “Police incident,” the venue turned its back on big-name acts and leaned hard into the local underground.
That shift fuelled Kyoto’s hardcore punk explosion. Young bands like S.O.B. were not involved in the debates, but they thrived in the DIY infrastructure the previous generation had built. Ironically, punks rejected the politics and music of those older activists, but without their spaces, networks, and hard-won ethos, punk in Kyoto would never have taken off.
Kansai No Wave
Kansai No Wave
Apart from international influence, the early punk scene in Kyoto began to develop and evolve from earlier music/noise scenes. Bide (Fujiwara Hidenori) started his first band Ultrabide with regulars of the music cafe Drugstore, including Jojo Hiroshige (JOJO広重) of Hijokaidan. Bide had also appeared at Seibu Kodō on the bill of the Tokyo Rockers event, although a falling out with the management meant that Bide’s set was unofficial and took place before the venue opened. Fully signing up to the DIY ethos of punk, Hide began holding monthly events in his parents’ garage, mainly free-form jam sessions of like-minded musicians, though these were advertised in regional events calendars alongside other more "legitimate" venues. Bide and his peers were tireless organisers and, together, the Kansai groups, Ultrabide, Aunt Sally, INU and SS began a series of collective events called "Kansai No Wave."
Detail from Kansai No Wave Flyer for an event in Tokyo, 1979. Record Shop Base: Chirashi - Tokyo Punk & New Wave '78-80s (2022)
Kansai No Wave was primarily intended as a way for the mainly Kyoto-based groups SS and Ultra Bide, along with Inu (Osaka) and Aunt Sally (Kobe), to create a counter to Tokyo Rockers and bring the Kansai music scene to the capital. Again, as David Kato Hopkins notes, the Kansai No Wave tour of Tokyo was intended as "confrontational theatre" in which they would show that the centre of punk in Japan was not the nation’s capital (Hopkins, 2015, 96).
In 1980, the collective released a compilation album Dokkiri Record. This would end being something of a testament to the early days of Kyoto punk as, by the time of release, most of the bands featured were already split up or close to splitting up. The Kansai No Wave collective would continue in various guises to influence the global and Kyoto punk scene. In recent years, following his return to Japan from the USA, Bide is once again hosting garage events at his home.
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