XI.
In the weeks leading up to the Aoyama Gala, the atmosphere is one of festive excitement. Since it is the twentieth anniversary; since the permanent gallery opening represents an investment of a rumored eighty million U.S. equivalent, the decision is made to bring up the arrival date of the new cycle’s Fellows and extend the contract of the currents’, bringing together nearly two hundred of the program participants, along with a not inconsiderable number of donors, benefactors, alumni, staff, associated interested parties, native artists, special guests and so on; this will be the social event of Tokyo philanthropy that year—representatives from minor branches of the Imperial Family itself are rumored to be considering attendance.
It seems every week brought another planeload of arrivals, fresh-faced early twenty-somethings from every corner of the world, bright-eyed, goggle-eyed with wonder, filled with the enthusiasm and vigor of new arrivals in Japan. Aoyama Studio itself is transformed: the Galleria next door is still covered in blue construction tarp, its crystal and metal architecture carefully hidden from site, but in the studio, every last nook and corner was packed with luggage and boxes. The dorms are at capacity; portfolios and installation art had to be stored in hallways and corridors, brown wrapping paper torn open as works were processed; the smell of turpentine, sawdust, oil paint everywhere.
“All right! Everyone get a move on! Let’s get the show on the road!”
At the center of all this tumult is Gustav from Sweden. His presence is obvious, the young blonde carrying around a megaphone and issuing mock orders, the merry ‘Prangstgrup’ with which he surrounds himself the source of constant rumors and story-making. In contrast to the extended film tradition in which Julian works, Gustav is famous for his ‘Three Minute Samurai” clips, mock Japanese sword-and-ninja videos, one of which has reached two hundred thousand views on YouTube. The two, of course, hate each other.
So much goes on, so many flagrant “artistic temperaments” meet that drama, I suppose, is inevitable, but I feel distant from it; I feel a distinct sense of remove. I am not a Fellow myself, of course, and actually I am not all that much older than the average (twenty-four or twenty-five? but some as old as sixty…), but it all feels so familiar now; it all seems like just the same thing over and over. In the weeks leading up to the Gala launch itself, the artists hold ‘events,’ spontaneous artistic gatherings like taking over a pedestrian tunnel, putting up paintings, drinking wine, and then disappearing within the space of two hours. VIPs and dignitaries are escorted through the studio proper; with plain, unassuming manners but elegant refinement, they anonymously pass through the building, leaving behind a wave of curiosity and wonder.
“I’m a professional actress! I don’t need this! I can go modeling and CM work here in Tokyo!”
Julian loses his primary actress about three months before the gala, a high-strung half-Asian girl from New York City, and everyone says this is when his real decline begins, this is when he has to cut corners, make compromises, and produce something out of existing footage because there’s simply not enough time to re-do things. Sympathies do exist for this particular problem; not everyone is on the actress’s side.
“Yet the point can still be made that she’s still an interesting person in her own right. It takes courage to invest six months of life into an art film…”
“I heard she’s really rich; that her parents tried to get her into respectable professions but she kept having fiascos. Sexual harassment suit at the law-firm and then she was considering marriage to two different men, one had a HBS MBA and the other...“
The actress isn’t so important, I suppose. Neither are, I guess, the rumors of Julian’s decline—the alleged bottles of urine stacking up in his dorm room as he scrambles to edit his work; the hours he may have spent in the G-CANS storm system. Maybe he really does go a little nutty; maybe it’s just the wire speaking, adolescent drama springing into existence and washing away in the next rain. Gustav’s group has energy; numbers; but the output, three minute films, isn’t exportable to a gallery launch. Julian has invested years of his life in the group; but he may think he owns it; he may be a little too obsessed with his commitment to things.
“So we're just sitting there in the car minding our own business...”
(A flurry of giggles informs me this is not the whole truth.)
“Can we trust him?”
“Yeah, Ritchie's cool...”
“But maybe Julian wants...”
“It's common knowledge...”
“Guys, you can just tell me. What's up? I was like, gone for two weeks, and it's like everything's fallen to pieces.”
“OK OK. So we were filming a bit all weekend and on Sunday afternoon we decide to take a break.”
Now Gustav speaks up, in his slightly breathless, edge-of-laughter sort of way. “Well I light up a joint to share with everyone.”
The kids all laugh.
“We're sitting there hiding a spliff in the car taking a break in some quiet little neighborhood.”
“Well it's because Gustav decides to take a photograph of people...”
“No, no it's because we're just hanging out there, a bunch of foreign kids in a white Japanese car...”
“It's because what? What's because what? Guys, you're telling me the story all out of order.”
“Well basically, a bunch of cops starts walking and biking past us. Not like literally right past us, but in the T of the T-intersection we're facing.”
“So Gustav gets all paranoid.”
“Oh shut up, I saved us all.”
“No, Gustav starts yelling that we have to get our asses out of there 'cuz we're going to get busted.”
“And we can't lose our visas, you know...”
“My mother would kill me...”
“Fortunately, I'm a good driver.”
“Yeah! We almost hit a bicyclist!”
“Almost. And then Gustav is panicking, and a cop sees us, 'cuz we're right in front of the neighborhood post, one of those koban things, you know? We like drive right to it and almost run over a cyclist.”
“Please... we just had to brake hard is all.”
“And the cop tells us to pull over.”
“Gustav is like, 'hit the accelerator!' 'hit the accelerator!' but there's, like, seven cars in front of us. So I can't hit the accelerator. He's being a nutjob! Actually what happens is that I save the day, 'cuz I pretend like I'm pulling over, but I'm just slowing down until the light changes...”
(etc.)
What's clear what happened is that he and his film crew are almost arrested by the police, with their license plate almost certainly noted, and everything apparently can be hushed up, except, of course, this is art school, so actually everybody internal knows before the sun has set twice. Even, apparently, Julian finally gets wind of it, and, being the law-and-order type that he is within his own organization, he pushes for Gustav to be let go.
“Julian marches into the administrative office at Aoyama Studios, and if it had been any other person, any other employee there except the new girl, Shiori-”
“She's such a sweetie.”
“Any other girl than Shiori, probably he could have gotten what he wanted completed. Instead, Shiori, being new to Aoyama, decides to actually look up the rules on how to handle this sort of situation and she discovers--”
The crowd excitedly presses closer.
“That Julian is not actually a member of Aoyama!”
At this news, I am shocked. “Wha--?”
“No, exactly. He was on the Fellowship twelve years ago, but technically, he shouldn't even be addressing any formal meetings of any kind.”
“But I thought he basically ran the thing?”
“Yeah, he does, but it's all informal. Totally based on his relationship with Roshi-sensei. And Roshi-sensei's daughter has actually started handling more of the administration lately, so she's going to start enforcing rules a bit more strictly.”
I clear my throat. “You know, I'm not without some bitterness about this development.”
“Why not?” The crowd is generally surprised.
“Well a few years ago, before you guys arrived, Julian basically turned this entire organization against me, and I thought that he actually had some right to because he was the senior person here. But now it seems that he shouldn't even be part of the organization at all.”
Gustav makes a contemptuous expression and nods. “See this is exactly what I'm saying about Julian. He just does all this rude stuff to people and they accept it because they think he's the genius or the boss. We just have to say no whenever he orders anything.”
Other stories come out, apparently some karaoke fiasco where somebody is trying to input in their song, and Julian forcibly stops them. Sentiment against the overly-controlling director is quite evident.
“Ritchie,” says Gustav, “why are you even hanging out with him? He lost his actress, he lost his film, I heard Melanie is leaving him. There's no point in hanging out with this loser.”
“Well...”
“You can hang out with my crew. We have a lot of fun.”
The kids nod in agreement.
“Well, it sounds very tempting….”
"Ladies and gentlemen, patrons of art, generous benefactors, assembled guests. Twenty years ago today Murayama Roshi-sensei had a vision. In a Japan that had just recently 'learned to say no,' Roshi-sensei realized that the relationship between the re-emerged world power and the outside world could go in one of two directions. Either Japan would continue to develop its independent identity and emerge as an alternative to the Soviet-U.S. dialectic of the time, or it could engage the world that it was inextricably a part of and enrich and enliven the culture, expression, and knowledge of that world, not as a political power, but as a cultural entity, a treasure-chest and aesthetic partner to all the varied family of the world. He wanted the latter and founded the Aoyama Fellowship, Japan’s answer to the UK’s Rhodes Scholarship, the U.S.'s Fulbright program, Comintern's International Youth Congress and so on, but the first--and only--program that sought art as a means of international communication and a building block for peace.
"Today, we have reached an important milestone in the fulfillment of that vision. Although the Soviet Union has collapsed and the U.S. has emerged as the world’s sole superpower, today more than ever it is the medium of art; the manipulation of symbols; the study of semiotics and hermeneutics; structuralism, existentialism, post-modernism and intercultural understanding that dominate the intellectual life of our earth. In twenty years over a thousand young artists from the West and Eastern bloc and former Eastern-bloc nations have been invited to Japan to work side-by-side with Japanese masters and young artists, exchanging ideas, methodologies, visions, and forging bonds of friendship that extend far beyond the nation, and creating many lasting and meaningful works of art. During this time, moreover, countries have grown closer together and new bonds have been built between organizations, institutes, schools, and studios of many kinds.
"A great artist once said, 'true communication can only occur through the fiction of art.' Perhaps so. As an artist and film-maker myself, I am ever conscious of the ways in which film both distorts and accesses reality itself; I am conscious of the impact my decisions have and of the forces in immanent reality that have inspired and inflected my vision. The advice given to aspiring young film-makers is 'don’t ever talk about your work!' [general laughter] But unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of following that rather excellent piece of advice: I am, after all, a scholar on Fellowship; and I am speaking to you today as a duty—a duty for the generous support the Fellowship has extended me; a duty for the honor of having my work be the centerpiece for the Gala launch, and a duty for the mentorship the Aoyama Fellowship has given to me through all these years.
"So today, I will speak first about ‘Shibuya Grey,’ my MFA thesis submission for the Gakuin School, and the movie you have just seen. Following these remarks I will review some of the history of the past twenty years of the Aoyama Fellowship, and I will end, briefly, with a set of further benchmarks and goals that we might achieve with your continued financial support. This—all of this—was only possible with your support and we are sitting here today in these superlative surroundings only because benefactors as yourself have understood the importance of art in human life and perpetuated its creation. Artistic output is an excruciating, painful, time- and resource-consuming process, so much must be invested for the creation of just one piece of work—this we all know—but its rewards are ultimately the advancement of civilization itself.
"Okay, may I have slide one please?
"Let’s start our discussion of the film by acknowledging the obvious. ‘Shibuya Grey’ is first and foremost a movie about the Amy Blair murder.
[audience gasps]
"All of us are of course familiar with the circumstances of Amy Dolores Blair, the first-year Aoyama Fellow of the seventh year of the program, a sculptor and aspiring potter, who was murdered by her boyfriend, a fellow Aoyama Fellow, during those early, unfamiliar years of the program. The criticism made about those early years, of course, still rings true today: that it was simply ludicrous to bring over a bunch of young artists and assume that somehow, magically, art would be produced; that the creation of art could somehow be ‘purchased;’ and we are all familiar the stories of the first few years: Fellows simply hanging out in cafes or even disappearing for weeks at a time to Thailand. Even the one legendary Fellow who simply never even showed up, but was paid his full grant on-time and in-full, quarterly installments arriving in his North American bank account never to be recovered.
"These criticisms, of course, were misguided. After the crisis of the Blair affair, we have grown beyond, far beyond that nadir to become one of the world's preeminent cultural exchange programs. But, I found myself, as the years passed, more and more interested in the Blair case not because I wanted to learn any more of the details (the media has been quite efficient with that responsibility), but because I wanted to know more about Jim Wolverham, who was, after all, also a Fellow, also one of our own. Slide two, please.
"Jim Wolverham, 26, was in many ways an unusual acceptance to the Aoyama Program. A little older than the average, he was nonetheless an accomplished graphic artist of his own right and his background, the years of service in the Marine Corps, the service in Operation Desert Storm, gave him experience and life knowledge that many young Aoyama fellows lacked. According to the conventional story, he was a troubled, dark soul, one inclined to morbidity and violence, and we have all seen the last unfinished comic he was working on; its images have been disseminated across the world. In my research with Jim’s classmates of the time, however, I have heard only that he was a kind, gentle person, one who always had time to listen to a friend’s problems and who could be counted in during times of genuine need. So which was he? Was Jim the nice boy who inexplicably, without any apparent warning sign, went berserk and killed his young girlfriend? Or was he a dark and evil individual, one who had been discharged from the Marines for unknown offenses, and who wore a mask of normality and meekness only to cover a foundational identity of psychopathic insanity?
"Slide three.
"I did not know Jim. I don’t feel ashamed to admit this. We were Fellows together at the same time, but aside from some distant sightings, I never interacted with him; I never had a conversation with him, nor did I know, for that matter, Amy Blair. The obvious claim to make, of course, is that not having known him personally, I am now engaged in a sort of aesthetic exploitation: I am creating a work of art that plays upon feelings upon which I have no genuine claim. To this I reply: guilty as charged. I didn't actually know Jim; I didn't actually know Amy. But, as the beginning of the film makes clear, I was in the end affected by these events, and further, as we can see on the slide—all of us were. For some reason that I can't quite fathom even today, on that first day when the news spread through the dorm, I felt compelled to take a picture of the scene. I remember distinctly one of my classmates giving me a look of absolute horror; we were caught up in the moment, now was not the time for representation. But I did so, for whatever reason, and we can see here the impact of that Saturday; we can see why things would take so long to return to normal.
"Slide four.
"The next question of course is 'why change the characters? Why is Jim a Marine officer AWOL and Dolly a foreign hostess girl? Well, legal questions aside, I made this film this way in part to examine the particular interplay between genuine experience and the creation of art. All of us have already heard the rumors and stories about Jim's military experience; but none of that, really, concerns me. What I see when I look at the Aoyama Program is a large number of talented, idealistic overachievers and go-getters, people who have done great things already and will surely go on to do even greater. But, that being said, in a sense we are a disappointment; there have been internationally renowned graduates of the Fellows program and people who are quite appreciated in their field. But there still is no universally-known graduate; there still is no 'artist who revolutionized the world' former Aoyama Fellow, with some minor exceptions who are more a matter of degree and definition or of previous accomplishment predating their Aoyama years.
"Why is this?
"Well, much of this has to do with youth of course. A twenty-year old program is not going to generate a list of illustrious alumni in the same way that a school or institution existing for a hundred years or more might. For its size and scale, Aoyama has been quite impressive—accomplished even. But what this brings us back to us is that fundamental criticism made of our brave little endeavor: the fact that an Artistic Fellowship program is itself a contradiction in terms—we cannot build an artist; we cannot produce art on demand. An individual has to be born an artist—to some degree—and he or she must live first and then create—or all we have are the lineaments of the cage in which we imprison him; all he can do is paint the bars of his cage.
"It was for this reason that Jim Wolverham intrigued me. Unknown to me in person, in death his story became to me a fixation and an obsession. For years after my first work I brooded over his case, torturing myself to bring out draft after draft of unsuccessful treatments of the subject matter. It was only after a fateful encounter of my own—details which must alas remain private—that I realized that I had been going about the project in entirely the wrong way. There was never any reason to make the work true to life; Jim's story never had anything to do with Aoyama. What if I reimagined the story as taking place had the Fellowship never existed at all?
"It is for this reason, that Shibuya Grey begins in Naha Marine Corps base and opens with the glimpse of Mount Fuji. I am a visual artist, after all; I deal in images. Amy, as we now see her, is not the scholarship recipient and talented young potter, but the hostess girl who makes 3000 yen an hour pouring drinks to Japanese businessmen. Here, in short, is the perfect intersection of two worlds: the battle-weary young Marine officer; the Western girl fallen and Easternized. Add to this mix an understory of a past romance, and we have all the ingredients of tragedy; we have all the ingredients of art.
"Jim, of course, seeks to 'rescue' Amy. But is Jim not the one who is truly fallen? In flashbacks we see the story of his own life; the domineering father, the older brother's who deformed arm prevents him from carrying out his father's overwhelming obsession for his sons. But at the moment of truth—at the film's opening—this path is seen as not Jim's own, and the drive up to Tokyo is itself symbolic of a rejection of one's past, a complete break with history.
"Artistic output cannot be created by those who have not lived; those who have lived are not inclined to speak needlessly. Therein lies the crux. By abandoning the outside pretense of 'attempting to create art,' now we better understand Jim; now we see the story of his failure as the story of a individual who cannot escape his own circumstances; one who is, in a final sense, a victim of his own.
[The crowd stirs.]
"Ladies and gentlemen I know this is not a popular opinion. There is no question that Jim Wolverham was a murderer; we have no doubt that he committed a grave crime. What I was attempting to say with 'Shibuya Grey' was that if we look carefully at his circumstances, if we see what his father is on record as saying; his mother--
[Angry voices, once imperceptible, are now distinct. 'He was a murderer! There is never any excuse or explanation for homicide!']
"Ma'am, please. I beg only a little more of your time...
[At least several people get up to leave the gala. Julian is flustered, but attempts to continue.]
"As an artist and a creator, it is my duty to tell uncomfortable truths. The media has portrayed past events as a simple opposition of good and evil, but what this obscures is a certain darkness inside Amy herself, and a certain lightness inside the character of Jim Wolverham..."
[Hara is booed off the podium. With much embarrassment, the management takes over.]
He had retired, flustered, to the upstairs studio where I find him, going up there only to pick up my book bag. In fact, I don't even know he's in the room until he coughs, lightly, and I see the ever-present red ember of his cigarette; the little glow intensifying as he inhales.
“Oh, Julian! Oh my god, people are looking for you.”
“Yeah, to hang me.”
“Ah, no. I mean like Melanie and stuff. Nobody hates you.”
I think the reaction against Julian is so negative just because of how know-it-all-he-is, all the time. Even if he hadn't gone where he did, there still would have been an undercurrent of resentment; that strange curly-haired nerd head perched now on evening formal-wear, the bowtie untied and raggedy, but with none of the air of savoir faire it would have on anyone else.
“Well, Julian, I'm not a Fellow; I don't have a stake in any of this. But I guess the idea was for you to have done a fund-raising speech. And now half the donors are never speaking to Aoyama again!”
“They're going to fire me.”
“Wha-?”
“They're going to let me go. Shibuya told me five minutes ago.”
“No way!”
“Yeah. This is the last straw. After all the years I spent building up this place.”
“Well...”
“Well what?”
“Well I think this is not necessarily bad for your career.”
I return to my donors’ table after that last conference with Julian, and I know the situation is already over. Everything in the end had come down to Hisako’s choice in the matter, and although the broker is looking at her with a greedy eye, she is wearing a sarcastic expression and indicating by body language that she wishes to go. Obviously there is little need to play it out longer.
“Ritchie, Ritchie, Ritchie.”
“Mmm.”
“You invested several years of your life, you called in all remaining favors, and put all of your personal funds into one shot against the Establishment.”
“Yes.”
“But of course I’m not going to do this.”