SANKAI JUKU story in 1980

14th.Apr. 2008 by:Y.Yoshikawa

*The first day* “How much money do you have?” Takada asks. “Well, about 150,000 yen,“ I answered. I was rather absent-minded due to jet-lag. “OK, so we collectively have only 300,000 yen. We should change the hotel.” We were at the Hotel At Home, 7 Rue Thenard, Paris, at 8:30am, April 27th, 1980. What an uncool morning! I and two skinheaded men checked out and began to look for a cheaper hotel in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. There were a lot of students going to school and university. A middle aged gentleman with a shepherd dipped a crispy croissant in a large cup of café crème and enjoyed eating the croissant. “Takada-san, I am starving!” “Don’t say that. We have to find a hotel first.” The two skinheaded men (Takada and Morita) were dancers—or, to be more specific, Butoh performers. And I joined them to help as a sound engineer. Takada and Morita were both 26 years old, and I was 22 years old at that time. This was the first morning of the first overseas tour by ‘Sankai Juku.’ And this was also my first overseas trip. Even though we needed a lot of money for overseas performances the trip was not sponsored. We scraped together money we earned and also borrowed some before we could finally send all our stage materials. There were no guarantees whether we could make it successfully or not. If no one came to the stage, we couldn’t get any money. What a reckless and foolhardy plan we had. It is not remarkable nowadays for Japanese people to do overseas performances, but it really was back then. At that time, only big artists could do a stage performance abroad -- such as Hiroshi Itsuki in Las Vegas and Pink Ladies in Los Angeles. They had been staged for Japanese people living overseas. Or you could find some grant-aided performances such as Kabuki. However, we were not such a big performance group. Despite this situation, we came to Paris anyway. With no connections, with no support. Our plan was completely reckless! We would try to put on performances in Paris with no guarantees and live there with income from the performances. I wonder if we could call it a ‘plan’ as we had no concrete schedules. Takada had sculpted features like a Filipino. He had recently decided to grow a stubbly beard similar to a loach. He was wearing slim jeans, a purple acrylic sweater by Benetton, and a chocolate colored leather jacket with the small white logo of “SANKAI JUKU” on the back. Morita had a round face just like a traditional Japanese doll called ‘Kokeshi.’ He always wore dark brown slacks and a pale beige shirt with a button-down collar. His leather jacket had the same logo as Takada’s. (Morita calls himself ‘Semimaru’ now, a change that happened many years later.) As for me, many people thought I was Cambodian. Slim black jeans, a black T-shirt, Adidas sports jacket colored navy blue…… dressed very roughly, with an unshaven face and long hair. The three of us were then in Paris, which was one of the fashion capitals of the world. How inappropriate! We each pulled our suitcases along the stone pavement heading to Odeon. After two or three minutes’ walk, looking into a corner, we found a small faded nameplate of the ‘Hôtel Cluny Sorbonne.’ “OK, let’s stay here.” Takada pointed to the hotel with a little bit of a peremptory tone in his voice. (Turning left from Boulevard Saint-Germain and going up Boulevard Cluny a little, there you can find this small hotel.) 　 It was a one star hotel that we could only recognize as being a hotel because of the nameplate. Takada negotiated a price through gestures, and it seemed to be quite tough work for him. He finally received a key from the large man at the reception desk. The key has a heavy brass plate with ‘601’ on it. The room was 100 FF per night. The exchange rate for 1 FF was about 60 yen, so 6,000 yen per night. Each of us had to pay 2,000 yen. Hauling our suitcases, we wound our way up a darkish flight of stairs to the 6th floor. There was no elevator, of course. Huffing and puffing, we arrived at room 601 which had one old double bed (the edge of the bed cover was all frayed) and a foldaway bed. There was also a small antique desk (“old“ was more like it ) near a window. There was no bathtub but there was a bathroom with a shower, a toilet, and a douche. The screeching shower gave out hot water in dribbles when we turned it on. There was no telephone, no TV, and no fridge. The room never caught the sun even if we opened the window. I felt down because of this somber and miserable room. Ding-dong— we heard the big hollow chimes of Pantheon through the window. The members of Sankai Juku comprised five dancers and four staff at that time. Two dancers and I came to Paris in advance. Let me explain why it was us……Takada doubled as the manager of Sankai Juku, and had been in Paris before this preparatory period. He spoke French a little. Morita had the responsibility of being the flyman. And I was the freest of us all and spoke English. So we were chosen and went right away. Of course we had a lot of work to do. First, we had to find apartments for the nine members before they arrived one week later; get a car for the tour into which we could put the stage materials; negotiate with the Nancy International Festival in which we were supposed to appear; and meet as many people as possible to broaden our network. “Say, Takada-san. How many performances do we have now?” “Well, nine performances at Les-Halles, 30 performances at Calais Sylvia M…” “And then?” “Nothing! Ha-ha! ” said Takada wearing his gold framed Ray-Bans and tapping his date book into his left palm. I carefully confirmed an open return ticket from Paris to Tokyo for more than 250,000 yen in cash. Then I tucked it away in the bottom of the suitcase.