Nippon Scape

Tetsuwari Albatrossket is a group of stage entertainers. Their performances are like a four panel comic in rock form . They don’t present any conclusions, and they don’t force anything on their audience. They seem to have a point to what they do and at the same time, no point at all. Short performances unfold on the stage one after the other in quick succession. The audience is never in agreement about where to laugh: everyone finds something different to laugh about. It’s comedy, but at the same time it’s not comic. They launched in 1997 and twelve years have passed since then and they are finally beginning to attract some attention. I spoke to Inui, the scriptwriter, Misao, director, and actor Murakami.

Hello. I’ve always enjoyed your work. I’ve already read all about your group on webDICE so I know all about you. Mr. Inui, you were originally at the Bungaku Company and you formed this group with the people you met there, isn’t that right?

Inui ： Oh, is that how it happened? You know actually, it started when Misao Ushijima and I were students at Tamagawa Gakuen. You know those guys in university who are always talking big with nothing to show for it? That was us. (laughs) And one day I was saying, “I’m going to write a screenplay and get famous someday.” And Misao said, “Well then let’s do it. Let’s do it together.” And we tried it once while we were still in university. But it was just the one time.

Misao: And I kept doing it after that.

Inui: After I graduated I joined the Bungaku Company. I had wanted to learn how to direct, but I wasn’t able to do what I wanted and quit the company. Then I asked Misao if he wanted to do something together. That’s how we started Tetsuwari. We started absorbing more and more people and swelled up to our current size.

Murakami: I was in a band called the Backdrops, and I wound up doing some stuff with Tetsuwari. At first I thought, “These guys are kind of freaky. How unsettling.” I approached them with real caution at first, but now we’re working together.

Misao: Now Murakami is of one of our freakier members. (laughs)

I just can’t wrap my head around how a performance group like Tetsuwari forms its works. How do you do it? Is there some kind of blueprint?

Inui: We’ve all come from a theater background, so we came from a desire to tear down the theater form. But we hadn’t actually watched all that many plays, so I don’t think we truly understood. What else? Oh yeah, we wanted to be like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

It’s really hard to explain what kind of group Tetsuwari is, isn’t it?

Inui: Once, in English conversation class, I had to do a presentation about what I was doing. When I explained it all to the teacher, he said it was called “Marginal Performance.” What we’re doing is influenced by folklore, by the old legends and entertainment that used to be done in rural areas. For example, African tribal music, American blues, Japanese dragon dance, sumo, kabuki, bunraku, and so on. I feel like what we do is an imitation of that kind of popular travelling entertainment.

Masao: The name Tetsuwari also comes from that history. Long ago there was a man named Kumazo Tetsuwari who led a group of performers who did tricks with their feet, called the Tetsuwari Family. They’d spin tubs on their feet and stuff.

Inui: I think it was something like an Edo-era circus. They went over to America and made a living by performing their foot tricks. I read about them in a book by Shoichi Ozawa (Chairman of the Shabondama Theater Company, essayist, and entertainment scholar) and I liked the sound of it, so I named us Tetsuwari. Albatross is a kind of bird, but it’s also the name of songs I like, both one by Fleetwood Mac and one by PiL, so we added it to our name.

Oh, I see. So that was the reason.

Inui: Actually, you’ll never believe it, but our website is tetsuwari.com, and we were contacted by a Japanese guy living in America, saying, “Why are you using the name Tetsuwari?” And so we explained, “This is this and that is that, and that’s why we’re Tetsuwari.” And the reply came, “Kumazo Tetsuwari was my great-grandfather.” Apparently he’d even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show once.

What a remarkable story. Now, I’d like to know what your wacky group of misfits is planning to do next.

Inui: We’ve just been continuing on like this without any particular goals, so I don’t know what we’ll do. Don’t you think it’s amazing that we’ve come this far despite all that?

Misao: I don’t really feel like continuing, and I never made any passionate promises or anything. (laughs) Inui, your goal is to be popular with the ladies, isn’t it?

Inui: Yeah. I mean, I’d like to meet one. (laughs) Ah well, simply put, we’re like a bunch of middle school kids who put a band together. I mean, we’re all friends. So I don’t know what to say when someone comes up to me all serious about acting and asks to join the group.

Murakami: We climb the mountain because it’s there type of thing, you know?

Inui: I think the existence of Tetsuwari has been very vital for me. It’s like my hobby is Tetsuwari. Take away Tetsuwari and what have I got? Nothing but boring hobbies like reading and watching movies. I’m the leader and I write the scripts and stuff, but it’s like I’m the one who replaces the battery in the clock, and after I change the battery, it’s “Everyone gather together under the clock!” and then all my friends comes and pass time under the clock. It’s like that.

Misao: What the hell kind of literary expression is that? (laughs) It sounds like we’re prisoners of time or something. Are you okay with that?

Inui: Okay then, everyone gather together under the mad clock!?

Speaking of friends or group members, everyone in Tetsuwari seems to be quite individualistic. It’s remarkable that everyone’s managed to stick together so well.

Misao: We didn’t go out of our way to find people like that, they just came together somehow. But I think we do get along because we all bring something different to the group. It’s like, we’re not friends because we’ve all watched the same movies, we’re friends because we’ve all watched different ones.

Murakami: I entered the group after it had already been going for a while, and one thing that really strikes me is how at first I thought, “These people are freaky.” but over time, we became friends and I realised, “Oh, they’re just normal.” When I first started, people told me things like, “one of them is a pyromaniac” and “one of them is a murderer” so I thought they were really dangerous people, people I wouldn’t even be able to have a normal conversation with. But once we started rehearsing together everyone was really normal, and I was so relieved.

Inui: What! When I first saw you, I was scared! I was like, who is this guy!? (laughs)

But, I can see where you’re coming from, feeling that the Tetsuwari people are “normal.” I’m getting that feeling myself. In that sense, the popular image that Tetsuwari is a motley crew of cranks and oddballs is slightly off the mark.

Murakami: Also, people think we don’t try very hard, but that’s not true. We can’t say we’re able to entertain everyone, and we can’t say that “people who don’t understand us are stupid.” I mean, we don’t have a core, so it’s very scary to do what we do. That’s why I think we’re putting in a lot of effort.

Inui: It’s true. We are trying hard. When I’m directing, I just say stuff like, “Murakami, do some pee pee paa paa there,” but when I work at writing the script, I’m very serious about what I do. There’s no sense of being laid back or easygoing.

Misao: Personally, I don’t feel like I’m trying that hard. But I do want to see things other than what I already know to be entertaining, so I do try hard to produce that. I guess you could call it spite. (laughs) I think about stuff like, “what can Murakami do to bring out his charm?” It’s fun to try and produce something where it’s hard to tell whether it’s acting or not. I do make an effort to do that.

Inui: Aaah, I hate doing stuff where the actors can confidently say, “It’s pretty neat, isn’t it!” It’s like, I’m the one writing the script, but I can never tell whether it’s funny or not, so how can they be so confident! (laughs)

I see. But Tetsuwari is pretty neat. I wonder why that is?

Murakami: I’ve thought seriously about how people enter the sleep state when they go to bed, and I think it’s something like that. When you’re falling asleep, words that aren’t words, “te-ni-o-ha” with no grammar or logic get connected together and we fall asleep. I think that state when the mind is just floating is similar to what Tetsuwari does on stage. While watching the short programmes, your mind gets more and more floaty. In other words, I think Tetsuwari is a theater group that does performances that are like daydreams.

Tetsuwari Schedule 2009

11th September-13th September
Azumabashi Dance Crossing

26th September
Event at Nasu

12th November – 17th November
Performance at the Suzunari theatre