A shrine to rock ’n’ roll
QUESTION
Why have many artists (Bob Dylan, Ozzy Osbourne, Cheap Trick and Blur) recorded live albums at the Budokan in Tokyo? WhEN my wife and I were living in Tokyo in the Sixties, our nearest tram stop was the one outside the Budokan.
On our way home one evening in summer 1966, our tram made slow progress and eventually came to a halt some way short of our stop. We got off to find traffic in both directions had come to a halt because the street — a broad avenue about 40m wide — was completely jammed with a heaving mob of teenagers.
This was just the overflow from the area round the Budokan, which itself was packed with thousands more. There were lots of police around, and when I asked one officer what the excitement was, he said: ‘A band called The Beatles.’
The large police presence was accounted for by the fact that threats had been made against The Beatles by several extreme right-wing political groups.
The Nippon Budokan (Japan Martial Arts hall) was built for the judo events at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Martial arts are a major element of traditional Japanese culture and regarded by many as having profound spiritual significance.
This is reflected in the architecture and location. The building’s design is based on the Yumedono (hall of Dreams) of the Buddhist Temple horyu-ji, which dates from the seventh century.
The Budokan stands in the grounds of the Imperial Palace, across the street from the Yasukuni Shrine, where the spirits of all those who died in the service of the Japanese Empire between 1868 and 1945 are commemorated. It was thus ‘hallowed ground’ for the ultra-nationalists, who regarded its use for a rock concert by a foreign group as a desecration.
But the performances went off without incident, and the Budokan continues to be a favourite venue for foreign bands.
I’d say there were three reasons for this: it’s an excellent performance space, seating nearly 14,000 and Japanese audiences (as foreign musicians often say) are a delight to play to. They are knowledgeable and appreciative, quiet and attentive during performances and burst into rapturous applause at the end. Oh, and Japanese impresarios are able to offer very large fees.
Visitors to the Budokan should also make the effort to see the Yasukuni Shrine, which is politically contentious but of great historical interest.
And as they cross the road, they should take the opportunity to admire the beautiful 19th-century lighthouse. Stranded by a busy highway, it now looks out of place, but before the city was extended eastwards on reclaimed land, it was visible for miles into Tokyo Bay.
Graham Healey, School of East Asian Studies,
university of Sheffield.
QUESTION
Did any member of the band 10cc have a bad experience in the Caribbean before they wrote Dreadlock Holiday? DrEADlOcK holiday was 10cc’s third UK No 1. The lyrics relate the experiences of a white man lost in Jamaica and confronted by ‘a brother from the gutter’ who wants his jewellery: ‘Well he looked down at my silver chain/he said I’ll give you one dollar/I said you’ve got to be jokin’ man/It was a present from me mother’.
The next encounter is beside his hotel pool drinking a pina colada, a dark-voiced woman offers him ‘something harder’.
These experiences were inspired by events that happened to 10cc’s Eric Stewart and Justin hayward of the Moody Blues when holidaying together in Barbados.
Stewart recalled in the book 1,000 UK No 1 hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer leigh: ‘Justin and I were on a para-sailing raft in the middle of the ocean, and I was strapped into this parachute gear. I was towed behind a speedboat at high speed.
‘I waved goodbye to Justin. he was left on the raft with three guys; one Jamaican and two from Barbados. The Jamaican guy said: “I like your silver chain, man, I’ll give you a dollar for it.” Justin replied: “come on, it’s worth a lot more than that and it was a present from my mother.” And this guy said: “If this was Jamaica, I would cut your hand off for that.”
‘I came back and asked Justin if he wanted a go. he said: “No, let’s get off this raft as quick as we can, I’ve had some problems.” Back in England, I relayed the story to Graham (Gouldman) and we wrote a song around it.’ The later line, ‘I don’t like cricket, I love it’ came from a chat Gouldman had with a Jamaican cricket fan in a hotel in Jamaica.
Marc Edmunds, Bournemouth.
QUESTION
Since 1861, police stations have had blue lamps, but Bow Street station in Covent Garden had white lights instead. Why? FUrThEr to the earlier answer, unlike other police stations, Bow Street never had the lantern-style lamp, but two glass globe type converted gas lamps.
In the early Seventies, I was an apprentice electrician there. Before leaving one evening, the foreman handed me two blue 150-watt bulbs and told me to fit them in front of the station. They were not there in the morning when I returned to work.
Dave Blackman, Carshalton, Surrey.