STB47: Kanagawa
I Just Wanna Chilllllll
Review — Starbucks JIMOTO Frappuccino #14 Kanagawa
Perhaps my mistake was not sipping this outside in the intense Kawasaki heat. The day I head to the shopping mall connected to one of Kanagawa’s bigger train stations is scorching hot — which is to say, it’s summertime in Japan — and just looking at the glorious marble-blue shade of this prefecture’s JIMOTO Frappuccino makes me dream of sucking it down while wandering the crowded streets. No Frappuccino I have on this quest looks better than this sky-meets-sea themed drink, and probably works wonder when navigating high temperatures.
I’m tired and wet, though, so I opt for the in-mall sitting area, right under an air conditioning vent. Maybe that was my mistake, because this ends up being the single blandest entry in the series. The hue makes up a huge part of the marketing, with that vivid blue coming from the use of a local flower called a “butterfly pea,” but it doesn’t bring any real taste to the beverage. That just leaves a very faint peach and milk taste, but one that is too subtle to impress. When those big streaks of peach syrup are eaten alone or with just the whipped cream, it delivers a lovely tartness. Mixed in with the blue bog beneath, however, and everything just becomes watered down. They imagined it as a “Kanagawa Big Wave,” but it’s just submerged into nothing.
Spiritually a Kanagawa song, even if Tatsuro Yamashita is from, like, Ikebukuro (and this movie is about…California?)
If Saitama is Tokyo’s bumpkin cousin, eventually accepting themselves and finding their own confidence in the process, Kanagawa is the laid-back relative living the life the capital wishes they had. Accurately or not, the prefecture exudes a certain relaxed charm, thanks to ample coastline and just more space to stretch out in (never discount the emotional boost wider sidewalks provide). It’s not all pretty, and that fantasy paradise zooms away in the slightly grimy Kawasaki or the US-military-impacted port town of Yokosuka…but head south enough, to the beaches of Chigasaki or Zushi, for that Pacific breeze. Or simply head to Yokohama, sometimes unfairly viewed as a glorified suburb for Tokyo, but a bay-adjacent city moving at half speed compared to the metropolis above it.
Southern All-Stars became one of the most successful bands in Japanese music history by translating this ocean-sprayed attitude and playfulness into song.
A Keisuke Kuwata solo number that reminds us…we are all just salarymen trying to escape to our own private surf island.
Modern Kanagawa, like Saitama, has become a hotbed for musical talent, thanks to families moving to the prefecture thanks to far more agreeable housing prices, leading to a generation of artists emerging from just south of Tokyo. Suchmos bottled Kanagawa cool for a new generation of kids, while oddballs like KOM_I of Suiyoubi No Campanella, ZOMBIE-CHANG, and more emerged from just south of the capital, when in a previous time they absolutely would have been, like, Shibuya kids. And don’t forget mega-level acts like RADWIMPS, an early example of this shift at the start of the 21st century.
Yet before this modern development, Kanagawa provided fantasy. City pop gets tied to the glistening, glittery image of Tokyo during the 1980s, but it’s important to remember where the term comes from. It’s origins are in marketing, selling music born to be played out of cars — which people in the suddenly flush-with-cash country could now afford — which one could drive around the city…but the whole point of owning a set of wheels is to get away from wherever you are. Yokohama offered the perfect destination — just see the Hipinion-born “Convertible To Yokohama” idea predating the current city pop boom, or even “Yokohama Twilight Time.” Accessible escape less than an hour away.
I would urge anyone interested in city pop — and the realities / fantasies it represents to so many — to spend some time with the filmography of director Yasuo Baba, whose entire career involved latching on to the economic boom times. His 1987 Watashi wo Ski ni Tsuretette! is a vital artifact of the period thanks to its celebration of skiing and consumerism (and pure leisure), though follow up Kanojo Ga Mizugi Ni Kigaetara is far more reflective via its boneheaded celebration of capitalist excess (like, I get skiing as a trend…but this movie imagines boat ownership and submarines as middle-class aspiration?) and horniness. Baba even offered up an early bit of bubble nostalgia in 2007 with a film about literally traveling back in time to the pre-burst days.
It’s his 1991 feature — and final segment in his “bubble” trilogy — Nami No Kazu Dake Dakishimete that stands as a highlight in his resort-dreaming career. While not necessarily a good movie (it gets pretty confused about what it wants to be), it’s an early instance of someone longing for Japan’s bubble era…so early that the bubble hadn’t even popped yet when it hit theaters in August that year. Set in a monochrome 1991, it follows a group of friends reflecting on their youthful days spent on the Shonan beaches in Kanagawa, centered around launching their own radio station playing, like, Toto and Bertie Higgins.
Even at a moment when the revelry of the decade before hadn’t officially ended, Baba was pining for the easy-breezy days of youth spent spinning Ned Doheny records from an abandoned lifeguard station alongside the coast. Of course it plays out in Kanagawa — it has always been a place to project fantasy on, whether from burnt-out city dwellers or folks expecting the sky-blue drink they travelled out to enjoy to be a knockout.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies