A Life in Folk

by Mikami Kan

Genres: Music

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Mason Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

As might be expected, if you know about Mikami Kan, this is a very idiosyncratic pseudo-autobiography. Originally published in 2000, its meandering text tells the story of his journey to Tokyo, becoming a folk singer, actor, and poet. But it's not a straight-forward narrative, and much of it consists of asides, ideas, and philosophical thoughts. It's more like sitting in a bar hearing him tell stories and what the events meant to him over beers or sake. Which makes for fun reading. It's a pretty quick read. Translator David Hopkins notes in his introduction that he kept the structure of the text as faithful to the original as possible, and Kan's style includes many brief one-sentence paragraphs, lending an unusual sort of weight to some of his conclusions. I honestly don't know how interesting this will be to most readers, but while I know Kan's work I wasn't particularly familiar with the folk music scene of the '70s and '80s and I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

[Schwites · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a big fan of Mikami Kan since highschool in 2014 among other artists and musicians associated with Shuji Terayama. Onkashu: Hiraku Yume nado Arujanashi is one of my most favorite albums, so I wanted to learn more about him but there's not much to find, at least in English, until I heard about this book. He's just like how I had pictured he would be just from listening to so much of his music, a spitting image of a poetic folk singer in 1960s Greenwich Village. The book covers his life from 50s-00s but the folk boom of the 60/70s obviously plays a big part of his life.

Even if you haven't heard his music or seen him in movies I feel like anyone interested in 60/70s Japan and/or fans of Murikami would really enjoy this book.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great!