www.koreanfilm.org/Q

Kawai has become one of the essential figures in the post-Three Trimuvirate Generation (the Great Three being Sato Masaru [think Kurosawa Akira], Ifukube Akira [Godzilla] and Takemitsu Toru, all no longer with us) of contemporary Japanese film music. He’s virtually cornered the market in two genres with strong appeals outside Japan: J-horror and the high-end Japanese animation, or animé, especially the products of his close collaboration with Oshii Mamoru, epitomized by Ghost in the Shell and its sequel Innocence.  

I’d like to run maybe a three-part essay, somewhat rambling and unstructured, on the significance of Kawai Kenji’s contribution to the Japanese film music. Instead of going through his scores one by one chronologically, I will pounce from one cluster of them to another in a rather random manner, beginning with what is handily available right in front of me. After all, that’s the freedom afforded by the blog format.

Kawai Kenji was born in 1957. Believe it or not, his college major at Tokai University was Nuclear Power Engineering. But he soon dropped out of it, forming his band and recording his demo tapes at home. Like many other composers, Kawai entered the field of film/TV scoring through advertising. In mid-1980s he graduated to the music director’s position for a series of direct-to-video and TV animé jobs, including Devilman, Twilight Q, Miyu the Vampire Girl and Super-Deformed Gundam. Kawai really hit it big when he was recruited for Oshii Mamoru’s mega-hit video series Patlabor (rumor has it that he was less costly than others available), later its TV variations and two theatrical features, made between 1988 and 1993. From there he branched off to numerous memorable scores for horror/thriller films, most importantly the directorial output of Nakata Hideo, including Ring (known as Ringu in Region 1 DVD market) and its sequels, Dark Water and Chaos. His Takemitsu-esque horror music with the signature taiko drums and the “cold blizzard” electronic effect has become closely identified with J-horror. In recent years he was also sought out by non-Japanese Asian filmmakers, contributing his distinctive sounds to Tsui Hark’s Seven Swords, the thoughtful Hong-Kong-Korean co-adaptation of a Japanese manga Battle of Wits, the Korean psycho-thriller Antarctic Diary and other notable productions. As of early 2009, his talent is yet to be tapped by Hollywood, although he did write music for a bizarre French cult-wannabe flick Bloody Mallory in 2002.

Now, one of the biggest benefits of iTunes, perhaps the most important one for a collector like me, has been the availability of surprisingly hard-to-find film scores in its ever-changing catalogue: just do “search” on, say, Ennio Morricone or Stelvio Cipriani and what items show up. To my big surprise, iTunes occasionally carry even Asian film music, in addition to the Korean hip-hop, Japanese jazz, Tan Dun symphonies and other usual suspects, in this case Kawai Keiji’s score for Seven Swords and Kaidan, Nakata Hideo’s latest supernatural thriller. They are both highly representative of Kawai’s style, a bit more elaborate than usual perhaps, given the high-profile nature of the projects.

I’d recommend Seven Swords to anyone looking for an interesting, alternative take to usual Hollywood epic action score by, say, Alan Silvestri. It is by and large a rousing symphonic score with the electronic effects more subdued than usual for Kawai, but still a large chunk of tracks consist of what one might call “dramatic ambient” music, with synth drones wailing like snow blizzards or human voices in the grip of despair. “Woman from Yonder” and “Fire from Heaven/Mount Heaven Serenade” feature Kawai’s signature technique of the taiko drums beating in time to the slow lurching of the creepy-crawly electronic sounds, punctured by stabbing notes of ethnic (Chinese) flutes, followed by the women’s chorus, ringing bells and shaking chimes that abruptly explodes the oppressive, grey tension into sparkles of light scattering out into the open. To be sure, those in the lookout for exciting and robust (martial arts) action music will find tracks like “Encounter at the Shrine” and “The Final Sword Battle” more to their taste.

On the other hand, Kaidan, despite its deliberately traditional setting, is a J-horror score through and through, although unusually melodious and elegant. The title theme, “Kaidan no hajimari,” sets the tone with powerfully theatrical taiko drum beats, with a shakuhachi sorrowfully playing a rather simple three-note tune. The soundtrack is divided into twenty tracks, some of which are brief (one-minute or less) “stingers” that accentuates the onscreen action in the manner of Takemitsu’s biwa plucking or other minimalist musical annotations. Kaidan’s score is actually superior to Nakata’s rather awkward direction, apparently caught between remaining faithful to the original rakugo and the modernist shockeroo techniques he usually employs. It suggests the mordant beauty of the romantic obsession that underlies this story of a young tobacco merchant cruelly rejecting the love of a much older but still beautiful music teacher, not quite effectively conveyed in the movie version. 

I will be back with more thoughts on Kawai’s scores for Oshii Mamoru’s epic animé in Part 2.