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periodicreviews · 1 year

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14th Generation Toilet Hanako-san

Crowd interaction. For most people, crowd interaction at a music event will only ever entail clapping and maybe singing along. By doing so, we feel slightly more connected to the other people in the crowd and to the band.

Dancing, moshing, or crowd surfing might be the next level which serve to physically connect to the other members of a crowd.

From there, it might be the band coming into the crowd or crowd surfing themselves, literally bringing you closer to the band. Or you might pay extra for a VIP meet and greet where you might shake their hand or get a photo together. Fan clubs are another way to get more intimate experiences in smaller venues or non-musical settings.

Some groups like Metallica, hold volunteer events the day before the show which unite the crowd for some greater purpose. Or if the group is religious, you might view the concert itself as having a higher purpose.

But from there, where does your connection to the artist go, short of becoming a stalker?

I think 14th Generation Toilet Hanako-san has figured it out. By hitting people in the crowd with a paper fan and by throwing toilet paper and food at them.

Intro

Hanako-san is an idol from Japan. The stereotypical image of an idol is usually one of the multitude of South Korean or Japanese groups where 1-100 young attractive girls/guys sing and dance pop music in tandem. But nowadays, at least in Japan, idol can really mean anything. From death metal to techno, there's a male/female/mixed idol group with whatever genre you want, with a variety of different themes from maids to street punks. Some groups put more emphasis on the intricate dance routines and others focus more on vocals. Most idol groups are differentiated from bands in that idols sing along with instrumental tracks as opposed to having the music performed live.

Many of these diverse combinations are not mainstream artists and play for crowds of like 20 people in tiny basement venues in Tokyo. Hanako-san falls into this category of "chika idol" or underground idol. At least for underground idols, there is no lip syncing, despite the physical strain of having to dance and sing at the same time.

One thing that sets Hanako-san apart from other artists is that typically those artists are just performing as themselves (or at least performing as the version of themselves that they want to show to an audience). But Hanako-san has taken on this persona of a ghost that haunts a toilet stall, which is based on a Japanese urban legend. In the few English interviews that are available, she answers most of the questions in character.

I think the novelty of this has more to do with me not getting out enough. Playing a character on stage isn't necessarily new, KISS has been doing it for 40+ years. Of the acts I've seen, Ghost probably comes as close to this in terms of characters/theatrics, but they never threw any toilet paper at me.

I had seen Hanako-san featured in a documentary called “Flowers of Passion” which offers a very intimate portrait of several different underground idols. When I had heard she was coming to perform in LA, when I happened to not have much going on at work, I thought “What the hell” and flew over to see the show.

The experience

When I first showed up to the supposed address of the venue, The Smell, all I found was an empty store front. There was like a door with no handle and I could see a sliver of light but no way to open it. I had vaguely remembered reading something about an alley, so I tried to go around one side of the building only to find what appeared to be craft services for a film crew. They stared suspiciously at me and I surveyed the big fence behind them with no apparent way around. I walked back to the other side of the building and at first glance, it seemed to be another fenced in parking lot. I finally gave up and walked into the nearby bar to ask. The bartender confirmed that I had to go into the alley. When I opened the door to exit, as luck would have it, I ran into the friend I had invited. I pretended I knew where I was going and walked back to the parking lot with him. In the darkness, we found an opening in the fence that wasn't visible until you got close to it. That led to the aforementioned alley and at this point my friend while nervously laughing asked "Where exactly are you taking me?"

We walked inside at almost exactly 830pm, which according to one flyer was the doors open time, but an email I had gotten had said the show would start exactly at 830pm. Fortunately, the opening act, Kuromy, was doing a sound check so there was plenty of time to get acquainted with the location of the bathroom and merch. I was a little disappointed that there were no shirts on sale since they were apparently a VIP only benefit. At $250, I couldn't really justify the VIP ticket if I was really only doing it for the shirt. But the regular ticket at 20 dollars was a steal. I picked up a copy of Hanako-san’s new album since I figured she would be performing most of it that night.

Kuromy was up first and made me glad that I had brought my ear plugs due to the volume. During the sound check they kept asking for the volume to be raised and I kept thinking to myself, "no please don't." But once the mosh pit started, I was really glad they were there. From the pit, it seemed clear that a bunch of people attending were fans of this band specifically, which gave the crowd some much needed diversity. Their music had a punk/riot grrrl style to it which fit the brick walls of the venue. The other thing that made them unique was that when they played one of their slower songs, the pit turned into into a slow dance of sorts as the audience members embraced and moved in a circular motion. I'm used to seeing the camaraderie of the pit but never expressed quite like this.

The second act was Paprika Mari, a local LA idol who performed with Hanako-san on her previous trip to America in 2018. Her microphone holder was styled after Ranka Lee's cellphone from Macross Frontier, so I had high expectations from the beginning. Accompanying her were dancers from a local studio which helped to give her a more mainstream idol image.

Several songs jumped out at me, the first being her song "Neko Neko Neko" which comes from the perspective of a cat. The arrangement was unexpectedly heavy metal and that provided a nice contrast with the typical idol image. Both this and her song "Taco Tuesday" seemed primed for a viral music video. She also performed a cover of the opening to the anime Genesis of Aquarion, which I was very surprised when I was the only person who cheered for it.

Mari was there not just as a performer but also as emcee/translator for Hanako-san. She gave a brief explanation of how Hanako-san is summoned by knocking on the 3rd stall and calling out her name. So she had the audience stomp/clap to knock and then call out her name. I was surprised when Hanako-san appeared immediately but from the smile on her face it seemed like she probably couldn't contain herself.

Before the show, we were instructed that we couldn't take videos of the performance, but thankfully she had Mari read a series of cue cards which spelled this out again for the crowd. After a few words in Japanese to the crowd, Hanako-san launched into her first song.

I'm normally not someone to like songs that are entirely screamo or harsh vocals, I usually like there to be some mix between harsh and clean vocals. But it was a special occasion of sorts so I didn't have any trouble getting through the night. She did have one or two songs that were broken up with her normal speaking voice and I feel like she could be just as appealing with non-screamo tracks.

Although I'd seen it before on a live stream, her full body head banging is a feat in itself to see live. Between her head banging and vocal style, I have always been worried about how her health is, particularly when she complained about neck pain during the show. I'm not sure she even has a manager or someone really looking after her.

A few songs in, she brought out a harisen, which is a large paper fan. If you've played Super Smash Bros, this is the same "Fan" item that you can hit players with and not damage them that much. She then proceeded to smack the top of the heads of each member of the front row. The fan makes a loud sound, but is relatively soft when it hits. It's more about the idea of getting attention from the idol rather than taking pleasure in the physical pain (though maybe they wanted that too). I'm sure that everyone in the front row was aware this was going to happen and had stood in front explicitly to get hit. I say that because no one made any attempts to get out of the front row after seeing the first person get hit.

Her show culminates in her standing up on a chair in the audience and then throwing food, toilet paper rolls, and later spitting various liquids like vegetable juice on audience members. Of course, before this happens, she hands out trash bags to be used as ponchos for those who did not want to get wet. I'm not sure if everyone in the crowd was immediately aware of what was happening, but I think the message was clear enough. There were also enough people standing right in front of her to intentionally get hit that people behind them were relatively safe.

Maybe this is just me, but there's something somewhat liberating about saying "yes, I want you to stain my clothes and shoes" when you go your whole life trying to avoid that. Sure I've gone and played paintball before or gotten dirty doing yard work, but there are few opportunities where the objective is to get messy.

If you're thinking "Andrew, do you really want to get hit in the face with food/spit?" then the answer is no. That's precisely why in addition to my N95 mask, I wore a face shield, both to protect my mask and also to avoid getting anything in my eyes.

I also wore the first Babymetal shirt that I bought back in 2017. It has a bit of sentimental value but as my interest in Babymetal has waned and idols has waxed, I thought it would be fitting if it got destroyed/battle damaged from this show.

After Hanako's supply of juice, Cheerios, and tuna fish/mayo was exhausted, the clean up time ensues. Much like the recent news stories about Japanese fans at the World Cup cleaning up the stadium, the same thing is expected here. We used the toilet paper that had been thrown around before as well as the unused trash bag ponchos. Hanako-san berated the crowd for needing the cleaning song to be played twice in order to allow for enough time to clean.

The face shield worked flawlessly in case you were wondering. I was able to wipe off most of the tuna that I had been hit with, but I ended up washing my clothes in my hotel room when I got back and nothing was stained by the time I washed them again when I got home. Though the scent of tuna fish did linger in my shoes since I couldn't really wash and dry those in time for my 8am flight the next day. I'm not really sure if it was noticeable to the people surrounding me on the airplane since no one said anything to me.

Why?

This might come as a surprise, but if you asked me what my favorite Hanako-san song was, I couldn't give you an answer because I don't know any of the song titles. And until buying her CD at the show, I didn't own any of her music.

So why fly across the country now that I hate traveling?

Part of it was just wanting to experience this type of crazy live show once. Up until this point, all the shows I've gone to seen have been fairly conventional/mainstream. Sure there are other "shock rock" artists like GWAR who have a history of spraying fake blood into the audience. But I've never really had much interest in groups like that because they seem too extreme. I'm not really into graphic violence despite all the video games and anime I consume with graphic violence. A show like Hanako-san's felt like a much less extreme and safer way to experience that type of show.

I also wanted to experience this show because I'm not sure how much time she has left as an artist. Maybe this year, she blows up in popularity and then I'd never be able to get within 10 feet of her without waiting in line for hours.

Or maybe she gets in some kind of legal trouble for throwing things at the crowd. She apparently used to throw more objects at the crowd but someone did get hurt so she changed it to just toilet paper rolls. This is what I was most concerned about, particularly in America. I'm sure LA has some kind of rule about spitting into peoples' faces. This kind of rolls into the whole gatekeeping concept. Do you share this cool thing with your friends hoping she gets more popular and risk unwanted legal attention? Or do you keep quiet about it and condemn her to forever being this indie artist who I assume is scraping by to make a living. If she got popular and was forced to either quit or tone down her act, I'm not sure which she would choose. And if you took away the food/throwing things, would she just be another idol with a horror theme?

Most idols, particularly underground ones, do not last more than a few years. Yet Hanako-san has been at this since at least 2013 which is impressive even by non-idol band standards. And this is in spite of being banned from Twitter and various venues in Japan for making too much of a mess. Maybe my concern about her disappearing is overblown if she's had the tenacity to survive for this long, particularly through COVID lockdowns, without altering her image much.

At the beginning of this, I mentioned crowd interaction because that too factored into my decision to see the show now. The crowd can sometimes make or break a show and I didn't want to risk waiting and seeing it was a crowd that wasn't 100% committed to the artist. I was actually a little worried that I was going to be the person who knew the least. But the crowd never sang along and there was no other part of the ceremony that I hadn't already seen on the livestream or documentary that I had seen. There were also a number of people in the crowd who were there for the opener so I'm not sure they knew anything about what was going to happen.

Conclusion

Babymetal was what got me started in J-music. But my interest steadily waned as they felt more and more inaccessible and more just like a product. In my quest to fill that hole, 2020 and the prevalence of livestreams drew me further down the rabbit hole of idols. Now I can check off the list going all the way to bottom to hell and I enjoyed it.

#十四代目トイレの花子さん #14th generation toilet hanako-san #hanako-san

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