Kazuki Tomokawa

In a generation of musicians that came of age in postwar Japan, Kazuki Tomokawa stands as a pioneer of radical individualism—forging a sound and sensibility marked by shocking intimacy and blistering honesty.

In his third album, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth, released by Harvest Records in 1977, Tomokawa creeps “ever more inward,” as Kiichi Takahara writes in the record’s original introductory text—embracing an attitude pervasive amongst musicians of the time who interrogated the prosaic and the profound alike, eschewing politics and society in favor of an “attitude of total self-containment.

TRACKS:

• SIDE A
• A1. Try saying you're alive!
• A2. Kill or be killed
• A3. Memory
• A4. Got a problem?
• A5. Namahage

• SIDE B
• B1. My hometown is also inside a dog
• B2. The boys of Hachiryu
• B3. The donpan song goes off the rails
• B4. Runaway boy
• B5. Missed my time to die