Satomimagae: In Praise of Shadows

The elusive Japanese singer-songwriter on creating "something more than haiku but less than music"

In his famous essay In Praise of Shadows, writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki explores the contrasting aesthetics between Western and Asian cultures.

Very broadly speaking, his theory is that Western aesthetics are usually defined by light, clarity and brightness, while Eastern cultures more often utilize shadows, greyscale and darkness.

That distinction is most prevalent within architecture and the arts. 

Some of my favorite Japanese music consciously employs ambiguity and vagueness – not bluntly spelling things out but accepting innuendo as an apt expression of sentiment.

Like Satomimagae, a Tokyo-based singer-songwriter somewhere between indie folk, bedroom pop, electronic and experimental music: Her introspective fragments of acoustic guitar, hushed vocals, synths and field recordings are shaped by a magical interplay of melody and noise, intimacy and obscurity.

photo: Norio

Born in 1989, Satomi has been a recording musician active on the Tokyo indie folk circuit since the early 2010s, but started reaching wider audiences with her 2021 album Hanazono, which was released on established American experimental music label RVNG Intl.

On her newest record Taba, she continues her musical path but leaves the idea of linear storytelling behind, at least for the moment. As the press blurb states, these 14 mostly short vignettes “document fleeting scenes and sounds of life flowing outside of her home studio”.

Taba is a Japanese word for a bunch, a collective or a bundle of things, in this case representing a loose collection of poetic short stories. In the past, Satomi has often looked inwards for inspiration, while here she’s casting her view towards the outside, in acceptance of being part of a bigger whole.

Wanting to find out more about the elusive musician, I reached out to her label, and Satomi agreed to a written interview. When I received her answers, I felt they were at the same time specific and opaque, and I thought about following up with more detailed questions, but ultimately decided against it.

To quote Kate Bush: “In our contemporary world, things of mystery are even more precious than they were before the internet, and I think it would be really terrible if that mystery was taken away from us. It’s really important.”

Satomi, what are some of your earliest memories of sound?

I moved to Vermont with my family when I was around four years old for my mother’s work. We lived there for two years. My memories before the USA are almost gone. So my first memories of music are from the USA, like old blues music that my father was playing in his car, “Over The Rainbow” being played at the day-care after nap time.

Did you grow up in a musical household and get a musical education?

I’ve heard that there was a pianist in my grandfather’ s siblings, but I think my family was not that “musical”. My parents liked playing music when they were driving. I learned music almost only in classes and club activities at school. I went to guitar lessons sometimes, when I was in high school, to learn the basics.

How did you get into playing music and writing your own songs?

I’d started playing a trumpet in a brass band as a club activity at elementary school. I liked being a part of the band and creating music with others. I got a chance to play acoustic guitar in music class at junior high school, and I got absorbed immediately. I enjoyed it because I could sing while playing, [which wasn’t possible with] the trumpet. It was also around that time that I started writing songs.

What did music mean to you back then, when you were younger?

Music was the only thing I could do that I was passionate about. I wasn't good at relationships and didn't find much enjoyment in socializing at school, so I diverted my energy to learning music and practicing instruments and songs. Without music making, I would have gone in the wrong direction and done something dangerous.

What kind of music did you grow up listening to?

J-pop, blues, rock, folk, electronic music, techno, more academic and experimental music, traditional music from many areas in the world… I’ve listened to anything sounding interesting.

Your music seems to have folk and blues roots, but also elements of electronic and experimental music. Which artists and records were formative to you in those realms?

When I was a student, folk guitar was considered lame. My friends were in bands. I practiced bass and electric guitar, but the sound I really liked playing was the acoustic guitar. It doesn’t need an amp, and I could play low notes and high notes at the same time on it. But I didn't want to make lame music. I was always wondering if there was anyone who played that kind of guitar, then I stumbled upon José González. I was convinced that his music could be enjoyed by people who were not necessarily fans of folk music, and I felt the same way about Nick Drake's intricate rhythms. These are the artists who made me feel it might be able to make interesting music with the acoustic guitar.

So I think Etta Baker, Nick Drake and José González would be my inspirations for guitar play. As a songwriter, I think I was influenced by Radiohead’s and Björk’s darker songs in the beginning.

How and why did you start working with field recordings?

My elder sister went to art college. Once I made music for her exhibition when we were students, which was the first introduction to the field of experimental/ambient/academic music for me. I started collecting interesting sounds outside and tried adding them to my music. I wanted to make multi-layered sounds, but I thought it would be difficult to work with others all the time and boring to layer sounds made entirely by myself. I thought it might be fun to play an ensemble with unexpected environmental sounds. My music basically contains no instruments that make beats, so there are often gaps left to insert stimulating sounds. I like to try to include environmental sounds to scatter them in those spaces. I like the feeling of making clean, clear music a little dirty.

Could you try to describe the Tokyo indie folk scene to an outsider? Do you feel like you’re part of a musical community there?

I feel that the indie music scene in Tokyo is very finely divided. Even in the folk scene, there are invisible walls between each of them, and it seems as if they don't mix. Of course I don't have a complete picture of the whole scene. Sometimes I feel like I am in between them. And I am very shallowly involved in each community. I might not say I am part of the community in that sense.

Taba is your second album on RVNG Intl. How did you get on an experimental music label based in New York?

When I was looking for a label to put out Hanazono, a friend of mine who worked in a record store told me about RVNG, and when I looked at the website, I saw Emily Sprague's name. I knew her because I love Florist. Other music on the label also sounded unique and particular. So I decided to send them a demo.

You have songs in Japanese and songs in English on the same album. How do you decide when to employ which language?

In addition to considering the best fit for the melody, I also choose the language in which I think the music can be expressed. I feel like the things we express through words are quite different in English and Japanese. For example, something that sounds romantic in English can sound too direct and unnatural in Japanese. So sometimes the best language to use depends on what situation I'm trying to sing about.

I used to insist on singing in Japanese, but I thought that might be closed-minded, so I decided to choose from the two languages I could sing in, and stopped limiting myself to that since Hanazono.

Taba is a Japanese term referring to a “bundle” of things or maybe a “pile” – what does the title refer to in this case?

I was imagining a place where people were gathered. There are several bundles, and there seems to be a natural boundary between them. I pictured a bunch of pasta noodles, all bundled together in a messy way with strings or tapes.

I thought it was interesting that people see a group of people in a certain bracket and make it easier to judge, instead of caring about each person individually. I liked this slightly crude way to describe a collection or gathering of something. And this album is more like a “taba” of short stories, rather than a complete album of one story with chapters relating to each other.

I was thinking about how we see people as a group, and individuals within a group. How groups are connected and also how borderlines exist. The awareness that we are just one element in the collective (taba), and yet each individual’s invisible experiences and memories remain somewhere, influencing us, or society, without realizing it. The image of accumulated, unnoticed lives/memories/experiences influenced this album. Not in the sense of major influence, but it was one of the inspirations for the landscapes that came to mind when writing the lyrics.

And musically, what inspired you to write this album?

For the music, I was conscious of the acoustic guitar sound that is used as a sample in rap music or electronica, because I wanted to de-nature the sound of the guitar. I also think that the environment has changed dramatically since the pandemic, and this has led to an interest in groups, communities, history, and politics, which has had a significant impact on the way I observe ourselves from a different angle.

Writing and recording this album, what were some of the general ideas, inspirations, approaches and challenges that you encountered?

I wrote these songs around 2020 to 2021, during the pandemic. First I recorded about 100 short fragments on my iPhone, then I selected the tracks and recorded them in 2022 and completed the mixing in April 2024.

In 2021, I had the opportunity to be part of a RVNG x Adult Swim collaboration and took one of these songs as a base for the contribution. I felt I found a new direction that was different from my past works, so I kept that feeling in mind and recorded more fragments afterwards, experimenting with many different chords, rhythms and tempos. Also the concept of the compilation may have been one of the inspirations for the album. It made me think about mass, community, which I am usually not very conscious of, but had to be aware of in the pandemic. I think the perspective that individuals are just small dots in a mass and almost everyone is invisible to each other, influenced this album, for better or worse.

In 2023, I released an album called Kyokai with [the sound artist] duenn, and the theme was “something more than Haiku but less than Music”, which left a lasting impression on me. Rather than assembling the fragments into something with a solid structure, I thought I would try to make songs that end with a short statement, and collect them as a series, like a collection of short stories. I think working with other artists different from myself made me see my music objectively and try new approaches.

Satomimagae’s Taba is out now on RVNG Intl.