Les Rallizes Dénudés: Spies, hijackings and secret societies – Who was the real Takashi Mizutani?
Les Rallizes Dénudés step out onto the stage. Rather than an uproar of cheers, a hush descends. It’s like the headmaster has just walked into a chattering classroom. It’s a strange reaction. Everything about the whole show seems peculiar. The leather jackets in the audience shine with newness, far less wrinkled and beer-stained than they should be. A rather more ominous anticipation subsumes the boho buzz of their usual gigs. Something is rotten in Denmark as Japan‘s most radical band begin to strum.
Takashi Mizutani felt this perturbing atmosphere backstage. As he wandered towards the flickering spotlight, he was bursting with uncomfortable anxiety, like a bus driver’s bladder as they approached the last stop of the day. He knew why, too. He was certain that the fellows in the newest, uncreased leather jackets, the ones observing him now with a sober glare, were all spies.
When I sat down to chat with the remaining members of the band – Makoto Kubota, a Rallizes multi-instrumentalist and producer behind recent reissues like YaneUra Sept. ‘80, and the mystically named Doronco – decades after this fateful gig, I asked them whether it’s true that, for a period, their shows were infiltrated with spies. “I mean, probably,” Kubota exclaims, that tends to happen when one of your members has hijacked a plane.
A few months prior to the show, the group’s former bassist, Moriaki Wakabayashi, along with eight of his Red Army comrades, had taken control of Japan Air Lines Flight 351. The students produced samurai swords shortly after takeoff of the domestic flight. Their intention was to divert the plane to Cuba, hoping that their actions would invoke a communist uprising across Asia and then the world. But when they were informed that there was barely enough fuel to make it from Tokyo to the intended destination of Fukuoka, they had to think on their feet.
The young students came up with a concession: land in Fukuoka, refuel, and then fly to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. This gave the Japanese authorities, along with the CIA, a frighteningly brief window to think of a plan. When the restless plane landed in Fukuoka, the authorities managed to secure the safe release of 22 of the most vulnerable passengers, but 100 remained onboard. The plane was refuelled, and it headed off to the no-fly zone of North Korea, manned by two terrified pilots who were armed only with a rudimentary map, hastily passed onboard by the negotiators.
They were flying into no-man’s-land with little more than a sketch and shredded nerves, anticipating the worst. Shortly, they were greeted in the sky by North Korean fighter jets that opened fire on the domestic airliner, narrowly missing. The students demanded that the pilots continue to fly onward. Suddenly, the jets changed tact, flanking the plane in an escorting manoeuvre, ushering it towards Pyongyang airport. A valorous roar erupted in the cockpit. The students had been accepted by their fellow communists. A hero’s welcome awaited them.
As they touched down on the asphalt, the first signs of an unfurling revolution greeted them. Scores of fans, a choir of Pyongyang schoolgirls, and the proud local authorities stood in wait. Or so the hijackers thought. In truth, the jets that had flanked them belonged to the South Korean military, hastily daubed with North Korean flags. While on the ground at Seoul airport, a sudden redecoration to mimic a celebratory scene in Pyongyang was underway. The whole thing had been a ruse. The hijackers would eventually notice this cunning trick and instruct the plane to take off for Pyongyang, but not before all the hostages, barring the crew, had been released.
An international incident of the most epic proportions might have been mitigated, but shockwaves unravelled throughout Japan. The nation seemed to have reached a fever pitch of division and disorder. The streets were awash with gobsmacked chatter. The newspapers were graced with gaudy headlines—as tends to be the case when a group of sword-yielding students commandeer a jet and abscond to the enemy territory at the height of the Cold War—hoping to initiate a global revolution.
Meanwhile, back in Kyoto, Mizutani was nonplussed. Politics had never been his thing. His concern was, as it always had been, rock ‘n’ roll. He barely flinched at the news that his former bandmate was now being granted asylum in a hermit state. Instead, sinking deeper into his Tatami floor, cushioned by the lilting tones of Lou Reed, the proverbial hijacker of his higher consciousness, he sought solace in music.
“But not only The Velvet Underground,” Kubota exclaims. And he exclaims for good reason. One of the downsides of being such a musical mystery is that while you’re squirrelling away in the shadows, others end up writing your story for you. The lurid myth—tying the band to international hijackings and highlighting the inexplicable fact that they were somehow early disciples of a band who peaked at a mere 171 in the US—often overshadows the truth. In reality, Mizutani was never moved by anything as mawkish as politics, and the Velvets were only one strand in a whirlwind of eclectic influences that included “San Francisco psychedelia and lots of blues rock from England.”
Yet, the backdrop can’t be ignored. It’s what makes Les Rallizes Dénudés’ story so extraordinary—it’s the gaudy glow of the lurid myth that illuminates the magic of the shadows—the liberating power of the rock ‘n’ roll underground. To fully appreciate their music and the truly enigmatic ways of Mizutani, you must first understand the climate that made them such an unlikely and welcome proposition… for about 500 people in the Kyoto area. You see, in Western schools, you’re taught that the Second World War ended on September 2nd, 1945, but maybe in a few hundred years’ time, scholars will look back and conclude that it is still going on now.
It most certainly seemed that way in Japan in the late 1960s. Officially, the US occupied the country after the war and initiated demilitarisation and democratisation before handing control back over in 1952. But many thought that this handover was a sham. The US maintained military bases and funded the conservative ruling LDP party, while the CIA lined the pockets of pro-American politicians, brutally suppressed student movements in ‘The Red Purge’ and pushed the nation towards involvement in the Vietnam War.
So, it is not without irony that a huge host of the same spies strongarming the nation towards their own ideals found themselves mulling around in a concert, watching the only people in Japan who only really cared about music.
“We were in the same university, Doshisha in Kyoto,” Kubota says over Zoom, reflecting on the origin of the band, Doronco quietly devouring a bowl of ramen in the corner without a word, just the odd nod and smile. I’m not sure if these earnest nods were in appreciation of his lunch or what Kubota and I were saying. Nevertheless, Kubota muses over how a clutch of students refused to engage with the messy rigmarole of politics and, instead, turned towards The Cannonball Adderley Sextet, Yusef Lateef, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and a plethora of others in “the golden age”.
This brilliant, blossoming jazz and pop offered an escape for the music students, even if all their classes were cancelled. But, as Kubota explains, Mizutani never fit into the conventional college music club. “He didn’t know what to do in the club with the guidelines. He became independent.” In doing so, he gathered up a few like-minded folks and “he actually created the underground scene. I don’t even know how he got all these American underground rock ideas and records,” Kubota says.
With the best of the bunch in that underground scene, Mizutani formed Les Rallizes Dénudés in “1967, I guess. Or ’68”. The fact that one of the key members is uncertain on the date does little to dispel the enigmatic nature of the group. But before Kubota formally joined the band, he attended their first-ever concert. “It was so fucking loud. I never seen this. I never experienced that loudness in my life,” he recalled. “I don’t know how he collected all the equipment. That’s my first question. It was so loud that the sound hurt my body.”
It was hurting Mizutani, too. “After a few months, he said he was tired,” Kubota recalled. Softer acid folk inflexions began to punctuate the noise, and the gigs became more sporadic. The goal was now to commit some of this unique nature to tape, so Mizutani booked a studio “just for one night” and summoned Kubota to make a record. “It was about eight or nine at night when we got to the studio. Then it was morning light when we left.” In six or seven hours, with rudimentary microphones and knock-off guitars, they cut some ecstatic music—music that in its own way gave voice to a different kind of revolution, one that finds its own utopia without the need to desecrate the underpants of airline pilots.
“That’s the funny thing, you know, it’s like the the club of some secret society.”
Makoto Kubota
Doronco’s ramen seems bottomless. Meanwhile, Kubota continues to explain how the intent of this recording and a few that sporadically followed, either recorded live or in the studio ‘as live’, were also a mystery. “He was well known at this stage,” Kubota says, but he never pushed to have these tapes published by major labels. Quite often, they were just left in the same reel-to-reel machine they were recorded on, waiting for Kubota to discover them years later and eventually release them to the world. Like Mizutani himself, maybe the intent was for the music to emerge from the shadows.
In fact, most of Les Rallizes Dénudés’ releases only occurred when Kubota had quit touring with his other bands that found international fame. He had grown tired of the road and decided to be a producer. Mizutani would call him from unknown places and say things like, ‘Do you remember that session in Doshisha in 1970? Would you like to release it?’ And Kubota would dig out the scotch tape recording and polish it up a touch for public consumption.
“Suddenly, he’d call me and say, ‘What’s up, let’s do something together’. So I said, ‘Yeah, sure’. You know, I was always ready—all the members of Rallizes were always ready. That’s the funny thing, you know, it’s like the club of some secret society, something like that,” Kubota says. Doronco nods over his unending feast.
So, as time went on and the fandom swelled to international levels, and a roster of musicians waited for mystic calls from Mizutani on high, why was there no effort to put on a global tour or create a bonafide record? Was it that CIA surveillance had spawned a debilitating paranoia? Was it that the backdrop of student riots had slowly ceased, quelling the sense of the band’s transcendent opposition? Or was it something else? Something that only the mystic Mizutani could ever explain.
“He loves the feeling of the first time,” Kubota posits. “I mean, the meaning of a fresh session. So he didn’t want to repeat anything. It’s more like music theatre.” He adds, “When the band starts repeating, he changed the band.” In essence, he wanted to protect the magic of the music. But ‘protecting magic’ is a principle rather than a grounded reality. It costs money to ‘protect magic’, and Mizutani was not from a rich family, nor is there any traceable record of major employment during the weeks, months, and years when he would disappear.
“The financial thing… I, I have nothing to say,” Kubota says, stumped. Doronco looks equally baffled as he takes another mouthful. “Again, it’s another magic. I don’t know how he kept being able to maintain the band. I had no idea. I guess, it’s maybe like, I don’t know, Nica Rothschild and Thelonious Monk. Stuff like that. I don’t know. I really don’t know. But he always had the loudest the music with the loudest equipment all the time. [There’s just so much mystery] in even the way he looks. I’ve never seen any other Japanese looking like him.”
Was his Rothschild the CIA? Was he a plant to turn students onto something more apolitical? Or was he a secret kingpin in more than underground music? All these notions seem a little too lofty, and there’s barely anything in his life that you can substantiate. Which leads to the conclusion that he was the hardest thing to trace of all: a romantic. Hell, one of the few things you can trace is that he even lived in France at one point. “Black and night is his life; it’s his style,” Doronco says, his sole remark.
He was always late, and he would always operate at nightfall. He’s a mystery, but he’s one that proves easy to empathise with when we search our tired souls. An artist seeking a sense of drama a little more magical than the pantomime of the humdrum world, living by his whims, pouring his money into fleeting passion projects designed to be seances that come and go on the heels of their own inspiration rather than workaday vocations ascribed for profit and judgement.
There’s an appeal to that, and it pours off the latest bottled ether from the Rallizes, YaneUra Sept. ‘80. It even intoxicated Kubota as he made the record. He says he started staying up late, obeying Mizutani’s hours. “I follow the music, you know, and he’s the commander.”
Where did he go in the fallow years of the band? Did he really even pass away in 2019, as the dispatches say? As Kubota and Doronco conclude with wry smiles, there are plenty more mysteries out there than they even know about. The only thing they know for certain is that, if anything, their late friend’s passion was for “love stories”, and Rallizes was one of them—they fittingly don’t expand on that.
