For months John had been fascinated by Yoko. Now as they talked and talked he was finding out about the many things they had in common, and those they didn’t, and how much she had been shaped by her childhood, as he had been by his.
The name ‘Yoko’, she explained to him, translates as ‘the child of one who is overseas and far from home’, and, although her childhood, like his, was lived in part against a background of the Second World War, her upbringing could hardly have been more different.
Born in Tokyo in 1933 into a wealthy banking family that claimed a samurai ancestor, her mother was a Buddhist and her father a Christian; her early home schooling meant a governess had, therefore, taken her in Bible reading and Buddhist scripture, as well as calligraphy, music and Japanese culture. The eldest of three children, she explained to me in her first interview with a British newspaper how she’d been ‘like a domesticated animal being fed on information’. She’d hated it, as well as the moral code of the time and place. ‘God was always watching, and any misdemeanour, or bad thought, had to be confessed to my mother,’ she told me. Her mother was, she said, very beautiful, but distant. Her father had wanted to be a concert pianist but had been forced through family pressure into banking. The weight of conformity was all around her. But that conformity didn’t extend to sex. As she grew up she would realise that her parents had an open marriage and both took lovers whom she would get to know. That wasn’t unusual for her. She would later display a guilt-free and tolerant attitude towards extramarital sex.
Early childhood for Yoko had been spent mainly in the strict but cosseted culture of the Japanese rich, other than for three years when her father was running a Japanese bank in New York, and the family had joined him there. But returning to Japan in 1940, her mid-childhood coincided with the war, when, with her father at a bank in Hanoi, her mother took her children to the country to get away from the bombing of Tokyo. There would be hard times, and in Yoko’s version of events, in one instance she had to beg for food. Whether that was strictly true or a slight embellishment – even her best friends would admit that she was never beyond that – is unknown.
Back in a recovering Tokyo after the war, and with her father home from Vietnam where for over a year he had been missing in the chaos of conflict – as John’s father had been while at sea – things quickly improved for a highly intelligent, strong-willed child. Soon she was back in school, in the same class, it is said, as the Emperor’s son, Prince Yoshi. Then after two terms at university, the family followed her father once again when he was posted back to the US. From her home in the comfortably well-off suburb of Scarsdale, New York, she then enrolled at the educationally permissive, private liberal arts Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers in 1953.
Already sophisticated, and very intense, she quickly discovered her main interest to be in the avant-garde, and she spent more and more time in New York City and less at college, finally dropping out when she met a young Japanese composer, Toshi Ichiyanagi, who was studying at the Juilliard School. Her parents objected to the relationship, in that Toshi’s family were not considered socially elevated enough, but Yoko and Toshi were married in 1956 – the year John was failing his O-levels. She was twenty-two, and was, she would say, a virgin on her wedding night. According to her biographer, Jerry Hopkins, some of those who knew her at the time believe that to have been unlikely.
Renting a loft on New York’s Lower West Side the young couple threw themselves into the avant-garde milieu with Yoko attending classes given by the experimental composer John Cage. With money tight, and her parents appalled by her bohemian lifestyle, she sometimes worked as a waitress in a macrobiotic restaurant or taught calligraphy to subsidise the ‘events’ that she would arrange in their loft.
Yoko’s art was highly influenced by the Fluxus group whose Lithuanian leader, George Maciunas, with whom she would later have an affair, described it as ‘a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, vaudeville, John Cage and Duchamp’. In other words, it was zany and fun, and, in Yoko’s style, unfinished, meaning that when somebody witnessed one of her events that person then became part of the happening. She was, she would say, a conceptualist, dreaming up instructions for her pieces, which others might perform. In other words she was a thinker rather than a doer.
If she received any reviews at all they were usually critical, but criticism and rejection never stopped her. Her belief in herself was total. She would always say that she was shy, but ‘aloof’ or ‘impervious’ might be better descriptions, and she was always a dedicated self-publicist. Demanding and highly ambitious, if she cared that some people laughed at her, she never showed it. She always had a very formidable hide.
As she told me, she’d been having affairs during her marriage, and in 1961 she and her husband Toshi, whose career was progressing more swiftly than hers, separated. Unsuccessful in her art and with no prospects, she returned to Japan and put on an event in Tokyo. Once again, she failed to ignite any excitement, and soon found herself in a hospital for the mentally disturbed after taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She had been institutionalised by her husband and family.
One person was intrigued by her, however. He was an American sometime film-maker called Tony Cox. Although they had never met, Cox had heard about this strange Japanese artist and sought her out in the hospital. Helping to get her out, Cox went to live with Yoko and Toshi in Tokyo, but when Yoko became pregnant by Cox, Toshi left. ‘My first husband was very kind,’ she would say. He would go on to have a very successful and honour-laden career in Japan as an avant-garde composer.
After a quick divorce from Toshi, Yoko married Cox. Actually, she married him twice, the first occasion being illegal as, at the time, she was still married to Toshi. Once again, her family were outraged. But, by this time, they had to accept that their eldest daughter was determined to do whatever she felt like doing.
Kyoko, Yoko’s daughter with Cox, was born in Tokyo on 8 August 1963. Cox delivered the baby himself at their home, after which Yoko had to be rushed to hospital. At that time in England, in another cultural universe, the storm that would soon become Beatlemania was gathering strength.
Motherhood didn’t come naturally to Yoko in that it interrupted her work. So when Kyoko was a baby, Cox found himself doing most of the childcare. Cox was very supportive of his wife in promoting her art, but it was often a tempestuous relationship.
Despite all her efforts and fierce determination, fame as an avant-garde artist eluded her in Japan, so in September 1964 she returned to New York. Cox and Kyoko followed some months later. So far her only real achievement had been the self-publication in Japanese of her book of instructions, Grapefruit. Of the few who read the copies she gave away, some thought it was just humorous whimsy.
Her biggest hit was at the Carnegie Recital Hall when she performed her ‘Cut Piece’. That involved her appearing alone on stage in a little black dress holding a large pair of scissors, which she gave to members of the audience, who she then invited, one by one, to cut off a piece of her clothing. It took quite a while, but eventually she was left in her bra and pants. Two more cuts severed the halter bra straps, before finally someone cut the holding strap that ran around her back. The bra fell away and Yoko clasped her bare breasts. The event was over.
Proud as she was of the event, there were no reviews in the newspapers. Nor did her next project, ‘Bagism’, which entailed two people climbing into a very large bag leaving onlookers to surmise what might be happening inside, hit the New York headlines either. What she needed above all else was a patron to support her obsession with her art – someone who was really rich.
Then, out of the blue, she received an invitation to appear at a symposium being held in London entitled ‘Destruction in Art’. Cox didn’t want to go at first. But Yoko was adamant. London was then the centre of the swinging Sixties cultural world of music, art, fashion, film and theatre. It was the city to be in, the place for her to finally be noticed and taken seriously.
It’s unlikely that Yoko told John all these details during their first few weeks together. But even if she did, he wouldn’t have been deterred one bit. He was in love. He had, as he told Pete Shotton, ‘finally found someone as barmy as I am’.