—SHIN MIYATA
Rows of bald-headed, broad-shouldered young men were positioned in the middle of a small, smoky dance club called Sound Base. They wore “locs” (wrap-around shades), well-pressed Dickies pants, Nike Cortez shoes, extra-long flannel shirts, ironed large shorts past the knees, knee-high white socks. A few wore T-shirts with images of lowrider cars as well as cholas and cholos. In the club’s parking lot, adjacent to a lumberyard, several lowered 1950s and 1960s Detroit-built cars displayed airbrushed murals and shiny chrome, the one exception being a caramel-brown 1941 Chevy truck.
It was November 2006. On stage were Quetzal Flores and his longtime companion, Martha Gonzalez, two members of Quetzal, one of East Los Angeles’s most popular bands. Flores strummed a jarana, a stringed instrument used in the son jarocho musical tradition of the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz. Gonzalez sat astride a cajon and thumped a rhythm with her hands and fingers as she sang in Spanish and English, words heavily tinged with Mexican/Chicano cultural and political significance.
They also accompanied a Xicanx poet, reading barrio-bred verses. Even famed harmonica player Tex Nakamura, formerly of the LA-based band War, guest played another jarana during Quetzal and Martha’s set and with the poet. Son jarocho, which combines indigenous, African, and Spanish traditions, by then had become extremely popular in Xicanx communities from Los Angeles to the Bay Area to Chicago. One of rock and roll’s standards came from son jarocho—“La Bamba,” originally sung by Ritchie Valens in 1958 (Los Lobos had a number one hit with the song in 1987).
DJ dGomez (David Gomez) of Monte Carlo 76, another East LA group, stood over the turntables. In between sets, Xicanx street rolas from the 1960s to the present emanated from speakers—including El Chicano’s “Viva Tirado;” the Village Callers’ “Hector;” Slowrider’s “Sandoval y Teixeira;” and War’s “Cisco Kid.” Later that evening, English-language poetry laced with calo, the slang of LA’s Mexican streets, and Spanish echoed across the densely filled hall.
This could have been in Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, or Montebello. It could have been any place in California, for that matter. This music, this style, this way of life, was mostly based in the US Southwest. It’s called Xicanx—a clearly defined musical, cultural, and social reality that is also unabashedly antiracist, antiexploitation, and antioppression while also being indigenous led, intellectually grounded, and linked to the social movements that leapt out of the Mexican barrios, migrant camps, and factories in the United States during the last century, particularly at the height of the civil rights struggle.
However, this concert and reading didn’t happen in East Los Angeles or East San Jose or East Oakland—it took place in an industrial, mostly isolated, section of Chiba, about two hours’ drive outside of Tokyo.
In Japan.
“My purpose is to bring the deep side of Chicano culture to Japanese youth who presently tend to gravitate towards style,” said Shin Miyata, founder and owner of Barrio Gold Records/Music Camp, Inc., based in Tokyo’s fashionable Omotesando district.
A short-bearded man in his mid-forties back in 2006, Miyata had invested tens of thousands of dollars, and much time and energy, over the previous twenty years to bring Xicanx music to Japanese audiences. He did this first in 1988 by writing articles in various Japanese publications like Latina: Musica Para El Futuro and Ambos Mundos, which featured reviews of Latino music. He also penned a column in Lowrider Japan magazine that he called “Que Pasa Aztlán,” showcasing the music, books, and other news out of California’s barrios.
Miyata reissued classics from Xicanx musical acts like Malo (of “Suavecito” fame), Tierra, East L.A. Sabor Factory, Slowrider, Mezklah, and the aforementioned Quetzal, among others, some of them going back forty years. At one point, Miyata, out of his own pocket, remastered the music of seminal East LA band the Village Callers, whose original master of their best-known LP from 1968, The Village Callers Live, had been lost.
“This was my contribution to Chicano music and culture,” Miyata explained. “I pay attention to the mastery, the artwork. I put a lot of commitment into what I do. I do the best work, always . . . I love the artistry. Now with these CDs, Chicano music can find new outlets.”
One of Miyata’s most important projects was to produce CDs from the extensive Rampart Records archives, known for live shows and the East LA anthology albums called The West Coast East Side Revue, first issued in the 1960s and early 1970s. One of these Barrio Gold/Music Camp compilations is Eastside Soul Classics 1963–1977: Chicano Rare Grooves with Rampart acts like Cannibal and the Headhunters (“Land of a Thousand Dances”), the Village Callers, Tocayo, Eastside Connection, and Willie G (a singer for Thee Midniters, Malo, Los Lobos, and other groups, he’s also featured on Ry Cooder‘s Chicano-tinged 2005 CD Chavez Ravine.
“To me, Rampart Records is essential to know about Chicano music,” Miyata said. “I feel Rampart deserves respect. It’s very important to the roots of Chicano music.”
Miyata set up the promotional tour with Quetzal and company, which included a set at Tower Records in the Shibuya district, two nights at the Bird Café in Shimokitazawa, Setagaya-ku, and interviews on radio and in various print publications. Miyata’s aim was to introduce listeners to Xicanx music of the time, and to expand the repertoire beyond what many Japanese aficionados thought was Xicanx music—gangster-related rap.
“Too many times when people in Japan think of ‘Chicano,’ they usually think of gangsters and hip-hop,” Miyata said. “A lot of this comes from US movies like American Me, Colors, or Mi Vida Loca. But this also is because of the push from the mainstream music industry to depict gangsters, guns, and drugs. Many fashion magazines in Japan even feature the word ‘Chicano’ with gang images.”
“I want to emphasize the original meaning of Chicano,” Miyata added. While he has also released Xicanx rap CDs, they’re usually by more conscious performers such as Aztlan Underground, Kemo, and Aztlan Nation.
“I try to make sure that Chicano music is not just related to gangs,” Miyata said. “My purpose is to teach kids the true history of Chicanos and their struggle.”
The Barrio Gold/Music Camp, Inc. offices were located in a multifloor complex of small workspaces. Shoes crowded the entrance where visitors, in the Japanese tradition, removed their footwear before entering the carpeted suite. Metal shelving with CDs was one of the first things anyone would notice beyond the sofa and sink in the reception area. In another room were desks with computers and piles of CDs, books, and papers.
A bookshelf surrounded Miyata’s desk, filled with titles that included Xicanx classics like the PBS TV series book Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, by Francisco A. Rosales; Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story, by Don Normark; Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles, by Steven Loza; the Sandra Cisneros novel Caramelo; The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea; and the photo books Vatos, with photos by José Galvez, and East Side Stories: Gang Life in East L.A., with photos by Joseph Rodriguez.
On another wall was a special collection of rare vinyl LPs from Xicanx bands and musicians such as El Chicano, Thee Midniters, Tierra, Sapo, Sunny and the Sunliners, and Daniel Valdez that Miyata had amassed at great personal expense.
Miyata probably knew more about Xicanx music than most Xicanx.
I was the poet who read that night at Sound Base, and later at other locations, invited by Miyata to accompany Quetzal, Martha, David, and Tex as they traveled throughout the Tokyo area. The Los Angeles Times had a magazine then, called West, that included me as a regular contributor (although I hardly contributed anything). Nonetheless, the magazine paid for my trip.
That first night, after fourteen hours on a flight across the Pacific Ocean, and with Sudafed in my system to ease a knock-me-on-my-ass cold, I felt like a zombie. My brain was seemingly filled with cotton. But I performed my poems, like I always did, as if I had my wits about me—the show had to go on.
I stayed in a mirrored hotel room in a largely transgender community, with male, female, and gender nonconforming sex workers on the street—apparently among the cheapest rooms available.
When I wasn’t accompanying Miyata and my East LA friends, I walked around the vast city, the world’s largest, checking out shops, beautifully kept parks, and interesting neighborhoods. I bought manga magazines for my young sons, who loved anime and other Japanese art forms. I rode the subway system with queer Afro-Peruvian artist Favianna Rodriguez, who was in Japan at the time studying printmaking. She showed me many sights, and we had great talks about art, music, and the Japanese-Xicanx connection.
In the late 1960s, my brother José owned a 1957 Chevy Bel Air that we worked on together—placing it over cinderblocks to put in brakes, or tuning and timing the engine inside an open hood. We learned by following the instructions in car-repair books, or by putting our hands in the grease, so to speak. Once, when I was thirteen, I held up a transmission with a two-by-four board as my brother—three years older than me—lay under the propped-up car wrenching nuts and bolts. At one point, I lost my grip, and the gearbox fell on José’s chest. He yelled, and I ran off, knowing how mad he’d get. But he was fine.
José and I have laughed about that incident for years.
Around age sixteen, three homies and I collectively owned a 1963 Chevy Impala—we tinkered with the car together and lowered it the old-fashioned way, by cutting the tire springs. We glided “the tre” on cruise nights down East Los Angeles’s Whittier Boulevard, rolas blaring from bass-heavy stereo players, cars “dancing” on the road with hydraulic lifts, lowrider hats and shades on dudes with tattooed arms hanging over car doors, and big-haired girls sitting high on convertibles in the most strikingly beautiful dresses, with dark eyes and smiles.
One day, one of the homies crashed the Impala—and that was that.
At eighteen, the first car I ever personally owned was a silver flake–blue lowered 1968 VW Bug with magnesium hubcaps on wheels that protruded inches from the body. I drove this baby till the bumpers fell off.
After my first marriage, I obtained a 1954 Chevy Bel Air. I worked on this car constantly, lowered it, even took off the engine from its mounts, rebored cylinders, and then put it back together. I enjoyed working on that car, even when my first wife accused me of loving it more than her. I sold that car for a lousy $250 after our marriage broke up. I had gotten laid off and needed funds.
How stupid was that?!
I’ve never had another lowrider since. Monetarily it wasn’t feasible, as customizing involved more complex and expensive lifts, chrome or gold-plated metal, and extravagant murals. Not that I didn’t appreciate a well-designed and beautifully kept ranfla. I continued to show up at lowrider shows. And in the late 1970s, I freelanced as a photographer and writer for Q-vo, a lowrider magazine.
I remain a lifelong follower of lowrider culture.
I was amazed at how the Japanese aficionados kept this tradition alive. At the time, Japanese buyers were paying from $30,000 to $50,000 for Xicanx-created cars from LA with hydraulics, magnesium wheels, chain steering wheels, and colorful airbrushed murals. One official at LA’s harbor told me Japanese products arrived in large container ships. Mostly lowrider cars shipped out to Japan.
Unfortunately, the Los Angeles County’s Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles Police Department had outlawed lowriding on the streets. Most lowrider cars were kept in garages or protected safe spots until the next lowrider show at fairgrounds, parks, or malls. Yet lowriders and LA’s murals (and later aerosol graffiti) brought tourist dollars to the area, perhaps more than well-known haunts like Hollywood or Venice Beach.
Despite this, for decades there was no official support for lowriders, murals, or graffiti (which was also outlawed with graffiti abatement ordinances). What Los Angeles street life offered to the world was officially rejected, although recognized and valued worldwide.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Los Angeles was famous for regional cruising scenes, including Whittier Boulevard, the mother of all cruising spots, and the San Fernando Valley’s Van Nuys Boulevard. East LA’s seminal band of the 1960s, Thee Midniters, had a regional hit with the 1965 cruising anthem “Whittier Blvd.”
Then, in March 1979, law enforcement officials closed off the main cruising sections of Whittier Boulevard. In the ensuing melee, officers arrested some six hundred people, many of whom were beaten. Nationally syndicated columnist Roberto Rodriguez wrote a self-published memoir of this crackdown in 1984 called Assault with a Deadly Weapon. He documented the beating he suffered at the hands of sheriff’s deputies (the “deadly weapon” in question was his camera). Rodriguez reported that after the beating, deputies arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon and assault and battery on a police officer, although he was only covering the scene for Lowrider magazine. He was hospitalized for several days and still suffering headaches at the time he wrote about the attack. Rodriguez later received a $200,000 settlement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Xicanx youth created lowriding with cars that Detroit cast off for newer models in the 1930s, tied to the pachuco culture of the time. By the 1950s, lowriding became a nexus of black and brown urban reality; African Americans, who influenced Mexican Americans in music and style, were in turn influenced by Xicanx street creations. There were a number of African American car clubs, and many African American fans showed up to Xicanx car shows. Later in the 1990s, when West Coast hip-hop turned the hip-hop world upside down, lowrider cars featured prominently in rap music videos.
In fact, the LA band War, the musical group that captured the Xicanx street style of the 1970s, consisted mostly of African Americans. In 1975, War made the theme song of all theme songs for this culture—“Lowrider.”
In 2006, I did a poetry reading with the Jump Start Performance Company in San Antonio, Texas, exalting lowrider culture, with the theme of “Suavecito.” A local car club, La Familia, had a display of vintage lowered cars and trucks. Lowrider bikes hung from the ceiling. Aerosol spray art covered the back wall. Also reading were Levi Romero of Albuquerque, New Mexico, renowned for his lowrider poems, and the great Xicanx writer Sandra Cisneros.
Then, in 2009, Los Angeles’s Department of Cultural Affairs reversed years of neglecting lowriding culture when it obtained a federal grant for several writers and artists to attend that year’s Guadalajara Book Festival in Mexico, the largest book festival in the Western Hemisphere. Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural became one of the grant recipients. Besides having me read and take part in panels, as well as display Tia Chucha Press books, we were provided funds to present two lowrider cars, two lowrider bikes, and a short film called “Living La Vida Lowrider.”
Denise Sandoval, a Chicano Studies professor at California State University, Northridge, gathered the cars, bikes, and film. Sandoval is a leading expert on lowriding. Over the years, she’s written extensively on the culture and curated lowriding and related art exhibits at the Petersen Automotive Museum on LA’s west side, including “La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Los Angeles” and “The High Art of Riding Low: Ranflas, Corazón e Inspiracíon.”
The lowrider display we brought to the Guadalajara Book Festival became a hit, the first of its kind in Mexico. We had the famous “Mexican Pride” car by Chino Vega, among others. Mexican media interviewed all of us. Even deported Xicanx youth came to tell us they had lowrider cars and bikes, mostly hidden away. One afternoon a number of them brought their vehicles to the parking lot of the book festival, creating an impromptu lowriding show.
Xicanx pride in Mexico.
“I first found out about Chicano culture from the movies and TV,” Shin Miyata said. “The TV show CHiPs, for example, was for a time very popular in Japan. I liked Ponch [the role played by Erik Estrada]. There was even one CHiPs show with Eddie James Olmos in it—he was very young then. I also recall a 1979 movie called Boulevard Nights [starring Richard Yñiguez and Danny De La Paz] with lowrider cars and people speaking Spanish as well as English with an accent. The youth in this movie had a unique fashion: baggy pants, bandanas—I felt it was cool. Gradually, I figured that something was going on in Los Angeles. After I graduated high school, I went to a Japanese university to learn Spanish. But while some students wanted to go to Spain or Latin America to practice the language and study, I was already interested in Chicanos. So, in 1984, I went to LA”
“In LA, I didn’t go to Hollywood or Santa Monica like others might do,” Miyata continued. “I went directly to East LA, which I found on a map. I walked into a Mexican restaurant on Whittier Boulevard. The restaurant had a jukebox where I found songs from the band Tierra. I knew I wanted to hear more of this music. I then brought Chicano music to Japan. The first Chicano LP I bought was Tierra, in 1981 or 1982. I also got music from Texas, including accordion music known as ‘Tejano.’”
After taking off a year from Kanagawa University, near Tokyo, Miyata decided to spend that time in East LA—he stayed in City Terrace and Boyle Heights. Miyata had met a reverend from Japan at an English school on Wilshire Boulevard who had started work at an old Buddhist temple on First Street. This reverend introduced Miyata to a Xicanx family to stay with. The family was part of a church near the Ramona Gardens housing project. To help make ends meet, he taught judo for a time at the church.
In May 1985, at age twenty-two, Miyata attended a free Cinco de Mayo concert in Lincoln Park, in East LA’s Lincoln Heights, to see Los Lobos—the biggest band to come out of East LA—and another well-known east side band, Califas. There he met Rodrigo Hernandez, a factory worker who ended up inviting Miyata to stay with his family. Hernandez introduced Miyata to the East LA lowrider car scene, including shows at spots like the Pico Rivera Sports Arena and the Los Angeles Coliseum.
“Rodrigo showed me a lot about Chicano music, history, and the meaning of it all,” Miyata recalled. “We used to cruise down Whittier Boulevard at midnight, listening to these sounds, including the old Sancho (Daniel Castro) radio show. I remember how Rodrigo loved to listen to bands like War and Malo—that’s how I got to know who they were.”
When Miyata returned to Japan, he began writing on Chicano music and culture. His articles included interviews with Tierra singers Steve and Rudy Salas (Tierra, according to their website, was the first Latino group to have four songs on the national charts, and two simultaneously in the Top 100); Xicanx Latin jazz conga player Poncho Sanchez; Xicanx rapper Kid Frost (now known as Frost); Esteban Jordan, of Tejano music fame; and the late, great Xicanx singer Freddy Fender (“Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” among other hits).
“I wrote around two hundred articles in various magazines,” Miyata said. “I even went to San Antonio for a Tejano music festival. I had to pay for the whole trip myself—I spent so much money, but it was worth it.”
In 1988, Miyata wrote for Custom Car magazine in Japan. He did the first piece on the Los Angeles lowriding scene there. The magazine was so impressed with the work, they gave Miyata his own page every month. In 1991, a spin-off of Custom Car was born called Lowrider Japan. They in turn obtained license to use the original California-based Lowrider magazine logo. At its height, Miyata claims, Lowrider Japan reached 150,000 readers; by the time we talked the circulation had dropped closer to 70,000. He also wrote about the first lowrider show in Japan, in 1994. Miyata continued to do a column in the magazine, making him well known in the Japanese lowriding world.
A perusal through the hefty magazine—read from back to front as most books and magazines are in Japan—showed how big this world had become. Many Japanese car shows and car clubs were featured in its pages, including lowrider bike clubs, most of which emulated the names and styles of their LA counterparts: Califelos Car Club, Ride IV Life, Hermanos Car Club, Street Life Car Club, and more.
A page called “Lowrider Arte” demonstrated Xicanx-style street drawings. Advertisement featured shops specializing in tire rims, hydraulics, and mountains of accessories. There were also ads to buy older US-made car models. And space was reserved for clothing stores featuring cholo and hip-hop attire, including five pages of lowrider-wear shop listings. Most of this, except for the lettering and the Japanese women and men whose images embellished the magazine, appeared as in the original Lowrider publication.
The skyline at night spread jaggedly across Tokyo Bay for miles. The lights in Shinjuku or Shibuya, world-renowned walking districts, were penetrating, colorful, dazzling. Multistory neon signs and video billboards flashed so brightly it felt like daytime.
People were extraordinarily orderly and also extremely polite. The Japanese word I heard often was arigato—thank you. This only seemed out of place in my mind because of living in the United States, especially in the poorer working-class areas like the barrios of California or Chicago. In the United States, most things were in your face. People pretty much told you what was on their mind—sometimes they could be kind, often not. I’m not saying one culture was better than the other. They were just different.
For days I walked around, taking in the sounds, the flavors, the people, under the spell of this world-class city. The streets appeared void of street vendors and children, yet it streamed along to a clearly defined urban pulse.
A myriad of sights and smells sprang at me, including tons of advertisements—so many products to sell. This city was the epitome of modern commercialization. Many people I saw wore business suits. There was no escaping the layers of commodification.
On one holiday, I noticed thousands of people in the street. I thought it was a protest—something I was used to in LA, but also because of having just come from Mexico City, where protests and marches were endless.
When I witnessed the multitudes on the street in Tokyo, I climbed a cement wall for a better view, trying to surmise what issue they were addressing. To my amazement I discovered this throng had not gathered to protest—they had amassed to go shopping. I soon grasped that the turmoil and recklessness of Mexico City worked for Mexicans; the orderliness and decorum in Tokyo somehow worked for the Japanese.
Tokyo was also a city of books, of poets, of artists, of restaurants. The landscape of glass and steel seemed devoid of actual nature, yet I found serene and well-manicured green spaces. In the streets and clubs there were song, dance, theater, and a sea of languages. I danced one night at a salsa club in Roppongi, mingling with Peruvians, Brazilians, and the Japanese who lived among them, all of whom rattled away in Spanish or Portuguese.
To understand the Xicanx soul, which still claims facets of the Mexican soul, you have to understand rasquache. This term, originally from the Nahuatl language, literally means “by the seat of your pants,” creativity out of disorder, doing the most with little. It’s a catch-as-catch-can philosophy that is part of life, death, and everything in between.
Rasquache seemed alien to the Japanese character, which was shaped by systems, quickening social advances, and being the best, particularly in technology and finance. I learned to appreciate the great interest in Japan toward Xicanx. Xicanx chose not to totally assimilate into the mostly hollow “American” brand culture, while enriching US culture with our own art, speech, clothing, and presence. The Japanese didn’t want to appropriate our culture but to honor it. The lowrider cars I saw in Tokyo came directly from LA streets—they had to be real, from the source land of Lowrider Nation.
At the core of the modern Japanese culture is a hunger for raw inventiveness and loose organization, pulsating with a creative center, not always controlled and tidy—typical of what Xicanx artists, musicians, and writers often embody. And I could also see why Xicanx artists had a fascination with the Japanese—how meticulous, organized, and original they were.
After generations of surviving inside the belly of the United States, mostly as second-class citizens, Xicanx chose the past that best defined us and strove to carve out a future that would truly embrace us. Choice was important for Japanese as well, especially after the debacle of World War II. Neither people can go back—the question at the heart of this marvelous encounter is, Which way forward?
“Despite the obvious differences,” Shin Miyata said, “Chicano people are similar to Japanese. We have similar skin tones. We are small in stature. And we also love the same kind of music—mellow with sabor. In Japan during the 1950s, we heard the old boleros from Mexico, like Los Panchos. They used to come and play here. Similarly, Japanese kids like cholos—they feel sympathetic to them. Japanese youth are always looking to relate to things against the mainstream, against authority. This is a very strict society. There are lots of pressures to succeed. Many youth here therefore relate to Chicanos and street culture. They relate to the love of cars and how artistic and creative Chicanos have been. Japanese kids are looking for something like this in themselves. Politics is important here. They have to be against something. Japanese society tries to control kids, but many of them don’t want to be controlled. That’s why they love the Chicano tattoos, even the Chicano graffiti. Kids are looking for powerful, meaningful things, and some gravitate toward gangs with style. Or they gravitate to hip-hop. Or the skateboard culture.”
To demonstrate this, Miyata drove me to two independent stores that sold Xicanx street-style clothing, T-shirts, CDs, and other items, including for hip-hop and skating aficionados.
Nicety was located in the Machida-shi neighborhood. Xicanx-inspired mural art was painted over the main counter. Joker Brand clothing and other Xicanx clothing brands were on sale. Parked on the street just outside the store was a lowered 1968 Impala, owned by Rikiya Kando, the young businessman who ran Nicety.
Chiba-shi, in Chiba-ken, had one of two Wannabe’s stores, owned by Masayuki Tachibana. Kousake Sakata managed the Chiba store. It had a darker street feel, with actual graffiti on the inside walls and oldies from the East Side Story album collection spilling out of speakers. Items included tandos, the small-brimmed cholo hats, bandanas, neckwear, and clothing with Mexica and Mayan motifs.
Tachibana, also known as Masa, had a shaved head, pressed baggy pants, and a long Dickies denim jacket, looking very much like an LA homeboy—he often traveled to Los Angeles to buy the latest clothing and music. Interestedly, he made a connection between cholos and the samurai, members of medieval Japanese warrior societies.
“They both represent high order and morals,” Masa said.“They stand up for their communities, for others in need. They distinguish themselves with creativity, but mostly with bravery and skill.”
I’m not sure how much this applied to cholos, having been one myself in my youth. But I saw the association—although for me the samurai have more to do with the Jaguar or Eagle Knights of the preconquest Mexicas, whom many present-day Xicanx activists have studied, including a version of martial arts as well as their dance, cosmology, and art. Going back to go forward makes sense.
Sakata also wore cholo-style clothing and sported an amazing array of tattoos on his arms, back, and stomach. They were done in the fine-line tattoo style and lettering that Xicanx perfected in prisons and the streets. In fact, the renowned Xicanx tattooist Mister Cartoon (Mark Machado) inked most of Sakata’s body art. Mister Cartoon, with his business partner Estevan “Scandalous” Oriol, both of whom I know, created the Joker Brand clothing enterprise; Mister Cartoon is also known for inking the amazing tattoos on recording artists such as Cypress Hill, 50 Cent, Pharrell Williams, Travis Barker of Blink-182, and Eminem.
In Tokyo, I also hooked up with Masahiro “Cholo” Wada, a Japanese radio personality on Power 046-FM in the Yamato-shi neighborhood in Kanawaga-ken who is popular among Japanese hip-hop and lowrider communities. Miyata claimed there was a growing following for such stores and radio shows in Japan.
“The future of the kids here is Chicano culture,” Miyata insisted. “This is why it was important for me to bring bands like Quetzal to Japan. I wanted these kids to see and experience the deep side, the political side. So they can get the consciousness behind the music. They need to learn how to overcome struggles like Chicanos have done, and not just succumb to commercialization, to Western culture, like what’s happening so much in Japan today. The Japanese kids who need to become conscious are those born in poverty, in the industrial areas. Most of them live in communities surrounding Tokyo, not so much in Tokyo, which is too expensive. They are the sons and daughters of factory workers, less educated than in Tokyo. Tokyo is more sophisticated. I think these youth need what Chicanos are about.”
Xicanx can find home in Tokyo, this faraway, startling city, at least at the level of culture. Since I visited there, I’ve found out there are cholo/lowriding subcultures in Thailand, Taiwan, Brazil, Sweden, Amsterdam, and Spain. This seems right, especially in a world where being rootless and homeless seems to be the poignant feature of our time. If I can stand next to a lowered 1940s Ford truck with magnesium rims in Tokyo, something I could have done in East LA, and still feel the same sensation of joy that such a car can bring in both countries, then I know—it’s time for borders to come down.
Of course, taking down borders is a controversial subject, especially in a time of “build that wall.” There are arguments about trade and home markets and so-called terrorism used to scare residents of the most developed countries into closing in on themselves. But we have seen how divisions by race, by nation, by religion, even gangs, has led to fear and, too often, violence. I visualize a world with no borders, but also where people can be their own special kind of human being—not homogenized but driven by their own passions and geniuses—and yet still have indispensable things that bring us together.
In October 2017, Shin, Quetzal, Martha, Tex, David Gomez, and I had a reunion of sorts at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Shin had brought a team to LA to organize a concert featuring Mexican and Japanese acts, poets, and musicians. There was even a conjunto band with Mexican-style charro hats, shirts, and pants. I thought they were paisas (two of the guys looked Mexican)—in the green room I began to address them in Spanish. One said, “No understan’ . . . we Japon.” They were a Japanese group that had learned the words of Mexican corridos in Spanish without knowing Spanish!
The last act was Quetzal and Martha with their full band. They played their original rocking and politically charged music. Then Tex Nakamura blew his powerful harmonica and added his voice to a couple of songs. And for one of their longer pieces, I came in and was able to share two poems. The LA community in attendance loved it.
So arigato, Japan. Or as we say in Nahuatl: tlazhokamati. Or in Spanish: gracias. Languages differ, but the sentiment is the same: thank you, Land of the Rising Sun, for opening up to me as a Xicanx poet, and for letting me savor your own magnificent heritage. “Tokyo rifa,” as we say in the barrios of East Los Angeles, meaning “this place lives, demands respect, cannot be erased.”
Con safos.