Isao Yamada: From Shuji Terayama’s theatre to experimental film

Transmission 107: Interview with Isao Yamada

Isao Yamada (山田 勇男), also known by his stage name Yamavica, is a Japanese film director, graphic artist, and manga author. He began his artistic career as a member of Terayama Shuji’s theatre troupe and, from 1974 onwards, was involved in various capacities in the visual design of Terayama’s feature films: Den’en ni shisu (“Pastoral: To Die in the Country,” 1974), Boxer (1977), Kusa meikyu (“Grass Labyrinth,” 1979), and Saraba hakobune (“Farewell to the Ark,” 1982). In 1977, as part of the cinema club “Gingagahou-sha Eiga Club,” which he co-founded in Sapporo, Isao Yamada made his directorial debut with Subaru no yoru (“An Incident of Night”). Ever since his first 8mm film was selected for the Pia Film Festival, he has consistently worked with 8mm films (occasionally 16mm). His first solo exhibition took place at the Image Forum Tokyo in 1981. Later, in 1983, he appeared as a guest at the Image Forum’s annual experimental film festival, where his films were subsequently screened regularly.

The majority of them are brief “private films,” which he labeled “Yamavicascope.” His films and the works of Yamazaki Mikio have been regularly screened in pairs at La Camera in Tokyo since 1991. In the filmography of Yamavicascope, the film correspondences between Yamada and Yamazaki are titled OUFUKU (Film Letter) I-V (1986–2006). Isao Yamada has showcased his experimental art at many film festivals, including Cannes, Oberhausen, and Stockholm, in addition to numerous showings in Japan. In his experimental avant-garde films, viewers encounter themes of poetry, subtle gestures, personal insecurities, and his unique approach to analyzing interpersonal relationships. The music and images merge; aesthetics and beauty are omnipresent. Audiences are firmly captivated by the depth, vitality, and intense focus present in his work. In addition to creating over a hundred cinematic works, Isao Yamada also produces manga, paintings, and graphic designs. Many periodicals and advertising posters have featured his calligraphic typeface.

Read the interview in Japanese with Isao Yamada
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Featured image: Portrait photo of Isao Yamada by Nobuyoshi Araki ©️ Nobuyoshi Araki

What were the best memories related to your beginning in the fields of art? What is the motivation that also right now would prompt you to get again to choose this path?

When I was 21 years old, I joined the theatre laboratory Tenjo Sajiki of Shuji Terayama. Mr Terayama said to me,  “Yamada, since you don’t have talent, you’d better continue”.I still can’t get his words out of my mind.

What were some of the most significant challenges you faced in your career, and how did you overcome them?

As I plodded along, my ego disappeared more and more, and I had no time to think about whether I could or couldn’t do something, but had to work hard and concentrate on what was specifically in front of me.

Your artwork often cobines different emotions to capture details frozen in time that are represented visually both in a video art, painting or a manga. You manage all of these techniques. How does your creative process shift between these forms, and how do they influence one another?

In the words of Walter Benjamin, the brilliance of the presentation depends on the value of fragments of thought. When I look at the various expressions, persuasiveness is for me the key to how far the nerve goes into the “details”, even if they are invisible. I go to the act of seeing the depth. When you open Jorge Luis Borges’ book, he wouldn’t simply say the moon, but instead, he would say “round pale bright on the dark” or “pale orange in the sky” –  he uses image combinations like that. Whether in images, paintings or cartoons, it is probably my unconscious result rather than influencing one another.

From film to manga to painting. Your artworks feature calligraphy, all hand-written by you. What role does traditional Japanese art and calligraphy play in your artworks? How does the act of writing influence the visual and emotional tone of your work? Do you approach it as an extension of your visual art, or as a separate practice? 

I saw Shuji Terayama’s first feature film, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, at the age of 18, in which he says: ‘We can only live in the direction of our actions, only in the things we create’. Until now, when I think of my own poor expression, even not only my own, when drawing a line with a pencil, when writing one’s name, I can inevitably read his or her personality in it. I had written sign letters as a job for about 15 years, but I just couldn’t write them as mechanically as printed letters. Even so, I feel that the magic lies in the fact that visual and emotional tone comes out in the act of writing.

In your work, there’s a distinctive tempo, an intriguing rhythm that mixes concentration with a rapid shift of context. How does this balance of deep concentration and sudden shifts in attention shape your creative process? How do you consciously develop this rhythm, and what do you hope it evokes in your audience?

“The vision was met with in every air”, says Arthur Rimbaud in his poem. It was when I had my first vertigo in the winter of my fifth year of primary school that I realized that the conscious mind and the unconscious mind are inextricably linked to each other, or more precisely, two sides of the same coin. I think that my perception of the way of seeing the world has changed since then. It delights me to encounter beauty in art as well as in life. Zeami says “Beauty is in disorder”. I believe it to be true, and I am only trying to balance the rhythm of my senses. I cannot help but think of the trembling and convulsions that support the other side of the beauty. I have no expectations of the audience, but if any, they might be the tears brought to their eyes, at the unspeakable moment of waking up with a melancholic aftertaste.

His feature films include Shutorumu unto Doranku (Sturm und Drang: 2014), Jouhatsu Tabinikki (The Soul Odyssey: 2003), and Anmonaito no sasayaki wo kiita (I’ve heard the ammonite’s murmur: 1992).

Your artwork often feels like a search for a world different from our immediate reality. What is it that you seek in these alternative worlds, and how do you translate that vision into your art? How do you perceive the interplay between imagination and reality? Do they coexist or are they in opposition to one other?

“Mystery is the lifeline of art”, said someone. I found the following sentence in a book I read recently, “mutual support is to be shown not by theory or words, but by gestures and signs”. I think about this every day. When I first made a film with Yumekichi Minatoya, our keyword was <atmosphere>.  <A phenomenon that seems to exist but doesn’t > is the worldview I am willing to express in the first place. That is to say, reality and imagination for me coexist between life and death, front and back, non-fiction and fiction. Borges says, “Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms.” 

Your characters often seem to exist in a world where time and reality are fluid. What role does the concept of time play in your storytelling, and how do you convey this fluidity visually?

I want to depict the world as a collective trace of disordered time. It concerns a displacement of the reality principle, in other words, a phenomenon like encountering some fundamental moment. For characters in my work,  I want them to have an unrealistic and timeless image like ‘mechanical dolls’. 

Can you share with us the story behind a meaningful project? What was the driving moment behind it, and what do you hope it achieves? 

I am not an active type of person, so big projects always come from the other side. It is nothing but a product of encounters. It is a miracle, and I have nothing but amateurism, which I have cherished since I was a little boy, so I have no idea why I do but I only have loyalty to what I love. There is a saying by Yves Cosson, “Our childhood immortalises the scent of velvet”.  I truly agree. I feel like that’s all I have.

How do you define your overarching vision or philosophy in your artwork? Has it evolved over time? How do you balance innovation with tradition in your projects? Is there a particular aspect of tradition that you feel is essential to maintain? Looking forward, are there any new fields or challenges you are eager to explore?

For I think I am nothing, I have always been dragged back to the sensations and impressions of the first time I felt vertigo since I found the aphorism by Taruho Inagaki, “Art is the perfection of a child’s mind” in a book I read when I was twenty. 

I think I have nothing, but when I encountered the aphorism ‘Art is the perfection of the infant mind’ in a book by Inagaki Taruho at the age of 20, I thought I understood a little, that there is something that cannot be explained by theory or logic. These unconscious sensations are important. In my case, the feeling of the extreme of unawareness I experienced during my first vertigo persists throughout my adult life. Namely, I think:

“Tel petit chagrin, telle petite jouissance de l’enfant, démesurément grossis par une exquise sensibilité, deviennent plus tard dans l’homme adulte, même à son insu, le principe d’une œuvre d’art (Charles Baudelaire).”　

Now that I am a fully grown old man, not to mention an old boy, I am still attracted to the charms of Japanese classics. I mean the works of film and literature created in the past. My appreciation of the Japanese tradition is the atmosphere or lingering sense of beauty, that is, the nebulous beauty of what is or is not there. All I want is to live each day in a fragile, delicate, elegant, tasteful, phantom-like existence. Beyond that, I want nothing.

Photos and images courtesy of Isao Yamada

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.