Kim Taehee and Han Yeseul of Kumiho waejeon (2004)

In East Asian mythology, the figure of the fox is somewhat ambiguous. Foxes are magical, alluring, but unreliable and dangerous. In China, Korea, and Japan, foxes take human form and trick real humans in various ways; classically foxes take on the shape of beautiful women and prey on young men, either draining their energy through frequent and irresistible sex, or by directly killing them in order to eat their liver. The role of the fox in the East Asian pantheon of the supernatural is thus somewhat similar to the role of the vampire in the Western supernatural. Unlike Western vampires, however, foxes in East Asia have long been complex figures, often conflicted between their animal nature and their human form, drawn to seduce human men from bloodlust but then truly falling in love with their victims. This aspect of Western vampires is relatively new–Bram Stoker’s Dracula was pure evil, as pure an evil as one can find in Victorian literature. In China, however, as far back as the collection of tales by Pu Songling (1740), female foxes (vixens) live out a tension between blood and love, and in some cases resolve them in favor of the latter, living happily ever after with their “victim.”

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the 2004 Korean re-envisioning of the legend of the nine-tailed fox, Kumiho waejeon, should work so hard to make at least some of the fox characters appealingly conflicted, leaving the viewers to identify with them and root for them against both the more blatantly evil foxes as well as the cluelessly evil humans–and it is important to observe that the humans are evil because they are cluesless, not because they are fundamentally evil, because the primary conflicts driving the drama are between the foxes, not between the foxes and humans.

But let’s back up a bit. The scene is Seoul, present-day. Bizarre murders are taking place that appear to be linked to an organlegging ring that specializes in obtaining and selling black-market livers. A young cop named Minwoo (played by Jo Hyunjae), working undercover, discovers that 1) one of the organleggers seems to have superhuman strength, and 2) so does a comely, leather-clad woman named Shiyeon (played by Kim Taehee in a veil) who may or may not come to the cop’s aid. Of course, while attacking/defending Minwoo, Shiyeon discovers that he has a locket around his neck, and of course, later she opens a small box in her own bedroom and reveals that she, too, owns a similar locket. Shades of Thief of Bagdhad, except that–wait for it–his picture is in her locket, and vice-versa. Yes! They were next-door neighbors and close friends as little tykes, and then tragedy struck, leaving both of them orphans believing the other dead. Good thing Shiyeon always wears a veil when she’s out in her leathers, or Minwoo would have realized it was her immediately, and the drama would be over.

We quickly discover that the unknown organlegger, and Shiyeon as well, have superhuman powers because they aren’t human–they’re nine-tailed foxes (kumiho in Korean). However, unlike the classic nine-tailed foxes of Korean mythology, they don’t change shape, at least not into foxes, anyway. We also discover that there is a highly secretive South Korean government agency, the CIS, composed entirely of people who lost relatives when kumiho attacked them and ate their livers; the sole purpose of this agency appears to be to figure out how to tell the difference between kumiho and humans so that the latter can exterminate the former.

This is a Korean drama, so of course it has to have interlocking love triangles, and the protagonists have to be orphans. Sure enough, although Shiyeon loves Minwoo at first (well, not really first…) sight, she is loved by another kumiho (Muyoung, played by Shinhwa boy band member Jun Jin), who is, in turn, loved by fashion model Chaeyi (Han Yeseul) who is, in turn, loved by DJ Rang (Park Joonsuk in dreads) who, in turn, is loved by Minwoo’s younger (foster) sister Minjoo (Jung Hyeyoung), who is, in turn, dying of liver cancer. Shiyeon’s parents and Minwoo’s parents were all murdered in a home invasion when the two future lovers were little, Shiyeon being fostered by evil Chief Leader of the Foxes Shin Soojang (Lee Hwi-hyang), while it’s not clear who fostered Minwoo because his foster parents are also dead.

So anyway, that’s the setup. A little Romeo and Juliet, a little Thief of Bagdad, a little Highlander, a little Forever Knight, with foxes instead of vampires or immortals. The plot is complicated with subplots and counter-plots, many costume changes, and not a little in the way of brooding stares (Kim Taehee’s speciality, apparently–Han Yesul is much better at the coquettish sidelong glance, usually just before she knifes someone). The drama of the story arc is rather damaged by the director’s insistence on foreshadowing the final three minutes of the series starting about halfway through the episodes, and the scriptwriters apparently couldn’t decide what, exactly, differentiated kumiho from humans, at one point announcing that the DNA taken from Rang was “identical” to human DNA which, if they had thought about it for a moment, simply can’t be the case. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable little bagatelle.

I know I had some point in writing about this drama, but it seems to elude me. I’ll just post this and move on.

Doesn’t anybody remember CBGB? I weep for the young generation….

Anyway, this particular disc is English-language only in the sense that the liner notes are in English. None of the songs are in English. In fact, it’s hard to tell sometimes what language they’re screaming in. And isn’t that part of the punk aesthetic? Really, a brief listen to this disc and there will be no question that punk is the touchstone for their style. The first cut, “Width of a field of view,” features lead vocals by guitarist Kanna (“blood type A, hobbies: fishing, watching movies”), with the chorus lovingly shrieked by bassist Miya (“blood type B, hobbies: embroidery”). Nevertheless, across the various albums that have come out, they mix into the punk aesthetic shots of dancehall, electronica, a little surf (perhaps as a tip of the hat to punk-pop predecessors Go!Go! 7188), some acid jazz. They even do some gentle ballads. Well, relatively gentle, anyway.

I originally heard of them courtesy of a fellow graduate student, who had seen them at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, Wisconsin, the proprietor of which, Cathy Detmers, periodically books unusual Japanese bands. My friend snagged a copy of Bleach’s eponymous CD and then burned me a copy. Dedicated researcher that I am, I then purchased a copy from Amazon Japan. But in the intervening couple of years, more and more Bleach discs have been released with English liner notes and are available through Amazon US or Amazon UK. Be warned that they are not the same as the Japanese releases, which often have bonus tracks easter-egged at the end of the disc, or in the case of the most recent release, The Head That Controls Both Right and Left Sides Eats Meats and Slobbers Even Today (右も左も支配する頭は今日も肉を食いヨダレを垂らす), an entire DVD with live performances in Okinawan clubs filled with US servicemen. Ahem. The videos are worth seeing–nobody staggers around a stage shrieking like Miwa, trust me. Some of the videos from the Japanese releases (as well as the bands appearances at SXSW and the Knitting Factory) are available on YouTube, so check them out. You’ll never see the stereotype of the kawaii Japanese female the same way ever again, I guarantee it.

So what does Coffee Prince bring that’s new? First of all, the acting is good, really good. Unusually really good. Really. The main male character, Choi Han Kyul, is played by pretty boy Gong Yoo, whose previous work was not so good. His previous performances were so broad, so exaggerated, that it was as if you could see him thinking “OK, now I pretend to be mad…let’s hope I can keep a straight face this time. They were entertaining, sure, but in the same way that clowns can be entertaining, and every bit as draining to watch for any length of time. Coffee Prince is the first drama in which Gong Yoo really acts, and does it well. He has said as much himself in interviews, that he really first learned to act doing this drama. And it’s not just Gong Yoo. Every actor in the show gives consistently strong performances, particularly the “background” characters like coffee master Hong (played by veteran actor and singer Kim Chang Wan) and of course the horribly romantic butcher-poet (played with an almost unbearable level of self-absorption by Lee Han Wie).

Second, the subtheme brought in through the Comedy of Errors-like gender confusion brought about by very tomboyish Eun Chan (played by singer-actress Yoon Eun Hye), while handled in part for laughs, is ultimately taken very seriously when her real gender is revealed. The opening scene of the first episode suggests that the gender confusion is going to be all for fun–Eun Chan, working as a noodle-delivery driver, is driven out of a women’s public bath by the patrons who do not believe she’s really female. And the humorous take continues for several episodes as Eun Chan is hired by Han Kyul to pretend to be his male lover as way of getting his mother and grandmother off his case (they of course want him to get married and settle down). Then, as Han Kyul begins to realize that he is falling in love with Eun Chan, the humor begins to mix with darker elements as he struggles with the possibility that he really is gay. Some of his attempts to deal with the implications of his attraction to an apparently male Eun Chan are predictably treated for laughs, such as his brief consultation with a clueless doctor who gives him pills to “treat the problem.” But these moments mix more and more with Han Kyul’s real anguish over the uncertainty of his sexual identity, and the growing sense that what concerns him most is the way he will be treated if society thinks he’s gay.

At first he tries to fall out of love with Eun Chan, but this doesn’t work. (This is not a spoiler–his failure to fall out of love occurs in the first third of the episodes, much too early to be a genuine resolution). So he decides that, if being in love with Eun Chan means that he’s gay, so be it. This plot move is strong stuff, particularly for Korean television, which only began addressing gay issues very recently, but it is also strong stuff for a US audience, one of the things that I am curious to see in American reception of the show. Over the last few years (we’ll say post-Tootsie), gay characters in American media have become normalized to a certain extent, and have entered the pantheon of stock minorities along with the sassy black woman, the surprisingly feminist fashion-plate, the conservative black man, the nerdy Asian, bla bla bla. Nevertheless, as with the other minority stereotypes, the normalized gay man or woman is kept at arm’s length from the presumable straight audience by either denying or exoticizing the identity issues that inevitably arise as people mature. If a gay character has a crisis over their sexual identity, it serves as much to reassure the straight audience that their identity is secure and unanalyzable at is serves to develop the character or provide insight into the human condition.

Han Kyul’s wrestling with the instability of his own, heterosexual, identity is strong precisely because it is unexpected, because it is so achingly depicted by Gong Yoo, and because his second attempt to resolve the uncertainty is to embrace the new option. There is a third attempt, and a fourth, as Eun Chan reveals her true sexual identity and Han Kyul then attempts to deal with the new information, so I don’t want to imply that Coffee Prince breaks all taboos etc. etc. The ending of the story is in fact quite conventional for Korean love-triangle dramas, and hardly unknown in the US, either. But the conventionality of the ending is, for me, haunted and undermined by the struggle over sexual identity in the first part of the series.

Systematicity is the easy one: First, you find something you like. Then, you look into everything that touches that thing you like. For example, I discovered the Insist (韻シスト) EP Relax Oneself wandering through a little CD shop in the Hanshin railway station in Ibarakashi, Osaka. For those of you still benightedly ignorant of this group, it is a highly creative Osaka hip-hop band that, until the most recent album, always performed with the backing of a live funk band. Well, according to the liner notes on the EP, the horn line for the funk band backing Insist came from another Osaka institution, a funk band called Osaka Monaurail (named after the classic funk tune “It’s the JB’s Monaurail,” recorded as a side project by the band behind the Godfather of Soul, James Brown). I found their first full album, Rumble’n Struggle, and continued from there. I found my first album by Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her (led by Higurashi Aiha) in the same little shop, an amazing disc titled Future or No Future. Contributing musicians on that album came from the bands Buffalo Daughter and Museum of Plate, and off I went.

This is one reason I really prefer to get a CD instead of downloading tracks if at all possible. I can’t get enough information to feed my habit for new music if I just download tracks.

Serendipity often comes from my colleagues and students, who know I love hearing new stuff and lend it to me, or at least point me in the right direction. A colleague brought me Year of the Tiger by the Korean(-American) hip-hop duo Drunken Tiger as a gift from Seoul; a fellow student introduced be to the Okinawan punk trio Bleach (aka Bleach03) in my final year of graduate school. I discovered the joys of not-really-legally streamed Asian video when a student of mine got me watching the entwined love triangles of the Korean drama Coffee Prince. And of course I am indebted to the colleague who got me watching the Japanese drama Ikebukuro West Gate Park (IWGP), which I am only halfway through even as I write this.

So there you have it. Some stuff I finds, and some stuff I gets. And yes, this will be on the exam.

So what’s my point? When are US and British bands going to do decent covers of Japanese songs? I’m sorry, but “Sukiyaki” really doesn’t count.

Like, right now, I’m listening to てんのみかう (Ten no mikaku), the 2004 solo album by Yuu (ゆう, full name 中島優美 Nakashima Yumi), the lead singer and guitarist for the Japanese punk-pop trio Go!Go! 7188. A rather hard album in spots, hard-sounding, that is, with loud guitar solos and the like. Every piece references food, and in fact the liner notes include recipes. She also uses traditional Japanese and Indian instruments on this album (well, other people play them, to be fair), which is a first for her or the rest of the band. The first pressing, which of course I pre-ordered (geek!), includes a DVD with a rather bizarre video featuring, among other things, Yuu wearing dog ears in her hair, a dog’s tail attached to her jeans, and a dog collar around her neck; and older man leads her on a leash around the streets of Kagoshima, letting her occasionally stop to check out garbage cans. See the sample on YouTube.