Kokeshi Doll & Bleach | Japanese Girls Samurai US Tour |Benten | Japan

A fundamental tenet of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism is that awakening the self is not enough. The first priority must be to awaken all sentient beings. When the "Japanese Girls Samurai U.S. Tour" made its stop at Chicago's Bottom Lounge last night, I'd just finished a day-long Zen meditation sesshin. I entered expecting the loud rock show to be counteractive to a day spent silently cultivating awareness. But then two noise-weilding trios who probably don't give a crap about Buddhism--Kokeshi Doll and Bleach--unsheathed their sounds, cut open space and time and awakened the room to the amazement of the present moment. The Bottom Lounge became a vibrating field of awareness.

Kokeshi Doll guitarist Naomi Okuyama wears her black Gibson low slung, almost vertical, the headstock nearly equaling her in height. Throughout the set, her small hands riffed furiously while her head operated as a separate entity--hair piled high, it growled and chortled like a satanic porpoise. Okuyama's voice has the controlled quaver of Kristin Hersh or Kate Pierson and she commanded the stage with a dark intensity which approached that of Shannon Wright, leading the band along a fine line between angular art punk and effects-laden noise. There was nothing flashy about the chords and single-string figures she laid down--the impact came from the way she and bassist Kaori Yokoo locked in with the punishing, impeccable beats of drummer Satoe Oiwake. The controlled instrumental chaos spurred on Okuyama's voice, whose raw honesty was apparent in the absence of lyrical translation. Here was a performer so wide open to herself and to the moment that she transmitted a heightened sense awareness to her audience.

The name "Bleach" suggests a Nirvana other than that of the Sutras, but aside from one slow, melodic breather there was no Cobain influence to be heard in the band's breakneck set. Looking impossibly young for a group with a five-year history, Okinawa's Bleach thrashed out martial music with call-and-response vocals that suggested a revolutionary child's army. On the first note of the first song, bassist Shuku Suke went apeshit. Wearing highwaters held aloft by suspenders streched over a Kermit the frog T-shirt, she attacked her instrument in a slap frenzy, shrieked and howled into the mic and barely managed to contain herself to the stage. Swallowed up by a man's shirt and a knit skater hat pulled low, guitarist Kanna's elfin appearance and fragile, keening voice contrasted sharply with her rock star stance and proficiency of instrument. Her million-mile stare and distant voice gave her an ethereal quality which balanced Suke's mania. Like Kokeshi Doll, Bleach had an explosive drummer in Sayuri and, if anything, used rhythmic variation and surprise even more to their advantage. In the course of the first song, the audience went from stunned silence to ardent support; and though it was the fourth band late on a Sunday night, Bleach kept their audience and kept them very, very awake.

As the crowd exited after the show, one woman said "they didn't just break stereotypes about Japanese girls--they broke stereotypes I didn't realize I had about what women can do." The members of these bands more likely spend their concentration woodshedding in a cramped practice space than staring at a wall, but like white people in Zen robes, Kokeshi Doll and Bleach are willing to risk outlandishness in order to radically confront a world that labels our eyes shut. As I lay in bed after the show, listening to the ring in my ears and smelling the smoke in my hair, a line from 13th-century Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen entered my head: "When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas."