An Interview with...Dr. Tetsuo Kogawa

Performance artist, philosopher, writer and teacher

Dr. Tetsuo Kogawa was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1941. He received his B.A. in Philosophy in 1966 at Sophia University; his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Waseda University. He is currently a professor of Communications Studies at Musashino Art University, Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences. On this large campus devoted to the exploration of new media he teaches performance art and media theory and as a practicing performance artist himself, is considered to be somewhat of a media guru among Tokyo's youth movement. His contribution to the field of Communications Studies is best described as impressive. He has published over twenty books in Japanese, almost as many articles in English, and has over twenty performance pieces accredited to his name.

Dr. Kogawa recently visited Vancouver and Toronto before making his way to Montreal. With the help of the Communications Studies Department, The Joint Commission for Asia Pacific Communications Research, and The Western Front Gallery in Vancouver he was able to spend some time at Concordia discussing his ideas of radio and his involvement in the Free Radio movement in Japan. His idea of radio is very different than most of ours in North America.

Radio has the potential to become a radio transmitter but are only used as one way communications devices where we passively receive information but cannot respond or have access to it.

During his talk professor Kogawa demonstrated how simple it is to make your home radio into a transmitting device with a few simple parts and tools. [Wiring diagram, 23K gif] In the space of 40 minutes, while fielding questions from the audience, he built a one Watt radio transmitter that could be "narrowcast" within one or two city blocks. He then went on to demonstrate a simple television transmission by connecting a transmitter to a standard home VCR. This is "illegal" in Japan as well as North America but Kogawa doesn't consider himself to be doing anything illegal. He believes that air waves are just that, air, and that everyone has the right to access this medium in order to build community strength and resistance.

During his recent stop-over in Montreal Mediatribe had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Kogawa about community, freedom, mini f.m. and the future of new technologies.

What is the state of radio in Japan today?

The situation right now is very quiet. The boom started in 1982 but towards the late 80's it nearly stopped. So now in Tokyo there are only about 5 or 10 mini fm stations.

You said there were over one hundred at one point.

Yes, I don't know the exact number, but there were alot.

Why the decline?

I think it was basically a kind of fashion and the fashion is over now. Around 1985, there was a very interesting station in Tokyo that used a two watt transmitter. They had a large audience not only in Tokyo but outside of Tokyo as well. It was cheap for them to transmit and cheap is very popular within the cyberpunk movement. So anyway, they had a relatively large audience on mini-fm and the government became very nervous and wanted to stop them. Also in 1985, one of the strong impacts on the government was the growing numbers of mini-fm stations at that time; they estimated that there were over 1000 mini-fm stations appearing all over Japan. So the government decided to take action against this phenomenon and established a very complicated computer system to check the mini-fm airwaves. There was a device that connected to their computer system and if you have illegal transmission, this system quickly checked where specific stations where transmitting from. The mass media picked up on what was going on and (the newspapers especially) distorted what was really going on and they made it seem like very illegal activities were transpiring. Then this station was forced to stop. The negative images in the media continued to put pressure on other stations and many closed down. At the time, our station started a very strong campaign against the government's actions. Our message was: if you do this kind of thing again many people from the "grassroots" will oppose you and since then there have been no similar cases. Our station uses a one watt transmitter which is still illegal. This year we are celebrating our tenth anniversary.

Your station has existed for 10 years and its still illegal?

Yes. It's illegal, but it has survived. We have had no trouble with the government. The government knows about us but they ignore us because we have journalists involved and we try to keep the exact the same frequency which does not interfere with television and other stations. We are also prepared to fight the government if any legal conflicts arise.

Was there a time when transmitters we legal in Japan?

No.

What was the highest wattage that was legal?

There is no exact definition. I think the maximum is fifty milliwatt but I think if you use more watts carefully and organize so that people support your station you can get some really interesting things happening.

We noticed that you wrote about women working at home who were setting up their own stations.

Yes, they've now stopped. They have children and they did not want to get in trouble with the authorities. I very much miss the family activities in relation to radio. Women's commitment is now very weak.

Has digital radio had any effect on the free radio movement?

There are experiments in corporations and Japanese government laboratories. This is a very popular topic now in terms of how to use it. I think now the political activists in Japan are becoming interested in using video, finally. So I think TV might be interesting. My first experiment with video transmission was last month in Vancouver.

How is information about these mini-FM or "pirate" transmitters disseminated to activists and the general public?

In April we are publishing a special issue of Paction (one of the most important left magazines established in the 1960's) on how to use alternative media. I think it is one of the only magazines to have survived the last three decades, it gives a lot of insight into what's going on in politics and subcultures Now they plan to publish this special issue on alternative media, including radio so I think it will definitely impact on activists. We are hoping to address this difficult situation where transmitters are considered illegal, making it very difficult for people to develop ideas because they are always scared.

Is your radio linked up with any other mini-fm radios in Japan?

Yes. We transmit out of only one room and unfortunately we don't have a great collection of discs. So we exchange tapes and people come from and our members go to other stations, so this kind of exchange is always happening but it is limited to small populations.

You maintain that the signal should be small, that one watt is adequate for radio. Do you see an importance in maintaining a small area of radio programming as a kind of community medium.

Yes, but I have to say that the concept of "community" in Japan is very different from the North American version. We used to have different communities based on geography but this has been drastically destroyed over the last 100 years. So I think our society is not so much community oriented. In terms of the national community, Japan is a kind of community but if you look at the local areas people are separated.

Yes I think the radio could create a kind of electronic community, but it always depends on the time of day. Our station is located in a neighborhood like St. Denis St. here in Montreal, there are a lot of students and young people at night with older people in the day. If you broadcast in the morning the audience will be mostly older people but if you broadcast in the evening the electronic community consists mainly of students. So now we only cover the evening to midnight hours because that is when our community audience exists. Most of the audience involved in our radio activities is largely students and younger people. My concept has alot to do with the recovering and reconstructing of community which has been destroyed by traditional radio.

So radio is helping to recover a sense of community ?

Yes..but its different from a traditional community based on ethnic, geographic, or physical aspects. In Osaka 2 years ago a new station appeared which was exclusively for Korean people but there are not many foreign language stations in Tokyo.

How is radio re-building communities? Doesn't the very nature of one watt radio (i.e. transmitter or receiver) limit this process.

Still even if you use a one watt radio transmitter there is a separation between listener and sender but I think its only a beginning. Our system is far simpler than the very small community radio stations in Canada; its just an apartment room, a tiny transmitter, tape recorder, CD players, mixers. Sometimes people bring different types of devices and instruments for their program.

I have also been involved in workshops for showing people how to build their own transmitters and they look at the process of transmitting realize how easy it is. They understand it's very easy to do but still, in the last couple of years people in Japan are not so interested in radio media because now people are much more interested in computers and networks, videos, sophisticated media etc., radio has become an older type of media.

Could you see the same process happening with TV that has happened to radio?

In Japan...I don't think so because the mini-fm boom in the early '80s' had some roots in the '70's student movement where young people were frustrated, especially by the media and the consumption situation. They are now satisfied with their life, but the situation is now slowly changing as we are beginning to face the recession. I think the situation will change soon. Mini-FM uses a very small transmitter but TV is not so easy to do because in the early '80's we had alot of free space on the FM dials, so you could broadcast on any frequency. Television on the other hand now uses channels 1,3 4, 6, 8, 10. 12, but channels 2, 5, 7, 9 are difficult to use because every station except 1 an 3 use very strong power waves. Even if you want to use channel 2 there is very strong interference making it very difficult.

But it is interesting...in Montreal, channel 4 is open so that you can use a small transmitter in a VCR. The VCR has a small transmitter in channel 4 or 3 so if you boost the original signal of channel 4 to for instance one-hundred milli-watt it covers three or four blocks. This is a similar system used by Vancouver's Western Front in the last 2 weeks. Canada has a good possibility to develop this type of transmission.

You mentioned the importance of youth cultures and radio in the 1980's. What is the state of youth culture now?

I think the situation has drastically changed but there are always people who keep similar, subversive cultures, so fortunately the people in radio still maintain this kind of thinking. There is a new generation but its very unusual, its a kind of enclave in the city. We have a network from the countryside and sometimes students come to visit and stay. This kind of interaction is "recycled networking", but generally speaking the trend is more towards isolated stations. Students are more interested in getting jobs, at the same time people are more narcissistic, not as interested in politics. Of course unconsciously people are not happy with the situation but maybe there are no interesting ways to express that right now. One of the exceptions is computers. The computer network system is very strong in Japan where we have several interesting events for instance, in the big networks there are some political bulletin boards, some electronic "rooms" on political topics, this kind of thing is very popular now.

Do you think free radio gets people active in politics?

I don't think we can mobilize such large numbers of people as in 1983-'84 because I think its not as important. We now have isolated but interesting enclaves that are separated and we can find some clues to link them together. I think if you look at our society from a micro-perspective you might not see anything interesting but if you look at individual aspects of certain students, in some places and periods, you will find interesting people linking different media together in interesting situations. The next stage if you are interested in politics or culture is not the same as it was in the '80s and right now the computer network is becoming increasingly effective in linking separated groups and people.

You mention in one of your articles that high technology creates a number of "disturbances". How do you think community-based radio or computer networks differ from high-technology?

I think that the present situation is that more and more people are interested in computers due to computers being more simple to use. I don't think computers are high tech. There are alot of people in different populations that are interested in advanced technology. Last year there was a business festival of virtual reality machines and also a computer fair of graphics and there was a kind of feeling that such devices could develop new things. So I think now there is too much reliance on technology. I was talking on a more general, popular level of culture of technology. You can say that in the minds of computer nerds or television watchers the physical space and the electronic space are reversed, but I think this kind of trend is ending in Japan.

You state in one of your papers that "freedom" does not have any meaning anymore. What then is the relationship between empowering people and freedom?

That was my strategy manifesto. It is complicated but, for instance, if you look at the situation in Japan we still need freedom, we have always been fighting for freedom against the government and the authorities, so my thesis does not work in Japan. My point is rather directed towards North America. I think that the age of freedom, the age for freedom, is finished. For instance, I think, though I'm not sure, that in Canada you may use a small transmitter whose power is less than one hundred milli-watt or old ten watt. It seems that the situation around such micro-power is not strict here, it is more relaxed so I think if you use a weak power its OK. I think the situation in terms of micro transmission is changing because AM is almost finished and not so many stations use it. Also VHF channels are dying because people use cable and satellite. So maybe AM and VHF will become free spaces, but these kind of things never happen in Japan, we still have to constantly struggle for free channels.

Have you listened to any Canadian radio?

Yes. Sometimes I listen at midnight.(Brave New Waves perhaps??)