P-Heavy
Issue #34
We learned loads from this Japanese band
By Amy Schroeder
Published: December 1st, 2007 | 4:05pm
The lineup:
Chifumi Fujisawa, 31, p-heavy guitarist-vocalist, from Matsumoto Nagano, Japan
Mari Kojima, 24, p-heavy drummer, from Shimane, Japan
Nami Noguchi, 32, guitarist-vocatlist, from Matsumoto, Nagano City, Japan
Meeting Venus Zine readers is one of our favorite parts of the job, so when a Japanese band called p-heavy e-mailed to ask if it could stop by our office while traveling the States, we said hellz yes.
Bearing gifts of fanzines, necklaces that say “I Read Zines,” and a handmade purple dog cell-phone tote, Chifumi Fujisawa said the first issue of Venus Zine she read was issue 13, released in 2002, with Sleater-Kinney on the cover. “They’re one of my favorite bands,” she says. “I love the Pacific Northwest music scene.”
Fujisawa said that she was inspired to learn how to play guitar in 1999 after she saw a performance by the Crabs, a K Records Portland band that consisted of Jonn Lunsford, Lisa Jackson, and Sarah Dougher. “It was the indie band with girls in it that I’d seen,” Fujisawa says. “In Japan, we don’t have many all-girl bands like Sleater-Kinney.” Discovering American feminist bands stimulated her start p-heavy, which is releasing a CD in December.
In addition to a lack of female indie musicians in Japan, Fuisawa said that feminism hasn’t influenced the workplace as much as it has in the U.S. “My mother is one of the only female sushi chefs in Japan. She’s self-taught and has been doing it for 30 years,” she says. “It’s commonly thought that a woman’s hands are too hot to handle the fish — it’s considered bad for sushi, which is wrong.”
Read more info at myspace.com/pheavy.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more