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| "The Spiders in Holland" |
Back in early spring of 2020, I was posting on this blog fairly often as I was preparing to knock out the bulk of my master's thesis (and I did!). Now that I have graduated and taken some time off to relax my brain, I'm ready to get back into my research!
In April of 2020, I posted an article on this blog called "The Spiders in the West: London & Hawaii" in which I asked a bunch of questions about how and why The Spiders ended up touring Europe. During the writing of my master's thesis during the 2020-2021 school year, I answered these questions when I discovered through Dutch, British, and American newspapers from the time period and through modern Japanese blogs that The Spiders actually toured Europe for 2 whole weeks during 1966 - starting in Amsterdam and moving from there to Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, and then back to Amsterdam. The Spiders departed from Haneda Airport in Tokyo on October 24, 1966 and arrived in Amsterdam the following day after a flight on a KLM Royal Dutch aircraft since they were invited to visit by Philips Records. Apparently The Spiders' tour in Europe, based in Amsterdam, was a bit of a trade for Philips Records since a Dutch orchestra leader named Malando became extremely popular in Japan around the same time.
In 1946, the Dutch electronics company Philips acquired a small company that pressed records for the Dutch outlet of Decca Records, a British company founded in 1929. Philips Records began by issuing classical music recordings in 1950. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Philips became a powerhouse of releasing music of various genres from around the world including but not limited to David Bowie, Blue Cheer, Chico Buarque (Brazil), Frumpy (Germany), Gong (France), Johnny Hallyday ("French Elvis," essentially), Kraftwerk, Los Paraguayos (Paraguay), The Tempters (another Japanese Group Sounds band) and, of course, The Spiders.
While reflecting on this portion of my thesis while listening to some of The Spiders' covers just last night, I had an epiphany: it makes so much sense that the record company that would invite The Spiders on their first and only international tour was Dutch. The Japanese and the Dutch had been trading regularly since 1609. I go into quite a deep dive in my thesis on when Commodore Matthew Perry visited Japan the second time, he introduced Japan and Japanese people to not only its first taste of American popular music (which was minstrelsy at the time) but also specifically to Black or at least American perceptions of Black music, which obviously formed the base of rock and roll and still form much of the base of American popular music to this day. However, I didn't have this epiphany about Japan's relationship with the Netherlands/Holland, which goes back an easy 250 years before Perry's expedition.
In one of my Japanese/independent study courses in grad school, I read the Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa who lived from 1835 to 1901 and founded Keio University. In his autobiography, we learn about Fukuzawa's early life as a low-ranking samurai and his academic prowess even from a young age. Fukuzawa grew up right on the cultural cusp in Japan as American and English-speaking culture was overtaking Dutch culture within Japan (Fukuzawa turned 19 in 1854, the year of Perry's arrival in Japan). Fukuzawa initially dedicated himself to the study of rangaku (蘭学, literally "Dutch learning") and learned Dutch (along with other western subjects like science and gunnery) on Dejima, the artificially-created Dutch colony located in Nagasaki Bay. Fukuzawa soon comes to the realization that he needs to learn English and acknowledge the United States as the new western power in East Asia if he wants to continue with his "Western studies." He does and becomes one of the diplomats on Japan's first diplomatic mission to the United States in 1860.
It is interesting that The Spiders' musical career followed a similar trajectory to Yukichi Fukuzawa's diplomatic one just a little more than a century later. The Spiders seemed to be welcomed quite warmly in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, during their 1966 tour, and even appeared on a few Dutch television programs. Excited by the success of their European tour which, ironically, made them more popular back home in Japan (they returned home to find their song "Yuhi Ga Naiteiru"/"Sad Sunset" had become a hit while they were away), The Spiders attempted to break into the American market. The Spiders spent approximately two weeks in Hawaii. Not much is known about their time in Hawaii, but it seems that most of that time was spent relaxing rather than performing. There is evidence of one show they performed at the Honolulu International Center on Saturday, June 24, 1967 from two different Honolulu newspapers and a photograph of them relaxing at the pool of the Hilton Hawaiian Village hotel.
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| The Spiders probably in Hawaii |
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| An article from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin advertising The Spiders' show the following Saturday (next to an ad for Dick Dale!) |
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| Some of The Spiders (and a friend) hanging out at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu (the same hotel Elvis stayed in while filming Blue Hawaii), sometime between June 20th and June 24th, 1967. Standing (L-R): Mitsuru Kato, Takayuki Inoue, Jun Inoue, Katsuo Ohno Sitting: Unknown (friend? translator?), Shochi Tanabe |
Unfortunately and ironically for The Spiders, while “Sad Sunset” was the beginning of the Group Sounds boom in Japan, it was also the beginning of the end for The Spiders’ international popularity. The Spiders did not seem to receive the same warm welcome in Hawaii as they did in the Netherlands. I currently have no further information on The Spiders in Hawaii or if they ever performed on the American mainland, which is my next research goal. However, I do have a photograph of Katsuo Ohno from a Japanese magazine that states that it was taken while they were in Disneyland but they could have possibly just been visiting Hiroshi Kamayatsu's father.
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| Katsuo Ohno at Frontierland in Disneyland, would be around 1967. |
