'Omoiyari, A Song Film': Let Kishi Bashi’s Voice and Violin Transport You
“When in song we are blessed to be/ Mending the rift of our apathy”
They say you shouldn’t meet your idols, but I’ve met a handful of mine (Danzy Senna, Maggie Nelson, for starters) and have left every interaction even more invested in their work. Maybe it depends on the type of people whose work attracts you, but I’ve always upheld that of the hard-working, intellectually honest, and emotionally resonant.
And that brings me to the following: Kaoru Ishibashi, known more widely by his stage name, Kishi Bashi. After 6 years, the indie rock musician has released his personally rendered documentary, Omoiyari: A Song Film (co-directed with Justin Taylor Smith), which offers an intimate portrait of Ishibashi’s cultural identity through an examination of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II coupled with an empathetic look at the contemporary migrant/refugee detentions at the US-Mexico border. I am exceedingly fortunate to live in Los Angeles, arguably the US cultural capital, wherein every musical act or major cultural moment passes through. This was no exception; the documentary is currently playing at the Laemmle in Glendale, where I was able to attend a screening with Ishibashi present for a Q&A.
The documentary begins with a number of close-up shots to visually convey the ways in which it is interested in History, yes, but primarily its impact on individuals. We get a sense of Ishibashi’s journey through his music and the ways in which music, as his primary mode of expression, also allows him to take a stand against injustice. But do not mistake this for a dark, troubling film. His humor and intimate portrait are a powerful thread throughout. In one of the beginning scenes, for example, he stands at the steps at the entrance of his high school building and announces: “This is where I learned I’m Asian!” That moment of jocular levity reveals a pointed critique of the ways he was a victim of alterity in his formative years in a white majority environment, one that played a role in which he adopts a more “white” identity, as he explains throughout the film, to the detriment, or perhaps confusion, of his Japanese one.
The documentary goes over some of the 19th and early 20th history of Japan with the rest of the world, particularly the US, before focusing on the resilience of the incarcerated during World War II. To tell this overarching history of Japanese-Americans, Ishibashi focuses on his family (immigrants to the US in the 1960s), but also on the individuals (notably ones who experienced the incarceration) he meets along the way in this journey of growth. He spends time in some of the camps as he grapples with the past to understand his own cultural and ethnic identity.
In terms of cinematography, stunning shots of Ishibashi playing his violin among natural beauty frame the film. In these moments, he improvises music on his instrument, allowing his emotions to speak through the musical notes. His stirring violin music is later accompanied with the voices of people he interviewed speaking truth to power in a way that completes the soundtrack.
At the screening I attended, an audience member asked whether Ishibashi could actually stand by equating the forced incarceration of Japanese-Americans with migrant detention at the border. That would be the easy, albeit incorrect reading of the film. In my estimation, the documentary functions as an iteration of Michael Rothberg’s theory of multidirectional memory. Rothberg posits that articulating one traumatic history (for him, the Holocaust) allows for the same for other histories (slavery, colonialism). Ishibashi takes this in an interesting direction by also creating the framework of omoiyari—which I can roughly translate, by relying on both English and French, as “empathy engagé”—to put these two violent moments in the public discourse, hoping that continuing to acknowledge the repercussions of one will prompt action against the other.
A generous and charming performer, Ishibashi brought his guitar and performed a few songs for us, asking the audience for requests. He seems to genuinely enjoy performing and sharing his music. When I saw him live last year for the first time, after being a fan for nearly a decade, he played for at least two hours. I also don’t think he’s given enough credit for how stunning his voice is. I’ve heard him in concert and he was fantastic, but his talents and virtuosity are all the more impressive when he fills the room with his voice, sans microphone, whilst performing with his acoustic guitar.
The album accompaniment to the film will be released on November 17, 2023, but I suggest listening through the first Omoiyari album that came out in 2019. To recount this traumatic history in music, Ishibashi breathes life into characters, arguably based on the stories he encountered through his oral testimonies. “A Song for You,” “Angeline,” “Summer of ‘42’” and “Violin Tsunami” (this is the official video) are standouts.
A beautifully rendered documentary, Omoiyari: A Song Film is currently playing in select independent theaters, but it will be streaming next month on Paramount +. I cannot wait to rewatch it. It is moving, heart-wrenching, and thought-provoking, a dreamscape where pain and beauty exist in tandem. It wouldn’t, after all, be product of Kishi Bashi’s overarching artistic vision if it wasn’t ultimately about love.