Q002:
Do you really live together communally as The Acid Mothers Soul Collective? Where? What do the neighbors think of you? Do you still feel that Japan is a very conservative culture? Tell us about some of the other members, the dancers, painters etc.
A002:
Over a decade ago I became involved with a commune of Japanese beatniks and hippies, but the whole left-wing ethos didn't really sit right with me. The members of Acid Mothers Temple have several houses all over Japan, and each of us is free to come and go between these houses. So we're not a commune in the sense that all of us live together in the same place. There are some members who like to travel, others who stay at home. Everyone is free to live in whatever way they like. Our slogan is "Do Whatever You Want, Don't Do Whatever You Don't Want!!". As a result of this philosophy, we have lost money and the trust of society as a whole, but we've gained time and freedom. When all the Aum Shinrikyo stuff was going on in Japan a few years back, there were quite a few of our members staying at my house. [NB Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth, were the religious cult who carried out the poison gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 that left 12 dead and over 1000 injured]. The neighbours mistakenly thought that our house was a secret Aum hideout and managed to get us evicted. Also, mountain villages are always suspicious of outsiders, and sometimes we are ostracised by the community. These kinds of problems pop up from time to time, but there's not much we can do about it. One of our members is a farmer, living together with his fields and rice paddies. There's another member who has travelled through the Australian deserts and lived with Aborigines. There's others who are bumming round India. One went to Africa and never came back. One dropped out of a yakuza gang and decided to travel around Japan searching for mermaids. But we all live according to our slogan, and we all eventually return to the fold. We respect each others' ways of life, and we try not to tie each other down. The "soul collective" only exists so that we can protect our freedom.