Mr Kazami left for Osaka on Thursday after a 5-day intensive course at Flying Dutchman London. Due to Osada Steve’s ill-health, I had to find a last minute stand in and we were lucky enough to get him for roughly the same dates.
He arrived on 13 April and was kindly met by Mack and Reina to be brought to my flat, where we had a small welcome party. In spite of a long flight, it wasn’t long before he was sufficiently refreshed by copious cups of English tea to have Nina hanging from my living room ceiling in an elegant ebi-tsuri; a tie which were were to learn later that week. It seems that Mr Kazami has acquired quite a taste for English tea and crumpets, although Marmite had him pulling a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle 🙂 Ah, sweet revenge for having natto (a bean product that looks like alien slime and reminds me of the smell of washing forgotten in the machine) foisted on me one morning at a hotel. Although, we had a lot of help from Nana, one of our interpreters from the festival, the rest of the time at home, we were left to the vagaries of Google translate and our couple of dozen shared words of each others languages. In spite of the somewhat random results, we seemed to get by without any awful misunderstandings…I hope.
Shortly, I will publish an interview when Nana has had a chance to get fuller translations of his replies. In it, I ask about himself and his discovery of kinbaku, which lead to some funny anecdotes, which will give many aspiring nawashi a lot of comfort. Apparently, his name is made up of ‘kazami’, literally and metaphorically ‘weathervane’, and ‘ranki’ which is composed of the word ‘orchid’ denoting ‘femininity/women’ and ‘desires’. Thus, ‘one who follows the desires of women’ or, as the Japanese so often seem to say, “something like that”. As I have mentioned before, these desires are followed into some very soft and touchingly romantic places and some contrastingly brutal SM that has earned him the nickname of the ‘Atrocious Nawashi’. He works with a limited pool of models, some of whom he has know for many years and has developed a very deep an trusting relationship. His model at Toubaku was one of these and the exchange of emotion left very member of the audience fighting back a tear.
We found he has other talents. Not only could he save the day by taking over after Jenis had a rice disaster but he proved after dinner at Hedwig’s that he is pretty good on the guitar and vocals too.
I’ll be posting photos from the classes and his demonstrations when I get back from Berlin next weekend. I’m off to run a 5-day master class in place of Osada Steve’s one which had to be cancelled. Anyway, must sign off as we are just about to leave to do a bit of rope at Club Rub and then try to grab some sleep before at taxi to the airport at 6:30am. Groan!