Craftwife : the electronic housewife

Moving on to the Craftwife costumes, you’re doing much more than simply disguising yourselves, but I wouldn’t say it’s really cosplay, which is mainly associated with mangas and anime. How would you describe it?

Well, I think it is cosplay sort of… Actually, I’ve always liked dressing up, but not as cartoon characters, rather as maids, policewomen and so on. You get into the skin of a character. For example, when I wore a nurse’s uniform, I suddenly became very organised and the movements of my body became more precise and alive. I guess what I like best is to try out all sorts of different activities rather than concentrate on one in particular. This must be why I continue with the Craftwife project. I can do music, design the visual side of things, come-up with costumes, play around with electronic devices. The costumes are an important part of the Craftwife presence, I guess. I went for red to make an impact on the audience and also because of my name, Akamatsu. [ aka = red in Japanese ]

What does tn8, your stage name, mean?

There are four people in Craftwife: KR-9000, NZ3, YS4 and me, tn8. One of my university lecturers gave me the nickname. At the time, there weren’t many women in electronic music and programming and the only well-known woman doing it in Japan was Yuko Nexus6. My teacher got my name from her stage name.

What do you call yourself now? Are you a musician, a teacher, a researcher?

Right now, I’m a housewife! In fact, the name Craftwife is a reference to this… but I think I’ve always enjoyed teaching. I learn so much from contact with other people. At the moment I give English lessons in a primary school once a week. I mean, I say lessons but it’s mainly listening to music and dancing! 

For you, what does it mean to be a housewife?

On a journey abroad, I realised that in Japan we have a very particular view of what a housewife is. Here, it’s almost a profession in itself. When I look at the housewives around me, I see that many of them have given up their dreams, particularly when it comes to music. I’ve always thought that the two weren’t incompatible and that it would be a great thing to start a band of housewives! 

I believe you didn’t want to produce any recordings of your work and you post very few videos of your concerts. Is there any reason for this?

An object like a CD only exists because it’s easy to produce, duplicate and sell as a mass product.  But now, now that consumers can make copies of CDs themselves, they’re not allowed to do it by law. I find that absurd.   

 If you don’t produce any discs or videos, how do you get the word out about your work? 

I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. I think that ideally we should develop a new iPhone application. I have enough knowledge to be able to program a simple app myself, distribution is a lot more direct than for a disc and you can send it round the whole world. This isn’t as easy to do with a CD, what with distance, delivery charges and so on and even legal download platforms for music are restrictive:  only people who listen to music use these sites. All sorts of different people visit the App Store. The only thing they have in common is that they have an iPhone. And also, I don’t like the idea of fixed content. An app would allow us to stream music for example, so that it develops with time.  

Are you already working on this application?

Yes, I’ve been working on it for a while but the audio is proving problematic. The quality changes enormously depending on whether you’re listening straight from an iPhone, with headphones or if you plug the phone into some speakers. It’s a real nightmare finding the right audio to run across all three.

If Craftwife isn’t a music project, how would you define it? 

What sort of places do you play in? Museums, clubs, where?

It really is varied. We’ve played in all the little cafés in Ogaki – the town where I live – in the planetarium in Ogaki too, in the gym at the Todai Institute at Tokyo University, at Gifu art museum, in a fashion museum and in lots of small concert venues. The audience is different every time, ranging from students to old people. We change the content of our performance and sound slightly depending on the space, the audience and the event in which we’re participating. It’s a lot of work! 

What other projects have you been working on recently?

I want to start a group of idol singers made up of models selected by the free newspaper Gifu Bishôjo Zukan (‘Illustrated encyclopedia of beautiful Gifu women’) and I also take a collective music creation workshop using the iPhone. I’m really busy, but I really enjoy what I do..