F

r

o

m

S

O

A

S

t

o

S

h

i

b

u

y

a

:

B

r

o

a

d

c

a

s

t

e

r

P

e

t

e

r

B

a

r

a

k

a

n

d

i

s

c

u

s

s

e

s

h

i

s

j

o

u

r

n

e

y

i

n

J

a

p

a

n

Hi Peter, tell us a bit about yourself, who you are and what you do? 

Sure, I'm Peter and I'm a broadcaster, DJ, and author in Japan. I currently host three weekly radio shows, two music programmes which I curate myself, and the other is an interview programme on which I am the co-presenter. I've also been presenting the show Japanology Plus on NHK World TV since 2003, which is a 30-minute programme in English presenting a wide range of topics relating to Japan.

You originally studied Japanese at SOAS, why did you choose this language? 

I have to admit that it was pretty random. I'd studied Latin and Greek at school and had a general interest in languages, and I wanted an intellectual challenge. 

I don't know to this day why it was Japanese though. Partly it may have been the sound of it that led me to give it a try. At that time SOAS was one of only four universities in the UK offering a Japanese course and London made more sense to me than the other three.

What was the reason you moved to Japan? 

Originally I had no particular desire to go to Japan. I'd studied Japanese but I was a music nerd, and I thought, okay, I want to do something that relates to music. So I went to work in a record shop. 

The pay wasn't that great though, and after about 9 months I saw an add for a Japanese music publishing company who wanted an English speaker to work in Tokyo. I interviewed, and about a month after that they called up out of the blue to ask if I could be in Tokyo in 10 days to start work. 

You packed up and went to Tokyo there and then? 

I was actually really surprised that it was so sudden, and also a bit nervous. But I said yes, I knew some Japanese and didn't have much in the way of possessions so I thought why not.

They sent me a round-trip ticket, so I got on a plane and came to Tokyo. I didn't have any idea whether it would work out, and no plans for the future. I suppose I just wanted the experience.

How did you get into broadcasting?

It was something that had been in the back of my mind since London actually, but realistically I didn't see it happening. Then one day a friend of mine in Tokyo who wrote scripts for radio shows, out of the blue asked if I wanted to audition for a new radio show that they were putting together. 

I screwed that up, but then about 6 months later he asked again for a different show, and I got the gig. That indirectly led to my leaving the job at the publishing company and starting on the road to where I am now.   

It was about this time that you started working with Yellow Magic Orchestra - how did that come about?

Another person I knew phoned me up and said he had a friend making a record and would I help out with some English lyrics, so I said, yeah, sure. It turned out his friend was Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose name I actually didn't know at the time, but he was in Yellow Magic Orchestra, who had been around for a couple of years by then and were really big. 

So I worked on some lyrics for the song, and that led to my working for the band’s management. I ended up contributing lyrics to several albums, and all in all it was an adventure.

Then how did you get into TV? 

I was doing my radio shows alongside working with YMO, and also a musician called Akiko Yano, who was married to Sakamoto at the time. We did a radio programme together, which then led to a music video programme on television. That was a very challenging experience, and the show turned out to be quite influential in its own way as we were playing music that hadn't really been heard in Japan at the time.

This took my broadcasting career in a whole new direction and led to more TV work. Since 2003 I've been presenting Begin Japanology and Japanology Plus on NHK, which is the Japanese public broadcaster, like the BBC.

You're an established broadcaster in Japan with some influential shows under your belt - have you a favourite? 

Back in the 1990s I was asked to do a radio show in Chiba, which is the prefecture just east of Tokyo. They gave me carte blanche to play whatever music I wanted. So I created a show which took blues as its core and then went out from there in any possible direction.

I ended up rediscovering all this amazing music, some of it from America, some of it from the Caribbean, some of it from Africa, and it made for a great radio show. It ran for 6 and a half years in total, and I still feel very kind of nostalgic about that once in a while. 

What advice would you give to someone looking to move to Japan? 

That’s a difficult one. The short answer is for a foreigner to succeed in Japan in any field, language ability is essential. But I guess like moving to most foreign countries, you have to have flexibility, and a level of humility. 

Final question, where do you buy your music in Tokyo?

Tower Records still exists in Japan. It's the only country where they still have actual stores, and there's an enormous one in Shibuya, Tokyo. I sometime go in there, though I must admit I buy most of my music online like everyone else.