We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Non Kuramoto a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Non, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I’ve wanted to live on stage for as long as I remember. I even joke that I gained consciousness on stage – my first step to stardom was as at barely two years old, singing the infamous “I Love You” song from Barney at my pre-school “concert” (or whatever you call unleashing a bunch of toddlers onto a stage with a full sound and lighting rig for some high production value home-videos).

I didn’t know HOW one became a person who gets-to-be-on-stage-all-the-time so I tried anything that seemed close enough. After school dance classes, middle school orchestra, high school theater, debate team – anything! I was my own stage parent. My formal education in performance didn’t start until I was in undergrad, but I think the eclectic trial and error I put myself through informs my genre-vague practice.

In my undergrad theater program, I was exposed to performance pedagogies that expanded my idea of stage performance beyond narrative, capital A, “Acting.” I was lucky enough to have a professor who was excited about how I “played with presence” and encouraged me to try clowning. The discovery of clown and how all of the physical theater that I’d come to love tied into it was the actual beginning of my current life.

Stand-up comedy seemed like the intuitive space for a clown to be, so I spent almost a decade of my post-grad life honing in on writing clever jokes that fit inside the space of one microphone. I love stand-up as a form and I learned so much about the craft of holding attention and the power of laughter. But the realization that it was making me rely too much on my brain and away from my body, where so much of my most pleasurable creative impulses come from ultimately lead me back in search of a new home for my clown.

While I’m categorically most easily identified as a musician these days, I’m a staunch believer in my work being “a clown in a punk band.” And I continue to study various forms of clowning and physical theater. I’m not necessarily seeking mastery of a certain pedagogy or form, but want to keep exploring the potential for “live-ness.”

Non, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am the “front-clown” of Brooklyn based clown punk band, “first president of japan.” Singer, or front-person are also words people use to describe my function in the band – I just happen to be a clown.

first president of japan is a true live experience. Our recorded music is great, but we will crack you open (like a good chiropractor) if you come to our shows. We are pleasure and nonsense forward with existential crises that peek through the cracks, entangled in glitzy guitar riffs that get you moving.

My goal is to bring the pleasure and release that the chaos of a punk show can pull out of folks to audiences that might not necessarily think the punk space is for them. I believe in the revolutionary power of love and community that can emerge from bopping around with strangers. We are open to all spaces and audiences, and have played everywhere from the legendary “Baby’s All Right” to a Chinatown food court. We have been a part of proof that Asian grandmas can GET DOWN as hardcore as the Brooklyn girlies.

As a more stripped down “first president of japan, less plugged” I’ve brought my clowning around to art show openings, hair salons, bookstores, and more. With audience members describing our music as “dropping lighting down on my heart” – I see my band and music as vehicles for something that deeper inside all of us.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I can’t tell you how often I’m called brave. It throws me off every time because I don’t think I’m doing anything exceptional or out of the ordinary. I have a job to do, and I do it. So much of my time is spent doing the same things everyone else is doing at their jobs. Sending emails, attending meetings, pitching, gathering information – pretty unglamorous. Is it bRaVe to do all of that without a salary?
I think that sometimes being an artist gets seen as some sort of big statement. That I have a point to make simply by existing outside of normalized systems. But usually, I’m just doing the things that make sense to me. I’m just doing the things that feel right to me. Because I would not last a year at a corporate job.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think it’s important for artistic work to be recognized as labor. Making art is work. It takes mental and physical effort, it requires eating, rest, stability. Positioning it as something people do for the love of it, or justifying undervaluing artistic work because it’s something that’s “fun” is a disservice to everybody. Romanticizing the struggling artist image is a myth of hyper-individualism and capitalism.
We’re currently in such a crazy time of wealth gap that I think it’s necessary to seriously consider the patron system. A true one. Not just philanthropic arts organizations, not Patreon or other social media platforms that artists need to grow. It’s clear that billionaires have no interest in anything other than extraction, but if well-meaning millionaires want to actually turn the tides, they have to invest in culture. Money needs to flow into artists like VC funding flows into start-ups. It’s actually more simple than it’s made out to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nonkuramoto.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firstpresidentofjapan
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@firstpresidentofjapan
• Other: https://firstpresidentofjapan.bandcamp.com/

  https://firstpresidentofjapan.substack.com/

Image Credits

Photos by Maddie Barkocy
https://www.instagram.com/maddiebarbar.t/