The Female DJ Who Quietly Challenged Japan's Parliament - And Won

Strength and feminism don’t always look like what you might imagine. Mari Takahashi’s version is quiet, strong, peaceful—and clearly commanding. As one of the first female DJs in Japan, performing under the names DJ AMIGA or Electrical LOVERS, she teaches in a program to helps train other female DJs. She plays clubs around the world, from New York to Seoul to Macau. And she deejays events for big name brands from Cartier to Gucci.

Perhaps more interestingly, she helped change the laws in Japan to make deejaying legal.

So how do you pioneer a field and successfully lobby the parliament of a country? By being flexible and smart – and never, ever giving up.

Takahashi started her career as a DJ about 12 years ago, at a time when there were almost no women deejaying in Japan.

“Until then, I was composing and publishing music as a professional techno musician," she says. “My ‘techno' music was not about so-called dance music of today, but ambient and electronica.

"I liked dance music, and I liked going out to nightclubs, but the pieces I composed were not for dancing with. I was part of a small part of the music industry."

At that time, she says, the environment surrounding deejaying was changing from analog to digital. Her friends who were DJs were also shifting their lifestyles from fishing for vinyl at record shops to visiting websites to download .wav and .mp3 files. The technology was changing. Pioneer CDJ—essentially a digital turntable—was becoming the industry standard in nightclubs, and because she was already well-versed in electronic music production, it came naturally to her.

As she tells the story, "One day, I still remember, a friend of mine asked me, 'Hey, I am looking for a female DJ, and can you do it?' And I said ‘yes’ to do my first gig. It was my first time deejaying. I always saw how others were deejaying, and I tried myself using my Apple’s laptop and the sequencing software on it that I was using for composing music.”

Until that moment, she says, she was doing her live music performances in hoodies with jeans and glasses – and she wasn’t making much money. At this party, though, she was dressed in top-brand clothes, connecting multiple pieces of music that other people composed, and she was well paid.

“The party where I first did a DJ gig was actually of a top fashion brand. The producer of the party was looking for a female DJ to decorate the gorgeous party. There were not still many DJs out there then,” she says. “[Another] organizer of parties who was attending that party [said], ‘Hey I want to book you for my party.’ The same kind of conversation followed again and again. I got connected with those in this industry, and I found myself doing 120 gigs in a year!”

Looking at this from a business perspective – the shift was smart. Looking at it from a feminist perspective, it was too. In Takahashi's current on stage appearances, under the name DJ Amiga, she is soft and feminine – very much in a forerunner in what has become popular DJ style across Asia. And that is not just a societal construct. That is to say, beauty is not put on just to get gigs or to please audiences. Rather, it is a choice – a means to empowerment and full expression of these female DJs, sexually and otherwise. Just like Beyoncé, Nikki Minaj and Diplo, for that matter, Asian female DJs revel in what they’ve got. They just do it Eastern style.

Ultimately, mastery of the craft matters more than gender. What Takahashi helped to create in Japan is an echo of the rise of masterful female DJs around the world. It is a movement that started in a big way in the 1990s and has gained momentum in both the East and the West (just check out the success and skills of Lady Bee or DJ RayRay). Female DJs are now receiving the recognition and support they deserve. Takahashi continues to lead that charge. She just taught a course called “How to ‘Win’ As a Female DJ" at  Studio Mission and Club Contact. While she laughingly says that course title was created by the producer, who wanted to sell more tickets, she is a champion of other young women who want to DJ.

“I recently started a new DJ team with multiple [women] who deejay in one DJ booth together," says Takahashi. "We have just started this. I am looking forward to see[ing] how it goes," she says.

Takahashi is more than a pioneer in the industry and a mentor to other women. She also helped to change the law in Japan to make DJing legal.

Fueiho (風営法) is the Entertainment and Amusement Trades Control Act, which keeps all the entertainment and amusement in Japan under control. It was enacted in 1948, and it regulated “letting customers dance,” based on the then assumption that Dance Halls were used for prostitutes’ business. Until 2015, when Takahashi worked to change the law, this act was still in effect. What it meant: people could not legally "dance" in nightclubs.

“This act was not updated until 2015, and we couldn’t legally 'dance'  in the nightclubs, which sounds ridiculous to us,” Takahashi explains.

“Although the police had been pretending not to have seen this 'gray [area]' for a long time, they started to expose nightclubs since around 2010. There happened [to be] a lethal violence incident in a nightclub, and a famous actress who was also active as a DJ was arrested for drug abuse," says Takahashi. "Many nightclubs in not only in Tokyo but also in Osaka were exposed, from those of underground to overground. We felt like the club culture was disappearing. The whole club scene was forced to shrink.”

So what did she do? In spring of 2013, Takahashi helped found an organization called Club and Club Culture Conference (CCCC). Made up of 30 professional DJs, MCs and rappers in the Kanto region around Tokyo, and supported by senators and lawyers who liked to dance, this group started working to preserve the music culture and club scene in Japan. At the same time, an organization called Let's Dance formed in the Kansai region–the geographic region including Kyoto and Osaka–to collect petitions and propose changes to the law.

"Although the owners of the nightclubs should have done this, they couldn’t do an open and visible movement because they were running their nightclubs in this 'gray' [area]. For this reason, we represented the club scene and did the lobbying effort," Takahashi says. The gist of what they were lobbying for: repeal of the "no dancing" law.

And Takahashi says her goal was to do it peacefully. "We DJs in Tokyo thought it's important to keep productive conversation with rather than fighting against the government, which is [the] reason we decided not to disclose to [the] public." Instead, she and her group worked quietly behind the scenes. She worked with lawyers to study and learn the law and constitution of Japan. She went to police departments to meet with the police force. Takahashi, other DJs, and lawyers—along with people from the Let's Dance group—appeared in front of the Diet [Japan's parliament] "again and again" to make a case for why they should change the law. Or as Takahashi put it, very politely, they were "exchang[ing] views and opinions."

It worked. In 2015, Fueiho (風営法) was revised. The dancing prohibition was lifted.

"Every factor worked out together to change the law," Takahashi says. "It helped that that same year, 2013, Tokyo successfully invited the Olympic Games of 2020. Tokyo needed to be the city that meets the 'global standard' to revitalize Japan’s economy."

"I still believe that nightclubs are a birthplace of culture," Takahashi concludes.

And in Japan at least, she is one of the mothers of it.

Source: www.forbes.com