My Mixtape: Kazuko Hohki’s 10 Ura Matsuri favourites

These headings alone offer an insight into the rich and varied artistic CV and career of Kazuko Hohki.

​​Born in Japan, Hohki moved to London in 1978 and joined the London Musicians Collective. In 1982, along with Kazumi Taguchi, she formed the alternative punk pop performance group Frank Chickens who released five albums and performed six Peel sessions during the 1980s and continue to perform today, now as a collective of more than 20, predominantly Japanese women, members.

Since the 1990s Hohki has focussed more on theatre work, with several full-length performance pieces touring the UK, and the children’s show ‘The Great Escape – A Borrower’s Tale’ which appeared at many venues, including here at the Southbank Centre as part of our Imagine Festival.

In 2016, combining these interests of music and performance, Hohki and Frank Chickens organised the festival Ura Matsuri, which celebrated the hybrid culture of immigrants, particularly those from East and South East Asia to the UK. The festival has become an annual London staple, with seven further ‘volumes’ of Ura Matsuri taking place across the city, and in July 2025 we welcomed Ura Matsuri volume nine, and an accompanying daytime event, Daylight Ninjas, to the Southbank Centre as part of our new ESEA Encounters series. 

Ahead of that day Hohki kindly put together this 10 track playlist featuring artists who were either appearing here at the Southbank Centre as part of this year’s Ura Matsuri, or who had performed at one of the previous eight volumes. Give it a listen whilst reading Hohki’s expert insight, and memories of the artists featured, below.

‘Musica Medicina’ – Beibei Wang

Beibei Wang has been a regular for Ura Matsuri since Ura Matsuri Vol. 2 at Bethnal Green Working Men‘s Club in 2017, and she will be performing again at Ura Matsuri at the Southbank Centre this year. She is a virtuoso percussionist who covers classical to experimental music and her live performance is so exciting that you would feel almost cathartic after watching her play. This track shows another side of her – playing very mellow ambient music in a collaboration with Fr4ncesco – but it is equally beautiful. She is my neighbour in Tottenham and I have seen her performing at our local primary school’s summer fair. It seems she is as generous as talented.

‘Denshi Lenzi’ – Tokyo Riddim Band

We are so excited to have Tokyo Riddim Band, a UK-based Japanese reggae band, at this year’s Ura Matsuri. They were formed in 2024 but are a cross-generational group and I have known the keyboard player, Mimi Kobayashi, since the 1980s when she was already a famous singer-songwriter. I’ve not seen her for a long time as our paths separated – she became a committed mother and I got involved in theatre – I’m thrilled to meet her again; I hope she remembers me! TRB’s live show is colourful and electric. Listening to them, I realise the combination of reggae rhythms and Japanese melancholy ballads is so perfect, like this song. Japan and Jamaica are not too far away after all. At this year’s Ura Matsuri, I will be dancing, sweating and feeling very nostalgic.

‘Hitori De Nadeshiko’ – Akari Mochizuki

Akari Mochizuki is an enka singer based in London. Enka is a Japanese ballad very popular in Japan and is a great way to open up your emotions, which could be suppressed in the Japanese daily routine. Everybody wants to sing enka at karaoke bars, but not many are as good as Mochizuki. This song is based on her personal experience of becoming independent away from a troubled relationship in the UK. The title means ‘lone nadeshiko’ and ‘nadeshiko’ means a Japanese traditional strong woman who can control her emotions, but I hope she does not do that too much when singing! She will be performing with Frank Chickens at this year’s Ura Matsuri and also with Hibiki Ichikawa and Shamisen London at the Daylight Ninjas event.

‘Merry Go Round’ – Kamura Obscura

I’ve known Kamura for a very long time, since the 1980s, when she was a founding member of the first Japanese female punk band, Polkadots Fire Brigade. After she moved to London, we worked together in Frank Chickens and presented our 1989 TV series (Kazuko’s Karaoke Klub) on Channel 4, as dual hosts. Rehearsals with her were always very entertaining as she has a great sense of humour; we laughed a lot, sometimes forgetting what we were rehearsing! In the 1990s she became an amazing solo improvising musician under the name of Kamura Obscura. Unfortunately she is not performing at this year’s Ura Matsuri, but she has been a regular since Vol. 1 at Cafe Oto, right up to last year’s Vol. 8.

‘We Are Ninja’ – Frank Chickens

This is us. Five members of the Ura Matsuri Collective, who produce the annual Ura Matsuri, all belong to Frank Chickens. Frank Chickens started as a duo in the 1980s, but now has 20 members, mainly Japanese women from different generations and backgrounds. This track, ‘We Are Ninja’, is our UK indie hit from the 1980s. Working with the other half of Frank Chickens, Kazumi Taguchi, and two frontier musicians from the London Musicians Collective, Steve Beresford and David Toop, in a small living room in a squatted house (there were so many of them around then), we wanted to make a rap song with minimum resources, boasting of ninja’s non-combatting skills, and commenting on women‘s position in Japan and their stereotypical images in the west. When I sing this song, I still feel proud and strong.

‘Chemical Element’ – Hibiki Ichikawa

When I was growing up in Tokyo you could still hear somebody practising shamisen in the small back alley, as if it was placed there to keep us remembering an older, slower Japan. That was a regular feature of Tokyo back then, so until I heard Hibiki Ichikawa, shamisen for me was an archaic instrument with nostalgia attached to it. Ichikawa’s shamisen changed that. His play is so energetic and his presence so strong that I’ve realised it can be as heroic as a rock guitar. Hard to believe that only three thin strings and a bachi (plectrum) in one hand can produce such an intense effect. He is playing with Frank Chickens at this year’s Ura Matsuri, and also with his ensemble Shamisen London and Akari Mochizuki at Daylight Ninjas.

‘Zundoko’ – NO CARS

NO CARS are Ura Matsuri’s favourite pop band and they appeared at our first Ura Matsuri in 2016. As their leader, Haruna Komatsu, went back to Japan, sadly they’ve only appeared at Ura Matsuri twice since, our digital edition during lockdown and Vol. 8 at Hoxton Hall. I love the unique world they create with their punk innocence. The four members, including one racoon on drums, are all very competent musicians, but they deliberately choose the style of care-free chaos when performing, to present a kind of Dada theatre. Their songs make you realise everyday events could be so much fun and special. Tomoko Komura, who appears at this year’s Ura Matsuki performing benshi (Japanese traditional silent film narrator) and as part of Frank Chickens, is also part of NO CARS, playing keyboard and singing.

‘Seiten Pt 2’ – Zashiki Warashi

Zashiki Warashi are a duet of Akinori Fujimoto (Aki) on taiko (Japanese drum) and Mikey Kirkpatrick on flute. Watching Aki playing his taiko is just like watching an elegant but powerful dance performance, while Mikey provides a tuneful context which takes you to a different world. Listening to this track, which comes from their latest release, makes me think of a walk among the rice fields in rural Japan. You hear a distant sound of taiko and flute, a typical sound associated with Matsuri (local community festival), wafting through to you and the image is so evocative that a story starts to emerge; you could say Zashiki Warashi are wandering storytellers without words. They appeared at Ura Matsuri Vol.7 in 2022 at Bethnal Green’s St Margaret‘s House.

‘Farewell (Jen)’ – Raimund Wong

Raimund Wong is a man of good taste. His radio programme on Soho Radio proves it. On his programme he plays continuous tasteful music from 1960s Japanese pop to experimental noise music, without any talking. Lately he has used this good taste to become a musician himself, collecting sound on his cassette tapes and mixing it. This track, ‘Farewell(Jen)’, comes from his new album A Record Of Living Beings – a collaboration with Suren Seneviratne, featuring Yoshino Shigihara on taisho-goto zither, Clive Bell’s flute and Max Hallett’s drums. They appeared in Ura Matsuri Vol. 7 at St Margaret’s House and Clive Bell will be playing shakuhachi flute and other ESEA instruments to accompany Tomoko Komura’s benshi performance at this year’s Ura Matsuri, too.

‘Fujiyama Mama’ – Haruomi Hosono

Haruomi Hosono has never been part of Ura Matsuri (yet!), but as he’s playing in the Royal Festival Hall’s auditorium while Ura Matsuri is happening in the Clore Ballroom this year, we are pretending he is. Anyway, we regard him as a holy spirit of Ura Matsuri, because without him Frank Chickens would not have existed, and hence no Ura Matsuri. His influence on us was immense. He looked at Japan from outside and utilised the idea (or fantasy) of Japan to create his own unique style. We were inspired by this creatively warped attitude. And he stayed inside Japan to invent and continue this, while we were already outside. Respect! ‘Fujiyama Mama’ is a cover of Wanda Jackson’s original from the 1950s and Frank Chickens have made our own version of this song, with Steve Beresford and David Toop, inspired by Hosono.