I’m back, baby! Picking up where was left off, with this 2 song EP from Crow. A very hard sleeve and vinyl to photograph! Thankfully this 2-song EP makes up for it in music. Continuing the era of metallic & crusty Tokyo Crow - good and heavy. I believe this came out around the time they came to the US for Chaos in Tejas.
The lyrics of Occupied Japan are interesting; interpreting perhaps as a critique of a “castrated” nation after WWII. I won’t wade too deeply into these waters, other than colonialism and imperialism are generally bad - as a punishment, a tool for “restoration”, or as a means of domination. The US’s position is that without the occupation, Japan might be devastated economically, with a starving populace leading to humanitarian crisis; subjected to nearby China or Russia’s communist influence; lose an opportunity for a geopolitical strategic location in Asia; receive a “fanatic” resistance to defeat, or all of the above. The US implementation of its occupation involved stripping the emperor of his divine right and reforming land, voting and business laws. Meanwhile, the occupiers protected many of the war criminals behind Japan’s brutal wartime savagery in order to create a puppet state that the US could both control and extract wealth from, not to mention the rape and “sanctioned” sexualization of its people by occupying US soldiers. Anyway, nothing new there, but this record is good. I’ve got a copy on smoky black and purple.