NeoL

Red Bull Music Academy/ Great The Kabukicho

ーーHow has the spread of coronavirus affected the initiative’s lifestyle and creative activities?


Akiko Kiayama : Most importantly, I am refraining from going outside. I am a person who usually doesn’t go out too much but my time spent at home has increased even more so over the couple of days. Business wise, a gig I was meant to do in France has been cancelled. Currently, France is under complete lockdown meaning, all events are obviously on hold at the moment. However, during the negotiation, the situation was not as bad as it is now. There is a feeling of disappointment but there is too much at risk in holding an event where there is a large crowd. There is always also the trouble of having to come back to Japan once I leave to go abroad nowadays so there was also a sense of relief when it did get cancelled. My other job was always done at home so not much has been affected in terms of that. I am usually the type of person who gets an urge to create when I am pushed up against the wall by something, so by being influenced by this situation I feel the need and motivation to create songs even more nowadays. The time I have in between raising my child, I invest in writing songs which has enabled me to take a step back from the negative news and calm myself down a bit.

ーーIs there anything that you have realized or want to be more aware of during the current situation ? If there is, please share them.

Akiko Kiyama : I don’t own a TV so I do not have the chance to check the news or broadcasting shows. As an alternative, I check twitter accounts that I have been following from before that release content related to domestic news. Just looking at news makes me feel a little hopeless at times so to remain hopeful I read research papers about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 . I am a musician but when I used to live in Germany, I used to work as a consultant for a consulting firms whose expertise lied within the Biopharma sector, so I am used to reading papers and articles associated with these topics. This unknown virus is even more fearful because we have little information and limited scientific/ clinical data about this new virus. We have not yet found a cure for it as well. I believe that trying to understand it will lead to getting rid of the extra fear that surrounds this situation.
I take care of the information that I choose to process and believe. It is important to do this regardless of the situation but I do not waste my time looking at headlines made by big media companies trying to lure readers in with misleading information. A couple of days ago I saw an article that stated that the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) can survive on surfaces for up to 17 days after the Diamond Princess was emptied but according to what CDC has released, SARS-CoV-2 derived RNA was detected on surfaces up to 17 days and this information can guide people in the wrong direction because it doesn’t even state how infectious it really is. I feel as if they are lacking journalists that have background knowledge about the Bio and medical sector as opposed to the number of journalists who specialize in political and economically quarrels.


ーーAs a person in your position or a creator, how are you trying to prepare yourself menatlly and physically for the lockdown?


Akiko Kiyama : Surprisingly, I have gotten used to the situation mentally. This is completely about myself but due to being pregnant, the majority of time I spent last year and this year has been indoors. I did feel a sense of societal isolation and guilt because most of my work was done inside of my house but now I can concentrate on only going out when I really need to without constantly worrying about those things. This happens during disastrous times but we feel more grateful towards everything we have in our daily lives. So I am not feeling too stressed out about the fact that I need to stay indoors the whole day.





ーーIn light of your own activities, what kind of ‘creation’ or artistic endeavors are possible indoors?

Akiko Kiayama : I usually create by myself and I rarely use the studio with another person so I am able to continue working without any difficulty. However, I will not be able to play in front of a crowd of people in clubs or festival unless the situation dies down sadly.


ーーPlease share any recommendations or ideas on how to use digital platforms to their full extent during the circumstances regarding COVID-19 or any measures that one can take themselves to use this opportunity for better and not for worse.


Akiko Kiyama : There is an online network for every type of family, so in that sense it is important to keep in touch with people without completely shutting yourself off. Currently, no measures beyond refraining from going outside has been made but if this situation escalates and a full on quarantine would happen, there will be more time spent alone so even if you are not fully on par with what is happening, I think it would be healthier to try and keep in touch with people and have a plan.
Generally speaking, the use of online courses has been brought to attention as schools have been cancelled but I think this can be implemented even for people who are not students. Online courses and workshops that can be taken and catered to a person’s schedule. Economic actions we can take have become limited so if you are wasting your time waiting for this to be over, maybe you should take this time to start learning a new skill of taking up a new hobby to come out of this quaratime as a better human being than you were before.


ーーDuring this time is there anything you or the initiative would like to challenge yourself with?


Akiko Kiyama : My life revolves around staying indoors at the moment but my time is taken up by taking care of my child and work so I do not actually have a lot of time left for other activities. However if I did, I would love to do a live broadcast. I would imagine not a full on live performance of me just singing but a friendly session where I can talk to my viewers whilst creating a new track with them. One or two hours a day and maybe making a song per week would be a nice pace. I don’t sing and write lyrics but if a viewer were to give me suggestions, maybe taking those in to create something out of it would be nice.

ーーAfter situations concerning COVID-19 improves, what would you like to do?

Akiko Kiyama: A family trip that was planned to happen in Spring has been cancelled so I do want to travel.


ーーDo you agree with the measures taken by the government in your own country? If not, what other measures would you recommend taking?

Akiko Kiyamaa : The WHO is at fault for this but considering how infectious the coronavirus is and the fact that the virus from asymptomatic patients are also known to be infectious, I think the pandemic was almost inevitable for any county in this globalized modern time. This would of course be different, if a country went into complete lockdown and measures were taken at borders in the earlier stages of the development. However I am not satisfied with the actions the government has taken as it has relied heavily on the country’s citizens and its population.
Some countries are facing chaotic situations around hospital entrances due to an abundant amount of people wanting to or needing to get tested however, so far in Japan, we have luckily been able to avoid this situation, and so hospitals are still functioning, we are becoming more sensitive towards our hygiene and wearing masks daily. These are things that the citizens have been doing by themselves, by being aware of the situation and having common sense and resistance. This is not because of the measures taken by the government. There are of course people who walk around without being aware of the situation and living life as usual or people who stock up too much on things but unless more serious measures are taken by the government, these types of people will not change their ways. Personally I thought there will be an upsurge in the amount of people infected in mid February so at this point (April 2nd), I am surprised that this has not happened yet. There has been an increase in the people being affected but that might be because more people are being PCR tested. When looking at the homepage of the Ministry of Health, Safety and Welfare, you can’t help but notice that the percentage of people who have been infected are from overseas. They are testing mainly people who have come back or are from overseas but it is strange that the percentage of Japanese citizens is so low. Taking these points into consideration, the BCG hypothesis (the epidemiological relevance between BCG mandatory countries and the low rate of COVID-19 severe/lethal cases in those countries) that has been going around since late March cannot be handled lightly as it does not have scientific evidence to back it up. There are countries that are starting trial cases so we need to still be wary of our circumstances.


I do not like the idea of Japan trying to mimic what another country is doing and I think this mindset is sometimes dangerous. The problem with this virus is, that it is affecting the lives of everyone and limiting their lifestyles and economic activities on a global scale, simultaneously. Even if we need to take extreme caution and not take anything for granted, the measures that have been taken by our country do not convey this urgency to our country at all. We should convert to lockdown if they think we are at the brink of an outbreak. Time needs to be invested if we were to implement measure that does not allow the re selling of masks and even in terms of economic strategy, I feel we are too late. When we think that finally something is being done to combat the situation, it is dinner vouchers or sending two masks per household. It is only a coincidence that an outbreak has not happened yet so I cannot help but think that are government is completely useless. To maintain their political party power, I do think that the reduce of consumption tax rate is something that is hard to implement but maybe making use of our My numbers to provide financial means or masks to people could be an option.

If I could suggest something in terms of how to combat the virus realistically, I would say to start implementing serological tests which sniff out antibodies in the blood.
PCR tests are not able to understand the full scope of the pandemic because of the low accuracy as there are often false-negative and false-positive resulted. Also the relatively long incubation period of the virus and a certain % of asymptomatic cases existing make the story more complicated to understand what is going on in the reality.
Also there are ongoing debates on heatedly “re-infection”, or more accurately “re-detectable positive” patients but it seems more natural to think it is “re-detectable positive”. From a study using a hyper-sensitive method, 18 out of 24 RNA-negative samples were tested to be positive, which supports the notion that many re-detectable positive are false negative.
As there are people who are infected but do not experience any symptoms, for people whose symptoms have died down, it may be natural to think that some viruses (probably low amount?) are still in their system. Taking these things into consideration, I think they should do an antibody-based blood test on preferably all Japanese citizens to help pinpoint people who are immune and reveal the full scope of the pandemic. I think this might drastically change the measures that have been taken by our government and how we look at social distancing and going back to work. I think the UK plans to take these measures already but there have been some problems in relation to falsified proof so that is something that we need to be aware of, if it were to happen in Japan. There is debate about the accuracy of the antibody test however. From what I know, the majority of companies that are associated with it are from China and they are IgM・IgG based blood test kits. While high sensitivity/specificity are often reported, the number of people that have been a result to these statements are often unclear. Also given that there is a time difference in the antibody titer between IgM and IgG, it is also unclear how long patients remains IgG positive.

Until when these measures will continue, if there will be multiple outbreaks until it dies down or if they will develop a vaccine or medicine. These are things that no one has the answers to but I plead that the government provides a major budget in order to hasten the process of trying to find a cure, clinical studies are done to understand the symptoms and recovery as well as research devoted to epidemiologic study and developing a vaccine.

Akiko Kiyama
instagram @akiko_kiyama
https://soundcloud.com/kebkomusic