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In a generation of musicians that came of age in postwar Japan, Kazuki Tomokawa stands as a pioneer of radical individualism, with a sound marked by shocking intimacy and blistering honesty. In his third album, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth, released by Harvest Records in 1977, Tomokawa creeps a€?ever more inward,a€? as Kiichi Takahara writes in the records original introductory texta€'embracing an attitude pervasive amongst musicians of the time who interrogated the prosaic and the profound alike, eschewing politics and society in favor of an a€?attitude of total self-containment.a€? Tomokawa recorded the album over the course of a montha€'from August 24 to September 25, 1977a€'at Tokyos famed Onkio Haus studio in the bustling Ginza district. The arrangements, accordingly, are amped up: paired with the Black Panther Orchestra, Tomokawas a€?screaming philosophera€? vocals find their match with the orchestras electric guitar, bass, piano, tuba, and ground-thumping drums played by the Brain Polices Toshi Ishizukaa€'who appears on Tomokawas first three records and remains his collaborator to this day. a€?This is Kazuki Tomokawa in the flesh,a€? concludes Takahara. A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth is, in Tomokawas uncanny way, able to cut through facade and artifice in pursuit of truth. a€?You call that life?a€? he heckles, exhausted by the melodrama and nihilism of youth counterculture, a€?try saying youre alive!a€?