Birth of the Cools

In the 1970s when hippie style dominated Japanese fashion, a rebellious young Pitpi could be found on the streets of Harajuku dressed in a tight leather jacket, hair slicked back, and a comb sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans. It was there that he met his fellow COOLS, an encounter which would later help launch his acting career, leading him to work and form a friendship with Shintaro Katsu, an internationally acclaimed actor/director who is remembered as much for his influential work as his frequent troubles with the law for illegal possession of marijuana and other drugs.

Pitpi Mizuguchi sat down with Frank151 to share some of his memories of 1970s Tokyo, and how the COOLS sent out cultural shockwaves that would set trends shaping generations to come.

FRANK151: Where does the nickname “Pitpi” come from?
Pitpi: It goes way back to a time before COOLS was made. I was about 20-years-old and working in a denim shop next to what was called the Roa Building. A lot of people would hang out in the shop. One of my co-workers went to Los Angeles on vacation and ended up hanging out with some Hells Angels. There was one member named Pitpi, the way I carried myself was so similar to him that my co-worker started calling me “Pitpi”. That’s how I got my name.

F151: What made you get into Rock & Roll and riding a motorcycle?
P: My father was 27-years-old when I was born. There is a picture of me with him when I was about 2-years-old. He is wearing a white suit and tie, a contrasting black shirt, his hair slicked back, and a hat tilted to one side. He was holding me in his arms and I was wearing a shirt, a two-piece tweed suit, a hat, argyle socks, and a pair of leather shoes. It was my father’s style that I grew up with and I feel like that’s how I started getting myself into Rock & Roll. That’s where my style comes from.

F151: Will you tell me about how the COOLS began?
P: COOLS was united on Friday the 13th of December 1975. Even though we all hung out together many times before, it was that day that we started working together as a group.


At a restaurant in Aoyama, we made a pledge to be COOLS. Each member wore a black leather jacket, their hair slicked back, and we all rode a black motorcycle. One member read the pledge which Hiroshi Tachi prepared. We all agreed and cut the tips of our right hand middle fingers, and then signed the pledge in blood. It wasn’t like we were being filmed or anything special, but we were enjoying it and liked that kind of stuff. We decided to limit the number of COOLS to 22 members because Hiroshi Tachi was on a rugby team, which consists of 22 team players including bench warmers.

F151: Tell me where you guys used to hang out together.
P: In the day, it was at the cafés Leon or Lope in Harajuku and also Grass. We would go to a pub called Cardinal in Roppongi and party through the night at disco clubs like Biburosu or Mugen in Akasaka and end up eating at a restaurant called Sara in Aoyama and then go home. That was kind of how we’d always hang out.

It used to be that most places had their own style and uniqueness, and now it’s more like you can get into any place or club if you just have money. Back then they would just turn their back on people, and if there were young kids they would joke around and say “come back later when you are old enough.” That would make us want to be cool dudes, so my buddies and I could hang out at those places.

F151: So how did you guys get into music?
P: In the beginning COOLS would always hang out together in the streets and sometimes go design some clothing. Music was not a part of our lifestyle. Then on April 13, 1975 Carol performed their last live concert in Hibiya Yagai Ongakudou, they asked COOLS to come in as bouncers, so we did.

Since that day, people from the record company kept coming to Leon café to look for us. They’d ask, “Do you want to make a record with us?” Those people, especially Sasaki of King Record, came everyday with great enthusiasm for making a deal with us. Eventually we signed a deal with King Record that year and that’s how we started off in the music industry.

Around that time, COOLS member Kouichi Iwaki started working as an actor and it somehow was the turning point for all of our careers.

F151: How did you meet actor Shintaro Katsu?
P: COOLS member Hiroshi Tachi decided to leave the group behind and go on as a Rockabilly artist. I also decided to leave on January 1, 1980 and then came to New York. By the time I left COOLS, I was kind of losing interest in music and Mr. Katsu had told me one day that he wanted to meet me. So I went to see him in Roppongi.

When I got there, he kindly asked me to have a seat. He was lying down on the floor and keeping himself quiet for a couple of minutes, he didn’t drop a single word. I didn’t know what was going on and it felt like such a long period of time that he didn’t say anything to me, even though it was only for a couple of minutes. A short while later he broke the silence and said, “You have a sense of humor. Are you interested in acting?”

So I said, “I’m always like this, just pretending to be cool.” He put me in his Jaguar as if he was kidnapping me and brought me to an agent for a screen test. After that, he changed his car to a Rolls-Royce and we headed to get some drinks in Ginza. That was the very fist day I hung out with him and it was such a memorable experience.

He gave me a part to play in Keishi K (Inspector K), a one-hour long TV drama series. It was more of impromptu acting, so if I literally read my line from the script, he would cut me off and he’d say, “All you need to do is just respond to what I say. Just like what you always do in your real life.”

I remember when we were shooting at the Haneda Airport, actor Yoshio Harada was there for a guest appearance and there were a great number of people working on the shoot. Mr. Katsu and I had been drinking until morning of that day, so I dropped him off at his agent’s to get some sleep before shooting. I went back later to pick him up, but he didn’t show up. Four or five hours later, he rolled up in his Rolls-Royce looked up to the sky and said, “it’s a bit cloudy,” and just drove back home.  That’s just how he was, and everybody who worked with Shintaro Katsu liked him just as who he was.

I hadn’t seen him for awhile since the series, but one day I saw him on TV talking to the press that his company declared bankruptcy, in debt over 2 billion yen. In a very serious matter he said, “I am going to pay off all of the debts at any cost.”

I went up to him as soon as I saw him on TV. It had been awhile, but as usual, he was just being himself as if we just met yesterday. I was getting all upset and worried about the situation saying ”You got to come up with some solution instead of just acting like nothing happened.”

He just laughed and asked, “Was it good how I carried myself at the press conference? Was it what people wanted me to say at that moment, just like lines from the script in a movie? Just to let you know, the money I spent for the drinks we had together was included in that 2 billion.”

It was always about acting and he was living his life as if in an imaginary movie. When he held a press conference after temporary release from his cancer treatment in a hospital, he was wearing a black suit and shirt with a red tie. In his mind, he would constantly portray himself as an actor and in a very objective point of view. He was always conscious of reminding his audience and the world that every once in a while, it is necessary to look at yourself from a different perspective.

He helped and taught me a lot. We can replace a President, but we cannot replace Shintaro Katsu. Nowadays, it seems that there is no one like him and it is boring. Even now I can’t help myself; I get tears in my eyes when I visit his grave.

F151: Lastly, what is your definition of being cool?
P: Once, there was an interview with James Dean and he said “Everything I say is cool.” In other words, it’s about how you live your life, your lifestyle, and I think this is what we made a pledge for.