[…]

Frank Chickens, a duo comprised of Kazuko Hohki and Kazumi Taguchi, began their life in 1982. They describe themselves as a “pop performance group”

It’s clear from the video for ‘We are Ninja (Not Geisha)’ that the main purpose of the track was to expose and challenge, in a very funny way, UK perceptions of Japanese womanhood. The bemused reactions of the audience on the clip from The Tube above would suggest that the presence of two Japanese women dancing to a sort of Tom Tom Club flavoured electro funk in post punk make-up, wearing what appear to be martial arts clothing was conducive to bafflement. It is possible that they took away some useful Japanese phrases though, as well as a strong warning not to fuck with Japanese girls.

While ‘We are ninja (not geisha)’ was the bands biggest hit, the band were busy throughout the 1980s, getting involved with Red Wedge for example, and supporting The Smiths. Kazumi Taguchi left the band in the late 80s, but the Frank Chickens continued, expanding their membership greatly throughout the 1990s.

Frank Chickens, my husband is a spaceman.jpg

They are still going strong today and, in 2010, won the Foster’s Comedy God award at Edinburgh Fringe.

Image of Frank Chickens performing their show My husband is a spaceman. The stage is made up of figures stretching their arms like birds in flight. Image by Mister F in 2009. Used via a flickr creative commons licence

Video commentary: The video clip shows Frank Chickens performing ‘We are ninja (not geisha)’ on UK music and culture show The Tube. It is a minimalist performance, during which the duo perform a similar martial arts inspired dance routine to that featured in the songs official video.

Cazz Blase
Music editor

Cazz Blase is a writer/journalist/blogger from Stockport. She has been writing for The F-Word since 2002 and co-edited the music section alongside Holly Combe between 2011 and 2013. Her growing awareness of sexism as a young teenager in the early 1990s coincided with a burgeoning political awareness, post Poll Tax riots, and with her discovery of both the 70s punk scene and the 90s Riot Grrrl movement. This led her to create the fanzine Aggamengmong Moggie between 1993 and 1999 and (much, much later) to write extensively about the UK Riot Grrrl scene and women and the UK punk scene. She will happily explore all kinds of music and has a ‘restless ears’ approach to trying different things out, which has led to a proliferation of Swedish electro/R&B on her mp3 player and a fascination with loud, angry, glitchy electro pop. She saw Florence + The Machine headline British Summer Time in Hyde Park in July 2016 and hasn’t been quite the same since. Cazz also writes about music on her personal blog and about Manchester and Greater Manchester at Too Late for Cake.

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2 Responses

  1. Kathryn Hyde

    I think it may be a little misleading to claim that the win of the Fosters award was a sign that they are still going strong – this might have been unintentional but putting the two facts together in the final sentence makes this connection. They were championed by other comics in order to highlight the lack of consistency where well-known acts were nominated against those who had been seen on tv and had commercial backing. They won because they became a sort of protest vote.

  2. Cazz Blase

    Hi Kathryn,

    That was “going strong” as in “still performing and people still being interested in them”. Sorry if you felt the post was misleading, but I’d say that even if they were a protest vote, they were still considered sufficiently interesting to be picked as a protest vote. It’s not the greatest compliment in the world, but it’s still a compliment of sorts.

    Cazz

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