In Japanese, the word konbini designates these local shops whose curtain, in general, never falls. All that Tokyo has of revelers stopping off there, at a more or less late hour of their evening, to buy a can. One of these lighthouses in the Japanese night is also the setting for Sayaka Murata’s best-selling novel, The Girl from the Convenience Store (Denoel & elsewhere, 2021).
great lover of konbini, Leon Miyachi Pearl has decided to hold his microphone in front of their doors. In 2021, his improvised interviews, subtitled in English, began to be broadcast on the YouTube channel “Konbini Confessions”. What is your favorite smell? Which animal could you defeat in single combat? What is the meaning of your life? “Situations can get absurd pretty quickly, and a second season started in late August,” relate The Japan Times.
The English-language Tokyo daily devotes an article to the show of this rapper who calls himself Miyachi. Born in New York, he now divides his time between the United States and Japan. Some of his songs where he declares his love for the konbini accumulate several million plays on the platforms.
During the lockdown, Miyachi found himself stranded in Brooklyn. Taking refuge on his computer, the young man discovered the YouTube channel “Sidetalk”, which is full of crazy interviews with the inhabitants of different districts of New York. This is where he came up with the concept of “Konbini Confessions”.
Small ecumenical refuges
“Videos – which often show Miyachi sipping on a Strong Zero or another can of chuhai (alcoholic beverages) in the middle of a conversation with interviewees – are crazy and funny, applaud the Japan Times. And they lift the veil on a facet of Japan that is not often shown by YouTube videos about the country.” With his sidekick carrying the camera, the photographer and great connoisseur of Tokyo life Yuri Horie, the duo insists on placing benevolence at the center of their project. And makes sure to collect the consent of the people filmed, to whom they offer a free antenna.
These confessions near Tokyo convenience stores are watched by tens of thousands of people on YouTube. A clip shared on TikTok, where Miyachi asks a cockroach what the meaning of his life is, has gone viral. But we also hear the Japanese give their opinion on the virtues or blockages of their society, when they are not discussing policy directly.
For Miyachi, Japanese convenience stores are like small ecumenical refuges. “You find all these people there who would never be recognized or heard normally, because the media is always aimed at the general public”, he explains. True odes to the marginalized, the forgotten and the eccentric, the “Konbini Confessions” allowed him to “understand how similar we are as human beings”.