Yoko Ono on the People of Japan – I think they will make it.
14 Apr
Yoko Ono is in the midst of a critical and popular comeback at the age of 78 — she reunited the Plastic Ono Band for a series of star-studded shows last year and recently scored her sixth consecutive No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot Dance Club chart. The notorious artist, musician, cultural scapegoat, social activist, mother and widow of John Lennon has, with the grace of time, found a new generation of fans that are open to her avant-garde take on music, melody, art and life. An outspoken advocate for peace, women’s rights and homosexual equality, Ono has recently focused her efforts on a cause alarmingly close to home. Having lived through the fire-bombing of Tokyo in 1945, and watched first-hand as the country rebuilt itself from almost nothing, Ono has taken the recent tragedies in Japan — which just suffered a massive 7.0 aftershock Monday morning — extremely personally, and recently organized the ‘Yoko Ono & Friends to Japan With Love’ benefit concert in New York City.
She spoke to AOL Music about her feelings on the devastation of her homeland:
“It’s my country — and I just got a shock. It doesn’t compare with John dying, that was a big shock. But this is the second biggest shock of my life. This is like my hometown. You think it’s never going to happen again. Japan made an incredible leap [since WW2] and the thing is, Japanese people are very resilient, very wise and they’re all workaholics. They have an obsessive goodness about things to do it right. So you see that people are not spilling anger, you see that they are just sad. Nobody’s being destructive; nobody’s going into other people’s house and taking things. They’re a very sensitive people, and I think they’re going to make it. I think we’re going to make it.”
