Scott Yano, an appreciation

The name of Scott Yano will, of course, be familiar to most of my readers. To some of you, he is a dynamic and innovative instructor of English. To others, he may most readily come to mind as co-translator of that seminal volume of East Asian studies, “The Women of the Heian Night.” Still others among you will know him best as a frighteningly persuasive after-hours rhetorician, or as a dashing figure astride his skateboard, slaloming dauntlessly through the chill air of morning. For at least two of you, he is simply and forever Daddy. Orator, Canadian, sportsman and bard. Prettyboy, pundit, philatelist and fiend. Well, all right then, not a philatelist, not really. Yet if I were a postage stamp, I do not know the man I should avoid so soon as that spare Yano.

At any rate, the pressing question isn’t, “Who is Scott Yano?” No, friends, the question I put to you tonight is, “Who isn’t Scott Yano?” I’m not. And neither are you, unless you actually are Scott Yano, in which case I say to you Hi Scott, thanks for dropping by.

But did you know Scott Yano can rock and roll? Oh yes…


Scott is back in Hiroshima after an absence of several years, and on Saturday night he took the stage at Shelter 69 in front of his (locally) legendary combo AKA Toe Jam. Rendered all the more imposing by the addition of genuine leather cowboy boots, Yano raised high his mighty axe and battered the cowering night with impudent musical sass. Or something very like that. Bending to his lordly will such standards as Down By the River, Peace Love and Understanding, Brown Eyed Girl and that one song by the Doors, the merciless force of his performance sucked the wind from the lungs of hapless passers-by, leaving them gasping on their knees under the terrifying yet strangely agreeable rock ’n roll onslaught.

Yes. Good to see you back in town, Scott. Now get out before the swooning cows stop giving milk, you delirious six-string sorcerer. To those of you who missed the show, I offer this rare 1991 recording, in which Scott appears as the last voice, playing Pied Piper to a group of Canadian graduate students in a hard-driving restatement of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73.