I wrote a short piece for The Japan Times last week on this month's Haikou Fes event, an indie festival held in an abandoned school in Shinjuku. To find out more about the event, I met up with the chief organiser, Takeuchi Tomoji, and asked him a few questions about it.

Why did you decide to do this kind of festival?

I thought that it's fun to have an underground music festival in an abandoned school building. I talked with the guy from Henrytennis three years before and we talked about live houses. We are so sick of live houses, so bored of them. It's an exploitation system where bands have to sell a certain number of tickets, and if they can't sell them, the bands have to pay. The live houses are getting money without any effort to sell tickets.

I'm not in a band, but I don't like going to live houses because a live house isn't the kind of place for having fun. Japanese people usually eat something while they're drinking, and they need a seat. In England, in a pub people drink beer without food or a seat, but in an izakaya we eat and sit. So a live house isn't a place to drink, just to stand. It's hard to stand around in a live house without any food from 6:00 to 10:00 and watching four or five bands -- it's totally exhausting for me. So we want to make a more comfortable place for audience and bands. We can watch the bands, sitting on the floor and eating food, and it's in the daytime -- until 8:30 but most of the bands are on earlier.

Is money an important issue for indie musicians in Tokyo?

The event is nearly sold out so we'll make a profit, but spread between eight organisers, that doesn't work out as much each. Of course the other side of that is that when things don't go according to plan, we share the risk too. I don't know if I'll continue next year or for another three or four years. I have to make a plan to actually make a profit because voluntary work doesn't last longer than about three years or five years.

I've been in Tokyo's independent scene for ten years and I've seen many people leave here because doing the indie scene is so exhausting if you can't make money from it, but sometimes you make a deficit and it's a bigger problem. If you want to keep going, you have to make a profit -- at least a penny. So that's my philosophy for keeping my label or my organising: to keep on not losing money.

Last year I did the first Haikou Fes, which was just 500 people, but, uh, 400 people was the minimum, so I made a little bit of a profit and I could keep going. It was smaller because I used only four classrooms and the gymnasium, now is seven classrooms and the gymnasium. Last year the famous band was only Shonen Knife. It was so hard because I sold 100 tickets before the event, so I thought it was going to be a huge deficit, but on the day, 400 people came to buy tickets on the door.

So what did you do differently to make this year so much more successful?

Last time it was too late to send email to famous bands -- just three months before -- but this time I mailed half a year before to Sokabe Keiichi, Kicell and Harco, and I had to wait two months to get an answer, but finally they agreed. Also Iida [from Limited Express (Has Gone?)] and Henrytennis joined as organisers, who are more experienced organisers than me. I do my own indie label but I'm not organising events so much, but they could invite some good bands like Illreme, younGSounds and BREAKfAST. And then I was able to invite people like Sokabe and Nisennenmondai.

Have you had any other problems?

It was hard to find the school. I went to many city government offices, but there was so much bureaucracy. I presented my idea but they said "no" without even looking at the plan, "A school is not a place for a festival". They don't use it anymore, but they just said "no, no, no." It took me more than a year to find a place. That school is now used for rehearsing plays or dance, but not for festivals or concerts, so at first they said "no" as always, but I persevered, and said we won't make any trouble, and said it's going to be good for Shinjuku City. So the first year, my first priority was not making any trouble for the school, before making a good festival or making any money. But I succeeded because the fans were very polite people -- there were 500 people but they didn't make a lot of noise or anything. So the school changed their attitude to us and, "Oh, yeah, you can use our place next year and have more classrooms."

I'm not such a famous organiser and it was my first time organising such a festival so big bands didn't accept our offer. Anyway, Shonen Knife was such a cool band because they're a famous band and an experienced band, but I haven't met them. I sent them an e-mail saying I had a plan to have a festival in an abandoned school, and I didn't offer much money, but they said, just one day later, "Oh, it's a fun idea, we're happy to join the festival." They're a really special band. So this year, because Shonen Knife played last year, other bands trusted me more.

What have you done towards making the festival different in terms of the music itself rather than just the environment of the festival?

In the world at the moment, festivals are booming and in Japan we have so many festivals, so I have to make something different. I wanted to make Haikou Fes a festival for indie bands, so I invited only indie bands -- nothing from major labels. Some major labels and some major management companies contacted me and said they wanted their bands to join, but I said no. I don't want to make Haikou Fes into a promotional forum for major labels. In America you have South By Southwest and the CMJ Music Marathon -- these big festivals for indie bands -- so I wanted to make something like that in Tokyo. Also, each room has its own organiser, and we communicate, but I don't interfere with their booking so they have the independence to organise each room in their own original way. I don't know what will happen on the day because it's not centrally controlled, which I think is a special point of Haikou Fes that I want people to understand.

Sometimes when a large number of people of people are involved, an event's identity can be diluted. Do you think this decentralised way of organising helps maintain the festival's identity?

Well, in big festivals like Summer Sonic, the organiser controls every stage and some stages are just for making money. Not for audience but for major companies who want to put their new bands on the stage. I think the record companies pay the festivals to put their bands on the stage and I don't think it's much fun. With us, someone like Iida has his own room, where he's got bands and DJs mixed, in more of a club or party style. But then other rooms are just for performing, others are doing teaching and music workshops, and then other rooms are like art markets with a small acoustic live in the corner. This mix of different approaches is our identity.

The idea of "school festivals" seems very important to how you conceive this event. Why is that?

For a lot of people in Japan school has an important meaning for each generation. Each generation has their own school TV drama that they identify with, and the annual school culture festival is an important event for students. Everyone has mixed feelings about this -- some are really into it, but some are cynical and don't want to join in. The biggest success of Haikou Fes is the name. It gives the idea of a school festival. The subtitle is "School Festival for Adults" and this can attract all kinds of people, regardless of what kind of music they like. We've had people contacting us on Mixi saying they don't know any of the bands but they're coming because they like the idea of a school festival for adults.