I Want to Destroy America

Hisao Shinagawa is a Japanese singer/songwriter and street musician who, despite moving to America in 1974 and making some especially famous friends in Nashville, has never achieved the kind of mainstream success enjoyed by his idol Woody Guthrie. Casting himself as a sort-of Japanese Bob Dylan, Shinagawa departed his native Tokyo in the mid-1970s in a bid to seek his fortune stateside. Though Shinagawa would befriend the likes of Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt after hitchhiking to Nashville, his journey ultimately led him to the unforgiving streets of Los Angeles. There, Shinagawa would work tirelessly to find an audience who would truly appreciate his powerful but polarizing style of music. At the age of sixty Shinagawa still clings to his dreams of stardom, despite enduring years of heartache and living in abject poverty.