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Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yogaku - A Reappraisal
Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yogaku - A Reappraisal
Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yogaku - A Reappraisal
David Pacun
Abstract: This study examines connections between cultural and political nationalism in
interwar yōgaku, the Western-style music composed in Japan between 1910 and 1945.
Close analysis of numerous examples reveals that a set of “Japanese-sounding” musical
tropes arose as early as 1900, were ingrained in public consciousness by 1910, and continued
to operate in Japanese music through the early 1940s. Within this stable context, debates
undertaken in the 1930s regarding the search for a new Japanese music possessed a strong
ideological component, a component that subsequently allowed for an easy mapping of
yōgaku onto the aims and aesthetics of Japanese imperialism.
Introduction
On April 14, 1936, the Japan Times published an editorial with the intriguing
title of “Cultural Propaganda.”1 The editorial viewed cultural propaganda (i.e.,
dissemination of information and support for concerts and programs) in a pos-
itive light, but took aim at recent actions of the government-sponsored Kokusai
Bunka Shinkokai (Society for International Cultural Relations), warning that
official control was leading to stale formalism, that the exclusion of foreign ex-
perts was hindering the society’s efforts to bridge peoples and nations, and that
cultural programs were becoming tinged with nationalistic propaganda. The
column added prophetically that “[o]ne can offer culture, but cannot force its
acceptance,” and concluded by citing part of a recent speech by Kōki Hirota,
then prime minister of Japan. In it, Hirota claimed:2
No one is qualified to talk about world peace unless he knows not only the national
aspirations of his own country, but also understand [sic] and appreciates the stand-
points of other countries. That understanding and appreciation are only obtainable
through an understanding and appreciation of the other country’s culture and civi-
lization. (Japan Times, April 14, 1936, 8)
While the editorial’s point was, of course, that Japan itself needed to live in
accordance with these professed ideals and should likewise respect the unique
histories and cultures of neighboring countries, the problem was that far from
separating culture and politics, Hirota’s specific formulation entwined them
further, even substituted one for the other. (See Harootunian 1974, 16.) In
Hirota’s seemingly benign view, a country’s national aspirations were to be
judged not through its actions and policies, but its culture and civilization.
Viewed through this lens, Japan was not conquering and colonizing East Asia,
only bringing “culture and civilization” to an undeveloped region of the world.
Hence, it made little difference whether or not Japan heeded Hirota’s words as
the editorial requested; his “words” were part of the problem.
From a contemporary perspective, it is hardly surprising that the editorial
failed to interrogate the broader implications and context of Hirota’s speech. In
what may be the ultimate paradox but also part of the point, Hirota’s linkage
of culture and conquest had deep roots in the West’s own colonialist history
and ideology. That Hirota could, in 1936, spit back the very essentialism that
presupposed the universality and centrality of Western culture (leaving to the
non-West—including Japan—the supporting role of exotic, colonized other)
was perhaps just his point: Japan was different. Not only had it resisted coloni-
zation but by 1936, it was successfully competing with the West for resources
and hegemony in East Asia. Holding up a mirror to Western colonialism (“the
bringing of civilization to the primitive world”), Hirota more than implied that
Japan would better the West at its own game, not simply militarily but cultur-
ally as well. In cultural terms Japan had a distinct advantage, for it could place
two forms and senses of Japanese culture—the traditional and the modern—in
service of its imperialistic ambitions: the traditional forms, whose authentic
exoticisms were valued in the West, could help to smooth over international ten-
sions in the comity of nations by demonstrating a common cultural bond with
the East, while the modern forms, built upon the melding of Japanese content
and Western techniques, could serve as models for the modern, hybrid-Asian
culture that was then accruing under Japanese rule.3
Hirota’s words thus bear witness to the close identification of culture and
conquest in Imperial Japan, and suggest a subtle but ultimately potent context
for much interwar Japanese culture, that of confrontation and competition. This
context holds important implications for the subject of this paper, the analysis
and interpretation of interwar yōgaku, the Western-style music composed in Ja-
pan between roughly 1910 and 1945.4 Often dismissed in English language stud-
ies, this music has become increasingly available in the West through recordings
and scores. While our knowledge of it is still selective, it is becoming rapidly
apparent that composition in this era was more substantive and interesting than
has been previously thought. Yet despite this, its style, context and meaning, and
the interaction between these aspects continue to be problematic. With the his-
tory of Japan during this period something of a minefield, understanding and
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 5
have they subjected its underlying terms and concepts to critical analysis.6 Envi-
sioning two schools of Japanese composition, a conservative (imitative) school
rooted in the German-Romantic tradition and a progressive school that looked
to the Japanese past as a source for new avenues of musical expression, Judith
Ann Herd writes:
Nationalism, born from the reactionary politics of the turbulent decade preceding
World War II, was another potent factor for the positive changes in Japanese modern
music. It was the missing link that opened a passage for a transition from the bor-
rowing stage to one of invention and innovation. . . . Without it, there would have
been no transformation from the identification with Other to the discovery of self.
(Herd 2004, 55; italics mine)
That nationalism helped lead Japanese composers back into traditional Japa-
nese music (as well as forward into postwar innovation) is not to be disputed.
But neither can one ignore how the “discovery of self ” enacted in the 1930s and
1940s became implicated in the military, political, and cultural subjugation of
East Asia.7 It is not that Herd doesn’t recognize the potential conflict, but that,
writing from the perspective of “postwar culturalism” (discussed below), she
prefers to read the interwar period as a staging ground for later developments
rather than as a self-standing era. Regarding Yasuji Kiyose’s A Suite of Japanese
Dances from 1940, she concludes:
His simple but effective programmatic style lies in the realm of general ideas and
emotions in celebration of the Japanese spirit, ideas and emotions that were deeply
rooted in the proletarian popular culture and agitated atmosphere of the 1930s. It
was precisely this spiritual essence that attracted Takemitsu, Kiyose’s famous student,
and his colleagues of the Experimental Workshop of the 1960s. (Herd 2004, 49;
italics mine)8
Referencing the elusive “Japanese spirit,” Herd passes over the critical ques-
tions of how and why culture and politics, or better cultural nationalism
(minzoku-shugi) and political nationalism (kokumin-shugi), became entangled,
and of whether Kiyose’s Suite may embody this entanglement in specific and
direct ways rather than general and spiritual ones.9 Such questions may be dif-
ficult to answer with certainty. Yet recently, scholars in numerous disciplines
have begun to investigate the complex interaction of culture and politics that
haunted interwar Japan, detailing how the former came to be intertwined in the
latter, and ultimately suggesting ways to more finely parse the cultural products
of this period. For instance, Kevin Doak (2001) relates how distinctions between
racial identity and ethnic identity broached in the 1930s helped to establish the
framework for an overreaching ethnic hierarchy within Asia, a framework that
allowed Japan to envision a “monoracial” yet “multiethnic” (hence hierarchical)
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 7
East Asian sphere. Elsewhere (1996) he shows how ideas developed by the Japa-
nese Romantic School intended to erect barriers between culture and politics
allowed the former to be co-opted and mapped onto the latter. For Doak, there
is a pressing need to “break through the weight of [this period’s] culturalist and
ethnic signifiers” (2001, 3–4).
Closer to home, in her seminal study of the Takarazuka Revue (a popular,
all-female theater troupe based in the Kansai region), Jennifer Robertson writes:
As a technology of imperialism, the revue theater helped to bridge the gap between
perceptions of colonialized others and the actual colonial encounters; it was one way
of linking imperialist fantasies and colonial realities. Takarazuka was a type of impe-
rial archive that . . . worked to create and naturalize among the people a pleasurable
vision of the New World Order . . . At the very least, wartimes revues both invited a
vicarious, fantastical experience of foreign travel and exotic romance, and sounded
a call to cultural arms and the shared work of empire. (Robertson 1995, 987)
More pointedly, writing of Junichirō Tanizaki’s early film criticism and screen-
plays, Thomas LaMarre (2005, 357) challenges histories in which “the universal
(West) becomes somehow particularized (Japan)”—paradoxically, this was one
of the narratives offered during the interwar period—and notes that “there is
cause to question the historical narrative of the beleaguered but finally trium-
phant emergence of a good [post-war] Japan, a culturalist Japan . . . It is a story
of cultural nationalism and belated modernization” (ibid.). Almost as a critique
of Hirota’s speech, LaMarre writes:
Reworking world-historical narratives was essential to imaging and inventing a
Japanese nation and a national empire. The Japanese empire (like Japanese moder-
nity) cannot be construed as a simple repetition of the British or American empires.
Nor can its difference be dismissed as a failure, a failed imitation of Western models.
(LaMarre 2005, 358)
Thus it is all too easy to divide interwar yōgaku into two camps, the first
overdetermined by Western forms, the latter informed (but not quite enough)
by authentic Japanese traditions. For this division merely restates rather than un-
tangles the era’s skein of musical style, theory, and ideology. In fact, both camps
were implicated in the rise of Japanese nationalism and imperialism, and their
aesthetic principles, theoretical debates, and stylistic differences—the music was
often more similar than not—need to be framed within this context. Omitting
the frame not only skews our understanding of the period, but also provides a
convenient excuse to ignore difficult issues concerning both the music and its
politics.10 On the one hand, the failure of the German-Romantic (aka Western)
camp to achieve an authentic connection to the Japanese past becomes a con-
venient symbol of the nation’s failed politics; on the other, the inability of the
8 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
progressive camp to break completely free from Western forms positions their
compositions as representatives of (premature) theory instead of actual, living
practice. In both cases the music, and our understanding of it, suffers.
From a still larger perspective, emphasizing interwar yōgaku’s failed or pre-
liminary “Japaneseness” has the paradoxical effect of positioning the music
within the context of Western colonialism, as a sort of self-inflicted exoticism.
Yet unlike almost all of its East Asian neighbors, colonialism was the very thing
Japan avoided, and music of this period must be understood, at least in part,
as a symbol of this resistance, an explicit and conscious, rather than forced,
appropriation of Western music. As Hirota’s remarks demonstrate, “universal”
Western thought was strongly implicated in the search for the particular Japan—
meaning the Japan of the 1930s. Hence, it is no mere coincidence that Japanese
composers bought into the same essentialized aesthetics used by their Western
counterparts and constructed their syncretic forms based upon standard West-
ern models: authentic (e.g., Japanese, Hungarian, Russian) melody, theme, or
idea placed within a traditional Western (universal) form.11
While this model certainly led to a fair amount of uninspired composition
and would be rejected (at least in principle) by postwar composers, in both
these regards Japan was hardly unique; in fact, Japan’s musical nationalism was
roughly contemporary with nationalist movements in many Western “others”
(i.e., Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Americas), and not surprisingly closely
parallels that found in these countries (Greenfeld 1992). Even if it did not gener-
ate masterpieces of the first rank, the decision to adopt Western forms must be
accepted as historically valid, a response that reflected the very real desires of in-
terwar composers to actively create a national (Japanese) yet comprehensible and
civilized (universal) music.12 Only by accepting this stance as historical fact can
we begin to move forward and analyze the result, the music itself. For until we
take all interwar Japanese composition seriously as music, as a direct and valid
expression of daily life in interwar Japan (rather than as a missed opportunity
to express “authentic Japan” and the “true Japanese spirit”), we will be unable to
understand its stylistic development, fully vet its nationalistic context, and ulti-
mately grasp its significance for Japanese culture and music history as a whole.
The purpose of this paper then is to begin the process of unpacking issues
of musical style from theory, theory from ideology, and ideology from history.
While it is impossible (indeed unwise) to achieve a pure separation of these is-
sues, an initial break is necessary before we can begin to assess interwar yōgaku
as music, subject its claims of difference and Japaneseness to scrutiny (poten-
tially uncovering features that are unique), and address vital questions regarding
historical and political context, nationalism, and imperialism. While certainly
not all interwar yōgaku was explicitly or even implicitly nationalistic or impe-
rialistic, most was part of Japan’s search for a national identity built upon the
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 9
ideal of an essential and common “Japanese spirit.” As the Japan Times warned,
it was but a small step from cultural nationalism (minzoku-shugi) to state or po-
litical nationalism (kokumin-shugi)—a step that proved easy for many Japanese
composers to make.
they advocated relied heavily upon the basic tropes described in part 1. The
searches of the 1930s did not, as their authors claimed, result in entirely new
musical styles, but rather distilled or amplified the earlier practice.13 Attempt-
ing to break free from this aesthetic and theoretical cul-de-sac, the participants
thus turned more and more to ideological principles to justify their claims of
authenticity and Japaneseness. In this way, many of the supposedly progressive
theories advocating a “new” Japanese music contained within themselves reac-
tionary strains, strains that would emerge in full by 1940.
Part 3 (“Two Examples by Shūkichi Mitsukuri”) analyzes two short works
by Shūkichi Mitsukuri, one of the composers who initiated the search for new
Japanese musical practices. As will be seen, the first work, a setting of a Bashō
haiku dating from 1930, embodies many of the contradictory aspects of the
new practice—especially its rooting of new compositional techniques in older
tropes—and thus neatly exemplifies the cul-de-sac in which composers found
themselves. The second, a fugue on the Japanese folk song “Sakura” dating from
1940, not only makes more direct use of the tropes, but also—owing to its fugal
setting in which a “Japanese” folk theme is treated to the highest form of con-
trapuntal (“universal”) exegesis—projects a strong sense of competition and
confrontation. The dichotomy between these two works suggests ways in which
we can begin to grasp and understand interwar Japanese music on both cultural
and political levels.
Part 4 (“Coda: Musical Developments 1930–1945”) concludes by briefly ex-
amining other short excerpts dating from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s.
These excerpts both confirm that the attempted shift in style was in fact an
intensification of the earlier practice, as well as provide additional examples of
how the ideology of militant nationalism infected the discourse surrounding
what was, by 1940, if not 30 years earlier, already an indigenous fact in modern
Japanese culture—namely, Western music.
Finally, a brief word is necessary on what I mean by Japanese and Japanese
music. Although a full definition cannot be ventured here, I take Japanese mu-
sic to be music composed in Japan principally (although not exclusively) for
Japanese audiences, the listening public in Japan. To this I add music composed
elsewhere by current Japanese residents (e.g., music written while visiting or
studying in another country), as well as music composed by expatriates (mainly
Germans and Italians) living in Japan14 (see Galliano 2006). In this context, the
need felt by many Japanese composers to have their music sound “Japanese”
must be understood as a matter of choice and agency; as I argue, by 1914, there
had arisen a reasonably concise set of musical parameters that were or could be
sonically identified as “Japanese.” This “sound” eventually became a conscious
music style, somewhat akin to a Classical period topic: the “learned style,” “ex-
pressive style,” now the “Japanese style.” According to the above definition, this
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 11
onkai transforms into the Western F natural minor scale.18) In this way the
melody’s cadential b2-1—treated as b6-5—could be harmonized by iiØ7-i, a pro-
gression not entirely sanctioned by traditional Western theory, but one common
enough in Romantic music as a variant of plagal elaborations—iiØ7-i in place of
iv-i—and prevalent as well in some exotic nationalist music (fig. 2). More to the
point, this progression neatly supported tetrachordal figures characteristic of
Japanese music, such as G-F-Db-C, as well as melodic figures centering on what
were originally the fourth and fifth scale degrees of the miyakobushi (fig. 1d).
Western composers immediately latched onto these melodic gestures and the
iiØ7-i progression as Japanese markers. In Dittrich’s arrangement of “Sakura,”
common-practice dominant chords arise with considerable frequency, yet the
half-diminished seventh sound clearly saturates the musical surface (see brack-
ets in fig. 3). This is not to say that the system worked perfectly, and amateur
left hand’s 1–5 oscillation implies a traditional harmonic support, the tonic and
(minor) dominant harmonies do not always materialize as expected. For in-
stance, the light cadence in m. 4 is built upon an open E-A fourth. In the realm
of voice leading, unresolved sevenths arise in measure 5, exposed parallel fourths
(between the piano and voice) in measure 6.
Critically, both Yanada and Nakayama attended Tokyo College of Music, the
training ground for art music composers. In this regard, their popular songs
can be (and must be) considered as learned artifacts arising within Westerniza-
tion, not distinct from it. Critical to the early development of Western music in
Japan, art music composers had few qualms about writing outside the art music
tradition, and popular song and art song composers often set the same poets,
sometimes even the same texts. For instance, the most famous composer of the
era, Kosaku Yamada, not only brought forth his own version of “Sunayama” but
achieved his most famous successes with quasi-art, quasi-popular songs such
as “Karatachi no hana” (1923) and “Akatombo” (1927). Evidence that Yamada
understood the power of these early Japanese musical tropes may be found in his
emblematic arrangement of Rentaro Taki’s melody “Kojo no Tsuki” (1901/1913)
(fig. 11). Not only does the half-diminished sound and iiØ7-i progression clearly
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 19
haunt the musical surface (see bracket in fig. 11), but Yamada replaced Taki’s
original G# in measure 7 with G natural, thus allowing iiØ7 to be prolonged
across the entire measure.27
It is interesting then to compare the above examples with at least one early
Yamada art song (kakyoku), “Kaze Hitori” from 1914 (fig. 12). Written to a poem
of Ryuko Kawaji, there is a density of musical thought here absent from both
the Yanada and Nakayama songs, but the similarities are patent. The melody
seems but a fancier, syncopated version of that in “Kojo no Tsuki” and can even
be analyzed as a chaining together of miyakobushi-based tetrachords (see top
bracket in fig. 12). The accompaniment provides a light-heterophonic coun-
terpoint and includes notable exotic or perhaps better modernist touches such
as the use of the raised fourth scale degree (F#), parallel fifths and suspended
seconds in the harmonic realm, and, of course, the half-diminished seventh,
hidden initially in the piano figuration (m. 1, beat 3) then placed subtly over
a G pedal (see bottom bracket in fig. 12). One may detect here ample traces of
Yamada’s own musical hero, Richard Strauss, especially in the placement of a
striking dissonance early in the song, but Yamada’s sources are varied and even
at this stage difficult to unravel.
Whether “Kaze Hitori” directly influenced Yanada and Nakayama (or vice
versa) is unknown, but its early date, 1914, and its stylistic similarity to the
popular songs discussed above, suggest a more fluid, porous, and evolved musi-
cal scene than is sometimes allowed in English language histories.28 Moreover,
this fluidity extends to two other enormously popular and influential genres of
yōgaku, namely dōyō (children’s songs) and shōka (educational songs). As this
body of music has already been subjected to extensive analysis by Elizabeth
May (1959) and more recently Noriko Manabe (2009), a full treatment is not
required here. Most importantly, these compositions often centered on bubbly,
major mode pentatonic melodies set to march-like accompaniments, and these
features easily intertwined with those of another rapidly growing song genre,
20 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
namely gunka (military songs). Composer Ikuma Dan writes that at the open-
ing of the century,
[p]eople everywhere began composing little songs along the same lines [modeled
on Ministry of Education music textbooks], called shōka, and they spread like wild-
fire. Also tremendously popular were many marching songs inspired by the Sino-
Japanese War [1894–1895] and later the Russo-Japanese War [1904–1905]. (Dan
1961, 211; see also Eppstein 1987)29
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 21
In fact, the symbiosis between the educational, the popular, the aesthetic,
and the national seems to have been a defining component of interwar Japanese
culture. Examining a broad array of Japanese educational practices, Harootunian
(1974) describes how, even by 1910, imperial rescripts, educational plans and
curricula, and government sanctions concerning morality and behavior had
significantly narrowed the sphere of acceptable artistic activity and content.
Similarly, William Gardner (2006) demonstrates how prominent avant-garde
artists often worked as much in tandem with mass culture as they did against
it. Hence, while influential modernist movements in dance, theater, and art—
including a Dadaist-like dance/art movement called MAVO (see Weisenfeld
2002)—arose in the teens and progressed well into the 1920s, specific events
often spurred reactionary turning points. For instance, the Tokyo earthquake in
1923 not only destroyed much of Tokyo’s artistic center in Asakusa, but also led
to the violent repression of Koreans living in the city.30 In fact, many progressive
artists from this period became active supporters of the military regime in the
1930s and beyond.
On a musical level, the establishment of a core of “Japanese” musical tropes
seems to have allowed an easy collapsing of musical nationalism onto politi-
cal, and eventually imperialist, forms. Historian Louise Young (1998) draws an
explicit connection between the songs from the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-
Japanese wars and those produced in the spectacular rise of militant nationalism
during the Manchurian Incident (ca. 1931–1933), and Manabe’s own disserta-
tion (2009, 238–42) draws parallels between the growing presence in shōka and
dōyō of figures and tropes derived from traditional Japanese music and Japan’s
rising militarism. More strikingly, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (2002, 124) holds that
popular songs played a prominent role in the transformation of sakura (cherry
blossoms) from a symbol of “life” in ancient Japan to one of bushido (samurai
code) and as a “motto for ideal soldiers” in Imperialist Japan. As she writes, the
image of the falling petals served “to aestheticize soldiers’ deaths on the battle-
field, followed by their resurrection at Yasukuni Shrine.” 31 Aside from differ-
ences in key and meter, the three song melodies shown in figure 13a–c (Rentaro
Taki’s shōka “Hakone Hachiri” of 1901, Shimpei Nakayama’s “Kachūsha no Uta”
of 1914, and the “2,600th Anniversary March Song” from 1940) all employ a
similar compositional language built from pentatonic scales, triadic outlining,
dotted rhythms, and emphatic and direct phrasing. It is not hard to imagine how
someone educated in the first might fall in love with the second, and ultimately
find themselves singing along with the third. It is to the ideological component
of this symbiosis that we now turn.
22 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
Figure 13. (a) Rentaro Taki, “Hakone Hachiri” (1901) (Source: Mori 2010).
(b) Shimpei Nakayama, “Kachūsha no Uta” (1914), as transcribed from a
recording of Sumako Matsui, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ander025/all1441
/027106.html (accessed January 10, 2011). (c) “2600th Anniversary March
Song” (1940) (Source: Ruoff 2010, plate 21 postcard [full text not visible]).
(2) The development of Japanese tonal systems suitable for primarily penta-
tonic and modal melodies, structured after the type of quartal “harmo-
nies” derived from the vertical tone clusters of the shō in gagaku;
(3) The use of linear, quasi-polyphonic texture similar to the sankyoku and
jiuta ensemble music; and
(4) A creative use of instrumental color. (Herd 2004, 44)
Herd notes that these “suggestions for creating new musical styles (minzoku
shugi-teki sakkyoku) were primarily methodological, not ideological or nation-
alistic” (2004, 44). But neither were they entirely new. Save for tone color—
and even this is debatable—the Federation’s list summarizes the basic features
of the nascent “Japanese” style found in the Yanada, Nakayama, and Yamada
songs discussed earlier: pentatonic and minor Japanese scales, modal harmo-
nies including clusters and fourths, and heterophonic textures. Hence, while the
Federation’s manifesto projected a progressive aspect—a more intense, detailed
exploration of traditional practices—it also contained within it a reactionary
one, in the sense that it was formalizing and delimiting the modern Japanese
musical style(s) that had already been in place for a decade or more.33
Thus, as debates over new musical practices intensified in the mid-1930s and
competing groups entered into the mix, it is easy to witness how the ideological
implications of this distillation rose to the fore: the stylistic features being not
entirely new, it was necessary to privilege solutions to the problem of the cre-
ation of “Japaneseness” in music within other constructs, constructs first theo-
retical, then ideological. For instance, in 1934, one of the Federation’s founding
members, Shūkichi Mitsukuri, published a treatise (itself the outcome of several
articles) proposing the basis for a new Japanese harmonic practice.34 Working
with ascending and descending cycles of perfect fifths, Mitsukuri fashioned two
traditional Japanese scales, the first common to gagaku, and the second similar
to the urban folk-based miyakobushi. With this Japanese content set in place
and characterizing thirds as dissonances, he then used the two scales to cre-
ate contrasting chord progressions (termed positive and negative) built upon
open fifths (fig. 14). As Luciana Galliano comments: “What interested Mitsukuri
was the possibilities for modulation offered by the interaction between the F in
the negative scale and the F# in the positive scale” (2002, 67). While Mitsukuri
also fashioned two whole-tone scales from this system, more importantly he
Fumio Hayasaka—now best known for the opening “Bolero” in the Kurosawa
film Rashomon—tweaked Tanaka’s system, adding single tones (typically unre-
solved suspensions) to some of the chords of resolution, while alternatively reject-
ing other chords as “not belonging to Japanese harmony.” For Galliano, Hayasaka’s
chords of resolution recall those created by the shō, but the limited nature of the
refinements and the immediate context, 1940, suggest ideological hair splitting
(2002, 71–72). Even in comparison with Mitsukuri’s overdetermined theory, both
Tanaka and Hayasaka’s systems provide evidence of the stale formalism of which
the Japan Times warned. More importantly, since by 1940 all publications re-
quired permission from government censors, surely both Tanaka and Hayasaka’s
claims of “Japaneseness” are suspect—except in the sense that they represented
or at the very least mapped neatly onto official political ideology.
Whatever Tanaka’s own politics, an August 1941 review in Contemporary
Japan neatly clarifies his treatise’s nationalistic underpinnings (10[8]:1091). 38
Situating the treatise within recent attempts “to create a new Japanese national
music,” the review used Tanaka’s explication of the different leading tones in
Western and traditional Japanese music (a half step and whole step below the
tonic, respectively) as a stepping stone to a qualitative assessment of the differ-
ence between Japanese and East Asian music, an assessment laced with strong
colonialist overtones:
It is only in Western music and Japanese [music] that the leading-note is fully es-
tablished; this is the case neither in Chinese, Indian nor in South Sea music. Our
[Japanese] music is, therefore, decidedly superior to other Oriental music in this
respect. (Contemporary Japan 1941, 10:1091)
While one cannot equate a review with the theory itself, the simple ridiculous-
ness of these claims should provide fair warning to anyone attempting to locate
grains of theoretical and aesthetic truth in Tanaka’s system.
While it is unclear whether any Japanese composers attempted to create ac-
tual pieces of music with Tanaka’s treatise—we will examine a short piano work
by Hayasaka later—the debate over a new Japanese music reached its apogee
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 27
Thus it must have been somewhat puzzling for avid moviegoers to read in a
June 1938 article by composer Shiro Fukai that realism in films “leaves no room
for Western music, which is still not truly a part of our lives,” or similarly, in an
article by composer Hattori Tadashi, that Japanese “do not know much about
Western music. We do not know what to write, or even what we should write”
(quoted in Iwamoto 1992, 325). To this, film scholar Kenji Iwamoto astutely
28 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
observes: “Although life in Japan is now permeated with Western music, it must
be remembered that these were the anxieties of composers living in an age very
different from our own” (1992, 325).
What is essential here is that, whatever the politics and musical intents of all
the participants, the terms of the debate and the pervasive nature of the musi-
cal constructs enabled an easy mapping of yōgaku onto the aims and goals of
Japanese imperialism: given the insistence that the music incorporate authentic
Japanese music (in the rather trope-based forms that it did) and thereby ad-
dress the Japanese spirit, the music could be easily co-opted (if not composed
directly) to serve the interests of the state, and there is little in the historical
record to suggest that this was not the case. In this very regard, it is instructive
to compare the musical theorizing of the 1930s and 1940s with that of the 1920s,
which focused largely on text setting, not so much the content as the mechanics
of rhythm, articulation, and accent, such that the Japanese would be audible,
understandable, and expressive (Manabe 2009, 243–88). There was an ideologi-
cal component to this, since the question of how to create a style of music truer
to the Japanese language was related to the question of how to make the music
more truly Japanese, but the criticism was still largely confined to technical
issues. It is all the more striking then that the specific nature of the theorizing
of the 1930s arose concurrent with the rise of militant Japanese nationalism: in
short, the question of “Japaneseness in music” only became an issue once the
political temperature had sufficiently risen.
While the intellectual project to create a truly authentic modern Japanese/
Western practice may not have been doomed from the start, it was founded upon
a contradiction between an essentialist ideal (unique Japanese content) and the
very technical nature of the harmonic, rhythmic, and textural derivations them-
selves.43 But even if these new systems of Japanese music were restrictive and
delimiting, rather than expansive, and even if the contemporary debates are
interesting in and of themselves, it is important that we examine the so-called
progressive music from this period in detail to understand not what Japanese
music wanted to be or what it would become, but rather what it was, in what
ways it was or might have been unique and, through this lens, reveal something
of what it may have meant.
arpeggio quickly descends from its climatic E6 only to halt abruptly with the
arrival of the aforementioned chordal texture (tōshi—distant, remote, or less
metaphorically waning). Here, the voice’s E-F# parallels its opening E-F, the shift
to a whole step (E-F#) signifying the poet’s awakening as the distant/dreamed
moon fades into the present. The voice’s subsequent quarter note ascent—an
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 31
sight, it possesses a distinctly Lisztian flavor and may ask to be considered along-
side of the contrapuntal writing of Bartok, whose music began to receive atten-
tion in Japan in the 1930s. In either case, there is a sense of gamesmanship here
with regards to both the “Sakura” theme and with the tradition of fugal writing
itself (compare, for instance, Mitsukuri’s treatment with that of Dittrich’s), and
this gamesmanship discloses a nationalist trace that, given the date of composi-
tion, 1940 (close to the extensive celebrations for the 2,600th anniversary of the
founding of Japan), certainly demands inquiry.46 “Sakura” was after all one of
Japan’s most famous melodies, and the ability to treat it to fugal elaboration must
have symbolized (at least to some) its inherent culture and civilization: the set-
ting seems an excellent example of “the particular in the universal.” In this very
striking and potentially politically charged way, Mitsukuri’s fugue takes up the
challenge issued at the start of Japan’s modernization, to pull even with and even-
tually to master the West. Whether this symbolism also possessed an explicit
imperialist meaning is difficult to say, but comparing the dates of compositions,
October 1930 for the Bashō setting, roughly a year before the Manchurian crisis
(19311) that triggered a powerful rise in nationalism within the Japanese popu-
lace, and 1940 for the “Sakura” fugue, does tend to further this assessment.47
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 33
and emphasizes Japanese-based tetrachords, (i.e., G-A-C) (fig. 21). This theme
then serves as the basis for several variations, each of which places the theme in
a different mode or harmonic context. Of particular interest is the segment in
measures 141, which superimposes simultaneous F#s, Gs, and As in a sort of
clustered heterophonic counterpoint. While this segment functions as a transi-
tion section—the surrounding music is pointedly more reserved and conso-
nant—the question certainly arises as to what Hayasaka may be attempting to
“represent” here.
In his preface to the score, Hayasaka wrote that he intended these pieces not
for concert use but as chamber music, and suggested that these pieces would
help address a cultural deficiency, in that Eastern people were unable to perceive
of art as abstract objects as Westerners did. But Hayasaka was also one of the
composers to engage in debates about the Japanese content of yōgaku, and he did
so at a time when militant nationalism was at its height. Hence this set of piano
pieces likely represents an outgrowth of his theoretical labors, and is certainly
intended as a demonstration of the power of its technical content.
To go one step further and collapse the music onto its historical/political
moment seems clearly crude, not merely because the music is contemplative
rather than combative, but also because it would enact the substitution that
Hirota announced in the quotation cited at the start of this paper. But might
we, at least, take issue with Hayasaka’s simplistic juxtaposition of Eastern and
Western listeners? Were Japanese really incapable of grasping Western music? If
so, what does one make of soprano Tamaki Miura’s performance of the complete
Winterreise on October 12, 1943 (Japan Times, October 6, 1943, 3)?50 There are
many potentially contradictory ways in which to read this event, but at the very
least we might observe that “Western” music was, by the time of the Pacific War,
a thoroughly integrated aspect of Japanese society and culture; that whatever the
apparent paradoxes and complexities attendant to its particular role in society,
these sonic artifacts and the events surrounding them are representations of that
culture—not anomalies distinct from it; and that, ultimately, the understanding
of this music depends upon close analysis, and not the all too easy application
of loaded signifiers onto it.
Thus even if we choose to catch in Hayasaka’s dissonant clusters a pre-glimpse
of his future student Tōru Takemitsu, it is important to remember that the lat-
ter composer’s first steps were not toward the Japanese spirit of the war years,
but decidedly away from it. If the story is to be believed (Burt 2001, 22–23), it
was not traditional Japanese music that set Takemitsu’s compositional heart
aflame, but his chance listening to a 1930 Jean Lenoir cabaret song, “Parlez-moi
d’amour” (Speak to me of love) as sung by Lucienne Boyer, a work that in its
simple declamatory style, elegant harmonies, and rocking accompaniment has
much in common with the kayōkyoku of Japan’s teens.
To conclude, the issues raised in this paper are not those of causality or of
responsibility, but of context. Following Western Romantic precepts and ideals—
precepts and ideals very much alive in the West of the same period—Japanese
composers created a large body of national music, music with demonstrable
connections to the past, music listened to and loved by many, and music that,
if originally forged from benign cultural impulses, that is, cultural nationalism,
eventually came to possess vestiges of politics and imperialism. With one eye
glued to Japanese traditions and the other glancing ahead to postwar innovation
and culturalism, and perhaps owing to a certain discomfort with addressing
Japanese imperialism, Western scholars have failed to fully grasp yōgaku’s im-
portance to interwar Japanese culture and hence underestimated the extent to
which it forms an important and perhaps unique chapter in the history of music
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 37
Ithaca College
Notes
1
April 14, 1936, p. 8. The Japan Times changed names throughout this period (i.e., the
Japan Times and Mail, later the Nippon Times); I use only the former here, abbreviated
as JT in notes.
2
Hirota lasted one year in office and was replaced in February 1937. Following the
war, he was tried as a Class A war criminal and was executed in December of 1948,
the lone civilian to receive this sentence. I have been unable to confirm the contents of
the cited speech.
3
See JT, July 14, 1943, 5, “[Motonari] Iguchi Outlines Vital Role of Japan in Musical
World: Japanese Music Is Spreading to the Southern Regions, and It Is Nippon’s Duty to
Lead the Peoples There to Find and Create Their Own National Music.” Iguchi boasted,
“Meanwhile Koscak Yamada, who has more and more grown into the post of Japan’s
musical ambassador at large, is traveling all over the Co-Prosperity Sphere to investigate
musical conditions on the spot and establish contacts with musical circles and cultural
authorities.”
4
For the purposes of this paper, I take the interwar period to encompass World Wars
I and II. On nationalism in Japanese poetry and literature, see Keene (1964, 1976, 1978),
Shillony (1991), and Mayo (2001). Following Keene, my aim is not to convict composers
in absentia, but merely to understand their work and its historical context.
5
A brief etymology of yōgaku appears in Galliano (2002, xiii and 58, n. 26). Written
with the kanji 洋学, yōgaku means simply “Western learning.”
6
Hence few entries on interwar Japanese composers in Grove Music Online (accessed
July 2010, www.oxfordmusiconline.com) discuss the issue of nationalism. For direct
consideration, see Pacun (2008) and Fukunaka (2008). As noted by Fukunaka, Kosaku
Yamada was president of the Performer’s Association (itself founded under the auspices
of the Metropolitan Police Department) and established the Music Service Force for the
purpose of “provid[ing] people living under harsh conditions with comfort and relief.”
One of its slogans was “Our music is our weapon.” The Association encompassed a wide
range of Japanese musicians including Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Yasuji Kiyose, Saburo Moroi,
and Masao Oki. A JT report, “Local Music Group Goes Totalitarian: Central Organization
Formed Covering Every Phrase of Musical Life of Nation” (November 25, 1940, 1), is
telling: “In a formal declaration, which was pronounced by Mr. Naotada Yamamoto, the
assembly pledged that in their new organization they will sincerely strive to serve the
true aims of the nation through music, under a renewed consciousness of their duties
as Japanese subjects. Another statement was read to the effect that Japan’s musicians,
realizing that present emergency of the nation, which must be overcome, will combine
their efforts to create a new genuine music of Japan, and each of them, remembering
his position as an individual subject and individual musician, will cooperate toward
38 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
the creation of one single musical organization ready to serve the nation.” Masao Oki
was quoted as stating, “All talk about totalitarian ideas in connection with the Japanese
New Structure Movement is based on a fundamental misconception regarding the true
spirit of the Japanese race. . . . This new consciousness among the people is finding is
[sic] expression also in our movement for the creation of this new musical organization,
which draws its strength from the cultural will of the musicians themselves. . . . [W]e are
convinced that those musicians who will insist on staying aloof from our common aims
in selfish individualism will eventually lose their foothold in the musical world and their
context with the people” (ibid., 3).
7
See notes 3 and 6.
8
Contrary to Herd’s assertion, Takemitsu had little interest in politics (Takemitsu 2010,
69). The role of proletarian politics in music of the 1930s remains outside the scope of
this paper; however, this study does aim to problematize the division of interwar yōgaku
into fixed schools.
9
The immediate context for Kiyose’s Suite would have been celebrations surrounding
the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese empire (see Ruoff 2010). On the
distinction between minzoku-shugi and kokumin-shugi, see Everett (2006).
10
On this broader issue, see Taruskin (2007).
11
Efforts to break free from this framework—such as those attempted by Hayasaka and
Ikufube, and those inspired by Alexander Tcherepnin—still took place through Western
aesthetics, such as the primitivism of Stravinsky, and were in any case driven by the
hypothetical norm of some ideal blend of Western and Japanese music. On the aporia of
this situation for Japanese culture as a whole, see Harootunian (2000). On Tcherepnin’s
influence on Japanese music, see Korabelnikova (2008).
12
That is, we must accept the claims of the participants as history.
13
Of early Meiji literature, John Mertz writes: “Yet what I have found in writing this
book is that where literary innovation did occur, often the innovation actually preceded
the naming of the precedent, and was motivated by mechanisms having very little to
[do] with direct emulation of the West. As I see it, the most significant developments
occurred early on as incidental . . . outcomes of their authors’ various narrative premises,
only later to be encompassed within the critical value system of so-called modernity. . . .
When critics such as Tsubouchi Shoyo and Futabatei Shimei finally began to enunciate
a critical vocabulary for Japan’s future novels, they were to a great extent merely giving
voice to developments that had already been installed within the ‘horizons of expectation’
(to adopt Jauss’s term) of their readership” (Mertz 2003, xi, italics mine).
14
For reissues of classical music recordings made in interwar Japan, see The Rohm
Music Foundation at http://www.rohm.com/rmf/naiyou/jouhou_chousa.html.
15
My heading references Vlastos (1998).
16
While this formulation already melds aesthetic and theoretical issues, the problem
of sensitive harmonization is not unique to Japanese melodies but is common to the
harmonization of any and all melodies. My analysis here derives from, and to some extent
simplifies Koizumi (1977).
17
I make no claim that Dittrich was the first composer to come upon this harmonic
treatment; only that as Dittrich taught at the Tokyo College of Music, he directly impacted
the Japanese musical scene.
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 39
18
Kitahara writes: “Traditionally, the in scale [essentially the miyakobushi] was not
associated with a sorrowful mood. Indeed, no definite mode was directly connected
to either the in scale or the yo scale [i.e., C-D-F-G-Bb-C]. . . . After the in scale became
identified with the minor scale, however, the characteristic mood often popularly ascribed
to the minor key was transferred to the in scale” (1966, 283).
19
For example, following the lecture, as published in an earlier[?] form, Harmonies
in Japanese Music (London: Beford Press, 1898), a (Japanese?) questioner “made a few
remarks on the difficulty experienced by Japanese in following their own melodies as
performed by foreigners.” On European debates over how to harmonize Japanese melo-
dies, see Waters (1994).
20
For instance, famed soprano Minnie Hauk performed selections from Carmen in
Japan in 1894 (Hauk 1977, 276–77).
21
On Taki’s use of Japanese folk song, see Mori (2010).
22
Despite the obvious differences in cultural framework, Italian opera companies were
among the first professional Western musicians to visit Japan (Galliano 2002, 100). Ital-
ian songs were available to listeners in Japan: Giulio Ronconi performed Tosti’s “Vorrei
morir” in Yokohama on October 24, 1922 (JT, 8); in a 1928 recital, Yamada’s “Kuroi
Bosan” directly preceded di Capau’s “O sole mio” (JT, November 22, 1928, 1).
23
This song was in part a homage to Tosti’s native region, and may have contained
elements of traditional Abruzzi folk music (Santivale 2004, 215).
24
Owing to the requirements of Japanese text setting (long and short vowels can result
in different meanings), melodic phrase structures derived directly from the text.
25
As “Jōgashima” premiered on October 30, 1913, in a recital at the Geijutza-za, a
prominent Western theater in Tokyo, the piano accompaniment was likely an original
part of the song. See notes to the reissue of a 1933 recording by tenor Ryozo Okuda in A
Selection of Japanese 78 rpm Recordings: III (Rohm Music Foundation: RMFSP-E018—
RMFSP-E024, 2007).
26
The enka style found in Shimpei Nakayama’s songs eventually became known as
Shimpei bushi (Martin 1972, esp. 340–41). In 1931, the Japan Times reviewed Hideomaro
Konoye’s Emperor Cantata (to texts from the Manyoshu) as “a commendable attempt to
represent a Japanese theme in Western style” (T.S., “New Symphony Orchestra Pleases,”
December 18, 1931, 2).
27
Yamada also transposed the original melody from B minor to D minor; #4 5 E#
in the original.
28
See, for instance, Komiya (1969) and Lieberman (1965, 73).
29
Nakamura notes,“. . . it must not be overlooked that nationalism was also an element
of the enka songs. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904–1905, contemptuous mockery of the Chinese and Russian peoples charac-
terized the enka-shi’s comic songs, which were bought up with enthusiasm” (1991, 271).
30
More subtly, events such as the enthronement of Emperor Hirohito seem to have
brought modern and traditional practices into a stark, and perhaps unsettling, juxtaposi-
tion. On November 10, 1928, the Japan Times placed a review of a chamber music con-
cert directly across from a photograph depicting “ancient” feudal celebrations: “Stupin,
Kawaloff Score Big Success: Chamber Music Played by Leading Artists for the First Time
in Japan” and “Tokyo Celebrates the Enthronement: ‘O-Mikoshi,’ a Sacred Palanquin
40 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
Carried on Men’s Shoulders.” This juxtaposition compares neatly with the excerpt of
Tokunaga Sunao’s Taiyō no nai machi cited in Harootunian (2000, xxiv).
31
She continues: “like cherry blossoms which fall after a brief life, the young men
sacrificed their lives for the emperor but were promised to be reborn as cherry blossoms
at the place where the emperor would pay homage.” Her analysis of songs, mainly the
lyrics, appears on pp. 125–42 (Ohnukī-Tierney 2002).
32
This society progressed through several transformations and eventually became
absorbed into the all-encompassing Gakudan Shintaisei Sokushin Domei (Alliance for
the Promotion of the New System of Music), itself part of the “Imperial Rule Assistance
Association” which was established October 1940 by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe
(see Fukunaka 2008).
33
Herd (2004, 49) provides a pointed example of the interaction of culture and poli-
tics when she writes that in the later 1930s “[m]usicians who had been educated in a
Western fashion and ignorant about traditional Japanese music had to search for ways
to cope with the situation. With his pragmatic vision, Kiyose rose to the occasion. He
adapted a simpler compositional style more closely related to the popular tunes, military
marches, and folk songs that appealed to traditional audiences.” Manabe observes: “To
a great extent, these movements among academic circles and art music composers [i.e.,
Mitsukuri, Matsudaira, and others] had already been alive in the more popular form of
dōyō for many years” (2009, 288).
34
My discussions of Mitsukuri, Tanaka, and Hayasaka depend on the synopses in
Galliano (2002). However, my conclusions differ.
35
In 1922, Kiyose rejected Yamada’s lessons in composition as “too Western,” but in
1936 was similarly attacked by Ginji Yamane for writing “sentimental” music in the man-
ner of Debussy and Franck.
36
For a brief discussion of this song, see Hoffman (1967).
37
Born in 1862, Tanaka traveled to Europe in the 1880s where he studied with
Helmholtz and gained notoriety for his work on just intonation.
38
Begun in June 1932, Contemporary Japan was published by the Foreign Affairs As-
sociation of Japan, itself headed by prominent businessmen, politicians, academics, and
newspaper editors. By 1941, the editorial board had narrowed to three directors: Toshi
Go, Yasotaro Morri [sic], and Katsuji Inahara.
39
There seems little reason to read the qualifier “Japanese” in this review as meaning
anything other than “authentic Japanese.” The derogatory view of Chinese music, which
echoes nineteenth-century Western complaints about “primitive” music, may have been
deep seated. In 1919, Yamada stated that “The Chinese, too, are very sentimental—more
so than the Japanese and their poetry takes on an exaggerated form . . . The Chinaman’s
imagination is childish and he is not so deep as the Japanese. . . . The Chinese finds his
inspiration in the occasions of daily life. The Japanese are more vivid and more modern
than the Chinese.” See “The Past, The Present and the Future Musical Situation in Japan,”
Musical Courier, February 27, 1919.
40
My summary here draws from Harootunian (2000, 75–78).
41
On her May 29, 1932 program, Miura sang Yamada’s arrangements of “Kuruka,
Kuruka,” and “Ume ni o Haru,” directly before “Un bel di bedremo” and “Tutu” from
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 41
Puccini’s Butterfly (JT, May 24, 1932, 8). As a “westernized” woman, Miura’s perennial
returns to Japan were controversial. (See “Threatening Letter Received by Miura,” JT,
September 12, 1922, 3.) On her operatic career, see Yoshihara (2004). A brief summary
of Fujiwara’s career may be found in Galliano (2006, 226–27). Fujiwara starred in Kenji
Mizoguchi’s first talkie, Furusato (Hometown, 1930), taking the part of a successful singer
who returns home; thus the film featured Fujiwara’s singing. A reissue of Fujiwara’s re-
cordings from the 1930s may be found on RCA RVC-1590, which includes arias by Verdi
and Puccini as well as Japanese folk song arrangements and, of course, “O sole mio.”
42
The famous Arnold Fanck and Mansuku Itami production, The Good (New) Earth
(Japanese title Atarashiki tsuchi), featured Yamada’s arrangement of “Sakura.” The film was
sponsored in part by the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai. (“World Premiere of New Earth at
Imperial Theater,” JT, February 5, 1937, 2). A damning assessment of the plot appears in
Miyao (2007, 267–70). On nationalism in Japanese films, see High (2003, 159–63); on the
Fanck/Itami collaboration, see ibid. (159–63). In 1934, J.O. Studios in Kyoto announced
a competition for film scenarios in which “Japanese culture and the Japanese spirit must
be woven into the story in a manner easily understandable to foreigners” (“Search for
International Film Drama to Represent Cultural Life of Japan,” JT, October 4, 1934, 3).
43
Strangely, it seems never to have occurred to the writers that once so identified and
codified, anyone anywhere could compose “Japanese” music. By the concurrent standards
of Western exoticism, however, Japanese music (e.g., “The Mikado”) had been written
for decades.
44
My reading here draws in part on Kojin (1993) and Walker (1979).
45
The setting also displays a basic similarity to Michio Miyagi’s “Haru no Umi” (1929)
for shakuhachi and koto. (See Galliano 2002, 54.)
46
Mitsukuri’s Symphonietta in D Major (1934), published by the Kokusai Bunka
Shinkokai in a 1941 collection edited by Felix Weingartner, further contextualizes the
“Sakura” fugue. It begins with a neoclassical “Presto,” then offers a second movement
“Aria” whose melodies are reminiscent of Puccini. The third movement, titled “Sara-
banda alla Giapponese,” is heavily saturated with miyakobushi-based figures, and the
work concludes with a “Fuga” based upon a modal subject (D dorian), apparently one
of Mitsukuri’s own making, but still resembling traditional Japanese music. The overall
design thus traces a teleology from West to East.
47
More radically, and following Ohnuki-Tierney’s (2002) study of the changing sym-
bolism of sakura (cherry blossoms) in Imperial Japan (see note 31), it may be possible to
read the individual subject entries as musical representations of resurrection. Interest-
ingly, the “Sakura” fugue later became the middle movement in a suite, framed by a “Night
Rhapsody” composed in 1935, and an arrangement of a Buddhist chant “Imayo” (under
the title “Es ist März, der Frühling”) written in 1957. Stylistically, “Night Rhapsody” is an
offshoot of Mitsukuri’s Bashō setting albeit more virtuosic and extended in treatment; “Es
ist März” draws on the language of “Sakura,” but in a plaintive and perhaps nostalgic way.
48
Hirao’s arrangement concludes on an F# major chord. Hirao’s famous “Sumida River”
from 1936 celebrates one of Japan’s most famous waterways.
49
Composed in Vienna, the Suite Japan was later orchestrated in 1938; the piano ver-
sion was published in 1941 by Universal Edition. In the reissue (Editions Kawai, 2002),
42 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
Atsutada Otaka writes: “it seems [Otaka’s] nostalgic feelings for his native land could
help him picture ‘One Day of Japanese Children,’ ” and that Suite Japan “would be the
first piece of work in which he manifested a Japanese emotion.”
50
This may mark the first complete performance of Winterreise in Japan. The concert
was repeated in November of the same year, suggesting that it was successful.
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46 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
Peter Manuel has researched and published extensively on the music of India,
the Caribbean, Spain, and elsewhere. His publications include the books Cassette
Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (1993), East Indian Mu-
sic in the West Indies: Tan-Singing, Chutney, and the Making of Indo-Caribbean
Culture (2000), and Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (2009), along with
two documentary videos, including Tassa Thunder: Folk Music from India to the
Caribbean. He teaches Ethnomusicology at John Jay College and the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York.