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PALGRAVE SERIES IN ASIAN GERMAN STUDIES
Musical Entanglements
between Germany
and East Asia
Transnational Affinity in the
20th and 21st Centuries
Edited by Joanne Miyang Cho
Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies
Series Editors
Joanne Miyang Cho
William Paterson University of New Jersey
Wayne, NJ, USA
Douglas T. McGetchin
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL, USA
This series contributes to the emerging field of Asian-German Studies by
bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from international scholars in
a variety of fields. It encourages the publication of works by specialists
globally on the multi-faceted dimensions of ties between the German-
speaking world (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and German-speaking
enclaves in Eastern Europe) and Asian countries over the past two centu-
ries. Rejecting traditional notions of West and East as seeming polar oppo-
sites (e.g., colonizer and colonized), the volumes in this series attempt to
reconstruct the ways in which Germans and Asians have cooperated and
negotiated the challenge of modernity in various fields. The volumes cover
a range of topics that combine the perspectives of anthropology, compara-
tive religion, economics, geography, history, human rights, literature, phi-
losophy, politics, and more. For the first time, such publications offer
readers a unique look at the role that the German-speaking world and Asia
have played in developing what is today a unique relationship between two
of the world’s currently most vibrant political and economic regions.
ADVISORY BOARD:
Prof. Sebastian Conrad, Freie University of Berlin
Prof. Dorothy Figueira, University of Georgia
Prof. Doris Fischer, Würzburg University
Prof. Suzanne Marchand, Lousiana State University
Prof. Lee M. Roberts, Purdue University, Fort Wayne
Prof. Franziska Seraphim, Boston College
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14664
Joanne Miyang Cho
Editor
Musical
Entanglements
between Germany and
East Asia
Transnational Affinity in the 20th and 21st
Centuries
Editor
Joanne Miyang Cho
William Paterson University of New Jersey
Wayne, NJ, USA
Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-78208-5 ISBN 978-3-030-78209-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78209-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Cover illustration: English: Gertud Eysoldt as Turandot; Alexander Moissi as Calaf. Photos
from the program book for Max Reinhardt’s 1911 production of Gozzi’s Turandot with
incidental music by Ferruccio Busoni.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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To Henrik Juho
Acknowledgements
The editor would like to express her appreciation to Editor Meagan

Simpson at Palgrave Macmillan for her generous assistance and accom-
modation. She is grateful to her fellow Asian German Studies scholars,
many of whom are regular participants at the German Studies Association
annual conferences, where they present their exciting new research and
support each other’s scholarly endeavors. The contributors are especially
thankful to Sarah Panzer for her tireless and invaluable assistance in edit-
ing the manuscript.
vii
Contents
1 The Idea of Entanglement, Historiography, and

Organization 1
Joanne Miyang Cho
Part I German-Japanese/Korean Entanglements,

1900–1945: Wagner, Bandmasters, and Japanese
Students 23
2 The Reception of Wagner in Japan at the Turn of the

Twentieth Century: A Non-musical Dimension of Cross-
Border Music Transfer 25
Toru Takenaka
3 Music for Modern Korea: Bandmasters Franz Eckert and

Baek U-yong 49
Hye Eun Choi
4 Japanese Music Students in Germany and Austria, 1880

to 1945 69
Alison Tokita
ix
x Contents
Part II Sino-German Entanglements, 1900–1949: Operas,

Beethoven, and Jewish Cantors 97
5 The “Oriental” Utopia: Postwar Orientalism and

Ferruccio Busoni’s Opera Turandot 99
Lufan Xu
6 Reimagining China in Interwar German Opera: Eugen

d’Albert’s Mister Wu and Ernst Toch’s Der Fächer125
John Gabriel
7 Demarcation and Cooperation: Nazi-Persecuted Jewish

Cantors in Shanghai Exile, 1938–1949151
Sophie Fetthauer
8 What Beethoven Meant in China, 1900–1949: Music,

Ideology and Power173
Hao Huang
Part III German–East Asian Entanglements since 1945:

Ferienkurse, Mozart, and East Asian Composers 195
9 Mozart in the Context of Globalization: The Musician as

an Agent of Cultural Hybridity197
Jinsong Chen
10 When “Japanese” Music Became “World” Music: The

Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik as
Intercultural Agency227
Fuyuko Fukunaka
11 The Music of the Korean-German Composer Yun Isang in

the Cold War Era: Interculturality and Engagement Art259
Hyejin Yi
Contents xi
12 Korean Contemporary Music and Germany: An

Examination of Four Korean Composers277
Hee Sook Oh
Index297
Notes on Contributors
Jinsong Chen is a Professor at North Sichuan Medical College in China.

She received her PhD in German literature and culture at Purdue
University. Her dissertation is entitled “Mozart as Intertext and Gender
Discourse in Austrian Postmodernist Drama.” Her master’s degrees are in
German Studies and Musicology and her master’s thesis is titled “The
Impact of Richard Wagner on Werner Herzog’s Film Nosferatu.” She is
the author of “China’s Encounter with Mozart in Two Films: From
Musical Modernity to Cultural Globalization” in The German-East Asian
Screen (Routledge, 2021).
Joanne Miyang Cho is Professor of History at William Paterson
University of New Jersey. She received her PhD in History from the
University of Chicago. She has co-edited Transcultural Encounters between
Germany and India (2014), Germany and China (2014), Germany and
Japan (2016), Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia (2016),
and Germany and Korea (2018). She edited Transnational Encounters
between Germany and East Asia since 1900 (2018), German-East Asian
Encounters and Entanglements since 1945 (2021), and Sino-German
Encounters and Entanglements, 1890–1950 (2021). She is a series co-
editor for Palgrave Studies in Asian German Studies.
Hye Eun Choi is an Assistant Professor Faculty Fellow of Korean
Language and Culture at New York University Shanghai. After receiving
her PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she was a
Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. Choi has
taught courses at Columbia, NYU, and William Paterson University. Her
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
book project, tentatively titled “Inventing Modern Sound Culture in

Colonial Korea (1910–1945),” traces the birth of the recording industry
in colonial Korea, revealing how a new sound culture was formed not only
under Japanese cultural hegemony but also in and through the currents of
global modernity.
Sophie Fetthauer studied musicology and German literature at the
University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on musical life during the
Third Reich and in exile. Among her publications are books about the
Deutsche Grammophon (2000), music publishing during the Third Reich
and in exile (2004), the cultural life of the DP-camp Bergen- Belsen
(2012), and the remigration of P. Walter Jacob to Germany (2018). She is
a member of the editorial board of the “Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und
Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit” (http://www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de). Her
monograph Musicians’ Exile in Shanghai 1938–1949 is forthcoming.
Fuyuko Fukunaka is Professor of Musicology at Tokyo University of
the Arts, the Faculty of Music. She has a PhD from New York University,
the Graduate School of Arts and Science, with a dissertation on Wolfgang
Rihm (b. 1952). Her publications have appeared in Japanese, English,
German, Italian, and Korean; some among them are The Horizon of
Opera Studies (co-editor; Sairyu Publishing, 2009), New Musicology:
Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of Musical Works (Keio University
Press, 2013), chapters in the books Music of Japan Today (Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2008), Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities
(Routledge, 2013), Contemporary Music in East Asia (Seoul National
University Press, 2014), and the entry “Japan” in Lexikon Neue Musik
(Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2016).
John Gabriel is a Lecturer in Musicology at the Melbourne
Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. His research
focuses on German and Czech speaking Central Europe from the fin-de-
siècle to the early Cold War. His work has appeared in the Journal of the
Society for American Music, Elephant and Castle: laboratorio
dell’immaginario, and several edited volumes. He is currently completing
a book on the music theater of the New Objectivity in Weimar Republic
Germany.
Hao Huang is the Frankel Endowed Chair in Music at Scripps College.
The USIA Artistic Ambassador on tours to Europe, Africa and the Middle
East, Dr. Huang’s published scholarship includes the Article of the Year in
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
American Music Teacher (MTNA journal) and articles in refereed journals

of Great Britain Hungary, Greece, Japan, China and the USA, that span
piano pedagogy, general music studies, popular music, ethnomusicology,
jazz, anthropology, American Studies and Humanities. His scholarly work
has been recognized by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the
Washington Post and National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”
Hee Sook Oh is a Professor of Musicology at the College of Music,
Seoul National University (Korea). She received a PhD in musicology
from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany), with her disserta-
tion “Studien zur kompositorischen Entwicklung des jungen Hindemith”
(1992). She served as president of The Musicological Society of Korea.
Her main research fields include Music Aesthetics, Western Music of the
twentieth century, and Korean modern music. Her selected Publications
are: (English) “Threnody and Aesthetics of interculturality in 21st Century
East Asian Composition” (2018); (German) “Das abgelehnte Genie –
Betrachtungen zur Kritik an der musikalischen Genieästhetik im 20.
Jahrhundert” (2013); (Korean) History of Korean Modern Music (2019).
Alison Tokita has written widely on Japanese musical narrative tradi-
tions, and music and modernity in East Asia and Australia. Working in
Japanese Studies at Monash University from the 1980s, from 2010 she
held professorial appointments at the Tokyo Institute of Technology,
Doshisha University, and was Director of the Research Centre for Japanese
Traditional Music, Kyoto City University of Arts (2014–2018). She
received the Tanabe Hisao Prize for her monograph Japanese Singers of
Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative, and the Koizumi Fumio
Prize for Ethnomusicology. Currently, she is an adjunct researcher at
Monash University, and Guest Professor at the Kyoto City University
of Arts.
Toru Takenaka studied history and earned his PhD at Kyoto University.
He worked for the Graduate School of Letters of Osaka University as
Professor of European history until 2017. Alongside teaching, he did
extensive research on German modern history, as well as on cultural trans-
fers between Japan and Germany in the modern era, and has published a
number of books and articles. He is currently working for the Research
Department of the National Institution for Academic Degrees and Quality
Enhancement of Higher Education.
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Lufan Xu is a Lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is a

historian of early twentieth-century music with a particular focus on
Ferruccio Busoni’s modernist opera reform. Her other research interests
include musical and cultural transfers between Weimar Germany and
Republic of China, and the Weimar echoes in postwar Regietheater. She
received a MPhil and PhD in historical musicology from the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, and has conducted research at Brown University
and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
Hyejin Yi completed her MA and PhD from Seoul National University
in Musicology. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Sungshin
Women’s University. Her research is mainly focused on musical aesthetics,
the history of nineteenth-century music, and modern music in East Asia.
Some of her publications are “A Study on the Genre Problem of
Programmatic Orchestra in the Late 19th-Century,” “An Aesthetic
Consideration on the Change of the Relationship a Music and Language
in the Liszt’ Symphonic Poem,” “National Cultural Memory in Late-
Twentieth-Century East Asian Composition,” and “A Reconsideration on
the Absolute Music Aesthetics of Hanslick.”
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 “Thousands of Buddhas” on Busoni’s podiums. (Courtesy of

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn–Archiv, Mus. Nachl.
F. Busoni. P II, 31). https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.
de/werkansicht?PPN=PPN86188115X106
Fig. 5.2 Busoni’s Das Wandbild libretto. (From Busoni, “Das
Wandbild,” 1919, p. 29) 107
Fig. 5.3 Max Ernst’s stage design for Max Reinhardt’s 1911
production of Turandot (Act III). (From Stern, Herald, and
von Hofmannsthal, Reinhardt und seine Bühne, 1919, p. 193) 109
Fig. 6.1 Club Berlin, Der Fächer, Act II, Königsberg World Premiere
Production, June 1930. (Courtesy of MARCHIVUM [City
Archives Mannheim], Hans Schüler Papers, 38/1969, item
312, p.13) 137
Fig. 12.1 Super Janggu. (Courtesy of Donung Lee) 284
Fig. 12.2 Kang interpreting for Renata Hong. (Courtesy of Unsu Kang) 285
xvii
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Study abroad destinations of Japanese musicians prior to 1914 73

Table 4.2 Study abroad destinations of Japanese composers from 1920s
to 1940s 74
Table 4.3 Study abroad destinations of other Japanese musicians from
1920s to 1940s 75
Table 5.1 Kalaf and Turandot’s themes in the opera Turandot112
Table 5.2 The frame structure of the parallel finales in the
opera Turandot115
xix
CHAPTER 1
The Idea of Entanglement, Historiography,

and Organization
Joanne Miyang Cho
Western art music has found fertile soil in East Asia from the late nine-
teenth century to the present. From the perspective of the twenty-first
century, some scholars have noted East Asians’ dominant role in Western
art music. Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai (2004) argue that classical music
is becoming “increasingly the turf of musicians from China.” They point
out that “so many of the world’s top composers and performers of classical
music are Chinese-born and educated.” The same goes for “many of the
rank-and-file orchestra musicians, music school professors, private violin
and piano teachers, and students.”1 Jürgen Osterhammel (2012) perceives
China as having reached an important milestone when it became “the big-
gest piano producer in the world,” as well as its having embarked upon
joint ventures with two prestigious piano manufacturers—Yamaha and
Steinway & Co.2 He also identifies the same enthusiasm for Western art
music among Koreans. Annually about 7000 South Korean instrumental-
ists and singers apply to German conservatories, nearly a third of whose
J. M. Cho (*)
William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, NJ, USA
e-mail: choj@wpunj.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
J. M. Cho (ed.), Musical Entanglements between Germany and East
Asia, Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78209-2_1
2 J. M. CHO
students originate from East Asia. Margaret Mehl (2013), in her history of
the Japanese adoption of Western music after the Meiji Restoration
(1868), shows that they frequently learned it “through their Western
(most often German or Austrian) teachers.”3 By the mid-twentieth cen-
tury, Japan’s appropriation was “so thorough” that “it had a dominant
position comparable to that in the countries of its origin.” Postwar Japan
also exported “musical instruments, sound technology and even musical
pedagogy,” such as the Suzuki method and Yamaha music schools. In
addition, many Japanese musicians perform with international orchestras
and teach at conservatories outside of Japan.4
Despite this high enthusiasm for Western art music among East Asians,
they did not initially embrace it for purely aesthetic reasons. Rather, the
nature of this adoption was closely connected to the political, social, and
diplomatic contexts in which it occurred. Western music was introduced
to China by “soldiers, merchants, and missionaries.” The first group that
brought Western music to China were the Jesuits, including Matteo Ricci,
in the sixteenth century. It was “spread more widely” after the British
defeat of China in the First Opium War. By the 1880s, Western bands
were a familiar sight in cities like Beijing.5 The Shanghai Public Band
(founded in 1879) expanded to become the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
in 1907. In the case of Japan, the introduction of Western music was facili-
tated through the Meiji government’s “political, military, economic and
social reform.” Officials supported its adoption because of its perceived
ceremonial and pedagogical functions. They witnessed Western music
being used in ceremonies in the West to present “the power of the modern
nation-state” and contributing to “physical, moral and aesthetic education
in schools.”6 Similarly, the Korean emperor Gojong was persuaded of the
utility of Western-style military bands by a Korean delegate to Tsar
Nicholas II’s coronation celebrations in St. Petersburg in 1896. The del-
egate was particularly impressed by military music. In 1900, Korea hired
its first bandleader, the Prussian Franz Eckert, who had previously been
Japan’s first naval band leader for two decades. Eckert shaped both coun-
tries’ military bands after the Prussian model.7
Despite being located at opposite ends of the globe, Western-East
Asian musical relations have proven to be remarkably dynamic and endur-
ing; indeed one might even say that they are kindred spirits in the twenty-
first century. This introductory chapter explains this volume’s theoretical
framework, historiographical landscape, and organization. The first sec-
tion explores the idea of historical and musical entanglement. Just as
1 THE IDEA OF ENTANGLEMENT, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND ORGANIZATION 3
global historians have worked to decenter the nation-state and to provin-

cialize Europe, global historians of music have also endeavored to decen-
ter the concept of European musical modernity in order to deconstruct
earlier Eurocentric narratives. The global history of music rejects the
Weberian assumption that European art music is completely self-informed
or that it possesses its own unique trajectory of development. It provin-
cializes European music and decenters it in relationship to the broader
question of modernity.8 Instead, it highlights the changing nature of
European music and reframes it from a global context. The second section
presents a historiographical review of works on the topic. This is a rela-
tively new field, with much of the secondary literature only appearing in
the last decade. This section examines monographs, as well as several
edited volumes similar to this volume. The last section explains the orga-
nization of this volume and introduces the key arguments of the following
eleven chapters. These chapters speak to the influence of German music
culture in East Asia as well as East Asian influence and presence in
Germany/Austria. They identify several significant historical cases of
hybridity and trace bi-directional cultural flows between Germany and
East Asia.
The Idea of Entanglement: Historical and Musical

Because scholars working on the global history of music are often influ-
enced by global history, this section begins by exploring some of the key
characteristics of this field. Since the end of the Cold War, a growing num-
ber of historians have begun exploring global history in a concerted fash-
ion. First and foremost, global historians reject claims of civilizational
isolationism and cultural purity. During the Weimar Republic some
German historicists, such as the liberal theologian Ernst Troeltsch, advo-
cated for historical narratives of civilizational isolationism, arguing that
each civilization is completely unique. Troeltsch even went so far as to
argue that each civilization has possessed its own unique theory of math-
ematics. A similar argument, based on the presumption of cultural purity,
was put forward by the British historian Arnold Toynbee, whom Jerry
H. Bentley criticizes for taking “a rigid and unsympathetic approach to
cultural exchanges” similar to “Johann Gottfried von Herder and Oswald
Spengler.” Toynbee “regarded cultural exchange and cultural borrowing a
disgusting promiscuity.” Furthermore, Bentley identifies “xenophobia” as
4 J. M. CHO
having predisposed “Toynbee (along with Spengler and others) to tenden-

tious and highly distorted analyses of cultural exchange.”9
Secondly, global history interrogates the ways in which nineteenth-
century Western liberals, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty, the author of
Provincializing Europe, selectively used two different models of histori-
cism to simultaneously grant Western liberal rights to Westerners and to
withhold them from non-Westerners. They “preached . . . Enlightenment
humanism at the colonized,” but they “also denied it in practice.”10 While
they applied “the individuality principle of Rankean historicism towards
Europeans,” they applied “the developmental model of Hegelian-Marxist
historicism towards non-Westerners” in order to postpone the latter’s
ability to claim rights as liberal subjects.11 Hegelian-Marxist historicism is
based upon the “‘first in Europe, then elsewhere’ structure of global his-
torical time.”12 In effect, it presumes that the West and the non-West
existed on different developmental stages. It was this logic that enabled
Europeans to justify their domination of the world in the nineteenth cen-
tury.13 Chakrabarty notes that even John Stuart Mill, the preeminent lib-
eral theorist of the nineteenth century, applied this Eurocentric ideology
to Indians and thus relegated them “to an imaginary waiting room of
history.”14 However, it is important to note that Chakrabarty’s
“provincializ[ing] or decenter[ing] project” does not reject Enlightenment
values, such as “modernity, liberal values, universals, science, reason, grand
narratives.”15 Yet, it rejects “a project of cultural relativism,” since reason
and science are not culturally determined.16 Moreover, these concepts
were integral to the political and social development of his native country,
India.17 Instead, Chakrabarty and other global historians want to decon-
struct the false sense of difference between the West and the non-West
that liberal developmental models had presupposed.
Thirdly, global history emphasizes hybridity and entanglement.
Hybridity does not mean the erasure of tradition but instead the synthesis
of the old and the new. In the context of transnational history, it aims at
identifying a new way of analyzing historical relations between the West
and the non-West, based upon mutual exchange, cooperation, and cross-
cultural communication.18 As the cultural historian Peter Burke notes, the
concept of “borrowing” became more acceptable in the second half of the
twentieth century.19 The theory of cultural hybridity rejects two superficial
views of the past—(a) identifying a cultural tradition as “pure” and (b)
narrating one culture as having dominated other cultures, such as “the
French in the past, the American in the present, or the global in the
future.”20 Burke also distinguishes between two types of “hybridizers,”

preferring the positive hybridizer who sees “the tendency to synthesis and
to the emergence of new forms” over the negative hybridizer who empha-
sizes “what is being lost in the process of cultural change.”21
Fourthly, the concept of entanglement rejects the primacy of one-
directional cultural flows from the center to the periphery and instead
highlights the significance of bi-directional cultural flows. Although civili-
zational influences often seem to be moving in a single direction over a
short time span, their true bi-directional nature becomes more apparent
by adopting a broader perspective. The historian Thomas Adam elaborates
on this claim:
The notion of intercultural transfer differs from concepts such

Europeanization, Americanization, and cultural diffusion in that it assumes
that exchange processes always occur in both directions if one considers a
time frame of more than a century. In the process of intercultural transfer,
ideas travel back and forth between one or more societies and sometimes
undergo so many changes that an idea might no longer be recognized as
originating in a specific society by the members of that society. This might
lead to the introduction of an idea from a neighboring country since it was
considered new and superior when in fact that idea originated in that same
country.22
One can find a good example of this kind of bi-directional cultural flow in
examining modern Japanese history. During the Meiji period, Japan
actively adopted European legal, military, scientific, and cultural ideas and
practices. Over the subsequent 150 years, however, the relationship
between Japan and the West has become increasingly bi-directional. After
Japan had achieved many technological innovations in its own right, and
realized a rate of economic growth higher than that of any European
country in the latter half of the twentieth century, it was no longer quite
so keen on learning from the West as it had been previously. As the histo-
rian Toru Takenaka points out, in the early twenty-first century Japan
believes that “its own social system functions as well as, and perhaps better
than, those of most European countries.” It now sees itself even as poten-
tially superior to Europe in certain respects and feels that other countries
could learn from its example.23
Finally, Jerry H. Bentley, who prefers the term “world history” to
“global history,” commends world historians who, without diminishing
6 J. M. CHO
the importance of the nation-state, “have decentered it.” He expresses

skepticism at relying too much on social theories, “especially Marxist and
Weberian,” since they have a tendency to under-emphasize meaningful
differences between societies and peoples in favor of broad abstractions.
He admits that “the turn toward the global in the form of the new world
history” has its own weaknesses. Because of its preference for long-term
perspectives, it tends to pay less attention to “the experiences of individual
communities” and “the contingency of history.” Nonetheless, he still sees
more advantages than disadvantages in pursuing world history as a proj-
ect. World history sheds light on interactions between peoples from differ-
ent societies and countries. It is able to transcend “national frontiers or
even geographical, linguistic, or cultural boundaries.” It also helps histori-
ans to go beyond local issues and to analyze transnational and global
issues, such as “mass migrations, campaigns of imperial expansion, cross-
cultural trade, environmental changes, biological exchanges, transfers of
technology, and cultural exchanges.”24
Echoing both Bentley, who argues for the decentering of the nation-
state in world history, and Chakrabarty, whose work was aimed at provin-
cializing Europe, the two musicologists Tobias Janz and Chien-Chang
Yang frame their analysis around the twin goals of provincializing European
music and decentering Europe’s claim on musical modernity. To these
ends, they explicitly identify global history as their model: “Global history
is one of the liveliest fields of search and methodological reflection within
the historical sciences . . . including musicology.”25 In the same way that
global historians trailed other social studies disciplines for years in analyz-
ing global phenomena from a truly global perspective, Janz and Yang
regard their discipline as having lagged behind history from a method-
ological perspective. Global historians, beginning in the late twentieth
century, have tried to “compensate for the past imbalanced assessments of
the cultural flows between Europe and Asia”; historical musicologists,
“however, rejoined the trend only recently.”26
Janz and Yang engage with several German theorists of global history,
including Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jürgen Osterhammel, and Sebastian
Conrad.27 But, they critique Osterhammel, the author of “Globale
Horizonte europäischer Kunstmusik, 1860–1930” (Global Horizons of
European Art Music, 1860–1930, 2012). They object to his reliance on
“a ‘Weberian’ assumption of a special path” that sees European art music
as relatively free of non-Western influences. Osterhammel writes in the
article: “European music is not a derivative of external model cultures, and
in its formative period it has shown itself to be less receptive to impulses

from outside than the visual arts. Their ‘globalization content’ was com-
paratively low.”28 Instead, Janz and Yang confidently trace how European
musicians have constantly evolved their practical and theoretical method-
ologies, as well as having challenged existing musical and cultural conven-
tions, even before the period that Osterhammel’s article examines. They
show how “the rationality and coherence of (Old) European art music”
has been clearly questioned since mid-eighteenth century “from the
major-minor tonality and the periodic structure of meter, rhythm, and
musical system to the concept of the musical work.”29 Simultaneously,
they mention an additional element which further destabilizes the
Weberian assumption, this one originating from within the work of several
modernist and postwar Western musicians.
Modernist Western music since Arnold Schoenberg, Clause Debussy, and

Igor Stravinsky developed its own kind of “otherness” distinct from the
rationality of traditional European art music…. This modernist otherness
contributed to the wide acceptance of “world music” by Western audiences
in the twentieth century.30
In addition to rejecting the Weberian assumption of a European “spe-

cial path,” Janz and Yang expressly hope to decenter the West within anal-
ysis of musical modernity, following Chakrabarty’s argument in
Provincializing Europe. They distance themselves from the long-standing
Eurocentric focus of the discipline of music and embrace the new analyti-
cal challenges presented by a globalized musical culture. They reject the
model of a “single modernity” as a hegemonic discourse, for European art
music cannot be “the single measure for music from all times and places.”
Instead, they want to reframe the concept from a global perspective, which
means examining it within “particular regional contexts.” At the same
time, they are opposed to the claim that this perspective requires a rejec-
tion of Western art music, because excising European art music from a
global history of music only continues “the antiquated opposition between
world music and Western music.”31 Instead, they prefer “approaches like
‘entangled history.’”32 In their search for alternatives to the current
Eurocentric history of music, they recommend “a de-centered conception
of ‘Western music’ entangled with music from all parts of the globe.”33
More specifically, they recommend the solution suggested by Chen Kuan-
Hsing, the author of Asia as Method (2010). Chen accepts Western
8 J. M. CHO
influences as “becoming internal to base entities in Asia.” In effect, this

means that the West and Asia are “never mutually exclusive but embodied
in each other.” According to this view, they are “two inseparable and
‘entangled’ concepts.”34
The Historiographical Landscape

In recent years, a number of historical musicologists have advocated for
the globalization of their field. The most notable examples of this trend
are Christian Utz’s Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization
and Reinhard Strohm’s three edited volumes, which were assembled in
the context of the Balzan musicology project.35 This section focuses on a
subfield within the global history of music, namely, Western-East Asian
musical connections. Writing in 2013, Margaret Mehl highlighted the
dearth of scholarship in this area, with the exception of Christian Utz and
Frederick Lau’s Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities (2013): “There
is remarkably little research in English (or German) on the subject of
Western art music in Japan (and the other East Asian countries for that
matter).”36 Since 2013, the scholarly situation has somewhat improved. As
this historiographical review will show, several noteworthy volumes have
subsequently appeared. This review will begin with a brief survey of
selected monographs on the topic and then examine four edited volumes
that specifically treat Western-East Asian musical relations.
With respect to scholarly monographs on modern Western-Chinese
musical connections, because the global turn in historical musicology is
still such a new phenomenon, most contributions to this topic have only
appeared in the last two decades. One exception is Richard Curt Kraus’s
Pianos and Politics in China, which appeared in 1989. Kraus presents in
his work “a more subtly shaded image of China’s middle class intellectu-
als.” While their skills were important for China’s industrialization, “their
elitism and hostility toward China’s native arts bred resentment toward
the urban middle class.”37 Thomas Irvine’s Listening to China (2020),
which treats an earlier period, from the late eighteenth century to the mid-
nineteenth, shows China’s encounters with European music as having
shaped its own musical development. When their trade relations wors-
ened, the West focused on China’s sonic disorder, while seeing itself as the
“great” other.38 Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai’s 2004 monograph
describes how Western classical music became Chinese over the course of
the twentieth century. Similarly, their 2015 work describes how Beethoven
became a Chinese culture icon and remained a durable part of Chinese life
for several decades.39 While Lan Yao’s work (2017) examines Western
music in China in the twentieth century, Tzu-Kuang Chen’s work (2006),
by contrast, probes Chinese cultural influences in Western music during
this same period.40 Over the last several years, several works focusing on
the musical lives of German-speaking refugee musicians in wartime
Shanghai have also appeared. One such monograph is Sophie Fetthauer’s
Musiker und Musikerinnen im Shanghaier Exil 1938–1949 (2021).41
With respect to recent monographs on Western-Korean musical con-
nections, one can specifically point to Okon Hwang’s Western Art Music
in South Korea (2009), which describes how Western art music became a
leading cultural force in South Korea.42 In so doing, it seeks to overcome
the hegemony of the East/West dichotomy. Choong-sik Ahn’s The Story
of Western Music in Korea (2005) examines the adoption of Western music
in Korea, its ubiquitous presence in radio and television programming,
concerts, and recitals, the large number of Korean music students at
Western conservatories, and so on.43 Hio-Jin Kim’s monograph (2000)
compares Korean and Western musical educational systems. One chapter
analyzes German musical education and reveals it as having been a para-
digm for music education in Korea.44 There are numerous dissertations on
the Korean-German composer Isang Yun, most of which discuss his work
as having synthesized Asian ideas and music techniques with Western
musical language.45
Regarding monographs on Western-Japanese musical connections,
Margaret Mehl’s (2014) thorough examination on the history of the vio-
lin in Japan is an important recent contribution to the field. It describes
how the Japanese completely assimilated a foreign musical tradition within
a relatively short period of time. The Suzuki method was developed in
Japan, and multiple Japanese violinists made their careers in the West on
“concert stages” or in “orchestras and conservatories.”46 Irene Suchy’s
dissertation analyzes the important contributions made by German and
Austrian musicians to Japanese music before 1945.47 It discusses both
German/Austrian musicians who were hired officially (e.g., Rudolf
Dittrich, Klaus Pringsheim) by the Meiji state and German/Austrian
musicians who were hired privately (e.g., Hans Remseger, Josef Laska).
Ury Eppstein’s The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan (1994)
examines the introduction of Western music into the educational system,
school songs and song books, in Meiji-era Japan.48 A section of Bonnie
C. Wade’s book discusses Japan’s enthusiastic reception of Western music
(2005).49
10 J. M. CHO
I will now examine the four edited volumes published in the last decade
in English that share some similarities with the present volume. These
volumes testify to the growing amount of research being done on Western-
East Asian musical connections. First, the edited volume by Christian Utz
and Frederick Lau, Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities (2013),
focuses on vocal music in Western-East Asian relations. While it covers the
twentieth and twentieth-first centuries, more attention is given to the
period since the 1950s.50 Chapters in this volume examine the human
voice and cultural identity from different angles—social, historical, aes-
thetical, technical, and so on. The volume’s primary focus is not musical or
cultural entanglement, however, since most chapters examine various vocal
traditions in East Asian and Western nations. In addition, it discusses not
only art music but also popular music and media art. Secondly, the edited
volume by Hee Sook Oh, Contemporary Music in East Asia (2014), exam-
ines contemporary East Asian music since the 1960s in Korea, Japan, and
China.51 Chapters in this volume show how Western music interacted with
each of these countries’ unique musical and historical traditions. They also
examine forms of creative bi-cultural hybridity in the compositions of sev-
eral leading East Asian composers from Korea (e.g., Hwang Byungki,
Unsuk Chin), Japan (e.g., Ryuichi Sakamoto, Masahiro Miwa, Toshio
Hosokawa), and China (e.g., Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, Bunya Koh).
Third, the edited volume by Janz and Yang, Decentering Musical
Modernity (2019), as already discussed in the previous section, questions
the Weberian assumption of Europe’s unique or special development and
reframes European musical modernity within a global context. This vol-
ume focuses on “the issues of musical modernity and its history through
dialogues between scholarly communities from Europe and East Asia.”52
Notably, it includes analysis of music from less frequently mentioned
countries (Taiwan, Finland, and Sweden) and discusses not only art music
but also traditional music. Finally, the edited volume by Hon-Lun Yang
and Michael Saffle, China and the West (2017), in contrast to the three
previous volumes, deals with China exclusively. It does resemble the other
edited volumes, however, in its broad definition of the West (e.g., Austria,
the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, Canada, the US), although Germany,
in a clear contrast to this present volume, is not treated. Moreover, it
addresses issues related to Chinese-American identity. Its focus is not lim-
ited to art music but also includes musical comedies, and it discusses a
number of cross-cultural topics such as exoticism, globalization, and
hybridization.
The Organization of the Volume

In contrast to the aforementioned edited volumes, the present work,
Musical Entanglements between Germany and East Asia, has some features
that make it noteworthy. First, its focus on German music specifically,
rather than Western music broadly defined, makes this volume unique.
Despite the former’s strong historical connections with East Asia, there
are no other edited volumes in English that focus solely on German-East
Asian musical relations. With this narrower focus, this volume contributes
not only to the global history of music but also to Asian German Studies,
two fields which have both emerged over the last two decades. Another
unique scholarly attribute of this volume is its interdisciplinary nature,
since it includes contributions by both musicologists and historians. It
thus provides a good balance between musicology and cultural history,
which makes this book more accessible to non-music specialists compared
to similar edited volumes. Moreover, the following eleven chapters intro-
duce some of the latest research on German-East Asian relations. Some
chapters explore the reception of specific German composers (e.g.,
Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner) by East Asian audiences and performers.
Other chapters analyze East Asian elements present in the work of German
composers/lyricists (Busoni, d’Albert, Karlov, Toch, and Lion) or, con-
versely, German elements in the work of East Asian contemporary com-
posers (e.g., Isang Yun, Donung Lee, Eunsu Kang, PyoungRyang Ko,
Kazuo Fukushima, Hidekazu Yoshida). Finally, some of the chapters high-
light the global mobility of German and East Asian musical performers,
teachers, and students as cross-cultural agents. Examples include Franz
Eckert at the Korean royal court, German-Jewish refugee cantors in war-
time Shanghai, the various Japanese and Korean music students who stud-
ied in Germany and Austria, the importance of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse
for Korean and Japanese contemporary composers, and the Lang Lang-
Nikolaus Harnoncourt collaboration in Austria. These global musical
agents have profoundly helped shape the musical worlds of both East Asia
and Germany.
In exploring German-East Asian musical entanglements, this volume is
organized topically and chronologically in three parts. Part I examines
musical entanglements between Germany and Japan/Korea between
1900 and the end of World War II. In Chap. 2 (“The Reception of Wagner
in Japan at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”), Toru Takenaka investi-
gates a truly unexpected musical phenomenon which occurred in Japan at
12 J. M. CHO
the turn of the last century. An intense dedication to Richard Wagner

abruptly seized many Japanese intellectuals, despite many of them having
never watched the German artist’s operas on the stage. This phenomenon
reveals the mechanisms of music transfer across cultural borders, which
otherwise can remain hidden within the choices and preferences of indi-
vidual aficionados. In music transfer the aesthetic code concomitant to
music plays a significant, often invisible, role. It allows the recipients, who
may initially be puzzled by the unfamiliar sounds, to adjust to them. In the
initial stage of the transfer process, there is a transitional period in which
the arrival of the music precedes that of this code. In this awkward transi-
tional phase, non-musical, conceptual components can help the recipients
bridge the “gap” between the music and its underlying aesthetic logic.
Japanese Wagnerians at the turn of the century were a particularly extreme
case. They were fascinated by music they had never heard. It was their
intense interest in Wagner’s philosophical thought that, despite the lack of
firsthand exposure, kept them engaged in his musical work.
In Chap. 3 (“Music for Modern Korea”), Hye Eun Choi explores
Yiwangjik Yangakdae, which is the commonly used generic name of the
four incarnations of the Western-style military band associated with the
Korean royal court. Since its formation in 1901, the band experienced a
continual downward trajectory within the tumult of modern Korean his-
tory. Nevertheless, its influence on the development of Western art music
in colonial Korea was considerable. To evaluate this influence, the chapter
traces the history of the band over three decades, from its creation as an
official organization of the imperial guard to its final incarnation as a
strictly private association, focusing on its activities under the guidance of
its first bandleader, Franz Eckert (1852–1916), and his successor Baek
U-yong (1883–1930). The chapter reveals that, regardless of its title or
role, under the guidance of Eckert and Baek, the band was unrivaled in
Korea for its musical quality and social influence. Korea’s first generation
of instrumentalists who belonged to the band, because of the band’s con-
sistent presence at official state functions and public events, helped to
familiarize residents of the capital with Western art music. They also con-
tributed to the performance and education of Western music in Korea
following the eventual dissolution of the band.
In Chap. 4 (“Japanese Music Students in Germany and Austria, 1880
to 1945”), Alison Tokita documents and analyzes transnational flows of
musicians between Japan and Germany from the late nineteenth century
to the 1940s, the era of Japan’s intensive nation- and empire-building.
Focusing on Japanese musicians who were professionally active in Germany

and Austria, it illuminates the messy nature of the flows of people who
enabled and enacted Japan’s adoption of Western classical music in the
volatile geopolitical context of colonial modernity and regional and world
wars. Individuals in these musical flows experienced the dilemma of musi-
cal identity, the pressure of Orientalism and exoticization, and the diffi-
culty of negotiating connections between state, institutional, and intimate
relations. The first part of the chapter discusses Japanese who studied
abroad before 1914. The next part deals with those who studied music
abroad after 1920, when Germany and Austria again became destinations
for Japanese music students after the disruption of World War I. The chap-
ter also discusses the Korean music students, technically considered
Japanese citizens as a result of Japan’s colonization of their homeland,
who were able to study in Germany and Austria.
Part II looks at musical entanglements between Germany and China
between 1900 and 1949. In Chap. 5 (“The ‘Oriental’ Utopia”), Lufan Xu
examines Ferruccio Busoni’s wartime opera Turandot, which was informed
by a strain of neoromantic Orientalism emerging out of fin-de-siècle intel-
lectuals’ critical reflections on Western modernity. In this instance, Asia
and Asian culture were used to signify Busoni’s theory of musical auton-
omy, which enabled him to imagine a middle-ground position in the fierce
interwar debates on music culture between conservative nationalism and
liberal cosmopolitanism. Turandot provides evidence of the composer’s
aspirations to liberate himself from late romantic theatre, as well as from
operatic practices dominated by realistic principles. First, Busoni dehu-
manized opera by excising its erotic elements in order to build a musical
utopia completely free of human erotic impulses. Second, he created an
otherworldly atmosphere evocative of an exotic fantasyland through the
opera’s frame structure in the finales of Act I and Act II. Ultimately,
Turandot represents a cosmopolitan utopia of art and artists, juxtaposed
against the ultra-nationalism of German conservatives, and simultaneously
a non-political aestheticism set against the revolutionary idealism of
Germany’s younger generation.
In Chap. 6 (“Reimagining China in Interwar German Opera”), John
Gabriel argues that in the 1920s Germany and China found new common
ground in their perceived humiliations in the Treaty of Versailles, which
led to a thriving partnership as each country attempted to re-establish
itself as a world power. This chapter examines how this changed relation-
ship affected representations of China in two interwar German operas. No
14 J. M. CHO
longer an exotic fairy-tale land or a threatening “Yellow Peril” against

which German identity was defined by difference, modern China became
an allegorical site whose similarities to Germany were a means of exploring
Germany’s new postwar identity. However, these portrayals also subtly
positioned Germany in a dominant role, anticipating post-World War II
neocolonialism. The first, Eugene d’Albert and M. Karlov’s Mister Wu
(1930–1932), reconfigured the tropes of the Yellow Peril, exploring the
social upheavals experienced by Germany after the war and Germany’s
new relationship with its former colonies. The second, Ernst Toch and
Ferdinand Lion’s Der Fächer (The Fan, 1927–1930), transformed a
Chinese fairy tale into a story about modernization in Shanghai based on
capitalism, democracy, mass media, and jazz. While other German operas
portrayed this “modernity” as an American export to Germany, Der Fächer
reimagined it as a German export to China.
In Chap. 7 (“Nazi-Persecuted Jewish Cantors in Shanghai Exile”),
Sophie Fetthauer describes how, beginning in 1938, about 18,000 refu-
gees from Germany, Austria, and other European countries sought shelter
in Shanghai from Nazi persecution. These refugees included more than
forty Jewish cantors, many of whom resumed their work in the synagogues
and prayer rooms of the city. Most of these cantors followed the reformed—
liberal or conservative—version of Judaism then common in German and
Austrian Jewish communities. Shanghai’s two older Jewish communi-
ties—the Sephardic community, with its members originally from Baghdad,
and the Ashkenazic community, with its members originally from Russia—
were both rather orthodox by comparison. The history of the European
refugees in Shanghai is usually framed through the concept of entangle-
ment. The ways in which the Jewish cantors resumed their work in
Shanghai, however, were defined by traits such as solidarity and persever-
ance. This chapter shows how the Jewish cantors worked to preserve their
religious and musical identity through, firstly, the continuation of their
rites, secondly, the establishment of a professional association (Association
of Jewish Precentors Shanghai) that represented their social, economic,
and cultural concerns, and, thirdly, the foundation of a cantor’s choir
which presented “Jewish Concerts.”
Part III explores forms of German-East Asian musical entanglements
since 1945. In Chap. 8 (“What Beethoven Meant in China, 1900–1949”),
Hao Huang shows that many scholars in the West, let alone the general
public, do not comprehend how significant Beethoven has been and con-
tinues to be in China. His legacy has cast a shadow on momentous histori-
cal events in China: from the beginning of the “New Culture” movement,
to the funeral of China’s founding father Sun Yat-sen, to the development

of Shanghai into an international metropolis, to the Second Sino-Japanese
War. Beethoven has played the part of hero or villain to a host of Chinese
reformers, intellectuals, music lovers, party cadres, musicians, even gov-
ernment officials. He has been construed as a powerful cultural agent,
either a positive force for human liberation, or alternatively an instrument
of Western cultural hegemony. Beethoven and his music have been central
factors in China’s approach to Western culture, but reception has been
volatile and changeable. First introduced to China at the inception of the
New Cultural Movement in the early twentieth century, Beethoven was
heralded as a fountainhead of heroic inspiration for national “self-strength-
ening” in an age of Qing dynastic collapse. Many intellectuals believed
that learning about Beethoven and his music would help develop the
national resolve of China.
In Chap. 9 (“Mozart in the Context of Globalization”), Jinsong Chen
discusses how, in his Mozart Album (2014), the Chinese superstar pianist
Lang Lang, in collaboration with the respected Austrian Mozart authority
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, demonstrated his distinct interpretation of
Mozart’s two piano concerti (K453 and K491). With Lang’s freewheeling
musical instincts and Harnoncourt’s esteemed historically informed prac-
tice, this collaboration launched a new era of Mozart interpretation. Yet
critical debates persist, because the encounter represented an intersection
not only between the two nations’ radically different music performance
traditions but also between the two artists’ individual musical and cultural
sensibilities. The chapter, in dialogue with the collaborative, transnational,
and intercultural analyses of the global popularization of Mozart and his
music, engages with music not merely as an acoustic product but as an
ethnic phenomenon that reflects cultural, social, and economic human
experiences. The cross-cultural encounter between Lang and Harnoncourt
challenges the Eurocentric notion of standardized performance practice.
The synthesis of the two approaches to Mozart’s music reflects a multiplic-
ity of cultural practices, transforms an Austrian/European cultural prod-
uct into a global icon, and, as a result, facilitates cultural hybridity and
convergence, along with the support of globalized audience.
In Chap. 10 (“When ‘Japanese’ Music Became ‘Modern’ Music”),
Fuyuko Fukunaka examines the role played by the Internationale
Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt in introducing non-European
composers’ work, among them Japanese, to European avant-garde music
communities during its first decades. At the same time that Japanese
16 J. M. CHO
composers were intently studying the work of their counterparts in Europe

and the US, Europeans were beginning to take an increased interest in
non-European aesthetics, which symbolically culminated in John Cage’s
visit to Darmstadt in 1958. Beginning in the late 1950s the Ferienkurse
hosted many Japanese composers and performances of their work. Lectures
were given by Japanese composers and critics, among them Yoritsune
Matsudaira (1959), Kazuo Fukushima (1961), and Hidekazu Yoshida
(1962). Their lectures were meant to inspire awareness of non-European
music among Darmstadt’s avant-garde crowd. At the same time, their true
impact needs to be closely examined in the context of the concurrent
European fascination with “American” alternativism, one example being
the aforementioned Cage appearance in Darmstadt. Concepts such as
nature, silence, and space, all of which appeared in the lectures, were
instrumental in distinguishing Cage’s aesthetics from those of his European
counterparts. By the same process, “Japanese” music was transformed into
an alternative vision of postwar musical modernism.
In Chap. 11 (“Korean-German Musical Entanglements during the
Cold War”), Hyejin Yi analyzes Yun Isang (1917–1995), who moved to
Europe in 1956 and lived the remainder of his life there as a Korean-
German composer. In the European creative music world, he was rated as
“the first composer who combined Asian ideas and music techniques with
Western musical language to perfection.” As a composer who had, directly
or indirectly, experienced the series of political and social crises in South
Korea during the second half of the twentieth century, Yun Isang pos-
sessed the unique resume of having been barred from his own country,
becoming thereafter an artist in exile. The East Berlin Affair in 1967 most
dramatically affected his life. During the late 1950s and 1960s, when seri-
alism—which aims at the systematic organization of all the musical ele-
ments—declined, the composer from East Asia readily accommodated his
work to European avant-garde music. However, after the East Berlin
Affair, his music showed a return to classical musical convention, with
features such as distinct melody contours and tonal gestures. This shift
may be attributable to his new perspective on art, which was that art
should not merely serve itself but instead value reality, revealing the
humanistic voice therein.
In Chap. 12 (“Korean Contemporary Music and Germany”), Hee Suk
Oh describes how, soon after the introduction of Western music to Korea
at the end of the nineteenth century, many Korean composers began to
travel overseas to study and many of these musicians chose Germany for
their studies. One of the most significant composers who studied in

Germany was Isang Yun, whose music was deeply influenced by “German”
culture and society. His example led younger scholars to also choose
Germany for their studies. Since then, “Germany” has held considerable
significance for Korean contemporary music. What did it mean for some-
thing to be “German” to Korean composers? How was the influence of
“Germany” incorporated into the musical works of Korean composers?
These are a few of the research questions which this chapter interrogates.
To this end, the impact of “Germany” on Korean contemporary music is
analyzed by examining the work of composers who themselves had stud-
ied in Germany. Three prolific Korean composers who studied in Germany
are discussed: Donung Lee, Eunsu Kang, and Woosung Cho. Their styles,
the aesthetics of their music, and their views on music are analyzed in
order to identify the profound influence of “Germany” on Korean con-
temporary music.
In conclusion, this edited volume seeks to shed new light on German-
East Asian musical entanglements in the twentieth and twentieth-first cen-
turies by introducing new transnational topics and re-examining previously
explored topics from transnational perspectives. This volume presents
both German perceptions of East Asia and East Asian perceptions of
Germany. Although East Asian nations have historically shared many com-
mon features, each has had a unique musical relationship with German
music. Two key points have been highlighted in this chapter. Firstly, this
volume rejects the Weberian assumption that European art music has
existed on a separate developmental track from non-Western music. It also
supports the project of provincializing or decentering traditional
Eurocentric narratives by highlighting the concept of entanglement.
Secondly, this volume proves that Germany and East Asia have both bor-
rowed from each other’s culture and music. East Asians passionately
adopted German art music, which is now an integral part of their own
musical identity. Although less commonly known, as some of the chapters
in this volume reveal, German art music has also been influenced by East
Asian cultural elements. In the twenty-first century, one can expect that
these music entanglements will further intensify, mutually enriching both
East Asia and Germany.
18 J. M. CHO
Notes
1. Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red. How Western Classical
Music Became Chinese (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004), 1.
2. Jürgen Osterhammel, “Globale Horizonte europäischer Kunstmusik,
1860–1930,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38, no. 1 (2012): 87–88.
3. Margaret Mehl, “Introduction. Western Art Music in Japan: A Success
Story?” Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 10 (2013): 215.
4. Ibid., 211.
5. Richard Curt Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China. Middle-Class Ambitions
and the Struggle over Western Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989), 3–4.
6. Mehl, “Introduction,” 211.
7. Hans-Alexander Kneider, “Franz Eckert and Richard Wunsch: Two
Prussians in Korean Service,” in Transnational Encounters between
Germany and Korea. Affinity in Culture and Politics since the 1880s, ed.
Joanne Miyang Cho and Lee M. Roberts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2018), 83–84.
8. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and
Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008);
Tobias Janz and Chien-Chang Yang, “Introduction: Musicology, Musical
Modernity, and the Challenges of Entangled History,” in Decentering
Musical Modernity. Perspectives on East Asian and European Music History,
ed. Tobias Janz and Chien-Chang Yang (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019).
9. Jerry H. Bentley, “Cultural Exchanges in World History,” in The Oxford
Handbook of World History, ed. Jerry H. Bentley (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 345.
10. Charkrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 4. For a discussion on Chakrabarty,
see Joanne Miyang Cho, “Provincializing Albert Schweitzer’s Ethical
Colonialism in Africa,” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 16,
no 1 (2011): 73–74.
11. Cho, “Provincializing Albert Schweitzer,” 73; see Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe, 22–23.
12. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 7.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 8.
15. Ibid., 3–4, 42.
16. Ibid., 43.
17. Ibid., 4.
18. Peter Burke, Cultural Hybridity (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 10–11.
19. Ibid., 40.
20. Ibid., 11.
21. Ibid., 113.

22. Thomas Adam, Intercultural Transfers and the Making of the Modern
World: Sources and Contexts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 5.
23. Toru Takenaka, “A close country in the distance: Japanese images of
Germany in the twentieth century,” in Transnational Encounters between
Germany and East Asia since 1900, ed. Joanne Miyang Cho (New York:
Routledge, 2018), 97; cf. Joanne Miyang Cho, “Historical Survey,
Historiography, and Organization,” in German-East Asian Encounters and
Entanglement: Affinity in Culture and Politics since 1945, ed. Joanne
Miyang Cho (New York: Routledge, 2021), 5–6.
24. Jerry H. Bentley, “The Task of World History,” in The Oxford Handbook of
World History, ed. Jerry H. Bentley (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 12–13.
25. Janz and Yang, “Introduction,” 11.
26. Ibid., 20–21.
27. Ibid., 21.
28. Osterhammel, “Globale Horizonte europäischer Kunstmusick,” 102.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid, 25–27.
32. Tobias Janz and Chien-Chang Yang, “Preface,” in Decentering Musical
Modernity, 6.
34. Ibid., 28.
35. Christian Utz, Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization. New
Perspectives on Music History in the 20th and 21st Century. Revised and
expanded ed., trans. Laurence Sinclair Willis (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021);
Reinhard Strohm, “The Balzan Musicology Project towards a Global
History of Music, the Study of Global Modernisation, and Open Questions
for the Future,” Musicology 27 (2019), http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/
doi/1450-9814/2019/1450-98141927015S.pdf. Reinhard Strohm has
edited the following three volumes as part of the Balzan musicology proj-
ect: Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project (New
York: Routledge, 2018); The Music Road. Coherence and Diversity in Music
from the Mediterranean to India (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the
British Academy, 2019); and Transcultural Music History: Global
Participation and Regional Diversity in the Modern Age (Berlin: Verlag für
Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2020).
36. Mehl, “Introduction,” 212.
37. Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China, x.
38. Thomas Irvine, Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounters,
1770–1839 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
20 J. M. CHO
39. Melvin and Cai, Rhapsody in Red; Jindong Cai and Sheila Melvin, Beethoven
in China. How the great composer became an icon in the People’s Republic
(Melbourne: Penguin Books, 2015).
40. Lan Yao, Westliche Musik im modernen China 1900–2000: im Vergleich zur
chinesischen Musikkultur (Saarbrücken: AV Akademikerverlag, 2017);
Tzu-Kuang Chen, Chinesische Kultur in der westlichen Musik des 20.
Jahrhunderts: Modelle zur interkulturellen Musikpädagogik (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2006); Elizabeth Wetter, The Rise and Development of
Western Music in China (Saarbrücken: Akademiker Verlag, 2020).
41. Sophie Fetthauer, Musiker und Musikerinnen im Shanghaier Exil
1938–1949 (Neumünster: Rolf von Bockel Verlag, 2021).
42. Okon Hwang, Western Art Music in South Korea: Everyday Experience and
Cultural Critique (Saarbrücken; VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009).
43. Choong-sik Ahn, The Story of Western Music in Korea: Social History,
1885–1950 (Morgan Hill, CA: EBooks and Books, 2005).
44. Hio-Jin Kim, Koreanische und westliche Musikerausbildung: historische
Rekonstruktion – Vergleich – Perspektiven (Marburg: Tectum, 2000).
45. Some examples of dissertations on Isang Yun include: Sonia Choy, “The
Fusion of Korean and Western Elements in Isang Yun’s Konzert für Flöte
und kleines Orchester (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 2004); Yong Su
Clark, “The Legacy and Influences of Isang Yun’s Musical Aesthetics”
(PhD diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 2018); Ko Eun Lee,
“Isang Yun’s Musical Bilingualism: Serial Technique and Korean Elements
in Fünf Stücke für Klavier (1958) and His Later Piano Works” (PhD diss.,
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2012); Cf. There are some
edited volumes that deal with Isang Yun. Hanns-Werner Heister and
Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer, eds. Der Komponist Isang Yun, zweiter, erweit-
erte Auflage (Munich: Ed. Text und Kritik, 1997); Hinrich Bergmeier, ed.,
Isang Yun, Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1992);
Martin H. Schmitt, ed., Franz Eckert – Li Mirok – Yun Isang. Botschafter
fremder Kulturen. Deutschland-Korea (Oberursel/Ts.: Regardeur
III, 2010).
46. Margaret Mehl. Not by Love Alone. The Violin in Japan, 1850–2010
(Copenhagen: Sound Book Press, 2014)
47. Irene Suchy, “Deutschsprachige Musiker in Japan vor 1945: eine Fallstudie
eines Kulturtransfers am Beispiel der Rezeption abendländischer
Kunstmusik” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1992).
48. Ury Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1994).
49. Bonnie C. Wade, Music in Japan. Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
50. Christian Utz and Frederick Lau, eds., Vocal Music and Contemporary
Identities. Unlimited Voices in East Asia and the West. New York:
Routledge, 2013.
51. Hee Sook Oh, ed., Contemporary Music in East Asia (Seoul: Seoul National
University Press, 2014).
Bibliography
Adam, Thomas. Intercultural Transfers and the Making of the Modern World:
Sources and Contexts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Ahn, Choong-sik. The Story of Western Music in Korea: Social History, 1885–1950.
Morgan Hill: EBooks and Books, 2005.
Bentley, Jerry H. “The Task of World History.” In The Oxford Handbook of World
History, edited by Jerry H. Bentley, 1–16. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
———. “Cultural Exchanges in World History.” In The Oxford Handbook of World
History, edited by Jerry H. Bentley, 343–60. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
Bergmeier, Hinrich, ed. Isang Yun, Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag. Berlin: Bote &
Bock, 1992.
Burke, Peter. Cultural Hybridity. Cambridge: Polity, 2009.
Cai, Jindong, and Sheila Melvin. Beethoven in China. How the Great Composer
Became an Icon in the People’s Republic. Melbourne: Penguin Books, 2015.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Chen, Tzu-Kuang. Chinesische Kultur in der westlichen Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts:
Modelle zur interkulturellen Musikpädagogik. Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 2006.
Cho, Joanne Miyang. “Provincializing Albert Schweitzer’s Ethical Colonialism in
Africa.” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 16, no.1 (2011): 71–86.
———. “Historical Survey, Historiography, and Organization.” In German-East
Asian Encounters and Entanglement: Affinity in Culture and Politics since
1945, edited by Joanne Miyang Cho, 1–20. New York: Routledge, 2021.
Eppstein, Ury. The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan. Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1994.
Fetthauer, Sophie. Musiker und Musikerinnen im Shanghaier Exil 1938–1949.
Neumünster: Rolf von Bockel Verlag, 2021.
Heister, Hanns-Werner, and Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer, eds. Der Komponist Isang
Yun, zweiter, erweiterte Auflage. Munich: Ed. Text und Kritik. 1997.
Hwang, Okon. Western Art Music in South Korea: Everyday Experience and
Cultural Critique. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009.
22 J. M. CHO
Irvine, Thomas. Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounters,

1770–1839. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
Janz, Tobias, and Chien-Chang Yang, eds. Decentering Musical Modernity.
Perspectives on East Asian and European Music History. Bielefeld:
Transcript, 2019.
Kim, Hio-Jin. Koreanische und westliche Musikerausbildung: historische
Rekonstruktion – Vergleich – Perspektiven. Marburg: Tectum, 2000.
Kneider, Hans-Alexander. “Franz Eckert and Richard Wunsch: Two Prussians in
Korean Service.” In Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea.
Affinity in Culture and Politics since the 1880s, edited by Joanne Miyang Cho
and Lee M. Roberts, 79–97. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Kraus, Richard Curt. Pianos and Politics in China. Middle-Class Ambitions and the
Struggle over Western Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Mehl, Margaret. “Introduction. Western Art Music in Japan: A Success
Story?” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 10 (2013): 211–22.
———. Not by Love Alone. The Violin in Japan, 1850–2010. Copenhagen: Sound
Book Press, 2014.
Melvin, Sheila, and Jindong Cai. Rhapsody in Red. How Western Classical Music
Became Chinese. New York: Algora Publishing, 2004.
Oh, Hee Sook, ed. Contemporary Music in East Asia. Seoul: Seoul National
University Press, 2014.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. “Globale Horizonte europäischer Kunstmusik,
1860–1930.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38, no. 1 (2012): 86–132.
Schmitt, Martin H. Franz Eckert – Li Mirok – Yun Isang. Botschafter fremder
Kulturen. Deutschland-Korea. Oberursel/Ts.: Regardeur III, 2010.
Strohm, Reinhard. “The Balzan Musicology Project Towards a Global History
of Music, the Study of Global Modernisation, and Open Questions for the
Future.” Musicology 27 (2019). http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/1450-
9814/2019/1450-98141927015S.pdf.
Takenaka, Toru. “A Close Country in the Distance: Japanese Images of Germany
in the Twentieth Century.” In Transnational Encounters between Germany and
East Asia since 1900, edited by Joanne Miyang Cho, 85–100. New York:
Routledge, 2018.
Utz, Christian. Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization. New
Perspectives on Music History in the 20th and 21st Century. Revised and expanded
ed. Translated by Laurence Sinclair Willis. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021.
Utz, Christian, and Frederick Lau, eds. Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities.
Unlimited Voices in East Asia and the West. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Wade, Bonnie C. Music in Japan. Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005.
Wetter, Elizabeth. The Rise and Development of Western Music in China.
Saarbrücken: Akademiker Verlag, 2020.
Yao, Lan. Westliche Musik im modernen China 1900–2000: im Vergleich zur chine-
sischen Musikkultur. Saarbrücken: AV Akademikerverlag, 2017.
PART I
German-Japanese/Korean
Entanglements, 1900–1945: Wagner,
Bandmasters, and Japanese Students
CHAPTER 2
The Reception of Wagner in Japan

at the Turn of the Twentieth Century:
A Non-musical Dimension of Cross-Border
Music Transfer
Toru Takenaka
Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, a wave of enthusiasm for
Richard Wagner engulfed young Japanese intellectuals.1 Renowned writ-
ers such as the poet Shimazaki Tōson (1872–1943), the novelist Nagai
Kafū (1879–1959), and the poet Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912), as
well as many university students, feverishly discussed the loftiness of his
music dramas and revered Wagner as a new cultural hero. As described by
a contemporary, many “began all of a sudden to praise Wagner’s music.”2
The boom was so intense and wide-ranging that one researcher speaks of
an “epidemic of Wagnerianism” that gripped Japanese intellectual circles.3
There was, however, something very peculiar about this boom: few of
these dedicated Wagnerians actually had firsthand experience with the
T. Takenaka (*)
NIAD-QE, Tokyo, Japan
Osaka University, Suita, Japan
e-mail: takenaka@niad.ac.jp
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Switzerland AG 2021
J. M. Cho (ed.), Musical Entanglements between Germany and East
Asia, Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78209-2_2
26 T. TAKENAKA
composer’s music dramas.4 In effect, as strange as it may sound, most of

them had become enthusiastic fans of the German artist without ever hav-
ing watched one of his operas. To a certain extent, this was understand-
able, given that there had not yet been a performance of a music drama in
Japan; staging Wagner’s work in Japan would have simply been too diffi-
cult. Furthermore, it had only been a few decades since European music
had first been introduced to Japan.
Even taking this into account, it is surprising that such collective enthu-
siasm could emerge for music that had not actually been publicly per-
formed. In this chapter, I first try to account for this puzzle by discussing
how contemporary Japanese intellectuals experienced Wagner, why he was
singled out for admiration, and what it was about him and his work that
was regarded as worthy of admiration. We will see that the Japanese
Wagner boom was more a product of ideological affinity than of musical
aesthetic appreciation. Specifically, the critique of the social status quo
articulated by the völkisch/Life Reform movements inspired the thinking
of the boom’s primary advocate, Anesaki Chōfū (1873–1949). Similarly,
ideology helped devotees such as Ishikawa attempt to rationalize their
socio-cultural frustration. Subsequently, I will try to show both empiri-
cally and theoretically that this conceptional reception of music “through
the head,” as evidenced by the Japanese Wagnerians, is not necessarily an
anomaly in music history. Rather, it speaks to the significance of non-
musical elements in cross-border music transfer, which was an important
aspect of the German/European-Asian music relationship.
What Was the Wagner Boom?

The Wagner boom was passionate to say the least. The Wagnerians did not
hesitate from using exaggerated phrases in expressing their adulation of
the composer. Ishikawa, for example, who had developed a devotion to
the German composer as an adolescent, described him as a “giant who left
behind unprecedented examples and conveyed profound predictions and
instructions about the future of mankind.”5 Ishikawa’s reverence toward
Wagner approached that of a cultist. He even pinned a portrait of Wagner
cut out of a journal on one of the walls of his room. Inspired by Wagner’s
work, the young poet constructed an ambitious, although ultimately
unrealized, plan to devise a panoramic theory of human civilization. In his
semi-religious devotion to Wagner, Kondō Itsugorō (1880–1915), a stu-
dent of Western languages, was second to none. He admired Wagner
2 THE RECEPTION OF WAGNER IN JAPAN AT THE TURN… 27
because “he, by creating the music dramas, perfected the sublime synthe-
sis of genres of art and tried to bring salvation to the masses.”6
Kondō and his comrades, who organized the association Waguneru
Kai (Wagner Club), were not content with passively appreciating Wagner’s
masterpieces. The student group instead took up the challenge of staging
a Wagnerian music drama themselves. Their plans, however, were overly
ambitious, and they were forced to change direction, eventually staging
Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice rather than their original
choice of Tannhäuser. Moreover, unable to muster an orchestra, their per-
formance was instead accompanied by a piano. Even so, they did success-
fully stage their opera in 1903, the first ever performance of its kind by
Japanese.
Interest in Wagner’s work was not confined to its performative ele-
ment but also addressed its theoretical foundations. A highly specialized
debate over Wagner’s compositional idiom, between the famous writer
Mori Ō gai (1862–1922), who had studied in Germany for four years in
the mid-1880s, and Ueda Bin (1874–1916), a linguistically talented
scholar of literature, had already taken place in 1896, with the two men
debating whether to align Wagner’s “endless melody” within the tradi-
tion of the recitative in Western opera. Notably, both opponents were
able to draw on extensive musicological knowledge in making their
respective arguments, referring to the Franco-Flemish School of the fif-
teenth century, Gluck, and Mozart, among others.7
Wagner’s music was thus received in Meiji Japan by a public fanbase
that was both intense and broadly diverse. In an age before music repro-
ductions were widely available, it may be surprising to see this kind of
collective enthusiasm for foreign music. In order to understand how this
happened, we should first examine the origins of the Wagner boom, which
can be traced to a series of journal articles published in 1902 by Anesaki
Chōfū, a scholar of religious studies. Anesaki was instantaneously capti-
vated by Wagner’s music drama while watching Rheingold one evening as
a student in Berlin. His enthusiasm grew as he became acquainted with the
other operas in the Ring des Niebelungen (The Ring of the Niebelung).
He expressed this exhilaration through a series of articles which were pub-
lished in the influential highbrow journal Taiyo ̄. His homage to Wagner
resonated with his readers, and the impact of his articles rippled through-
out Japanese intellectual circles, thus giving rise to the Wagner boom.8
This widespread enthusiasm is all the more mystifying because, aside
from a handful of individuals like Mori and Anesaki who had spent time
28 T. TAKENAKA
abroad, none of Wagner’s devotees had ever actually seen a live staging of
one of his operas, especially because no music drama had yet been staged
in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Japan. The infrastructure to stage such a
large-scale opera did not exist in Tokyo, which is understandable if we
remember that it had only been barely a half century since Western music
had been introduced to Japan following the country’s forced opening in
the mid-1850s. To be sure, Western tunes had indeed gained some ground
in Meiji society during Japan’s era of frantic modernization.9 Even so,
Japan still lacked operatic soloists and choral singers capable of tackling
Wagner’s difficult work, not to mention the stage artists and lighting tech-
nicians required for his music dramas. The orchestras of that time were, at
best, incomplete. Furthermore, there were no suitable venues in Tokyo at
the time. Nearly all of the capital’s theaters were built in the Japanese style,
where the audience sat on tatami mats rather than on chairs. Under these
circumstances, a staging of a music drama was out of the question.10
Hence, Meiji Wagnerians interested in a live performance of Wagner’s
music had to be content with orchestral excerpts or, as was more com-
monly the case, piano arrangements. The young Wagner-admirer Ishikawa,
who lived in a province distant from Tokyo, was most likely only familiar
with the piano arrangements of a few pieces by his hero. In short, most
Japanese Wagnerians did not actually know Wagner’s music.
Three Questions About the Wagner Boom

This naturally prompts several questions. First, how did these individuals
experience Wagner’s music drama if they weren’t able to watch it per-
formed? Second, what made Wagner in particular, out of all Western musi-
cians and composers, the object of this veneration? Finally, what did they
see as admirable about Wagner? These are the questions this chapter is
trying to answer. The first question is relatively easy: the only possible
access to Wagner for most Japanese was through his publications. We may
well speculate on the efficacy of conveying such sensual sentiments through
these somewhat more conceptual conduits. This problem must have been
equally perplexing for Japanese Wagnerians, but it could not be helped.
They did believe that it was possible for emotions to be shared in this way,
however foreign this concept may seem to us.
Indeed, there are witnesses who speak to the extent that admirers relied
on published knowledge. A case in point is Ishikura Kosaburō (1881–1965),
a university student of German literature and one of the core members of
2 THE RECEPTION OF WAGNER IN JAPAN AT THE TURN… 29
the above-mentioned Orfeo ed Euridice team. He later confessed that

when he first learned about Western opera he felt a deep yearning, although
he had no idea whatsoever of what it was actually like. He and his com-
rades did their best to grope ahead, relying on “what we vaguely imagined
from books.”11 One of the useful sources of knowledge for them was the
biography of Wagner by Houston Stewart Chamberlain.12 On this aspect
it is worth pointing out that, of all Western musicians, Wagner was par-
ticularly accessible through publications. Alongside his work as a com-
poser and conductor, he was such a prolific writer that his essays and
poetry fill ten volumes. Beyond his own writing, he also had a devoted
entourage, the Bayreuth Circle, which worked to disseminate the master’s
music and philosophy even further.13 Chamberlain, Wagner’s son-in-law,
was one of the leading apostles of Wagnerism. For Japanese admirers of
Wagner, most of whom were Western-style intellectuals with university
education and were therefore proficient in European languages, it was not
difficult to acquire information through books and journals.
Their book-oriented approach affected their discourse on Wagner and
his work. Their plaudits, no matter how sophisticated they may have been
rhetorically, were confined to the abstract sphere of theory. Kondō, for
example, repeats superlative phrases like “magnificence” in praising
Wagner’s music dramas but never elaborates on how specifically it is mag-
nificent musically. Overall, very few Japanese Wagnerian addressed the
musical quality of Wagner’s work, meaning that the composer’s innovative
theories and unique style went unmentioned, let alone the interpretative
role of the singers and conductors in staging the work.
Why was the object of this veneration Wagner, out of all Western com-
posers? Was there a compelling reason that it was not, say, Brahms or
Mozart? This is the second question of this chapter. The decisive reason
was no doubt the great sensation surrounding Wagner and his work in the
Western music world at the time. His epoch-making art conquered opera
houses across Europe. Munich was undoubtedly one of the strongholds of
Wagnerism, as the Bavarian king Ludwig II was personally a generous
patron of the composer.14 In Vienna as well Wagner’s music dramas were
frequently on the program at the Staatsoper. Moreover, these performances
were reviewed meticulously in dailies and journals.15 Wagner’s work was
popular not just in Europe but also across the Atlantic; in the United
States, the cult around Wagner dominated musical high culture during the
last decades of the nineteenth century.16 It is only natural that young
Japanese intellectuals, who were acutely sensitive to new international
30 T. TAKENAKA
trends because of their Western-style education,17 would have also eagerly

responded to Wagnerism.
The third question is trickier. What was it about Wagner that aroused
this veneration by Japanese intellectuals? If a different composer had been
the prolific, acclaimed writer and international celebrity of the era, would
he have received the same kind of devotion in Japan? A possible clue is
provided by Anesaki, the instigator of the Wagner boom. When we read
his articles on Wagner carefully, we are struck at how little he actually
addresses the music itself. Almost nothing is said about Wagner’s idiom,
nor about the singers, chorus, and orchestra of the performances he
attended. Instead, the author merely summarizes the operas’ plots in a
highly speculative manner, ornamented with philosophical terms. This is
baffling but understandable when we reflect on his background. Anesaki,
who had been raised in a family of traditional craftsmen in the old imperial
city of Kyoto, had little contact with Western music in his youth, with the
exception of a few simple school songs. We should also remember that
Western music, with its utterly alien sounds, initially aroused a strong aver-
sion among Japanese when it was first introduced in the mid-nineteenth
century.18 As a result, it is reasonable to suspect that Anesaki had minimal
familiarity with Western music before he encountered Wagner. Could
Anesaki, who was probably much more comfortable with Japanese tradi-
tional music, have truly understood the musical complexity of Wagner’s
pioneering work so quickly? Probably not. Thus his approach to Wagner
was not all that different from that of his fellow Wagnerians in Tokyo,
despite the opportunities he had to see the music dramas performed first-
hand in Berlin.
Even more importantly, the articles are, in their essence, not really
about the music. Their tone is, despite the occasional acclamatory phrase,
less an homage to the composer and more an exhaustive critique of
Wilhelmine society. Anesaki argues that Germany, behind the veneer of
unprecedented prosperity, has been thoroughly corrupted by the material-
ist spirit of the day. The only thing that anyone cares about is making
money, while the blatant decay of public morals goes unchecked.
Germany’s reputation as the motherland of scholarship does not reflect
the current condition of its academic community, which has fully stag-
nated. The Protestant Church has degenerated. All it preaches is subservi-
ence to state authority and nationalist chauvinism. Vested particularist
interests deeply rooted in class and occupation fragment society, and out-
ward displays of national unity are uniformly xenophobic. In expressing
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features in the case; the fever was peculiar. It might have been
produced by certain conditions and localities. It might be contagious,
it might not be, he could not say; but of one thing he was certain,
there would be no protracted struggle, the crisis would arrive very
soon. She would either be better or beyond help in a few days, and it
was more than likely that she would never recover consciousness.
He would do all he could to save her, and he knew Madame Jozain
was an excellent nurse; she had nursed with him through an
epidemic. The invalid could not be in better hands. Then he wrote a
prescription, and while he was giving madame some general
directions, he patted kindly the golden head of the lovely child, who
leaned over the bed with her large, solemn eyes fixed on her
mother’s face, while her little hands caressed the tangled hair and
burning cheeks.
“Her child?” he asked, looking sadly at the little creature.
“Yes, the only one. She takes it hard. I really don’t know what to do
with her.”
“Poor lamb, poor lamb!” he muttered, as madame hurried him to
the door.
Shortly after the doctor left, there was a little ripple of excitement,
which entered even into the sick-room—the sound of wheels, and
Raste giving orders in a subdued voice, while two large, handsome
trunks were brought in and placed in the corner of the back
apartment. These two immense boxes looked strangely out of place
amid their humble surroundings; and when madame looked at them
she almost trembled, thinking of the difficulty of getting rid of such
witnesses should a day of reckoning ever come. When the little
green door closed on them, it seemed as if the small house had
swallowed up every trace of the mother and child, and that their
identity was lost forever.
For several days the doctor continued his visits, in a more or less
lucid condition, and every day he departed with a more dejected
expression on his haggard face. He saw almost from the first that the
case was hopeless; and his heart (for he still had one) ached for the
child, whose wide eyes seemed to haunt him with their intense
misery. Every day he saw her sitting by her mother’s side, pale and
quiet, with such a pitiful look of age on her little face, such repressed
suffering in every line and expression as she watched him for some
gleam of hope, that the thought of it tortured him and forced him to
affect a cheerfulness and confidence which he did not feel. But, in
spite of every effort to deceive her, she was not comforted. She
seemed to see deeper than the surface. Her mother had never
recognized her, never spoken to her, since that dreadful night, and,
in one respect, she seemed already dead to her. Sometimes she
seemed unable to control herself, and would break out into sharp,
passionate cries, and implore her mother, with kisses and caresses,
to speak to her—to her darling, her baby. “Wake up, mama, wake up!
It’s Lady Jane! It’s darling! Oh, mama, wake up and speak to me!”
she would cry almost fiercely.
Then, when madame would tell her that she must be quiet, or her
mother would never get well, it was touching to witness her efforts at
self-control. She would sit for hours silent and passive, with her
mother’s hand clasped in hers, and her lips pressed to the feeble
fingers that had no power to return her tender caress.
Whatever was good in Madame Jozain showed itself in
compassion for the suffering little one, and no one could have been
more faithful than she in her care of both the mother and child; she
felt such pity for them, that she soon began to think she was acting
in a noble and disinterested spirit by keeping them with her, and
nursing the unfortunate mother so faithfully. She even began to
identify herself with them; they were hers by virtue of their
friendlessness; they belonged to no one else, therefore they
belonged to her; and, in her self-satisfaction, she imagined that she
was not influenced by any unworthy motive in her treatment of them.
One day, only a little more than a week after the arrival of the
strangers, a modest funeral wended its way through the narrow
streets of Gretna toward the ferry, and the passers stopped to stare
at Adraste Jozain, dressed in his best suit, sitting with much dignity
beside Dr. Debrot in the only carriage that followed the hearse.
“It’s a stranger, a relative of Madame Jozain,” said one who knew.
“She came from Texas with her little girl, less than two weeks ago,
and yesterday she died, and last night the child was taken down with
the same fever, and they say she’s unconscious to-day, so madame
couldn’t leave her to go to the funeral. No one will go to the house,
because that old doctor from the other side says it may be catching.”
That day the Bergeron tomb in the old St. Louis cemetery was
opened for the first time since Madame Jozain’s father was placed
there, and the lovely young widow was laid amongst those who were
neither kith nor kin.
When Raste returned from the funeral, he found his mother sitting
beside the child, who lay in the same heavy stupor that marked the
first days of the mother’s illness. The pretty golden hair was spread
over the pillow; under the dark lashes were deep violet shadows,
and the little cheeks glowed with the crimson hue of fever.
Madame was dressed in her best black gown, and she had been
weeping freely. At the sight of Raste in the door, she started up and
burst into heart-breaking sobs.
“Oh, mon cher, oh, mon ami, we are doomed. Was ever any one
so unfortunate? Was ever any one so punished for a good deed?
I’ve taken a sick stranger into my house, and nursed her as if she
were my own, and buried her in my family tomb, and now the child’s
taken down, and Doctor Debrot says it is a contagious fever, and we
may both take it and die. That’s what one gets in this world for trying
to do good!”
“Nonsense, mum, don’t look on the dark side; old Debrot don’t
know. I’m the one that gave it out that the fever was catching. I didn’t
want to have people prying about here, finding out everything. The
child’ll be better or worse in a few days, and then we’ll clear out from
this place, raise some money on the things, and start fresh
somewhere else.”
“Well,” said madame, wiping away her tears, much comforted by
Raste’s cheerful view of the situation, “no one can say that I haven’t
done my duty to the poor thing, and I mean to be kind to the child,
and nurse her through the fever whether it’s catching or not. It’s hard
to be tied to a sick bed this hot weather; but I’m almost thankful the
little thing’s taken down, and isn’t conscious, for it was dreadful to
see the way she mourned for her mother. Poor woman, she was so
young and pretty, and had such gentle ways. I wish I knew who she
was, especially now I’ve put her in the Bergeron tomb.”
CHAPTER VI
PEPSIE
E VERY one about that part of Good Children Street knew Pepsie.
She had been a cripple from infancy, and her mother, Madelon,
or “Bonnie Praline,” as she was called, was also quite a noted figure
in the neighborhood. They lived in a tiny, single cottage, wedged in
between the pharmacist, on the corner, and M. Fernandez, the
tobacconist, on the other side. There was a narrow green door, and
one long window, with an ornamental iron railing across it, through
which the interior of the little room was visible from the outside. It
was a very neat little place, and less ugly than one would expect it to
be. A huge four-post bed, with red tester and lace-covered pillows,
almost filled one side of the room; opposite the bed a small fireplace
was hung with pink paper, and the mantel over it was decorated with
a clock, two vases of bright paper flowers, a blue bottle, and a green
plaster parrot; a small armoire, a table above which hung a crucifix
and a highly colored lithograph of the Bleeding Heart, and a few
chairs completed the furniture of the quaint little interior; while the
floor, the doorsteps, and even the sidewalk were painted red with
powdered brick-dust, which harmonized very well with the faded
yellow stucco of the walls and the dingy green of the door and batten
shutter.
Behind this one little front room was a tiny kitchen and yard, where
Madelon made her pralines and cakes, and where Tite Souris, a half-
grown darky, instead of a “little mouse,” washed, cooked, and
scrubbed, and “waited on Miss Peps” during Madelon’s absence; for
Madelon was a merchant. She had a stand for cakes and pralines
upon Bourbon Street, near the French Opera House, and thither she
went every morning, with her basket and pans of fresh pralines,
sugared pecans, and calas tout chaud, a very tempting array of
dainties, which she was sure to dispose of before she returned at
night; while Pepsie, her only child, and the treasure of her life,
remained at home, sitting in her high chair by the window, behind the
iron railing.
And Pepsie sitting at her window was as much a part of the street
as were the queer little houses, the tiny shops, the old vegetable
woman, the cobbler on the banquette, the wine merchant, or the
grocer. Every one knew her: her long, sallow face with flashing dark
eyes, wide mouth with large white teeth, which were always visible in
a broad smile, and the shock of heavy black hair twisted into a quaint
knot on top of her head, which was abnormally large, and set close
to the narrow, distorted shoulders, were always visible, “from early
morn till dewy eve,” at the window; while her body below the
shoulders was quite hidden by a high table drawn forward over her
lap. On this table Pepsie shelled the pecans, placing them in three
separate piles, the perfect halves in one pile, those broken by
accident in another, and those slightly shriveled, and a little rancid, in
still another. The first were used to make the sugared pecans for
which Madelon was justly famous; the second to manufacture into
pralines, so good that they had given her the sobriquet of “Bonne
Praline”; and the third pile, which she disdained to use in her
business, nothing imperfect ever entering into her concoctions, were
swept into a box, and disposed of to merchants who had less
principle and less patronage.
All day long Pepsie sat her window, wielding her little iron
nutcracker with much dexterity. While the beautiful clean halves fell
nearly always unbroken on their especial pile, she saw everything
that went on in the street, her bright eyes flashed glances of
recognition up and down, her broad smile greeted in cordial welcome
those who stopped at her window to chat, and there was nearly
always some one at Pepsie’s window. She was so happy, so bright,
and so amiable that every one loved her, and she was the idol of all
the children in the neighborhood—not, however, because she was
liberal with pecans. Oh, no; with Pepsie, business was business, and
pecans cost money, and every ten sugared pecans meant a nickel
for her mother; but they loved to stand around the window, outside
the iron railing, and watch Pepsie at her work. They liked to see her
with her pile of nuts and bowl of foaming sugar before her. It seemed
like magic, the way she would sugar them, and stick them together,
and spread them out to dry on the clean white paper. She did it so
rapidly that her long white fingers fairly flashed between the bowl of
sugar, the pile of nuts, and the paper. And there always seemed just
enough of each, therefore her just discrimination was a constant
wonder.
When she finished her task, as she often did before dark, Tite
Souris took away the bowl and the tray of sugared nuts, after Pepsie
had counted them and put the number down in a little book, as much
to protect herself against Tite Souris’s depredations as to know the
exact amount of their stock in trade; then she would open the little
drawer in the table, and take out a prayer-book, a piece of
needlework, and a pack of cards.
She was very pious, and read her prayers several times a day;
after she put her prayer-book aside she usually devoted some time
to her needlework, for which she had real talent; then, when she
thought she had earned her recreation, she put away her work,
spread out her cards, and indulged in an intricate game of solitaire.
This was her passion; she was very systematic, and very
conscientious; but if she ever purloined any time from her duties, it
was that she might engage in that fascinating game. She decided
everything by it; whatever she wished to know, two games out of
three would give her the answer, for or against.
Sometimes she looked like a little witch during a wicked
incantation, as she hovered over the rows of cards, her face dark
and brooding, her long, thin fingers darting here and there, silent,
absorbed, almost breathless under the fatal spell of chance.
In this way she passed day after day, always industrious, always
contented, and always happy. She was very comfortable in her snug
little room, which was warm in winter and cool in summer, owing to
the two high buildings adjoining; and although she was a cripple, and
her lower limbs useless, she suffered little pain, unless she was
moved roughly, or jarred in some way; and no one could be more
carefully protected from discomfort than she was, for although she
was over twelve, Madelon still treated her as if she were a baby.
Every morning, before she left for the Rue Bourbon, she bathed and
dressed the girl, and lifted her tenderly, with her strong arms, into her
wheeled chair, where she drank her coffee, and ate her roll, as
dainty as a little princess, for she was always exquisitely clean. In
the summer she wore pretty little white sacks, with a bright bow of
ribbon at the neck, and in winter her shrunken figure was clothed in
warm, soft woolen.
Madelon did not sit out all day in rain and shine on Bourbon Street,
and make cakes and pralines half the night, for anything else but to
provide this crippled mite with every comfort. As I said before, the girl
was her idol, and she had toiled day and night to gratify her every
wish; and, as far as she knew, there was but one desire unsatisfied,
and for the accomplishment of that she was working and saving little
by little.
Once Pepsie had said that she would like to live in the country. All
she knew of the country was what she had read in books, and what
her mother, who had once seen the country, had told her. Often she
closed her eyes to shut out the hot, narrow street, and thought of
green valleys, with rivers running through them, and hills almost
touching the sky, and broad fields shaded by great trees, and
covered with waving grass and flowers. That was her one unrealized
ideal,—her “Carcassonne,” which she feared she was never to
reach, except in imagination.
CHAPTER VII
THE ARRIVAL
O N the other side of Good Children Street, and almost directly

opposite Madelon’s tiny cottage, was a double house of more
pretentious appearance than those just around it. It was a little
higher, the door was wider, and a good-sized window on each side
had a small balcony, more for ornament than use, as it was scarcely
wide enough to stand on. The roof projected well over the sidewalk,
and there was some attempt at ornamentation in the brackets that
supported it. At one side was a narrow yard with a stunted fig-tree,
and a ragged rose-bush straggled up the posts of a small side-
gallery.
This house had been closed for some time. The former tenant
having died, his family, who were respectable, pleasant people, were
obliged to leave it, much to Pepsie’s sorrow, for she was always
interested in her neighbors, and she had taken a great deal of
pleasure in observing the ways of this household. Therefore she was
very tired of looking at the closed doors and windows, and was
constantly wishing that some one would take it. At last, greatly to her
gratification, one pleasant morning, late in August, a middle-aged
woman, very well dressed in black, who was lame and walked with a
stick, a young man, and a lovely little girl, appeared on the scene,
stopped before the empty house, and after looking at it with much
interest mounted the steps, unlocked the door, and entered.
The child interested Pepsie at once. Although she had seen very
few high-bred children in her short life, she noticed that this little one
was different from the small inhabitants of Good Children Street. Her
white frock, black sash, and wide black hat had a certain grace
uncommon in that quarter, and every movement and step had an
elegant ease, very unlike the good-natured little creoles who played
around Pepsie’s window.
However, it was not only the child’s beauty, her tasteful, pretty
dress, and high-bred air that interested Pepsie; it was the pale,
mournful little face, and the frail little figure, looking so wan and ill.
The woman held her by the hand, and she walked very slowly and
feebly; the robust, black-eyed young man carried a small basket,
which the child watched constantly.
Pepsie could not remove her eyes from the house, so anxious was
she to see the child again; but, instead of coming out, as she
expected they would after they had looked at the house, much to her
joy she saw the young man flinging open the shutters and doors,
with quite an air of ownership; then she saw the woman take off her
bonnet and veil, and the child’s hat, and hang them on a hook near
the window. Presently, the little girl came out on the small side-
gallery with something in her arms. Pepsie strained her eyes, and
leaned forward as far as her lameness would allow her in order to
see what the child had.
“It’s a cat; no, it’s a dog; no, it isn’t. Why, it must be a bird. I can
see it flutter its wings. Yes, it’s a bird, a large, strange-looking bird. I
wonder what it is!” And Pepsie, in her excitement and undue
curiosity, almost tipped out of her chair, while the child looked around
her with a listless, uninterested air, and then sat down on the steps,
hugging the bird closely and stroking its feathers.
“Certainly, they’ve come to stay,” said Pepsie to herself, “or they
wouldn’t open all the windows, and take off their things. Oh, I wonder
if they have; I’ll just get my cards, and find out.”
But Pepsie’s oracle was doomed to remain silent, for, before she
got them spread on the table, there was a rumbling of wheels in the
street, and a furniture-wagon, pretty well loaded, drove up to the
door. Pepsie swept her cards into the drawer, and watched it unload
with great satisfaction.
At the same moment, the active Tite Souris entered like a
whirlwind, her braids of wool sticking up, and her face all eyes and
teeth. She had been out on the banquette, and was bursting with
news.
“Oh, Miss Peps’, Miss Peps’, sum un’s done tuk dat house ov’
yon’er, an’ is a-movin’ in dis ver’ minit. It’s a woman an’ a boy, an’ a
littl’ yaller gal. I means a littl’ gal wid yaller ha’r all ove’ her, an’ she
got a littl’ long-legged goslin’, a-huggin’ it up like she awful fond uv
it.”
“Oh, stop, Tite; go away to your work,” cried Pepsie, too busy to
listen to her voluble handmaid. “Don’t I see them without your telling
me? You’d better finish scouring your kitchen, or mama’ll get after
you when she comes home.”
“Shore ’nuff, I’se a-scourin’, Miss Peps’, an’ I’se jes a dyin tu git
out on dat banquette; dat banquette’s a-spilin’ might’ bad ter be
cleaned. Let me do dat banquette right now, Miss Peps’, an’ I’s
gwine scour lak fury bymeby.”
“Very well, Tite; go and do the banquette,” returned Pepsie, smiling
indulgently. “But mind what I say about the kitchen, when mama
comes.”
Such an event as some one moving in Good Children Street was
very uncommon. Pepsie thought every one had lived there since the
flood, and she didn’t blame Tite Souris to want to be out with the
other idle loungers to see what was going on, although she
understood the banquette ruse perfectly.
At last all the furniture was carried in, and with it two trunks, so
large for that quarter as to cause no little comment.
“Par exemple!” said Monsieur Fernandez, “what a size for a trunk!
That madame yonder must have traveled much in the North. I’ve
heard they use them there for ladies’ toilets.”
And, straightway, madame acquired greater importance from the
conclusion that she had traveled extensively.
Then the wagon went away, the door was discreetly “bowed,” and
the loungers dispersed; but Pepsie, from her coign of vantage, still
watched every movement of the new-comers. She saw Raste come
out with a basket, and she was sure that he had gone to market. She
saw madame putting up a pretty lace curtain at one window, and she
was curious to know if she intended to have a parlor. Only one blind
was thrown open; the other was “bowed” all day, yet she was
positive that some one was working behind it. “That must be
madame’s room,” she thought; “that big boy will have the back room
next to the kitchen, and the little girl will sleep with madame, so the
room on this side, with the pretty curtain, will be the parlor. I wonder
if she will have a carpet, and a console, with vases of wax-flowers on
it, and a cabinet full of shells, and a sofa.” This was Pepsie’s idea of
a parlor; she had seen a parlor once long ago, and it was like this.
So she wondered and speculated all day; and all day the pale,
sorrowful child sat alone on the side-gallery, holding her bird in her
arms; and when night came, Pepsie had not sugared her pecans,
neither had she read her prayers, nor even played one game of
solitaire; but Madelon did not complain of her idleness. It was seldom
the child had such a treat, and even Tite Souris escaped a scolding,
in consideration of the great event.
The next morning Pepsie was awake very early, and so anxious
was she to get to the window that she could hardly wait to be
dressed. When she first looked across the street, the doors and
shutters were closed, but some one had been stirring; and Tite
Souris informed her, when she brought her coffee, that madame had
been out at “sun up,” and had cleaned and “bricked” the banquette
her own self.
“Then I’m afraid she isn’t rich,” said Pepsie, “because if she was
rich, she’d keep a servant, and perhaps after all she won’t have a
parlor.”
Presently there was a little flutter behind the bowed blind, and lo! it
was suddenly flung open, and there, right in the middle of the
window, hung a very tasty gilt frame, surrounding a white center, on
which was printed, in red and gilt letters, “Blanchisseuse de fin, et
confections de toute sorte,” and underneath, written in Raste’s
boldest hand and best English, “Fin Washun dun hear, an notuns of
al sort,” and behind the sign Pepsie could plainly see a flutter of
laces and muslins, children’s dainty little frocks and aprons, ladies’
collars, cuffs, and neckties, handkerchiefs and sacks, and various
other articles for feminine use and adornment; and on a table, close
to the window, were boxes of spools, bunches of tape, cards of
buttons, skeins of wool, rolls of ribbons; in short, an assortment of
small wares, which presented quite an attractive appearance; and,
hovering about them, madame could be discerned, in her black skirt
and fresh white sack, while, as smiling and self-satisfied as ever, she
arranged her stock to the best advantage, and waited complacently
for the customers who she was sure would come.
For the first time since the death of the young widow in Gretna,
she breathed freely, for she began to feel some security in her new
possessions. At last, everything had turned out as Raste predicted,
and she had worked her plans well. The young mother, sleeping in
the Bergeron tomb, could never testify against her, and the child was
too young to give any but the most sketchy information about herself.
She did not even know the name of her parents, and since her
recovery from the fever she seemed to have forgotten a great deal
that she knew before. Her illness had left her in a pitiable condition;
she was weak and dull, and did not appear to care for anything but
the blue heron, which was her constant companion. Whether she
was conscious of her great loss, and was mourning for her mother,
madame could not decide. At first, she had asked constantly for her,
and madame had told her kindly, and with caresses, which were not
returned, that her mother had gone away for a while, and had left her
with her Tante Pauline; and that she must be a good little girl, and
love her Tante Pauline, while her mother was away.
Lady Jane looked at madame’s bland face with such solemnly
scrutinizing eyes, that she almost made her blush for the falsehood
she was telling, but said nothing; her little thoughts and memories
were very busy, and very far away; she had not forgotten as much as
madame fancied she had, neither did she believe as much as
madame thought she did. Whatever of doubt or regret passed
through her little brain, she made no sign, but remained quiet and
docile; she never laughed, and seldom cried; she was very little
trouble, and scarcely noticed anything that was going on around her.
In fact, she was stupefied and subdued, by the sudden misfortunes
that had come upon her, until she seemed a very different being from
the bright, spirited child of a few weeks before.
CHAPTER VIII
LADY JANE FINDS A FRIEND
F ROM the first, madame had insisted that the stranger’s property
should not be meddled with until a certain time had passed.
“We must wait,” she said to the eager and impulsive Raste, “to see
if she is missed, and advertised for. A person of her position must
have friends somewhere, and it would be rather bad for us if she was
traced here, and it was found out that she died in our house; we
might even be suspected of killing her to get her money. Detectives
are capable of anything, and it isn’t best to get in their clutches; but if
we don’t touch her things, they can’t accuse us, and Dr. Debrot
knows she died of fever, so I would be considered a kind-hearted
Christian woman, and I’d be paid well for all my trouble, if it should
come out that she died here.”
These arguments had their weight with Raste, who, though
thoroughly unscrupulous, was careful about getting into the toils of
the law, his father’s fate serving as an example to him of the difficulty
of escaping from those toils when they once close upon a victim.
If at that time they had noticed the advertisement in the journals
signed “Blue Heron” it would have given them a terrible fright; but
they seldom read the papers, and before they thought of looking for
a notice of the missing woman and child, it had been withdrawn.
For several weeks Raste went regular to the grocery on the levee,
and searched over the daily papers until his eyes ached; but in vain;
among all the singular advertisements and “personals,” there was
nothing that referred in any way to the subject that interested him.
Therefore, after some six weeks had passed, madame deemed
that it was safe to begin to cover her tracks, as Raste had advised
with more force than elegance. The first thing to do was to move into
another neighborhood; for that reason, she selected the house in
Good Children Street, it being as far away from her present
residence as she could possibly get, without leaving the city
altogether.
At first she was tempted to give up work, and live like a lady for a
while; then she considered that her sudden wealth might arouse
suspicion, and she decided to carry on her present business, with
the addition of a small stock of fancy articles to sell on which she
could make a snug little profit, and at the same time give greater
importance and respectability to her humble calling.
Among the dead woman’s effects was the pocket-book, containing
five hundred dollars, which she had secreted from Raste. From the
money in the traveling bag she had paid the humble funeral
expenses, and Dr. Debrot’s modest bill, and there still remained
some for other demands; but besides the money there were many
valuables, the silver toilet articles, jewelry, laces, embroideries, and
the handsome wardrobe of both mother and child. In one of the
trunks she found a writing-case full of letters written in English. From
these letters she could have learned all that it was necessary to
know; but she could not read English readily, especially writing; she
was afraid to show them, and she feared to keep them; therefore she
thought it best to destroy them. So one night, when she was alone,
she burned them all in the kitchen stove; not, however, without some
misgivings and some qualms of conscience, for at the moment when
she saw them crumbling to white ashes the gentle face of the dead
woman seemed to come before her, and her blue eyes to look at her
sadly and reproachfully.
Then she thought of Father Ducros, so stern and severe; he had
but little mercy or charity for those who sinned deliberately and
wilfully, as she was doing. She would never dare to go to him, and
what would become of her soul? Already she was beginning to feel
that the way of the transgressor is hard; but she silenced the striving
of conscience with specious arguments. She had not sought the
temptation,—it had come to her, in the form of a dying woman; she
had done her best by her, and now the child was thrown on her and
must be cared for. She did not know the child’s name, so she could
not restore her to her friends, even if she had any; it was not likely
that she had, or they would have advertised for her; and she meant
to be good to the little thing. She would take care of her, and bring
her up well. She would be a daughter to her. Surely that was better
than sending her to a home for foundlings, as another would do. In
this way she persuaded herself that she was really an honest,
charitable woman, who was doing what was best for the child by
appropriating her mother’s property, and destroying every proof of
her identity.
From the child’s wardrobe she selected the plainest and most
useful articles for daily wear, laying aside the finest and daintiest to
dispose of as her business might offer opportunity; and from the
mother’s clothes she also made a selection, taking for her own use
what she considered plain enough to wear with propriety, while the
beautiful linen, fine laces, and pretty little trifles went a long way in
furnishing her show-window handsomely.
Notwithstanding her assurance, she felt some misgivings when
she placed those pretty, dainty articles in the broad light of day
before an observing public,—and not only the public terrified her, but
the child also; suppose she should recognize her mother’s property,
and make a scene. Therefore it was with no little anxiety that she
waited the first morning for Lady Jane’s appearance in the little shop.
After a while she came in, heavy-edged, pale, listless, and
carelessly dressed, her long silken hair uncombed, her little feet and
legs bare, and her whole manner that of a sorrowful, neglected child.
She carried her bird in her arms, as usual, and was passing out of
the side-door to the little yard, without as much as a glance, when
madame, who was watching her furtively, said to her in rather a
fretful tone:
“Come here, child, and let me button your clothes. And you haven’t
brushed your hair; now this won’t do; you’re old enough to dress
yourself, and you must do it; I can’t wait on you every minute, I’ve
got something else to do.” Then she asked in a softer tone, while she
smoothed the golden hair, “See my pretty window. Don’t you think it
looks very handsome?”
Lady Jane turned her heavy eyes toward the laces and fluttering
things above her, then they slowly fell to the table, and suddenly,
with a piercing cry, she seized a little jewel-box, an odd, pretty silver
trinket that madame had displayed among her small wares, and
exclaimed passionately: “That’s my mama’s; it’s mama’s, and you
sha’n’t have it,” and turning, she rushed into madame’s room,
leaving Tony to flutter from her arms, while she held the little box
tightly clasped to her bosom.
Madame did not notice her outbreak, neither did she attempt to
take the box from her, so she carried it about with her all day; but at
night, after the little one had fallen asleep, madame unclosed the
fingers that still clung to it, and without a pang consigned it to
obscurity.
“I mustn’t let her see that again,” she said to herself. “Dear me,
what should I do, if she should act like that before a customer? I’ll
never feel safe until everything is sold, and out of the way.”
“Well, I declare, if that isn’t the fifth customer Madame Jozain has
had this morning,” said Pepsie to Tite Souris, a few days after the
new arrival. “She must be doing a good business, for they all buy; at
least they all come out with paper parcels.”
“An’ jes’ see dem chil’ren crowd ’roun’ dat do. Lor’, dey doant cum
ter yer winner eny mo’, Miss Peps’,” said Tite, with an accent of
disgust, as she brushed the pecan-shells from Pepsie’s table. “Dey
jes stan’ ober dar ter git a glimge uv dat dar goslin’ de littl’ gal holes
all day. Po chile! she might’ lunsum, setten dar all ’lone.”
“Tite, oh, Tite, can’t you coax her across the street? I want to see
her near,” cried Pepsie eagerly; “I want to see what kind of a bird that
is.”
“Dem chil’ren say how it’s a herin’. I doant believe dat—hit ain’t no
ways lak dem herin’s in de sto, what dey has in pickl’. Sho! dat ain’t
no herin’, hit’s a goslin’; I’se done see goslin’s on de plantashun, an’
hit’s a goslin’, shore nuff.”
“Well, I want to see for myself, Tite. Go there to the fence, and ask
her to come here; tell her I’ll give her some pecans.”
Tite went on her mission, and lingered so long, staring with the
others, that her mistress had to call her back. She returned alone.
Lady Jane declined to accept the invitation.
“’T ain’t no use,” said Tite energetically. “She wunt cum. She on’
hugs dat dar long-legged bird, an’ looks at yer solum, lak a owel; ’t
ain’t no use, she wunt cum. She might’ stuck up, Miss Peps’. She
say she doan’t want peccuns. Ain’t dat cur’ous? Oh, Lor, doan’t want
peccuns! Well, white chil’ren is der beatenes’ chil’ren!’ and Tite went
to her work, muttering her surprise at the “cur-ousness” of white
children in general, and Lady Jane in particular.
All day long Pepsie watched, hoping that the little girl might
change her mind, and decide to be more neighborly; but she was
doomed to disappointment. Near night, feeling that it was useless to
hope, and noticing that madame’s customers were dropping off, she
sought consolation in a game of solitaire.
Just as she was at the most exciting point, a slight rustling sound
attracted her attention, and, looking up, she saw a little figure in a
soiled white frock, with long yellow hair falling over her shoulders,
and a thick, neglected bang almost touching her eyebrows. The little
face was pale and sorrowful; but a faint smile dimpled the lips, and
the eyes were bright and earnest. Lady Jane was holding the bird up
in both hands over the iron railing, and when she caught Pepsie’s
surprised glance she said very politely and very sweetly:
“Would you like to see Tony?”
And that was the way in which Lady Jane and Pepsie first became
acquainted.
CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST VISIT TO PEPSIE
W HEN Pepsie first looked at Lady Jane, standing before her

holding up the bird, with the light of the sunset on her yellow
hair, and her lips parted in a smile that made even the solemn eyes
bright, she felt as if she saw a visitor from another world.
For a moment, she could only look at her; then she found voice to
say:
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come. Tite said you wouldn’t. We looked
for you all day.”
“I came to show Tony to you before I go to bed. I’ll hold him so you
can see him.” And Lady Jane stretched up on the tips of her little
white toes to reach the bird above the railing.
“Wait a moment, I’ll have Tite open the door for you. Won’t you
come in?”
Tite, who heard Pepsie talking, was peeping through the kitchen-
door, and in an instant she had pushed the bolt aside, and Lady
Jane stood in the little room, and was looking around her with
pleased surprise.
“Why, how nice!” she said, with a little sigh of content; “I’m glad I
came. Have you got a kitty?”
“A kitty? you mean a little cat?” asked Pepsie, her face one broad
smile over the child and bird. “No, I haven’t one, and I’m sorry.”
Lady Jane had dropped Tony on the floor, holding him with a long
string fastened to the leather band on his leg, while she looked over
Pepsie’s little, distorted figure with mingled curiosity and pity.
In the mean time, Pepsie and Tite were watching the bird with the
closest attention, while he hopped about, not very gracefully, picking
grains of brick-dust from the cracks of the floor.
At last Tite, unable to control her wonder and admiration, broke
forth:
“Miss Peps’, jes look at he. Ain’t he the cur’ousest bird y’ ever
seed? An’ he ain’t no goslin’, shore nuff; jes look at he tail feaders;
jes lak dem feaders on Mam’selle Marie’s hat.”
“And he knows when I speak to him,” said Lady Jane, lifting her
lovely eyes to Pepsie. “Now I’ll call him, and you’ll see him come.”
Then she chirruped softly, and called “Tony, Tony.” The bird turned
his bright eyes on her, and with a fluttering run he hurried to her.
“Oh, oh!” cried Pepsie, quite overcome with surprise. “Isn’t he
knowing! I never saw such a bird. Is he a wild bird?”
“No, he’s very tame, or he’d fly away,” replied Lady Jane, looking
at him fondly. “He’s a blue heron; no one has a bird like him.”
“A blue heron!” repeated Pepsie wonderingly. “I never heard of
such a bird.”
“Didn’t I done tole yer dem chil’ren say he a herin’, an’ he ain’t no
herin’?” interrupted Tite, determined to support her assertion as to
her knowledge of the difference between fish and fowl. “I tole yer,
Miss Peps’, how herin’s fish, an’ he a bird, shore nuff.” And, unable
to repress her mirth at the oddity of the name, she burst into a loud
laugh of derision.
Lady Jane looked hurt and surprised, and, stooping for Tony, she
gathered him up and turned toward the door.
“Oh, don’t go, please don’t!” pleaded Pepsie. “Tite, stop laughing,
and put a chair for the little girl, and then go to your work.”
Tite obeyed reluctantly, with many a grin and backward look, and
Lady Jane, after lingering a moment at the door, shy and undecided,
put Tony down again, and climbed into the chair on the opposite side
of the table.
“Now that darky’s gone,” said Pepsie, with a gaiety that was
reassuring, “we can talk sense. Do you understand me, everything I

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Musical Entanglements between

Germany and East Asia: Transnational

Transnational Encounters between Germany and Korea:

Sino-German Encounters and Entanglements: Transnational

Pan-Islamic Connections : Transnational Networks

Gender, Care and Migration in East Asia 1st Edition

Cold War Social Science: Transnational Entanglements

The Gas Industry in Latin Europe: Economic Development

The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization

Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West

More information about this series at

Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies

The editor would like to express her appreciation to Editor Meagan

1 The Idea of Entanglement, Historiography, and

Part I German-Japanese/Korean Entanglements,

2 The Reception of Wagner in Japan at the Turn of the

3 Music for Modern Korea: Bandmasters Franz Eckert and

4 Japanese Music Students in Germany and Austria, 1880

Part II Sino-German Entanglements, 1900–1949: Operas,

5 The “Oriental” Utopia: Postwar Orientalism and

6 Reimagining China in Interwar German Opera: Eugen

7 Demarcation and Cooperation: Nazi-­Persecuted Jewish

8 What Beethoven Meant in China, 1900–1949: Music,

Part III German–East Asian Entanglements since 1945:

9 Mozart in the Context of Globalization: The Musician as

10 When “Japanese” Music Became “World” Music: The

11 The Music of the Korean-German Composer Yun Isang in

12 Korean Contemporary Music and Germany: An

Jinsong Chen is a Professor at North Sichuan Medical College in China.

book project, tentatively titled “Inventing Modern Sound Culture in

American Music Teacher (MTNA journal) and articles in refereed journals

Lufan Xu is a Lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is a

Fig. 5.1 “Thousands of Buddhas” on Busoni’s podiums. (Courtesy of

Table 4.1 Study abroad destinations of Japanese musicians prior to 1914 73

The Idea of Entanglement, Historiography,

Joanne Miyang Cho

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

global historians have worked to decenter the nation-state and to provin-

The Idea of Entanglement: Historical and Musical

having predisposed “Toynbee (along with Spengler and others) to tenden-

future.”20 Burke also distinguishes between two types of “hybridizers,”

The notion of intercultural transfer differs from concepts such

the importance of the nation-state, “have decentered it.” He expresses

in its formative period it has shown itself to be less receptive to impulses

Modernist Western music since Arnold Schoenberg, Clause Debussy, and

In addition to rejecting the Weberian assumption of a European “spe-

influences as “becoming internal to base entities in Asia.” In effect, this

The Historiographical Landscape

The Organization of the Volume

the turn of the last century. An intense dedication to Richard Wagner

Focusing on Japanese musicians who were professionally active in Germany

longer an exotic fairy-tale land or a threatening “Yellow Peril” against

to the funeral of China’s founding father Sun Yat-sen, to the development

composers were intently studying the work of their counterparts in Europe

their studies. One of the most significant composers who studied in

21. Ibid., 113.

Irvine, Thomas. Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounters,

The Reception of Wagner in Japan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

composer’s music dramas.4 In effect, as strange as it may sound, most of

What Was the Wagner Boom?

Three Questions About the Wagner Boom

the above-mentioned Orfeo ed Euridice team. He later confessed that

1 The Idea of Entanglement, Historiography, and

Part I German-Japanese/Korean Entanglements,

2 The Reception of Wagner in Japan at the Turn of the

3 Music for Modern Korea: Bandmasters Franz Eckert and

4 Japanese Music Students in Germany and Austria, 1880

Part II Sino-German Entanglements, 1900–1949: Operas,

5 The “Oriental” Utopia: Postwar Orientalism and

6 Reimagining China in Interwar German Opera: Eugen

7 Demarcation and Cooperation: Nazi-Persecuted Jewish

8 What Beethoven Meant in China, 1900–1949: Music,

Part III German–East Asian Entanglements since 1945:

9 Mozart in the Context of Globalization: The Musician as

10 When “Japanese” Music Became “World” Music: The

11 The Music of the Korean-German Composer Yun Isang in

12 Korean Contemporary Music and Germany: An

Table 4.1 Study abroad destinations of Japanese musicians prior to 1914 73