Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan

Jennifer Matsue

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317649533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan explores a diversity of musics performed in Japan today, ranging from folk song to classical music, the songs of geisha to the screaming of underground rock, with a specific look at the increasingly popular world of taiko (ensemble drumming). Discussion of contemporary musical practice is situated within broader frames of musical and sociopolitical history, processes of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and the continued search for Japanese identity through artistic expression. It explores how the Japanese have long negotiated cultural identity through musical practice in three parts:

Part I, "Japanese Music and Culture, " provides an overview of the key characteristics of Japanese culture that inform musical performance, such as the attitude towards the natural environment, changes in ruling powers, dominant religious forms, and historical processes of cultural exchange.

Part II, "Sounding Japan, " describes the elements that distinguish traditional Japanese music and then explores how music has changed in the modern era under the influence of Western music and ideology.

Part III, "Focusing In: Identity, Meaning and Japanese Drumming in Kyoto, " is based on fieldwork with musicians and explores the position of Japanese drumming within Kyoto. It focuses on four case studies that paint a vivid picture of each respective site, the music that is practiced, and the pedagogy and creative processes of each group.

The downloadable resources include examples of Japanese music that illustrate specific elements and key genres introduced in the text. A companion website includes additional audio-visual sources discussed in detail in the text.

Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an Associate Professor at Union College and specializes in modern Japanese music and culture.

PART I Japanese Music and Culture

Part I, “Japanese Music and Culture,” launches this exploration of Japanese music and cultural identity first by introducing geographical, historical and cultural characteristics of Japan that contextualize musical expression, and then focusing in on religious and folk musics. The search for Japanese cultural identity in music becomes increasingly complicated in the modern era, as Japan rapidly Westernized, but here I suggest ways that we may still locate some essence of “Japaneseness.”

CHAPTER 1 Japanese Music in Geographical, Historical and Cultural Context

Black-and-white images of a drum set on an empty wooden stage flash across the screen, followed by a close-up of the drummer, face obscured by long black hair and a white mask. The music thumps along in classic rock fashion, but these drums clearly are not Western. Images of several women in black, each holding the same mask to her face, are interspersed with those of the drummer, as one by one they gradually approach the viewer down a narrow hallway. A similarly garbed man is seen with a string instrument, which he is playing like a guitar, but even at a quick glance there is something unexpected here again. Suddenly several young girls appear, the same mysterious ladies, but now brightly displayed in color as two of them literally “unwrap,” the third from a large sash around her waist to reveal black and red costumes. She will soon assume her role as the lead-singer of this trio. Both she and her companions are backed by the drummer and four men, faces yet unseen, jamming on the same string instrument introduced above, thrashing and flipping their hip-grazing long hair as if each one were the lead guitarist for the latest speed metal band. But surely none of them are actually playing? Throughout the video the red and white image of the mask—clearly meant to depict a specific animal—is seen again and again, either floating on its own or on the faces of various performers. The music moves through various sounds, some in-line with mainstream Japanese popular music, and others not, begging us to ask—just what is going on here?

“Megitsune” (Website Example 1) is a confusing amalgamation of iconic references to Japanese traditionalism melded with modern popular music idioms. The video juxtaposes traditional Japanese settings, instruments, and costumes with the sounds of electric guitars, synthesizers, and a pounding dance rhythm to create a new style that is capturing the global imagination. Babymetal, the three Japanese young women featured here, indeed perform a highly “poppified” version of metal that is gaining steam. And whether consciously or not, Babymetal’s performance of “Megitsune” both celebrates and exacerbates stereotypes of Japan, down to the strangeness of it all. The oddness of this mix actually may account for its immense global popularity, with close to 10 million hits on YouTube as of October 2014. This video has gone viral, representing an important image of Japanese music making that has spread abroad. The following journey hopes to introduce ways to make sense of the sounds and images of “Megitsune” within the context of music making in Japan more broadly, and we will head back to Babymetal at the end of this volume.

Music and Japanese Identity

There is no doubt that music and dance are fully integrated into the daily lives of Japanese. As children, Japanese are exposed to music on television in educational programming, anime, and commercials. They learn to sing Western-style songs at school, some dating back to the late nineteenth century, and they play piano and violin from a young age. Whole families gather to watch contests with regional folk music competing against mainstream popular songs, or variety shows featuring top talents and favorite new hits on television every week. If everyone cannot come together on an average Sunday due to busy schedules, then certainly on New Year’s Eve when millions, rather than welcoming the new year with a glass of champagne and a kiss, gather around to watch “The Red and White Song Contest” (Kōhaku Uta Gassen) on public television (NHK). Both children and adults may find themselves in the neighborhood Japanese drumming group (taiko), and performing at the annual fall festivals (matsuri) for the local shrine.

The mother whose children have grown may enjoy taking a lesson on the Japanese three-string lute (shamisen) in a small studio, learning traditional Japanese dance (nihon buyō), guitar, or even South American panpipes. Young adults may find themselves spending hour after hour rehearsing with a rock band, dancing all night at the hot new club, sharing a karaoke box with friends, or even drinking at a pub amongst a sea of Western faces while an Irish band jams. The retired gentleman may pick up the Western flute, or sing along to his favorite Japanese popular song, as he imagines a rural, pristine homeland that no longer exists, if it ever really did (enka). There is an endless list of ways for Japanese to engage with the diversity of music and dance that inhabits contemporary Japan. And in so doing, individual, communal, and national identities are produced.

Music assumes such an important role in many cultures precisely because it is a powerful and immediate way to negotiate our own individual identities and come to a better understanding of how others view themselves. Ideas of identity should not be seen as fixed, however, but rather are in constant flux, transforming over time, and as we move between social contexts. Identity itself is a performance, not absolute, but rather something individuals, communities, and nations enact through various behaviors, including creating and consuming music. With its complex history of intercultural exchange, flexibility, and hybridity, music is a particularly rich and complicated practice through which to explore Japanese cultural identity (Naka 2002; Rawski 2002). And recognizing just how this “Japaneseness” is expressed, through sounds and actions that are somehow understood as uniquely Japanese, becomes ever more complicated in the contemporary moment, as globalization, and especially the Internet, shrink the distance amongst peoples and obfuscate the boundaries between nations.

Nonetheless, music remains a particularly compelling marker of identity because of its connection with the body, a relationship that has not changed despite technological innovation. Whether pounding away on percussion on stage, dancing in the audience, or tapping a toe to a beat in one’s headphones—music remains visceral—something we individually experience in our bodies. But through this immediate experience, national identity may be asserted. Surak (2013), in her study of Japanese tea ceremony (sadō), argues that after completing school, in Japan embodied practices are one of the most potent means of affirming ideals of national identity, whether one practices the art in question personally or not; an awareness of the meaning of necessary movements and the common values they express is enough to transmit knowledge and create shared identity. Music involves a similar engagement with the body, and therefore is a powerful means of creating identity.

This is true whether one is primarily a “listener” or a “musician,” roles that we may shift between, even finding ourselves at times simultaneously hearing and making music. De Kloet, in his study of bootleg recordings in China, argues identity work is possible through listening to recordings, as doing so

. . . is a reflexive and performative act. Sounds are integrated into lives and used as technologies of the self. The audience is engaged in a constant dialogue with musicians, and music is used as an important topic of conversation among friends, as a way to enact one’s identity.

(de Kloet 2010: 163)

We often introduce ourselves to others through the music we enjoy listening to, as a way to quickly say “this is who I am.”

Musicians may take even more active roles in creating Japanese cultural identity. Mathews explains Japanese musicians “whether playing the koto [a Japanese zither] or chanting hip-hop odes . . . are, at least indirectly, depicting, describing, or defining Japaneseness” and in turn revealing the transformation of this category throughout time (2004: 336). Given its ephemeral nature—its ability to reflect changing tastes, intersections of different peoples throughout time, and advances in technology and modes of production—music exposes the history of a people and the ways in which their collective identity similarly transforms. Music nevertheless remains capable of eliciting strong emotional responses and inspiring fierce debates about its artistic qualities. Thus music connects with both the deeply personal and the broadly national. The following pages attempt to explore how music has been used both to shape and express who the Japanese are as individuals and a nation. This identity work is possible precisely because music of course does not exist in a vacuum (an expression my own students are probably weary of hearing) but rather is informed by the unique geographical, historical, and cultural context in which it is produced.

The Natural Environment of Japan

Japan is an archipelago of some 6,852 total islands within East Asia, located between the Sea of Japan on the west and Pacific Ocean on the east (see Map 1).

Japan has four major islands—Hokkaidō, Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū—and a fifth group collectively referred to as either the Ryūkyū, the name of the ruling family of this area prior to colonization, or the Okinawan islands (see Map 2, which also indicates the prefectures, equivalent to states in the United States). Japan’s weather is temperate in general, with varied temperature and weather patterns, which are most noticeable in winter when the climate ranges from extreme cold in northern Hokkaidō, with some of the heaviest snowfalls in the world recorded on the coast of the Sea of Japan, to tropical warmth in the southern Ryūkyū islands.

Japan’s total area of approximately 146,000 square miles, which is smaller than California, is home to an estimated 126.66 million people as of 2013 (a number that is actually decreasing) (World Population Statistics 2013). Japan, however, is 80 percent mountainous and only 16 percent of its lowland coastal areas are inhabitable, which results in immense numbers of people crammed into relatively small spaces on the coastal margins (see Map 0.3). To put this into perspective, the population of the United States in 2013 was approximately 317.29 million (World Population Statistics 2014), but spread across nearly 25 times the land area. The Japanese therefore are tightly hemmed in by mountains to one side and oceans on the other, with both, not surprisingly, taking on great symbolic importance in their daily lives. The popularity of images of Japan’s most iconic mountain—the snow-covered Fuji-san (where “san” means “mountain”).

The natural environment of Japan, which is quite varied from region to region, exerts tremendous influence on Japanese sensibilities (Karan 2005: 9). In general, however, Japanese suffer from limited natural resources. Karan notes:

Japan’s natural resources are meager, and important materials such as oil and metals are scarce. Areas of good arable land are also severely limited. The main renewable resources are plants, forests, and fish. These are declining, however, primarily because of human activities such as overexploitation, shrinking acreage due to rapid urb...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Musical Examples on Compact Disc
• List of Musical Examples on Companion Website
• About the Author
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• A Word About Translations and Languages
• Maps
• East Asian Historical Periods
• Part I Japanese Music and Culture
• Part II Sounding Japan
• Part III Focusing In: Identity, Meaning and Japanese Drumming in Kyoto
• Conclusion: The Future of Japanese Music
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Additional Resources
• Index