Composing Japanese Musical Modernity

Bonnie C. Wade

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780226085494
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

When we think of composers, we usually envision an isolated artist separate from the orchestra—someone alone in a study, surround by staff paper—and in Europe and America this image generally has been accurate. For most of Japan's musical history, however, no such role existed—composition and performance were deeply intertwined. Only when Japan began to embrace Western culture in the late nineteenth century did the role of the composer emerge. In Composing Japanese Musical Modernity, Bonnie Wade uses an investigation of this new musical role to offer new insights not just into Japanese music but Japanese modernity at large and global cosmopolitan culture.Wade examines the short history of the composer in Japanese society, looking at the creative and economic opportunities that have sprung up around them—or that they forged—during Japan's astonishingly fast modernization. She shows that modernist Japanese composers have not bought into the high modernist concept of the autonomous artist, instead remaining connected to the people. Articulating Japanese modernism in this way, Wade tells a larger story of international musical life, of the spaces in which tradition and modernity are able to meet and, ultimately, where modernity itself has been made.

PART 1

Composers in the Infrastructures of Japanese Modernity

Among the first steps taken in the process of modernization in many places has been to tend to the education of the populace for national purposes, and Japan was no exception. Universal education was established in 1872 by imperial decree as a tool in the modernizing process. In this case, “imperial decree” actually means that it was done at the behest of an oligarchy of leaders who in 1868 had reinstated the emperor to a position of symbolic leadership not exercised for six hundred years.

Education was but one of the spheres in which infrastructures would emerge to undergird the development of the particular conditions of Japanese modernity. In this chapter and the next I shall address affordances for composers in an environment made up of infrastructures in four spheres of activity—education, government, industry, and commerce. From the beginning of the modernization process, a crucial quality of the environment was the connectivity among those infrastructures in the field of music; it is a connectivity that has continued to afford composers opportunities to engage in the creation of new music. The rewards for composers, I will argue, have been social as well as economic.

In chapter 1 I trace briefly how and why the government put music into the educational infrastructure, and the means by which the new persona of “composer” emerged, might achieve competence, and, in turn, engage in education of others. In chapter 2 I proceed to the consideration of other connectivities.

CHAPTER ONE

The Primary Connection: Music and Education

PUTTING MUSIC INTO AN EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

The new Ministry of Education in the Meiji governmental structure had very clear reasons for deciding to include music in the new educational system. The historian Ury Eppstein (1994) argues convincingly that the educational sector followed the example of the military—that the presence of military bands attached to the embassies of the Western nations that were pushing into Japan for trade in the 1850s and 1860s ultimately led to the official adoption of Western music for Japan’s own purposes.¹ Observing the utility of the bands not only for pomp but also for military discipline, the powerful Satsuma samurai clan formed Japan’s first brass band in 1869—the year after the founding of the modern nation-state (the Meiji era, 1868–1912). Music could thus be deemed valuable for character formation and discipline, and also for the spiritual and physical health of its practitioners.

The selection of “apt music” for primary school children was not so clear as the choice for military bands, however. Shuji Izawa (1851–1917), a Japanese teacher who had studied in Massachusetts, was asked to submit a statement of options to the Ministry of Education on October 30, 1879. In it he summed up three prevailing opinions:

[First] that European music has almost reached perfection by means of the contemplations and experience of the last thousand years . . . and it surpasses very greatly oriental music in perfection and beautify, it will, therefore, be far better to adopt European music in our schools than to undertake the awkward task of improving the imperfect oriental music. . . .”

The second says . . . we have never heard of any country in which the native music has been entirely supplanted by foreign music, and consequently to introduce European music into our country must, at least, be as useless an attempt as to adopt English as our language; therefore it will be a far wiser plan to take measures toward the cultivation and improvement of our own music.

The third says that the two former opinions are not entirely unreasonable, but they seem to run to the two opposite extremities on the matter and hence, taking a middle course, the proper measure would be to secure the best from both European and oriental music. . . . If, fearing the difficulties, we do not presently undertake the work, when shall we see musical progress in Japan? (Cited in May 1963: 52–53)

Very striking in the statement of the three options is the self-orientalized positioning of traditional Japanese music in the language of the reasoning and the prevailing theory of cultural evolution that it invoked.

The process of introducing Western music into the curriculum of the educational system was carried out in a series of several steps. In 1879 a circular from the Ministry of Education ratified the creation of Ongaku Denshūsho (the Center for Musical Education), which was almost immediately renamed Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari (Music Investigation Committee), the name by which it is commonly known, with Shuji Izawa at its head. Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari had three fundamental objectives: the creation of a new corpus of music using both Western and Japanese elements; the training of musicians in preparation for the new developments to come; and the introduction of music into the national school curriculum at the primary level (Galliano 2002: 29–31). The bottom line was that teachers had to be trained in Western music in order to enculturate others—a tremendous undertaking that would necessarily begin small and gradually extend to every primary school in the nation. In 1889 a national conference on education agreed to introduce music education in secondary schools as well (Galliano 2002: 91), though that would take until well into the twentieth century to manage. Putting the infrastructure for Western music into place was a nearly fifty-year process.

THE EMERGENCE OF COMPOSERS IN THE EDUCATIONAL ENDEAVOR

Before the domestic manufacture of European musical instruments made them widely available, singing was the most affordable musical activity in schools (see frontispiece). The need was pressing for new didactic materials, including a suitable repertoire of songs. While the first books of school songs were made up largely of Western materials such as folk songs, the creation of new songs would soon become a working opportunity for Japanese musicians who needed to become composers in the Western sense. The first book of school songs was produced in 1889–91 by Izawa and Luther Whiting Mason, the music education inspector for Boston, who had come to Japan as an advisor; 90 percent of the songs used Western melodies to which a properly moral and purposefully patriotic Japanese text had been added. In the second collection, only 80 percent of the songs were Western in origin, with the remaining 20 percent contributed by Japanese composers using Japanese scales and melodies (Galliano 2002: 30). The use of borrowed songs would gradually decrease; with the help of Mason, Izawa produced what would become a model genre of shōka (children’s school songs). While traditional Japanese musical sensibility would remain in some songs in subsequent collections, children learned to read five-line staff notation and to feel comfortable with tonal melodies and harmonizations as they sang together in a shared cultural space, a technology for the expression of the unity and identity of the nation. The school system encourages public-mindedness to this day.²

The national government remains in charge of the public educational system under a ministry whose name was changed in January 2001 to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. Local boards of education hire teachers and make decisions regarding their conditions of employment, but only under the supervision of the ministry. The ministry establishes curricular guidelines and publishes textbooks—including those for music instruction during regular classroom time. It is also expected that students will participate in school events such as athletic meets, school trips, and outings. Most also participate in after-school clubs such as chorus and wind band, where affective participation in music takes place. Those too are highly structured, as I discuss in chapters 5 and 6.

The periodic revisions of the Monbushō music textbooks have long afforded interested composers the opportunity to create new songs that, if adopted, will circulate widely through the schools. An early example of such a composer was Tsune Matsushima (1890–1985), credited by the musicologist Midori Kobayashi in her book The Lives of Women Composers as being the first Japanese woman to primarily pursue a career as a composer (1999: 289). Matsushima convinced her father to allow her to go to music school to conduct musical research only (not performance) under the condition that she would never perform on stage; accordingly, in 1907 she entered the seat of music education, the Tokyo Music School. She would go on to publish a manual for piano technique; works for piano, violin, cello, wind ensemble; and dōyō (children’s songs that are more artistic than shōka; see chapter 6) and—most pertinent here—shōka. A recent example of a prominent composer who has taken full advantage of this opportunity afforded by the ministry is Akira Yuyama (b. 1932), who graduated from the Tokyo National University of the Arts (previously the Tokyo Music School).

For textbooks, however, music teachers at present have options. Goto, a teacher at the National Elementary School attached to Nara Women’s University, explained to me why he did not use the ministry’s textbooks:³ “Public schools use the Monbushō [ministry] textbooks of songs by Yuyama and others; they say ‘in April do this, in May do this, etc.’ In public schools students mostly sit still and sing from the books. Not in this school. We don’t use them” (Goto, personal communication, June 13, 2000). Inspired by the philosophy of that school—founded over a century ago on the principles of the American education philosopher John Dewey, which stress freedom—he was not even using a textbook from among those that are commercially published but approved by the ministry. Goto explained to me what freedom in music instruction meant to him: “I think that moving while singing is important, using their imagination, doing it the way they want—even improvising. It takes a lot of effort to teach that way. Important to have assistance from mothers and other teachers” (personal communication, June 13, 2000). Indeed, I observed his second-grade class, in which a song was being heard for the first time: children had created the poem, mothers composed the melody, and Goto added choreography. Goto was even questioning whether or not students should have to learn to read notation—something that is usually taught to first- and second-graders in Japanese schools; indeed, the children were learning the melody by listening to him play it on the piano.

THE EDUCATIONAL PATH TO COMPETENCE

In the infrastructural environment of Japanese musical modernity, the matter of competence is central to the sphere of education. With regard to composers, it is important to consider the means by which a young person in Japan might gain the competence that will permit him or her to engage successfully in the action of composing.

Private instruction on an instrument or in voice is a huge industry in Japan that I will address later in this chapter, but it is not the only type of instruction that is usually assumed to be necessary for competence. Through several composers who began their systematic study of music at an early age, I learned of two programs in particular that give children a good start. Both are intended to complement, not replace, regular schooling. For Tokyo children whose parents could afford to send them to a school that, from its founding in 1948, has been associated with study of Western “concert music,” the program to attend has been Toho Gakuen Music for Children. For more populist training throughout Japan, there is the Yamaha Music School (see below).

As one section of an august private institution for music study, the Toho Gakuen Music for Children program caters to students between the ages of five and fifteen. The general rubric for the instruction they receive is “solfège,” and, because composers not only train in it but also are likely to teach it early in their careers, it was important for me to understand what the term encompasses. Introduced and escorted by Kimiko Shimbo, an emeritus instructor, I made a point of observing the instruction there in 2008. The Toho facilities are full of activity in this program, which the children attend for three to four hours on Saturdays; they might also come one other time during the week for private instrumental lessons. Part of Shimbo’s response to my question about why parents would involve their child in such an intensive experience reminded me of the rationale for adopting music in the schools in early Meiji: “The children are there because their parents think music education is a good thing. Good training for concentration. Also, if they can play an instrument, they will have an enjoyable life” (Kimiko Shimbo, personal communication, May 31, 2008).⁴

I attended six different classes nonstop from 12:30 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. and recorded the following observations in my field notes:

First class: Rhythm practice. Five children, three of them five years old. Two teachers: held hands with children, circling and singing an eight-bar melody with syncopation, stopping to demonstrate where not to take a breath so as not to break a word in the song’s lyrics. Now all clapped the rhythm while singing—turning over the palm at the rests. Second song: each sang along, hitting arm/hands to keep beat. Third exercise: children matched the pitch sounded on a small xylophone. Circled, singing and stepping the changing rhythm; teacher down in middle of circle to watch the feet. Next time children sang the melody and teachers sang harmony. Not a problem!

Rhythm notation practice, with a set of cards used in the Kodály training system, each showing a rhythm of a total of two beats. One teacher kept a regular beat, while the other put cards on a stick board in quick succession while the children read/articulated them together. Then all cards were mounted along the bottom of the board and the activity returned to the first song; each child had to put up a card to “notate” the rhythm of the song as the teacher sang.

Second class: Dictation. Eleven students, ten years old (fourth grade in primary school). Notation of an eighteen-bar melody. They were told “E major,” and all wrote the key signature (which they knew without being told). Teacher played a melody two times, then worked with them to sing it in pieces, then whole. Then they were told to notate it. Teacher circulated through the class to check on progress. When finished, the teacher went over the chords that underpinned the melody.

Next work: Make a four-part score. Teacher played a long phrase just once. Then they worked with each other to notate it all. Next they were told to turn it into polyphony. It turned out to be Bach.

Third class: Singing class for younger children—third- and fourth-graders in primary school (thirty-five, of whom twenty-five were girls). Started with stretches, then a very few vocalises, then songs—sung in unison—to teach techniques (one with text of “ha ha ha” for diaphragm control, another designed to teach how to control descending melody). They went from one to another in a sheaf of notations; Saburo Iwakama was the composer of several of the songs.

Fourth class: Chorus class for first-, second-, and third-year middle-school students. Most were pianists, one violinist (there was another class simultaneously to which most of the violinists go.) They did Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music,” then Schubert’s “Heidenröslein” in two parts in two languages. The song in German is almost syllabic, so it transfers well for singing in Japanese translation with the usual syllabic setting. The teacher went through the text, trying to make it interesting to the children.

Fifth class: Harmony and polyphony (and dictation). Some of the same eleven- and twelve-year-olds in this class that I had seen in the fourth class. They were turning a melody into a polyphonic score (having captured the melody from dictation, I presume) when we entered, and then sang it—two or three on a part (eleven students, eight girls). They sang beautifully, without problem, in at least four parts.

Then they did harmonic dictation, hearing chords only, not in triadic form. Students got this quickly. Then five children went to the board to write the chords in triadic form and identify them as I, V, etc. They all got it right, except for ii/V, which was a mystery and the new material for the day. Then they sang the chords, in parts. Discussion of resolution: to what pitches does V⁷ lead?

Teacher told students to make a score of four measures each on two lines. Gave time signature. Introduced the composer, Bach. Played a theme once through, looked at their notation two more times. She sang it too. This is a tough melody, with chromatics and syncopation. Once they all had it, she gave them the notation of the piece and they sight-read the rest easily. Got them to s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Series Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Frontispiece
• Introduction
• Part One: Composers in the Infrastructures of Japanese Modernity
• Part Two: Japanese Composers in Shared Cultural Spaces of Western Music
• Part Three: The Presence in Japan of European Spheres of Musical Participation
• Conclusion
• Chronology
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index