Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yogaku - A Reappraisal

Nationalism and Musical Style in
Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal
David Pacun
Abstract: This study examines connections between cultural and political nationalism in
interwar yōgaku, the Western-style music composed in Japan between 1910 and 1945.
Close analysis of numerous examples reveals that a set of “Japanese-sounding” musical
tropes arose as early as 1900, were ingrained in public consciousness by 1910, and continued
to operate in Japanese music through the early 1940s. Within this stable context, debates
undertaken in the 1930s regarding the search for a new Japanese music possessed a strong
ideological component, a component that subsequently allowed for an easy mapping of
yōgaku onto the aims and aesthetics of Japanese imperialism.
Introduction
On April 14, 1936, the Japan Times published an editorial with the intriguing
title of “Cultural Propaganda.”1 The editorial viewed cultural propaganda (i.e.,
dissemination of information and support for concerts and programs) in a pos-
itive light, but took aim at recent actions of the government-sponsored Kokusai
Bunka Shinkokai (Society for International Cultural Relations), warning that
official control was leading to stale formalism, that the exclusion of foreign ex-
perts was hindering the society’s efforts to bridge peoples and nations, and that
cultural programs were becoming tinged with nationalistic propaganda. The
column added prophetically that “[o]ne can offer culture, but cannot force its
acceptance,” and concluded by citing part of a recent speech by Kōki Hirota,
then prime minister of Japan. In it, Hirota claimed:2
No one is qualified to talk about world peace unless he knows not only the national
aspirations of his own country, but also understand [sic] and appreciates the stand-
points of other countries. That understanding and appreciation are only obtainable
through an understanding and appreciation of the other country’s culture and civi-
lization. (Japan Times, April 14, 1936, 8)
While the editorial’s point was, of course, that Japan itself needed to live in
accordance with these professed ideals and should likewise respect the unique
histories and cultures of neighboring countries, the problem was that far from
separating culture and politics, Hirota’s specific formulation entwined them
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4 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2012
further, even substituted one for the other. (See Harootunian 1974, 16.) In
Hirota’s seemingly benign view, a country’s national aspirations were to be
judged not through its actions and policies, but its culture and civilization.
Viewed through this lens, Japan was not conquering and colonizing East Asia,
only bringing “culture and civilization” to an undeveloped region of the world.
Hence, it made little difference whether or not Japan heeded Hirota’s words as
the editorial requested; his “words” were part of the problem.
From a contemporary perspective, it is hardly surprising that the editorial
failed to interrogate the broader implications and context of Hirota’s speech. In
what may be the ultimate paradox but also part of the point, Hirota’s linkage
of culture and conquest had deep roots in the West’s own colonialist history
and ideology. That Hirota could, in 1936, spit back the very essentialism that
presupposed the universality and centrality of Western culture (leaving to the
non-West—including Japan—the supporting role of exotic, colonized other)
was perhaps just his point: Japan was different. Not only had it resisted coloni-
zation but by 1936, it was successfully competing with the West for resources
and hegemony in East Asia. Holding up a mirror to Western colonialism (“the
bringing of civilization to the primitive world”), Hirota more than implied that
Japan would better the West at its own game, not simply militarily but cultur-
ally as well. In cultural terms Japan had a distinct advantage, for it could place
two forms and senses of Japanese culture—the traditional and the modern—in
service of its imperialistic ambitions: the traditional forms, whose authentic
exoticisms were valued in the West, could help to smooth over international ten-
sions in the comity of nations by demonstrating a common cultural bond with
the East, while the modern forms, built upon the melding of Japanese content
and Western techniques, could serve as models for the modern, hybrid-Asian
culture that was then accruing under Japanese rule.3
Hirota’s words thus bear witness to the close identification of culture and
conquest in Imperial Japan, and suggest a subtle but ultimately potent context
for much interwar Japanese culture, that of confrontation and competition. This
context holds important implications for the subject of this paper, the analysis
and interpretation of interwar yōgaku, the Western-style music composed in Ja-
pan between roughly 1910 and 1945.4 Often dismissed in English language stud-
ies, this music has become increasingly available in the West through recordings
and scores. While our knowledge of it is still selective, it is becoming rapidly
apparent that composition in this era was more substantive and interesting than
has been previously thought. Yet despite this, its style, context and meaning, and
the interaction between these aspects continue to be problematic. With the his-
tory of Japan during this period something of a minefield, understanding and
Pacun: Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal 5
appreciation—to borrow Hirota’s loaded terms—can arise only through a careful

unfolding of these aesthetic, cultural, and technical issues, including that of the
music itself. The purpose of this paper is to begin this process.
Preliminaries and Definitions: Yōgaku

and the Persistence of East/West Dualisms
Taken by itself, the term yōgaku carries within it considerable tensions.5 Its
literal definition, “Western music,” strongly implies an oppositional (insider/
outsider) binary, one that underlies many catch phrases of the Japanese Restora-
tion (1868)—sonnō jōi (revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians [foreigners])
and wakōn yōsei (Japanese ethics, Western science). (See Harootunian 1970.) Yet
just as these slogans contain complex layers of meaning and must not be reduced
to their simple oppositions, so too yōgaku must not be taken too literally as a
cultural product intrinsically foreign to Japan, incapable of assimilation, and
forever at odds with traditional practices. Owing to a variety of factors, however,
English language scholarship on yōgaku has done just that, not only treating the
East/West dualism as the primary starting point for analysis and appreciation,
but actually reifying its poles as eternally fixed opposites. From this perspective,
“good” yōgaku is that which unites or synthesizes the two poles, while “bad”
yōgaku is that which contains overt Western influence or only pays lip service
to traditional practices.
Not surprisingly then, most English language accounts of modern Japanese
music position interwar yōgaku as a link between the outright importation of
Western culture at the onset of the Meiji period (1868–1912) and the musical
independence achieved by postwar composers, an independence often attained
through the creative adaptation of traditional Japanese music. Displaying ample
“craftsmanship” but relying on traditional Western forms, interwar yōgaku is
thus imitative, a failed stage in the search for an “authentic” Japanese composi-
tional style—meaning one rooted in authentic Japanese traditions and the true
“Japanese Spirit,” to borrow a more loaded term. (See, for instance, Galliano
2002, 66; Nuss 2002; Burt 2001, 13.)
Yet even in condensed form, the language of this positioning demands closer
examination. Not only does it accept the East/West dualism as an ideal, blind-
ing us to how quickly imported traditions became indigenous ones in early
twentieth-century Japan, but it also restates terms and ideologies (“authentic
Japanese music,” “Japanese spirit,” “synthesis of East and West”) central to the
cultural foundation of Imperial Japan. Although musicologists have not shied
away from treating the issue of Japanese nationalism in interwar yōgaku, neither
have they subjected its underlying terms and concepts to critical analysis.6 Envi-
sioning two schools of Japanese composition, a conservative (imitative) school
rooted in the German-Romantic tradition and a progressive school that looked
to the Japanese past as a source for new avenues of musical expression, Judith
Ann Herd writes:
Nationalism, born from the reactionary politics of the turbulent decade preceding
World War II, was another potent factor for the positive changes in Japanese modern
music. It was the missing link that opened a passage for a transition from the bor-
rowing stage to one of invention and innovation. . . . Without it, there would have
been no transformation from the identification with Other to the discovery of self.
(Herd 2004, 55; italics mine)
That nationalism helped lead Japanese composers back into traditional Japa-
nese music (as well as forward into postwar innovation) is not to be disputed.
But neither can one ignore how the “discovery of self ” enacted in the 1930s and
1940s became implicated in the military, political, and cultural subjugation of
East Asia.7 It is not that Herd doesn’t recognize the potential conflict, but that,
writing from the perspective of “postwar culturalism” (discussed below), she
prefers to read the interwar period as a staging ground for later developments
rather than as a self-standing era. Regarding Yasuji Kiyose’s A Suite of Japanese
Dances from 1940, she concludes:
His simple but effective programmatic style lies in the realm of general ideas and
emotions in celebration of the Japanese spirit, ideas and emotions that were deeply
rooted in the proletarian popular culture and agitated atmosphere of the 1930s. It
was precisely this spiritual essence that attracted Takemitsu, Kiyose’s famous student,
and his colleagues of the Experimental Workshop of the 1960s. (Herd 2004, 49;
italics mine)8
Referencing the elusive “Japanese spirit,” Herd passes over the critical ques-
tions of how and why culture and politics, or better cultural nationalism
(minzoku-shugi) and political nationalism (kokumin-shugi), became entangled,
and of whether Kiyose’s Suite may embody this entanglement in specific and
direct ways rather than general and spiritual ones.9 Such questions may be dif-
ficult to answer with certainty. Yet recently, scholars in numerous disciplines
have begun to investigate the complex interaction of culture and politics that
haunted interwar Japan, detailing how the former came to be intertwined in the
latter, and ultimately suggesting ways to more finely parse the cultural products
of this period. For instance, Kevin Doak (2001) relates how distinctions between
racial identity and ethnic identity broached in the 1930s helped to establish the
framework for an overreaching ethnic hierarchy within Asia, a framework that
allowed Japan to envision a “monoracial” yet “multiethnic” (hence hierarchical)
East Asian sphere. Elsewhere (1996) he shows how ideas developed by the Japa-
nese Romantic School intended to erect barriers between culture and politics
allowed the former to be co-opted and mapped onto the latter. For Doak, there
is a pressing need to “break through the weight of [this period’s] culturalist and
ethnic signifiers” (2001, 3–4).
Closer to home, in her seminal study of the Takarazuka Revue (a popular,
all-female theater troupe based in the Kansai region), Jennifer Robertson writes:
As a technology of imperialism, the revue theater helped to bridge the gap between
perceptions of colonialized others and the actual colonial encounters; it was one way
of linking imperialist fantasies and colonial realities. Takarazuka was a type of impe-
rial archive that . . . worked to create and naturalize among the people a pleasurable
vision of the New World Order . . . At the very least, wartimes revues both invited a
vicarious, fantastical experience of foreign travel and exotic romance, and sounded
a call to cultural arms and the shared work of empire. (Robertson 1995, 987)
More pointedly, writing of Junichirō Tanizaki’s early film criticism and screen-
plays, Thomas LaMarre (2005, 357) challenges histories in which “the universal
(West) becomes somehow particularized (Japan)”—paradoxically, this was one
of the narratives offered during the interwar period—and notes that “there is
cause to question the historical narrative of the beleaguered but finally trium-
phant emergence of a good [post-war] Japan, a culturalist Japan . . . It is a story
of cultural nationalism and belated modernization” (ibid.). Almost as a critique
of Hirota’s speech, LaMarre writes:
Reworking world-historical narratives was essential to imaging and inventing a
Japanese nation and a national empire. The Japanese empire (like Japanese moder-
nity) cannot be construed as a simple repetition of the British or American empires.
Nor can its difference be dismissed as a failure, a failed imitation of Western models.
(LaMarre 2005, 358)
Thus it is all too easy to divide interwar yōgaku into two camps, the first
overdetermined by Western forms, the latter informed (but not quite enough)
by authentic Japanese traditions. For this division merely restates rather than un-
tangles the era’s skein of musical style, theory, and ideology. In fact, both camps
were implicated in the rise of Japanese nationalism and imperialism, and their
aesthetic principles, theoretical debates, and stylistic differences—the music was
often more similar than not—need to be framed within this context. Omitting
the frame not only skews our understanding of the period, but also provides a
convenient excuse to ignore difficult issues concerning both the music and its
politics.10 On the one hand, the failure of the German-Romantic (aka Western)
camp to achieve an authentic connection to the Japanese past becomes a con-
venient symbol of the nation’s failed politics; on the other, the inability of the
progressive camp to break completely free from Western forms positions their
compositions as representatives of (premature) theory instead of actual, living
practice. In both cases the music, and our understanding of it, suffers.
From a still larger perspective, emphasizing interwar yōgaku’s failed or pre-
liminary “Japaneseness” has the paradoxical effect of positioning the music
within the context of Western colonialism, as a sort of self-inflicted exoticism.
Yet unlike almost all of its East Asian neighbors, colonialism was the very thing
Japan avoided, and music of this period must be understood, at least in part,
as a symbol of this resistance, an explicit and conscious, rather than forced,
appropriation of Western music. As Hirota’s remarks demonstrate, “universal”
Western thought was strongly implicated in the search for the particular Japan—
meaning the Japan of the 1930s. Hence, it is no mere coincidence that Japanese
composers bought into the same essentialized aesthetics used by their Western
counterparts and constructed their syncretic forms based upon standard West-
ern models: authentic (e.g., Japanese, Hungarian, Russian) melody, theme, or
idea placed within a traditional Western (universal) form.11
While this model certainly led to a fair amount of uninspired composition
and would be rejected (at least in principle) by postwar composers, in both
these regards Japan was hardly unique; in fact, Japan’s musical nationalism was
roughly contemporary with nationalist movements in many Western “others”
(i.e., Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Americas), and not surprisingly closely
parallels that found in these countries (Greenfeld 1992). Even if it did not gener-
ate masterpieces of the first rank, the decision to adopt Western forms must be
accepted as historically valid, a response that reflected the very real desires of in-
terwar composers to actively create a national (Japanese) yet comprehensible and
civilized (universal) music.12 Only by accepting this stance as historical fact can
we begin to move forward and analyze the result, the music itself. For until we
take all interwar Japanese composition seriously as music, as a direct and valid
expression of daily life in interwar Japan (rather than as a missed opportunity
to express “authentic Japan” and the “true Japanese spirit”), we will be unable to
understand its stylistic development, fully vet its nationalistic context, and ulti-
mately grasp its significance for Japanese culture and music history as a whole.
The purpose of this paper then is to begin the process of unpacking issues
of musical style from theory, theory from ideology, and ideology from history.
While it is impossible (indeed unwise) to achieve a pure separation of these is-
sues, an initial break is necessary before we can begin to assess interwar yōgaku
as music, subject its claims of difference and Japaneseness to scrutiny (poten-
tially uncovering features that are unique), and address vital questions regarding
historical and political context, nationalism, and imperialism. While certainly
not all interwar yōgaku was explicitly or even implicitly nationalistic or impe-
rialistic, most was part of Japan’s search for a national identity built upon the
ideal of an essential and common “Japanese spirit.” As the Japan Times warned,
it was but a small step from cultural nationalism (minzoku-shugi) to state or po-
litical nationalism (kokumin-shugi)—a step that proved easy for many Japanese
composers to make.
Methodology and Structure

Although the body of the paper presents a broad overview of early twentieth-
century yōgaku, it takes as its centerpiece two short works by Shūkichi Mitsukuri.
Through this admittedly narrow lens, the paper evaluates some of the musical
and historical events that led Japanese composers to accept, even embrace, Ja-
pan’s militant nationalism or, at the very least, that allowed an easy mapping of
the music onto the demands of empire. Assessing a broad range of issues, the
paper aims to untangle the music from its complex and often charged ideologi-
cal framework in ways sensitive to the social, the political, the aesthetic, and
the theoretical, without being overly dependent upon and uncritically bound
by them. For while it is vital to recognize that composers themselves felt the
need to validate the inner spirit of their music and even went so far as to claim
that certain techniques and styles were better than others to achieve this aim,
it is also necessary to subject these claims of difference to analysis—the facts of
history (including its ironies and contradictions), the facts of the theories, and
the facts of the music itself (to the extent that these can be known). Without
this vital check, history and analysis simply repeat the aporia and assumptions
of the time, prohibiting understanding.
Specifically, the remainder of the paper divides into four parts. Part 1 (“Rec-
reating Japan in Yōgaku: Stylistic Developments ca. 1900–1920”) provides a
short account of the fluid musical scene in turn-of-the-century Japan. Here,
short analyses reveal how specific musical tropes (most derived from Japanese
folk music, but the derivation is not critical) took on meaning as “Japanese”
signifiers, and thus served the purpose—a purpose intended by composers and
understood by audiences—of evoking “Japan” in sound. The evidence suggests
that these tropes arose far earlier, ca. 1900, than is commonly acknowledged,
were ingrained in the public consciousness by at least 1914, and witnessed con-
tinued development in music of the 1920s. These tropes cut across genres, styles,
and levels, allowing for substantial interplay between art, popular, educational,
and military music.
Part 2 (“Theorizing Japaneseness in Japanese Music: Debates in the 1930s”)
turns to debates that arose in the 1930s surrounding the search for new and more
“authentic” musical practices. Although composers and critics often claimed that
certain techniques were more firmly rooted in traditional Japanese music, and
thereby more capable of conveying (authentic) “Japaneseness,” the techniques
they advocated relied heavily upon the basic tropes described in part 1. The
searches of the 1930s did not, as their authors claimed, result in entirely new
musical styles, but rather distilled or amplified the earlier practice.13 Attempt-
ing to break free from this aesthetic and theoretical cul-de-sac, the participants
thus turned more and more to ideological principles to justify their claims of
authenticity and Japaneseness. In this way, many of the supposedly progressive
theories advocating a “new” Japanese music contained within themselves reac-
tionary strains, strains that would emerge in full by 1940.
Part 3 (“Two Examples by Shūkichi Mitsukuri”) analyzes two short works
by Shūkichi Mitsukuri, one of the composers who initiated the search for new
Japanese musical practices. As will be seen, the first work, a setting of a Bashō
haiku dating from 1930, embodies many of the contradictory aspects of the
new practice—especially its rooting of new compositional techniques in older
tropes—and thus neatly exemplifies the cul-de-sac in which composers found
themselves. The second, a fugue on the Japanese folk song “Sakura” dating from
1940, not only makes more direct use of the tropes, but also—owing to its fugal
setting in which a “Japanese” folk theme is treated to the highest form of con-
trapuntal (“universal”) exegesis—projects a strong sense of competition and
confrontation. The dichotomy between these two works suggests ways in which
we can begin to grasp and understand interwar Japanese music on both cultural
and political levels.
Part 4 (“Coda: Musical Developments 1930–1945”) concludes by briefly ex-
amining other short excerpts dating from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s.
These excerpts both confirm that the attempted shift in style was in fact an
intensification of the earlier practice, as well as provide additional examples of
how the ideology of militant nationalism infected the discourse surrounding
what was, by 1940, if not 30 years earlier, already an indigenous fact in modern
Japanese culture—namely, Western music.
Finally, a brief word is necessary on what I mean by Japanese and Japanese
music. Although a full definition cannot be ventured here, I take Japanese mu-
sic to be music composed in Japan principally (although not exclusively) for
Japanese audiences, the listening public in Japan. To this I add music composed
elsewhere by current Japanese residents (e.g., music written while visiting or
studying in another country), as well as music composed by expatriates (mainly
Germans and Italians) living in Japan14 (see Galliano 2006). In this context, the
need felt by many Japanese composers to have their music sound “Japanese”
must be understood as a matter of choice and agency; as I argue, by 1914, there
had arisen a reasonably concise set of musical parameters that were or could be
sonically identified as “Japanese.” This “sound” eventually became a conscious
music style, somewhat akin to a Classical period topic: the “learned style,” “ex-
pressive style,” now the “Japanese style.” According to the above definition, this
Japanese sound is not a precondition for music to be seen as Japanese, merely

a stylistic feature common to some music from this period. When necessary, I
will refer to this sound style as “Japanese”—within quotes. Otherwise, Japanese
means, simply, made in Japan.
Recreating Japan in Yōgaku: Stylistic Developments ca. 1900–192015

While an intimate relationship between art and politics was manifest at the
start of Japan’s modernization—the importing of Western music was meant to
play a vital role in civilizing the country (Nomura 1969)—it is best to begin our
investigation more simply, with a brief account of the sorts of yōgaku composed
in the early part of the twentieth century. As noted earlier, interwar Japanese
composers constructed their syncretic East/West style according to standard
Western practice, incorporating traditional Japanese music—typically folk songs
as these were seen to best represent the spirit of a race, but the sources varied—
into universal Western forms, initially on a small scale (lieder/chanson, piano
miniature), then using larger genres such as symphony, cantata, and oratorio.
However, the attempt to meld East and West began far earlier, and centered
musically on how to integrate Japanese modes and rhythms into Western triadic
harmony and periodicity.
Ignoring for the present the complex and highly subjective signifiers (e.g.,
Japanese Spirit) that often underlay discussions of how best this might be
accomplished, the most important technical problem lay in how to harmo-
nize the modal melodies of traditional Japanese music in ways sensitive to
the latter’s structure (and thereby expression).16 To take one example, since
the m iyakobushi onkai (scale)—perhaps the most distinctive of the Japanese
scales—typically lacks (or de-emphasizes) scale degrees 3 and 7, and contains
a lowered scale degree 2, it cannot support the two most important triads, the
tonic and the dominant, in common practice tonality (fig. 1a). The tonic chord
would be incomplete—an open fifth, hence neither major nor minor—and the
dominant chord either incomplete or with an altered fifth (fig. 1b). In laymen’s
terms, both the tune “Hot Cross Buns” and its standard harmonization are non
sequiturs in miyakobushi-based music.
Yet a solution to these problems—if not the solution that most of us have
come to know as “Japanese” harmony—appeared remarkably early in the pro-
cess of Japan’s Westernization, and one finds evidence of it already in Rudolf
Dittrich’s 1894 Nippon Gafuku (Folk song arrangements). Dittrich was one of
the first instructors of Western music in Japan and he bore first-hand knowledge
of traditional Japanese music (Suchy 1990b). In any event, Dittrich’s trick was
to reposition the melody tonic (or as David Hughes [1990] calls it “the final”)
as scale degree 5 in the Western minor mode.17 (Figure 1c: the C miyakobushi
Figure 1a–d. Harmonizing the miyakobushi scale.
onkai transforms into the Western F natural minor scale.18) In this way the
melody’s cadential b2-1—treated as b6-5—could be harmonized by iiØ7-i, a pro-
gression not entirely sanctioned by traditional Western theory, but one common
enough in Romantic music as a variant of plagal elaborations—iiØ7-i in place of
iv-i—and prevalent as well in some exotic nationalist music (fig. 2). More to the
point, this progression neatly supported tetrachordal figures characteristic of
Japanese music, such as G-F-Db-C, as well as melodic figures centering on what
were originally the fourth and fifth scale degrees of the miyakobushi (fig. 1d).
Western composers immediately latched onto these melodic gestures and the
iiØ7-i progression as Japanese markers. In Dittrich’s arrangement of “Sakura,”
common-practice dominant chords arise with considerable frequency, yet the
half-diminished seventh sound clearly saturates the musical surface (see brack-
ets in fig. 3). This is not to say that the system worked perfectly, and amateur
Figure 2. Chopin, Waltz in A Minor, op. 34 no. 2.
Figure 3. Rudolf Dittrich (1861–1919), arrangement of “Sakura.”

Nippon Gafuku (Breitkopf und Hartel, 1894; copublished in Tokyo).
composers such as Paul Bevan struggled to establish a consistent and natural

syntax capable of conveying the musical structure and expression (1902). Fol-
lowing the ubiquitous half-diminished seventh of the opening, Bevan’s arrange-
ment of “Manzai” has little to offer and much that is awkward (fig. 4).19 In other
cases, it was a flipping back and forth between East and West that caused prob-
lems. In Dittrich’s “Jizuki-Uta,” for instance, iiØ7 first arises over a tonic pedal (m.
4) and then is suspended (m. 5) so as to clash with the subsequent chord, both
effects clarifying the exotic intent (fig. 5). This light exoticism accomplished, the
music quickly retreats into a traditional Western structure. From the present per-
spective at least, the ensuing tonicization of C major in measures 9–12 sounds
distinctly out of place, as if the melody were no longer the guiding principle but
rather merely the starting point in a textbook exercise. As Dittrich stated, he
aimed “to make [Japanese] melodies acceptable to European music lovers by
arranging them in a European style” (quoted in Suchy 1990a, 478). This purpose
haunts his translation of the text as well, with its references to iconic Romantic
imagery (e.g., “murmuring brooks”). Just as Dittrich mediated the Japanese text
through the lens of German Romantic poetry, so too he mediated the original
melody through the filter of traditional Western phrase structure and harmony.
Despite the initial harmonic tremor, universal Western practice would not, at
this stage, be overthrown or undermined by native, exotic forms.
Figure 4. Paul Bevan, arrangement of “Manzai” (1902). From

Paul Bevan, “Japanese Music,” Transactions and Proceedings
of the Japan Society, vol. 5 (June 12, 1901), plate I.
Figure 5. Rudolf Dittrich, arrangement of “Jizuki-Uta” (including

translation of text). Nippon Gafuku (Breitkopf und Hartel, 1894).
As is often observed, Japanese musical life developed rapidly following the

turn of the century. Except for the field of opera, however, the genealogy of this
development is poorly documented (both in the West and apparently even in
Japan), and involves a primordial soup of forms, styles, and genres, including
popular songs (enka, kayōkyoku), concert hall lieder (kakyoku), piano pieces
(often composed for modern dance), folk song arrangements, and some larger
works. Interestingly, the Western music performed in Japan at the time included
not only heavy doses of romantic and modern works by acknowledged masters,
but also the exotic Russian, Spanish, and even Asian salon miniatures that con-
stituted the core of almost every traveling virtuoso’s repertoire.20
Despite this wide array of music, it seems relatively clear that the solution
present in Dittrich’s arrangements became a de facto foundation for post-
1900 Japanese harmonic practice, and hence a strong marker of difference, or
“Japaneseness” in Japanese music. In Rentaro Taki’s Trio from 1900, the half-
diminished seventh sound reverberates both in the harmonic realm and the
counterpoint (fig. 6).21 But Tadashi Yanada’s 1913 setting of “Jōgashima” (The
rain on Jōgashima Island) to a text of Kitaharu Hakushū provides an offshoot
in a more popular vein, attesting to the quick dissemination of this harmonic
practice (fig. 7). Simple in accompaniment and texture, with a strong declama-
tory and emotive melody, the song bears the markings not so much of early
Figure 6. Rentaro Taki, Trio from Two Short Piano

Works (1900) (Source: Herd 1987, 12–13).
Figure 7. Tadashi Yanada, “Jōgashima” (The rain on Jōgashima Island, 1913)

(Source: Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.; translation: Fukusawa 1993, 68–69).
German lieder as of the operatic arias of Glinka (Taruskin 1983), or perhaps

even the canzona of Francesco Tosti.22 For instance, both “Jōgashima” and
Tosti’s “Chitarrata abruzzese” (1909) feature evocative melodies and accompa-
niments, each graced with exotic touches some of which are surprisingly simi-
lar (fig. 8).23 In “Jōgashima,” the emblematic half-diminished seventh underlies
the melodic climax on D5 (m. 7), while the pentatonic-like melody is inflected
Figure 8. Francesco Tosti, “Chitarrata abruzzese” (1909) (Source: Dover).
with prominent tritones and traditional tetrachord-like constructs (m. 9

C-D-Ab-C-G—projecting G as the “melodic” tonic). In “Chitarrata a bruzzese,”
the melody introduces a striking #4 (C#) within the context of the roughly
equivalent half-diminished chord—here used as a subdominant substitute in
the i-iv-i progression. A degree of independence in the Yanada comes from its
opening three-bar phrasing (this stemming from the text), but on the whole the
two songs are rather more similar than different.24
While the birth of popular music in Japan is typically identified as Shimpei
Nakayama’s “Kachūsha no Uta” (Kachūsha’s song)—an a cappella aria inserted
into a 1914 theatrical rendition of Tolstoy’s “Resurrection”—“Jōgashima” stands
as a characteristic example of the type of Western-influenced popular song
(kayōkyoku) listened to by many Japanese in the opening decades of the twen-
tieth century (Nakamura 1991).25 Rapidly insinuating themselves into the sound
world of contemporary Japanese life, it seems likely that these songs reified the
harmonic shading of the iiØ7-i progression as Japanese—that is, as a mode of ex-
pression that contemporary Japanese listeners embraced as their own and valued
as an authentic expression of modern Japanese life. That this sound was, in a cer-
tain sense, adopted does complicate matters but only briefly. For instance, David
Hopkins (2007) writes that this style of popular music “involved a great deal of
compromise and acceptance of ‘Japanesque’ as ‘Japanese.’ ” Yet, since kayōkyoku
was composed mainly if not exclusively in Japan for Japanese audiences, it is by
the definition posed above Japanese. Its stylistic conventions, despite some be-
ing imported from the West, are authentic, or at least as authentic as any other.
Still, following Hopkins, it may be best to understand “Japanesque” as a topic in

a manner akin to the Classical era’s “learned style,” “expressive style,” a musical
style that could be and was adopted by many composers for specific expressive
purposes.26 In fact, this Japanesque harmonic practice resonated well into the
postwar era. Dating from the 1950s, Yoshinao Nakata’s “Cherry Blossom Lane”
includes prominent E-F (b6-5) and Bb-A half steps placed within B-A-F-E and
E-D-Bb-A miyakobushi-like tetrachords (fig. 9). Harmonized with iiØ7-i pro-
gressions, these moments serve as openly nostalgic evocations of prewar Japan.
Harmony was not the only area in which early Japanese composers experi-
mented. Texture too was an important area for innovation, with special focus
given to the inclusion of quasi-heterophonic textures and nontriadic harmo-
nies. For his 1922 “Sunayama,” Shimpei Nakayama utilized a part pentatonic,
part Aeolian ostinato in the piano right hand (fig. 10). Although the overall
effect seems more happenstance than composed (or perhaps this ambiguity was
intended), the varying figuration creates occasional heterophonic interactions
with the melody, the two coming together only in the last measure. While the
Figure 9. Yoshinao Nakata, “Cherry Blossom Lane” (ca. 1950).

Reprinted by permission of Happy Echo Music, Japan.
Figure 10. Shimpei Nakayama (1887–1952), “Sunayama”

(Sand Hill) (1922) (Source: Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.).
left hand’s 1–5 oscillation implies a traditional harmonic support, the tonic and
(minor) dominant harmonies do not always materialize as expected. For in-
stance, the light cadence in m. 4 is built upon an open E-A fourth. In the realm
of voice leading, unresolved sevenths arise in measure 5, exposed parallel fourths
(between the piano and voice) in measure 6.
Critically, both Yanada and Nakayama attended Tokyo College of Music, the
training ground for art music composers. In this regard, their popular songs
can be (and must be) considered as learned artifacts arising within Westerniza-
tion, not distinct from it. Critical to the early development of Western music in
Japan, art music composers had few qualms about writing outside the art music
tradition, and popular song and art song composers often set the same poets,
sometimes even the same texts. For instance, the most famous composer of the
era, Kosaku Yamada, not only brought forth his own version of “Sunayama” but
achieved his most famous successes with quasi-art, quasi-popular songs such
as “Karatachi no hana” (1923) and “Akatombo” (1927). Evidence that Yamada
understood the power of these early Japanese musical tropes may be found in his
emblematic arrangement of Rentaro Taki’s melody “Kojo no Tsuki” (1901/1913)
(fig. 11). Not only does the half-diminished sound and iiØ7-i progression clearly
Figure 11. Rentaro Taki, “Kojo no Tsuki” (melody only, 1901).

Accompaniment by Kosaku Yamada (ca. 1917), Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.
haunt the musical surface (see bracket in fig. 11), but Yamada replaced Taki’s
original G# in measure 7 with G natural, thus allowing iiØ7 to be prolonged
across the entire measure.27
It is interesting then to compare the above examples with at least one early
Yamada art song (kakyoku), “Kaze Hitori” from 1914 (fig. 12). Written to a poem
of Ryuko Kawaji, there is a density of musical thought here absent from both
the Yanada and Nakayama songs, but the similarities are patent. The melody
seems but a fancier, syncopated version of that in “Kojo no Tsuki” and can even
be analyzed as a chaining together of miyakobushi-based tetrachords (see top
bracket in fig. 12). The accompaniment provides a light-heterophonic coun-
terpoint and includes notable exotic or perhaps better modernist touches such
as the use of the raised fourth scale degree (F#), parallel fifths and suspended
seconds in the harmonic realm, and, of course, the half-diminished seventh,
hidden initially in the piano figuration (m. 1, beat 3) then placed subtly over
a G pedal (see bottom bracket in fig. 12). One may detect here ample traces of
Yamada’s own musical hero, Richard Strauss, especially in the placement of a
striking dissonance early in the song, but Yamada’s sources are varied and even
at this stage difficult to unravel.
Whether “Kaze Hitori” directly influenced Yanada and Nakayama (or vice
versa) is unknown, but its early date, 1914, and its stylistic similarity to the
popular songs discussed above, suggest a more fluid, porous, and evolved musi-
cal scene than is sometimes allowed in English language histories.28 Moreover,
this fluidity extends to two other enormously popular and influential genres of
yōgaku, namely dōyō (children’s songs) and shōka (educational songs). As this
body of music has already been subjected to extensive analysis by Elizabeth
May (1959) and more recently Noriko Manabe (2009), a full treatment is not
required here. Most importantly, these compositions often centered on bubbly,
major mode pentatonic melodies set to march-like accompaniments, and these
features easily intertwined with those of another rapidly growing song genre,
Figure 12. Kosaku Yamada, “Kaze Hitori” (1914). The

Complete Yamada Edition (Shunjūsha, 1990).
namely gunka (military songs). Composer Ikuma Dan writes that at the open-
ing of the century,
[p]eople everywhere began composing little songs along the same lines [modeled
on Ministry of Education music textbooks], called shōka, and they spread like wild-
fire. Also tremendously popular were many marching songs inspired by the Sino-
Japanese War [1894–1895] and later the Russo-Japanese War [1904–1905]. (Dan
1961, 211; see also Eppstein 1987)29
In fact, the symbiosis between the educational, the popular, the aesthetic,
and the national seems to have been a defining component of interwar Japanese
culture. Examining a broad array of Japanese educational practices, Harootunian
(1974) describes how, even by 1910, imperial rescripts, educational plans and
curricula, and government sanctions concerning morality and behavior had
significantly narrowed the sphere of acceptable artistic activity and content.
Similarly, William Gardner (2006) demonstrates how prominent avant-garde
artists often worked as much in tandem with mass culture as they did against
it. Hence, while influential modernist movements in dance, theater, and art—
including a Dadaist-like dance/art movement called MAVO (see Weisenfeld
2002)—arose in the teens and progressed well into the 1920s, specific events
often spurred reactionary turning points. For instance, the Tokyo earthquake in
1923 not only destroyed much of Tokyo’s artistic center in Asakusa, but also led
to the violent repression of Koreans living in the city.30 In fact, many progressive
artists from this period became active supporters of the military regime in the
1930s and beyond.
On a musical level, the establishment of a core of “Japanese” musical tropes
seems to have allowed an easy collapsing of musical nationalism onto politi-
cal, and eventually imperialist, forms. Historian Louise Young (1998) draws an
explicit connection between the songs from the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-
Japanese wars and those produced in the spectacular rise of militant nationalism
during the Manchurian Incident (ca. 1931–1933), and Manabe’s own disserta-
tion (2009, 238–42) draws parallels between the growing presence in shōka and
dōyō of figures and tropes derived from traditional Japanese music and Japan’s
rising militarism. More strikingly, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (2002, 124) holds that
popular songs played a prominent role in the transformation of sakura (cherry
blossoms) from a symbol of “life” in ancient Japan to one of bushido (samurai
code) and as a “motto for ideal soldiers” in Imperialist Japan. As she writes, the
image of the falling petals served “to aestheticize soldiers’ deaths on the battle-
field, followed by their resurrection at Yasukuni Shrine.” 31 Aside from differ-
ences in key and meter, the three song melodies shown in figure 13a–c (Rentaro
Taki’s shōka “Hakone Hachiri” of 1901, Shimpei Nakayama’s “Kachūsha no Uta”
of 1914, and the “2,600th Anniversary March Song” from 1940) all employ a
similar compositional language built from pentatonic scales, triadic outlining,
dotted rhythms, and emphatic and direct phrasing. It is not hard to imagine how
someone educated in the first might fall in love with the second, and ultimately
find themselves singing along with the third. It is to the ideological component
of this symbiosis that we now turn.
Figure 13. (a) Rentaro Taki, “Hakone Hachiri” (1901) (Source: Mori 2010).
(b) Shimpei Nakayama, “Kachūsha no Uta” (1914), as transcribed from a
recording of Sumako Matsui, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ander025/all1441
/027106.html (accessed January 10, 2011). (c) “2600th Anniversary March
Song” (1940) (Source: Ruoff 2010, plate 21 postcard [full text not visible]).
Theorizing Japaneseness in Japanese Music: Debates in the 1930s

As shown above then, yōgaku quickly attained a formidable presence in Japanese
culture and society, a point attested to by knowledgeable foreigners who both
visited and worked in Japan. In 1927, for instance, conductor and composer
Heinrich Werkmeister wrote that musically, “Japan is a land which must be taken
seriously in every respect, and has passed the stage of fairytales in the style of
‘The Arabian Nights,’ for Japan has awakened, and is still emphatically sound
and capable of development” (1927, 107).
Although Werkmeister looked upon this development in an entirely positive
light, with the arrival of a new generation of composers, the exact nature of “new”
Japanese music became subject to critique and debate. It is difficult to know for
certain at what point the search for a new Japanese practice became explicit,
but most accounts cite April 30, 1930 as a critical turning point. On this date,
16 composers—almost all born after 1900—formed the Shinkō S akkyoku-ka
Renmei (New Rising Federation of Composers), a society specifically dedicated
to the development of a new modern style of composition.32 As Herd writes, the
Federation encouraged composers to explore several areas including:
(1) A wide range of possibilities for melody and harmony, by using combi-
nations of scales and modes found in traditional music, particularly the
minor and pentatonic to emphasize Japanese qualities;
(2) The development of Japanese tonal systems suitable for primarily penta-
tonic and modal melodies, structured after the type of quartal “harmo-
nies” derived from the vertical tone clusters of the shō in gagaku;
(3) The use of linear, quasi-polyphonic texture similar to the sankyoku and
jiuta ensemble music; and
(4) A creative use of instrumental color. (Herd 2004, 44)
Herd notes that these “suggestions for creating new musical styles (minzoku
shugi-teki sakkyoku) were primarily methodological, not ideological or nation-
alistic” (2004, 44). But neither were they entirely new. Save for tone color—
and even this is debatable—the Federation’s list summarizes the basic features
of the nascent “Japanese” style found in the Yanada, Nakayama, and Yamada
songs discussed earlier: pentatonic and minor Japanese scales, modal harmo-
nies including clusters and fourths, and heterophonic textures. Hence, while the
Federation’s manifesto projected a progressive aspect—a more intense, detailed
exploration of traditional practices—it also contained within it a reactionary
one, in the sense that it was formalizing and delimiting the modern Japanese
musical style(s) that had already been in place for a decade or more.33
Thus, as debates over new musical practices intensified in the mid-1930s and
competing groups entered into the mix, it is easy to witness how the ideological
implications of this distillation rose to the fore: the stylistic features being not
entirely new, it was necessary to privilege solutions to the problem of the cre-
ation of “Japaneseness” in music within other constructs, constructs first theo-
retical, then ideological. For instance, in 1934, one of the Federation’s founding
members, Shūkichi Mitsukuri, published a treatise (itself the outcome of several
articles) proposing the basis for a new Japanese harmonic practice.34 Working
with ascending and descending cycles of perfect fifths, Mitsukuri fashioned two
traditional Japanese scales, the first common to gagaku, and the second similar
to the urban folk-based miyakobushi. With this Japanese content set in place
and characterizing thirds as dissonances, he then used the two scales to cre-
ate contrasting chord progressions (termed positive and negative) built upon
open fifths (fig. 14). As Luciana Galliano comments: “What interested Mitsukuri
was the possibilities for modulation offered by the interaction between the F in
the negative scale and the F# in the positive scale” (2002, 67). While Mitsukuri
also fashioned two whole-tone scales from this system, more importantly he
Figure 14. Shūkichi Mitsukuri, “positive” and “negative”

fifths (as found in Galliano 2002, 67).
proffered several examples of “true” Japanese composition including his own

Bashō Kikōshū (1931), as well as music by Yamada and Nobutoki Kiyoshi. We
will examine one of Mitsukuri’s Bashō settings below.
A debate then erupted between Mitsukuri and Klaus Pringsheim (principal
conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo), who not only dis-
missed Mitsukuri’s derivation but implied that it debased Western harmonic
practice: “The decline of harmonic logic is not progress of any kind.” A disciple
of Mahler, Pringsheim offered his own Konzert für Orchester in C-Dur (1935) as
better integration of, as Galliano notes, “Japanese esthetics” and “Western prac-
tice” (2002, 68; italics mine). Not surprisingly, Mitsukuri rejected Pringsheim’s
Konzert as a model for Japanese composers, likening its Japanese content to the
Spanish content in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espangol.
In a span of 4 years, what was theoretical—Herd’s “methodological”—became
strongly ideological, the ideologies tainted with overtones of ethnic and racial
superiority, difference, and uniqueness. For instance, Pringsheim’s emphasis on
harmonic logic invoked a trope common to German criticism (harmony and
counterpoint above color), suggesting that what he really disliked in Mitsukuri’s
rendering was its French influence. In response, Mitsukuri played his ultimate
(if disputable) trump card, that Pringsheim had no business commenting on
Japanese composition since he wasn’t Japanese and, implicitly at least, was in-
capable of embodying the true Japanese spirit.
That Mitsukuri’s list of successful Japanese compositions cites already finished
works, and that Pringsheim so consciously offered his own music to the debate,
gives lie to the highly formalistic nature of these theories and exposes their
reactionary underpinnings. Paradoxically, what the theories advocated was not
inventiveness and creativity but composition by numbers. Moreover, although
growing international tensions in the 1930s increasingly sensitized composers
and theorists to the aporia of creating a perfect blend of Japanese and Western
music, they were (somewhat similar to the writers of “Cultural Propaganda”)
unable to find a way around the dilemma. After all, the debate was itself one
of Western making, for the idea and ideal of a national style was not unique to
Japan but arose in Europe as early as the eighteenth century in the writings of
Herder. As is clear from Mitsukuri’s and Pringsheim’s comments, Europe’s own
stylistic and aesthetic conflicts played a critical role in framing the debates in
Japan.35 But looking at Mitsukuri’s system, what is most surprising is that any-
one, even in Japan in 1934, would view progressions built upon open fifths as
a particularly new, let alone a purely Japanese idea—whatever their derivation.
Yamada’s “Rokkyu” (Six warriors) from 1922 utilizes open fifths in a manner at
least somewhat similar to Mitsukuri’s system; however Yamada’s likely source
was not traditional Japanese music but Debussy, whom he had conducted one
year earlier (fig. 15).36 An examination of other scores from the same period,
Figure 15. Kosaku Yamada, “Rokkyu” (Six warriors,

1922) (Source: Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.).
for instance “Ozami no Hana” (Thistle flower) by Kunihiko Hashimoto, reveals

the practice to be reasonably widespread (fig. 16).
Such contradictions and inherent circularities did nothing, of course, to halt
the debates and the advent of new systems. Hence in 1940, musicologist and
theorist Shōhei Tanaka published his own response to Pringsheim, a treatise
entitled Nippon kasei no kiso (Foundations of Japanese harmony), whose formal-
ism is even greater and more restricting.37 For here, the resulting chord progres-
sions—even accounting for their specific voicings—prove so generic as to be
meaningless; only that must have been part of the point, for this certainly eased
the attaching of cultural signifiers such as Japanese onto them. Shortly thereafter,
Figure 16. Kunihiko Hashimoto, “Ozami no Hana” (Thistle

Flower, 1929) (Source: Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.).
Fumio Hayasaka—now best known for the opening “Bolero” in the Kurosawa
film Rashomon—tweaked Tanaka’s system, adding single tones (typically unre-
solved suspensions) to some of the chords of resolution, while alternatively reject-
ing other chords as “not belonging to Japanese harmony.” For Galliano, Hayasaka’s
chords of resolution recall those created by the shō, but the limited nature of the
refinements and the immediate context, 1940, suggest ideological hair splitting
(2002, 71–72). Even in comparison with Mitsukuri’s overdetermined theory, both
Tanaka and Hayasaka’s systems provide evidence of the stale formalism of which
the Japan Times warned. More importantly, since by 1940 all publications re-
quired permission from government censors, surely both Tanaka and Hayasaka’s
claims of “Japaneseness” are suspect—except in the sense that they represented
or at the very least mapped neatly onto official political ideology.
Whatever Tanaka’s own politics, an August 1941 review in Contemporary
Japan neatly clarifies his treatise’s nationalistic underpinnings (10[8]:1091). 38
Situating the treatise within recent attempts “to create a new Japanese national
music,” the review used Tanaka’s explication of the different leading tones in
Western and traditional Japanese music (a half step and whole step below the
tonic, respectively) as a stepping stone to a qualitative assessment of the differ-
ence between Japanese and East Asian music, an assessment laced with strong
colonialist overtones:
It is only in Western music and Japanese [music] that the leading-note is fully es-
tablished; this is the case neither in Chinese, Indian nor in South Sea music. Our
[Japanese] music is, therefore, decidedly superior to other Oriental music in this
respect. (Contemporary Japan 1941, 10:1091)
Following a brief and (seemingly muddled) summary of Tanaka’s system, the

review concluded in a fanfare of nationalist propaganda:
By inserting a leading-note for the tonic and the subdominant and adding a triad
to each of the three basic notes, Dr. Tanaka has created a new Japanese scale, as the
fruits of fifty years of study and research in both Japanese and Western music. This
brilliant achievement will, we believe, add to Japanese music the depth and richness
it has heretofore lacked owing to the absence of successful harmonization; his work
will undoubtedly be found helpful to our composers and materially contribute to
the creation and development of a new national music. (Contemporary Japan 1941,
10:1091)39
While one cannot equate a review with the theory itself, the simple ridiculous-
ness of these claims should provide fair warning to anyone attempting to locate
grains of theoretical and aesthetic truth in Tanaka’s system.
While it is unclear whether any Japanese composers attempted to create ac-
tual pieces of music with Tanaka’s treatise—we will examine a short piano work
by Hayasaka later—the debate over a new Japanese music reached its apogee
at the famous Kindai no Chōkōku (Overcoming Modernity Symposium) held

in July 1942.40 Here, composer Saburo Moroi and critics Hideo Tsumura and
Kawakami Tetsutaō engaged in a debate as to whether Western music was ca-
pable of expressing Japanese thought. Invoking a jumble of complex and highly
contextualized signifiers and stylistic principles—many Western in origin (prim-
itivism, expressionism, and especially neoclassicalism, which was very much in
the air)—the debate apparently engaged little actual music, and from a present
perspective seems strangely divorced from actual contemporary musical life.
Although Tsumura complained that the practice of singing Japanese folk songs
in a Western style (as found in some movies) was a joke, such folk song ar-
rangements were popular at concerts, much recorded by the best internationally
known Japanese singers of the day, including Tamaki Miura and Yoshie Fujiwara,
and were common in successful Japanese movies.41
Tsumura’s criticism was no doubt aimed at the future of Japanese music, but
he implicitly proved what he wished to deny, namely, that yōgaku had for quite
some time constituted its own integrated and oftentimes startlingly indigenous
tradition.42 For instance, the fascinating and supposedly innovative combina-
tions of Japanese and Western instruments touted as originating in postwar com-
position were apparently commonplace in musical accompaniments to Japanese
silent films (especially jidai-geki) of the 1920s. J. L. Anderson writes:
Even the smallest movie theaters employed an ensemble whose principal Western
instruments were piano, violin, and clarinet or cornet (or trumpet). This was aug-
mented with shamisen [and taiko] for jidai-geki. . . . The best of these movie theater
musicians became pioneers in the promulgation of Western classical popular music
in the other venues in Japan. (Anderson 1992, 289)
Even after 1928 (following the appearance of talkies):

Japanese silent films were often distributed with a specially composed theme song
that was sung live by a guest singer or, on rare occasions, by a katsuben [a narrator
analogous to a benshi]. A film and the record of its theme song arrived on the mar-
ket simultaneously to cross-plug each other. Because so many movie theme songs
became hits, they played an important role in the development of modern Japanese
popular music. Most of these original theme tunes were based on the Japanese
pentatonic scale scored for Western instruments or were standard fox-trot idiom.
(Anderson 1992, 290)
Thus it must have been somewhat puzzling for avid moviegoers to read in a
June 1938 article by composer Shiro Fukai that realism in films “leaves no room
for Western music, which is still not truly a part of our lives,” or similarly, in an
article by composer Hattori Tadashi, that Japanese “do not know much about
Western music. We do not know what to write, or even what we should write”
(quoted in Iwamoto 1992, 325). To this, film scholar Kenji Iwamoto astutely
observes: “Although life in Japan is now permeated with Western music, it must
be remembered that these were the anxieties of composers living in an age very
different from our own” (1992, 325).
What is essential here is that, whatever the politics and musical intents of all
the participants, the terms of the debate and the pervasive nature of the musi-
cal constructs enabled an easy mapping of yōgaku onto the aims and goals of
Japanese imperialism: given the insistence that the music incorporate authentic
Japanese music (in the rather trope-based forms that it did) and thereby ad-
dress the Japanese spirit, the music could be easily co-opted (if not composed
directly) to serve the interests of the state, and there is little in the historical
record to suggest that this was not the case. In this very regard, it is instructive
to compare the musical theorizing of the 1930s and 1940s with that of the 1920s,
which focused largely on text setting, not so much the content as the mechanics
of rhythm, articulation, and accent, such that the Japanese would be audible,
understandable, and expressive (Manabe 2009, 243–88). There was an ideologi-
cal component to this, since the question of how to create a style of music truer
to the Japanese language was related to the question of how to make the music
more truly Japanese, but the criticism was still largely confined to technical
issues. It is all the more striking then that the specific nature of the theorizing
of the 1930s arose concurrent with the rise of militant Japanese nationalism: in
short, the question of “Japaneseness in music” only became an issue once the
political temperature had sufficiently risen.
While the intellectual project to create a truly authentic modern Japanese/
Western practice may not have been doomed from the start, it was founded upon
a contradiction between an essentialist ideal (unique Japanese content) and the
very technical nature of the harmonic, rhythmic, and textural derivations them-
selves.43 But even if these new systems of Japanese music were restrictive and
delimiting, rather than expansive, and even if the contemporary debates are
interesting in and of themselves, it is important that we examine the so-called
progressive music from this period in detail to understand not what Japanese
music wanted to be or what it would become, but rather what it was, in what
ways it was or might have been unique and, through this lens, reveal something
of what it may have meant.
Two Examples by Shūkichi Mitsukuri

Let us turn back then to Mitsukuri’s own Bashō Kikōshū, the song cycle he cited
as one example of new Japanese music. Composed in late 1930, hence after
the formation of the Shinkō Sakkyoku-ka Renmei (New Rising Federation of
Composers), it seems likely that Bashō Kikōshū was directly influenced by the
Federation’s goals, and that its musical language prefigures the theoretical system
that Mitsukuri later published. Nevertheless, a full evaluation of Bashō Kikōshū

hinges not upon Mitsukuri’s system—neither the degree that he enacted it nor
its inherent “Japaneseness”—but upon how well the music expresses or reveals
something about Bashō’s poems. The second song in the cycle sets a haiku from
Bashō’s “The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton,” whose text is as follows
(Barnhill 2004):
Uma ni nete I dozed on my horse
zanmu tsuki tōshi half in dreams, the moon distant;
cha no keburi smoke of breakfast tea
Mitsukuri’s setting displays a host of striking musical features including an
aphoristic structure, contrasts between syllabic and melismatic phrases, flexible
metric treatment, and short, asymmetrical phrasing ([112]121213), this last
aspect derived from the text itself (fig. 17). Galliano views Mitsukuri’s accom-
paniment as more scalar than triadic and she suggests, appropriately I believe,
that the pitch structure centers on “modulations” between E-F and E-F#, and
A-Bb and A-B dyads, each dyad part of a larger tetrachord figure drawn from
traditional Japanese music (2002, 67). At the same time, Dittrich’s “Japanesque”
half-diminished seventh is plainly audible in measure 4 and clearly implied in
measures 8–9, and there is a very real danger, especially in a work as short as this,
of the accompaniment dissolving into a bland pentatonic soup. On the positive
side, both Galliano (2002) and Herd (2004) point to how changes in texture con-
vey the poem’s story and symbolism, most obviously how the abrupt switch to a
block chord texture at m. 6 (tōshi or distant) portrays the poet awakening from
his vision (dream) of the distant moon to the smell of tea-smoke (cha no keburi).
In fact, this textural shift calls attention to how other images in the poem
(horse, dreaming poet, distant moon, tea smoke) as well as the relationships
between them are distinctly painted in the music. Despite the impressionist
surface, the opening texture recalls the stratified treatments found in Schubert
(e.g., “Gretchen am Spinnrade”). Here, the even, unchanging right-hand chords
evoke the horse’s slow, steady gait, the left-hand scales the sleeping poet. Appro-
priately with zanmu (half-dream) in measure 4, the right-hand chords quicken
and descend into the left-hand register, while conversely the left-hand scale
ascends, leading to the stream of 32nd note arpeggios that paint tsuki (moon).
These arpeggios are built from stereotypical gestures—the E half-diminished
seventh in m. 6—but each is clouded by strong dissonances, for instance, the A
that supports the E half-diminished chord. As the moon was a commonplace
trope in haiku, it is at least possible that Mitsukuri consciously drew upon a
similarly stereotypical musical gesture as its support. More importantly, this
arpeggio takes an important role in the subsequent play of figures, each possess-
ing a poetic/symbolic meaning. After the voice’s B4 cadence (m. 5), the piano’s
Figure 17. Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Bashō Kikōshū,

song 2 (1930) (Source: Galliano 2002).
arpeggio quickly descends from its climatic E6 only to halt abruptly with the
arrival of the aforementioned chordal texture (tōshi—distant, remote, or less
metaphorically waning). Here, the voice’s E-F# parallels its opening E-F, the shift
to a whole step (E-F#) signifying the poet’s awakening as the distant/dreamed
moon fades into the present. The voice’s subsequent quarter note ascent—an
augmented version of the piano’s opening gesture, a correspondence made clear

by the doubling in the piano right hand—paints the smoke drifting slowly up-
ward. Subtly echoing the moon arising within the poet’s dream in measure 6,
this final image and gesture unites the poem’s two contrasting states.44
A more detailed analysis might go on to explore how Galliano’s “modulations”
compose out the poem’s contrasting states on deeper levels of the musical struc-
ture, and it may even be possible to read the song, at least in part, as a portrayal of
the composer’s own “awakening” to the aesthetic pleasure (“scent”) of traditional
Japanese music and culture. In either case, however, I believe the pitch modula-
tions do not speak as clearly or as forcefully as Mitsukuri may have hoped. This
weakness arises in part from the aphoristic structure and in part from a telling
lack of motivic precision: the piano introduction is indistinct, the melodic ideas
and accompanimental patterns too generic for the ear to grasp or create a hi-
erarchical pitch field—in Jeanne Bamberger’s (1986) and David Lewin’s (1993,
46–47) term “layout”—against which the significance of the F to F# and B to
Bb shifts may be heard. The alterations of pitch seem, to my ear at least, too
much a part of a single cloth. In any case, while Mitsukuri was attempting to
release himself from the imitative and conformist music of his predecessors and
contemporaries, he was in fact merely harvesting the fruits of their labors. It is
not only easy, but in fact necessary, to hear this kakyoku alongside (as well as
against) them. The setting comprises a series of harmonic and textural variants
on the popular song and art song tropes that had long been transmitted to the
Japanese listening public.45
Interestingly, Mitsukuri’s own Sakura, Sakura, op. 16, no. 2 (1940) for piano
provides a useful comparison piece (fig. 18). Following a short introduction,
one that concludes with the standard miyakobushi-based glissando, Mitsukuri
subjects the “Sakura” melody to fugal elaboration, tweaking the traditional plan
slightly so that, following the exposition, the flow of subject entries modulate
by fourth: E-F#/C-B (mm. 11-15), B-C#/G-F# (mm. 17-21), A-B/F-E (mm. 34-
5), D-E/Bb-A (mm. 38-9), G-A/Eb-D (mm. 43-4), C-D/Ab-G (mm. 55-6). Not
only is the fourth the boundary interval of the miyakobushi tetrachord, but the
counterpoint likewise derives from these same tetrachord figures, as if Western
counterpoint and tonal structure had been reenvisioned in “Japanese” terms.
If the “Sakura” fugue appears the more successful of the two Mitsukuri pieces,
being denser in surface language and tighter in structure (although this might
be expected in an instrumental context), it also directly engages earlier yōgaku
and European romantic music. For while the treatment is mildly progressive,
the style represents a reworking, to be sure more intricate and dissonant, of the
heterophonic figuration seen in Nakayama’s 1922 “Sunayama.” More broadly,
the improvised fugue on a popular theme was a common trick of nineteenth-
century European composers. While this fugue was likely not improvised on
Figure 18. Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Sakura, Sakura, op. 16,

no. 2 (1940) (Source: Ongaku no Tomo sha).
sight, it possesses a distinctly Lisztian flavor and may ask to be considered along-
side of the contrapuntal writing of Bartok, whose music began to receive atten-
tion in Japan in the 1930s. In either case, there is a sense of gamesmanship here
with regards to both the “Sakura” theme and with the tradition of fugal writing
itself (compare, for instance, Mitsukuri’s treatment with that of Dittrich’s), and
this gamesmanship discloses a nationalist trace that, given the date of composi-
tion, 1940 (close to the extensive celebrations for the 2,600th anniversary of the
founding of Japan), certainly demands inquiry.46 “Sakura” was after all one of
Japan’s most famous melodies, and the ability to treat it to fugal elaboration must
have symbolized (at least to some) its inherent culture and civilization: the set-
ting seems an excellent example of “the particular in the universal.” In this very
striking and potentially politically charged way, Mitsukuri’s fugue takes up the
challenge issued at the start of Japan’s modernization, to pull even with and even-
tually to master the West. Whether this symbolism also possessed an explicit
imperialist meaning is difficult to say, but comparing the dates of compositions,
October 1930 for the Bashō setting, roughly a year before the Manchurian crisis
(19311) that triggered a powerful rise in nationalism within the Japanese popu-
lace, and 1940 for the “Sakura” fugue, does tend to further this assessment.47
Coda: Musical Developments 1930–1945

Thus in the end, the innovations so promoted by composers and theorists as
strong symbols of difference and uniqueness tended to be but minor shifts in
the surface musical language, not broad structural changes. As further evidence,
one need only cite Kishio Hirao’s arrangement of the folk melody “Gyofu no
Uta” (Fisherman’s song) from a collection composed in 1941 (fig. 19). Hirao was
also associated with the progressive school of composition, and his harmoniza-
tion accepts a high degree of dissonance, preserving the original melody’s “A”
tonic and lowered second scale degree, Bb, and utilizes a quasi-heterophonic
counterpoint. But while this treatment seems more “authentic” than those of
Rudolf Dittrich from 401 years earlier, the underlying approaches are strik-
ingly similar.48
If composers of the 1930s didn’t necessarily invent a new style, they did be-
come more adept at manipulating the earlier practice, and thus the music does
manifest a growing density of musical thought and technique. Hisatada Otaka’s
Suite Japan of 1936 (composed in Vienna) retains the half-diminished flavor,
yet the musical surface is considerably more playful and intricate than many
compositions of the 1920s discussed above (figs. 20a and 20b).49 Perhaps a more
intriguing work in this regard is Fumio Hayasaka’s 17 Piano Pieces, dated 1941.
As shown, the first piece in the set amounts to a passacaglia on the opening
theme, which stated in parallel octaves, establishes A in a quasi-aeolian mode
Figure 19. Kishio Hirao, “Gyofu no Uta” (Fisherman’s

song, 1941) (Source: Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.).
Figure 20a. Hisatada Otaka, Suite Japan ii (“Children
at Play,” 1936) (Source: Editions Kawai).
Figure 20b. Hisatada Otaka, Suite Japan iii (“Cradle

Song,” 1936) (Source: Editions Kawai).
and emphasizes Japanese-based tetrachords, (i.e., G-A-C) (fig. 21). This theme
then serves as the basis for several variations, each of which places the theme in
a different mode or harmonic context. Of particular interest is the segment in
measures 141, which superimposes simultaneous F#s, Gs, and As in a sort of
clustered heterophonic counterpoint. While this segment functions as a transi-
tion section—the surrounding music is pointedly more reserved and conso-
nant—the question certainly arises as to what Hayasaka may be attempting to
“represent” here.
In his preface to the score, Hayasaka wrote that he intended these pieces not
for concert use but as chamber music, and suggested that these pieces would
help address a cultural deficiency, in that Eastern people were unable to perceive
of art as abstract objects as Westerners did. But Hayasaka was also one of the
Figure 21. Fumio Hayasaka, 17 Piano Pieces (Piece

no. 1, 1941) (Source: Zen-on Music Co., Ltd.).
composers to engage in debates about the Japanese content of yōgaku, and he did
so at a time when militant nationalism was at its height. Hence this set of piano
pieces likely represents an outgrowth of his theoretical labors, and is certainly
intended as a demonstration of the power of its technical content.
To go one step further and collapse the music onto its historical/political
moment seems clearly crude, not merely because the music is contemplative
rather than combative, but also because it would enact the substitution that
Hirota announced in the quotation cited at the start of this paper. But might
we, at least, take issue with Hayasaka’s simplistic juxtaposition of Eastern and
Western listeners? Were Japanese really incapable of grasping Western music? If
so, what does one make of soprano Tamaki Miura’s performance of the complete
Winterreise on October 12, 1943 (Japan Times, October 6, 1943, 3)?50 There are
many potentially contradictory ways in which to read this event, but at the very
least we might observe that “Western” music was, by the time of the Pacific War,
a thoroughly integrated aspect of Japanese society and culture; that whatever the
apparent paradoxes and complexities attendant to its particular role in society,
these sonic artifacts and the events surrounding them are representations of that
culture—not anomalies distinct from it; and that, ultimately, the understanding
of this music depends upon close analysis, and not the all too easy application
of loaded signifiers onto it.
Thus even if we choose to catch in Hayasaka’s dissonant clusters a pre-glimpse
of his future student Tōru Takemitsu, it is important to remember that the lat-
ter composer’s first steps were not toward the Japanese spirit of the war years,
but decidedly away from it. If the story is to be believed (Burt 2001, 22–23), it
was not traditional Japanese music that set Takemitsu’s compositional heart
aflame, but his chance listening to a 1930 Jean Lenoir cabaret song, “Parlez-moi
d’amour” (Speak to me of love) as sung by Lucienne Boyer, a work that in its
simple declamatory style, elegant harmonies, and rocking accompaniment has
much in common with the kayōkyoku of Japan’s teens.
To conclude, the issues raised in this paper are not those of causality or of
responsibility, but of context. Following Western Romantic precepts and ideals—
precepts and ideals very much alive in the West of the same period—Japanese
composers created a large body of national music, music with demonstrable
connections to the past, music listened to and loved by many, and music that,
if originally forged from benign cultural impulses, that is, cultural nationalism,
eventually came to possess vestiges of politics and imperialism. With one eye
glued to Japanese traditions and the other glancing ahead to postwar innovation
and culturalism, and perhaps owing to a certain discomfort with addressing
Japanese imperialism, Western scholars have failed to fully grasp yōgaku’s im-
portance to interwar Japanese culture and hence underestimated the extent to
which it forms an important and perhaps unique chapter in the history of music
nationalism. The problem—really the dilemma—of interwar yōgaku is not that it

failed, but that it succeeded. But since it has never been taken seriously as music,
the basic questions surrounding it have never really been asked.
Ithaca College
Notes
1
April 14, 1936, p. 8. The Japan Times changed names throughout this period (i.e., the
Japan Times and Mail, later the Nippon Times); I use only the former here, abbreviated
as JT in notes.
2
Hirota lasted one year in office and was replaced in February 1937. Following the
war, he was tried as a Class A war criminal and was executed in December of 1948,
the lone civilian to receive this sentence. I have been unable to confirm the contents of
the cited speech.
3
See JT, July 14, 1943, 5, “[Motonari] Iguchi Outlines Vital Role of Japan in Musical
World: Japanese Music Is Spreading to the Southern Regions, and It Is Nippon’s Duty to
Lead the Peoples There to Find and Create Their Own National Music.” Iguchi boasted,
“Meanwhile Koscak Yamada, who has more and more grown into the post of Japan’s
musical ambassador at large, is traveling all over the Co-Prosperity Sphere to investigate
musical conditions on the spot and establish contacts with musical circles and cultural
authorities.”
4
For the purposes of this paper, I take the interwar period to encompass World Wars
I and II. On nationalism in Japanese poetry and literature, see Keene (1964, 1976, 1978),
Shillony (1991), and Mayo (2001). Following Keene, my aim is not to convict composers
in absentia, but merely to understand their work and its historical context.
5
A brief etymology of yōgaku appears in Galliano (2002, xiii and 58, n. 26). Written
with the kanji 洋学, yōgaku means simply “Western learning.”
6
Hence few entries on interwar Japanese composers in Grove Music Online (accessed
July 2010, www.oxfordmusiconline.com) discuss the issue of nationalism. For direct
consideration, see Pacun (2008) and Fukunaka (2008). As noted by Fukunaka, Kosaku
Yamada was president of the Performer’s Association (itself founded under the auspices
of the Metropolitan Police Department) and established the Music Service Force for the
purpose of “provid[ing] people living under harsh conditions with comfort and relief.”
One of its slogans was “Our music is our weapon.” The Association encompassed a wide
range of Japanese musicians including Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Yasuji Kiyose, Saburo Moroi,
and Masao Oki. A JT report, “Local Music Group Goes Totalitarian: Central Organization
Formed Covering Every Phrase of Musical Life of Nation” (November 25, 1940, 1), is
telling: “In a formal declaration, which was pronounced by Mr. Naotada Yamamoto, the
assembly pledged that in their new organization they will sincerely strive to serve the
true aims of the nation through music, under a renewed consciousness of their duties
as Japanese subjects. Another statement was read to the effect that Japan’s musicians,
realizing that present emergency of the nation, which must be overcome, will combine
their efforts to create a new genuine music of Japan, and each of them, remembering
his position as an individual subject and individual musician, will cooperate toward
the creation of one single musical organization ready to serve the nation.” Masao Oki
was quoted as stating, “All talk about totalitarian ideas in connection with the Japanese
New Structure Movement is based on a fundamental misconception regarding the true
spirit of the Japanese race. . . . This new consciousness among the people is finding is
[sic] expression also in our movement for the creation of this new musical organization,
which draws its strength from the cultural will of the musicians themselves. . . . [W]e are
convinced that those musicians who will insist on staying aloof from our common aims
in selfish individualism will eventually lose their foothold in the musical world and their
context with the people” (ibid., 3).
7
See notes 3 and 6.
8
Contrary to Herd’s assertion, Takemitsu had little interest in politics (Takemitsu 2010,
69). The role of proletarian politics in music of the 1930s remains outside the scope of
this paper; however, this study does aim to problematize the division of interwar yōgaku
into fixed schools.
9
The immediate context for Kiyose’s Suite would have been celebrations surrounding
the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese empire (see Ruoff 2010). On the
distinction between minzoku-shugi and kokumin-shugi, see Everett (2006).
10
On this broader issue, see Taruskin (2007).
11
Efforts to break free from this framework—such as those attempted by Hayasaka and
Ikufube, and those inspired by Alexander Tcherepnin—still took place through Western
aesthetics, such as the primitivism of Stravinsky, and were in any case driven by the
hypothetical norm of some ideal blend of Western and Japanese music. On the aporia of
this situation for Japanese culture as a whole, see Harootunian (2000). On Tcherepnin’s
influence on Japanese music, see Korabelnikova (2008).
12
That is, we must accept the claims of the participants as history.
13
Of early Meiji literature, John Mertz writes: “Yet what I have found in writing this
book is that where literary innovation did occur, often the innovation actually preceded
the naming of the precedent, and was motivated by mechanisms having very little to
[do] with direct emulation of the West. As I see it, the most significant developments
occurred early on as incidental . . . outcomes of their authors’ various narrative premises,
only later to be encompassed within the critical value system of so-called modernity. . . .
When critics such as Tsubouchi Shoyo and Futabatei Shimei finally began to enunciate
a critical vocabulary for Japan’s future novels, they were to a great extent merely giving
voice to developments that had already been installed within the ‘horizons of expectation’
(to adopt Jauss’s term) of their readership” (Mertz 2003, xi, italics mine).
14
For reissues of classical music recordings made in interwar Japan, see The Rohm
Music Foundation at http://www.rohm.com/rmf/naiyou/jouhou_chousa.html.
15
My heading references Vlastos (1998).
16
While this formulation already melds aesthetic and theoretical issues, the problem
of sensitive harmonization is not unique to Japanese melodies but is common to the
harmonization of any and all melodies. My analysis here derives from, and to some extent
simplifies Koizumi (1977).
17
I make no claim that Dittrich was the first composer to come upon this harmonic
treatment; only that as Dittrich taught at the Tokyo College of Music, he directly impacted
the Japanese musical scene.
18
Kitahara writes: “Traditionally, the in scale [essentially the miyakobushi] was not
associated with a sorrowful mood. Indeed, no definite mode was directly connected
to either the in scale or the yo scale [i.e., C-D-F-G-Bb-C]. . . . After the in scale became
identified with the minor scale, however, the characteristic mood often popularly ascribed
to the minor key was transferred to the in scale” (1966, 283).
19
For example, following the lecture, as published in an earlier[?] form, Harmonies
in Japanese Music (London: Beford Press, 1898), a (Japanese?) questioner “made a few
remarks on the difficulty experienced by Japanese in following their own melodies as
performed by foreigners.” On European debates over how to harmonize Japanese melo-
dies, see Waters (1994).
20
For instance, famed soprano Minnie Hauk performed selections from Carmen in
Japan in 1894 (Hauk 1977, 276–77).
21
On Taki’s use of Japanese folk song, see Mori (2010).
22
Despite the obvious differences in cultural framework, Italian opera companies were
among the first professional Western musicians to visit Japan (Galliano 2002, 100). Ital-
ian songs were available to listeners in Japan: Giulio Ronconi performed Tosti’s “Vorrei
morir” in Yokohama on October 24, 1922 (JT, 8); in a 1928 recital, Yamada’s “Kuroi
Bosan” directly preceded di Capau’s “O sole mio” (JT, November 22, 1928, 1).
23
This song was in part a homage to Tosti’s native region, and may have contained
elements of traditional Abruzzi folk music (Santivale 2004, 215).
24
Owing to the requirements of Japanese text setting (long and short vowels can result
in different meanings), melodic phrase structures derived directly from the text.
25
As “Jōgashima” premiered on October 30, 1913, in a recital at the Geijutza-za, a
prominent Western theater in Tokyo, the piano accompaniment was likely an original
part of the song. See notes to the reissue of a 1933 recording by tenor Ryozo Okuda in A
Selection of Japanese 78 rpm Recordings: III (Rohm Music Foundation: RMFSP-E018—
RMFSP-E024, 2007).
26
The enka style found in Shimpei Nakayama’s songs eventually became known as
Shimpei bushi (Martin 1972, esp. 340–41). In 1931, the Japan Times reviewed Hideomaro
Konoye’s Emperor Cantata (to texts from the Manyoshu) as “a commendable attempt to
represent a Japanese theme in Western style” (T.S., “New Symphony Orchestra Pleases,”
December 18, 1931, 2).
27
Yamada also transposed the original melody from B minor to D minor; #4 5 E#
in the original.
28
See, for instance, Komiya (1969) and Lieberman (1965, 73).
29
Nakamura notes,“. . . it must not be overlooked that nationalism was also an element
of the enka songs. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904–1905, contemptuous mockery of the Chinese and Russian peoples charac-
terized the enka-shi’s comic songs, which were bought up with enthusiasm” (1991, 271).
30
More subtly, events such as the enthronement of Emperor Hirohito seem to have
brought modern and traditional practices into a stark, and perhaps unsettling, juxtaposi-
tion. On November 10, 1928, the Japan Times placed a review of a chamber music con-
cert directly across from a photograph depicting “ancient” feudal celebrations: “Stupin,
Kawaloff Score Big Success: Chamber Music Played by Leading Artists for the First Time
in Japan” and “Tokyo Celebrates the Enthronement: ‘O-Mikoshi,’ a Sacred Palanquin
Carried on Men’s Shoulders.” This juxtaposition compares neatly with the excerpt of
Tokunaga Sunao’s Taiyō no nai machi cited in Harootunian (2000, xxiv).
31
She continues: “like cherry blossoms which fall after a brief life, the young men
sacrificed their lives for the emperor but were promised to be reborn as cherry blossoms
at the place where the emperor would pay homage.” Her analysis of songs, mainly the
lyrics, appears on pp. 125–42 (Ohnukī-Tierney 2002).
32
This society progressed through several transformations and eventually became
absorbed into the all-encompassing Gakudan Shintaisei Sokushin Domei (Alliance for
the Promotion of the New System of Music), itself part of the “Imperial Rule Assistance
Association” which was established October 1940 by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe
(see Fukunaka 2008).
33
Herd (2004, 49) provides a pointed example of the interaction of culture and poli-
tics when she writes that in the later 1930s “[m]usicians who had been educated in a
Western fashion and ignorant about traditional Japanese music had to search for ways
to cope with the situation. With his pragmatic vision, Kiyose rose to the occasion. He
adapted a simpler compositional style more closely related to the popular tunes, military
marches, and folk songs that appealed to traditional audiences.” Manabe observes: “To
a great extent, these movements among academic circles and art music composers [i.e.,
Mitsukuri, Matsudaira, and others] had already been alive in the more popular form of
dōyō for many years” (2009, 288).
34
My discussions of Mitsukuri, Tanaka, and Hayasaka depend on the synopses in
Galliano (2002). However, my conclusions differ.
35
In 1922, Kiyose rejected Yamada’s lessons in composition as “too Western,” but in
1936 was similarly attacked by Ginji Yamane for writing “sentimental” music in the man-
ner of Debussy and Franck.
36
For a brief discussion of this song, see Hoffman (1967).
37
Born in 1862, Tanaka traveled to Europe in the 1880s where he studied with
Helmholtz and gained notoriety for his work on just intonation.
38
Begun in June 1932, Contemporary Japan was published by the Foreign Affairs As-
sociation of Japan, itself headed by prominent businessmen, politicians, academics, and
newspaper editors. By 1941, the editorial board had narrowed to three directors: Toshi
Go, Yasotaro Morri [sic], and Katsuji Inahara.
39
There seems little reason to read the qualifier “Japanese” in this review as meaning
anything other than “authentic Japanese.” The derogatory view of Chinese music, which
echoes nineteenth-century Western complaints about “primitive” music, may have been
deep seated. In 1919, Yamada stated that “The Chinese, too, are very sentimental—more
so than the Japanese and their poetry takes on an exaggerated form . . . The Chinaman’s
imagination is childish and he is not so deep as the Japanese. . . . The Chinese finds his
inspiration in the occasions of daily life. The Japanese are more vivid and more modern
than the Chinese.” See “The Past, The Present and the Future Musical Situation in Japan,”
Musical Courier, February 27, 1919.
40
My summary here draws from Harootunian (2000, 75–78).
41
On her May 29, 1932 program, Miura sang Yamada’s arrangements of “Kuruka,
Kuruka,” and “Ume ni o Haru,” directly before “Un bel di bedremo” and “Tutu” from
Puccini’s Butterfly (JT, May 24, 1932, 8). As a “westernized” woman, Miura’s perennial
returns to Japan were controversial. (See “Threatening Letter Received by Miura,” JT,
September 12, 1922, 3.) On her operatic career, see Yoshihara (2004). A brief summary
of Fujiwara’s career may be found in Galliano (2006, 226–27). Fujiwara starred in Kenji
Mizoguchi’s first talkie, Furusato (Hometown, 1930), taking the part of a successful singer
who returns home; thus the film featured Fujiwara’s singing. A reissue of Fujiwara’s re-
cordings from the 1930s may be found on RCA RVC-1590, which includes arias by Verdi
and Puccini as well as Japanese folk song arrangements and, of course, “O sole mio.”
42
The famous Arnold Fanck and Mansuku Itami production, The Good (New) Earth
(Japanese title Atarashiki tsuchi), featured Yamada’s arrangement of “Sakura.” The film was
sponsored in part by the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai. (“World Premiere of New Earth at
Imperial Theater,” JT, February 5, 1937, 2). A damning assessment of the plot appears in
Miyao (2007, 267–70). On nationalism in Japanese films, see High (2003, 159–63); on the
Fanck/Itami collaboration, see ibid. (159–63). In 1934, J.O. Studios in Kyoto announced
a competition for film scenarios in which “Japanese culture and the Japanese spirit must
be woven into the story in a manner easily understandable to foreigners” (“Search for
International Film Drama to Represent Cultural Life of Japan,” JT, October 4, 1934, 3).
43
Strangely, it seems never to have occurred to the writers that once so identified and
codified, anyone anywhere could compose “Japanese” music. By the concurrent standards
of Western exoticism, however, Japanese music (e.g., “The Mikado”) had been written
for decades.
44
My reading here draws in part on Kojin (1993) and Walker (1979).
45
The setting also displays a basic similarity to Michio Miyagi’s “Haru no Umi” (1929)
for shakuhachi and koto. (See Galliano 2002, 54.)
46
Mitsukuri’s Symphonietta in D Major (1934), published by the Kokusai Bunka
Shinkokai in a 1941 collection edited by Felix Weingartner, further contextualizes the
“Sakura” fugue. It begins with a neoclassical “Presto,” then offers a second movement
“Aria” whose melodies are reminiscent of Puccini. The third movement, titled “Sara-
banda alla Giapponese,” is heavily saturated with miyakobushi-based figures, and the
work concludes with a “Fuga” based upon a modal subject (D dorian), apparently one
of Mitsukuri’s own making, but still resembling traditional Japanese music. The overall
design thus traces a teleology from West to East.
47
More radically, and following Ohnuki-Tierney’s (2002) study of the changing sym-
bolism of sakura (cherry blossoms) in Imperial Japan (see note 31), it may be possible to
read the individual subject entries as musical representations of resurrection. Interest-
ingly, the “Sakura” fugue later became the middle movement in a suite, framed by a “Night
Rhapsody” composed in 1935, and an arrangement of a Buddhist chant “Imayo” (under
the title “Es ist März, der Frühling”) written in 1957. Stylistically, “Night Rhapsody” is an
offshoot of Mitsukuri’s Bashō setting albeit more virtuosic and extended in treatment; “Es
ist März” draws on the language of “Sakura,” but in a plaintive and perhaps nostalgic way.
48
Hirao’s arrangement concludes on an F# major chord. Hirao’s famous “Sumida River”
from 1936 celebrates one of Japan’s most famous waterways.
49
Composed in Vienna, the Suite Japan was later orchestrated in 1938; the piano ver-
sion was published in 1941 by Universal Edition. In the reissue (Editions Kawai, 2002),
Atsutada Otaka writes: “it seems [Otaka’s] nostalgic feelings for his native land could
help him picture ‘One Day of Japanese Children,’ ” and that Suite Japan “would be the
first piece of work in which he manifested a Japanese emotion.”
50
This may mark the first complete performance of Winterreise in Japan. The concert
was repeated in November of the same year, suggesting that it was successful.
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About the Contributors 181
John Latartara is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Mississippi

and received his doctorate in Theoretical Studies from the New England Conser-
vatory of Music. His research interests include performance and timbre analysis
using spectrographic technology. He has published on a wide variety of Western
and non-Western music. He was awarded a research Fulbright to Thailand in
2008–2009 to study Thai classical music. Latartara is also a composer with music
released on the Centaur, Visceralmedia, and Sachimay Records labels.
Peter Manuel has researched and published extensively on the music of India,
the Caribbean, Spain, and elsewhere. His publications include the books Cassette
Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (1993), East Indian Mu-
sic in the West Indies: Tan-Singing, Chutney, and the Making of Indo-Caribbean
Culture (2000), and Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (2009), along with
two documentary videos, including Tassa Thunder: Folk Music from India to the
Caribbean. He teaches Ethnomusicology at John Jay College and the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York.
Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an ethnomusicologist specializing in modern Japa-

nese music and culture. She has conducted research on a variety of music cul-
tures in contemporary Japan including the Tokyo hardcore rock scene, nagauta,
electronica and trance raves, and most recently, the increasingly popular world
of wadaiko (Japanese ensemble drumming). She is the author of the monograph
Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene (Routledge,
2008), and is currently writing a book on the commodification of Japanese en-
semble drumming in Kyoto.
Christopher A. Miller is Curator of the e-kiNETx and Cross-Cultural Dance

Resources Collections in the Herberger Institute School of Dance at Arizona
State University (ASU). He was previously the bibliographer for Southeast Asian
Studies at ASU Libraries. His field research experience includes three years in
Indonesia and two years in Myanmar, where he was a Blakemore Foundation
Fellow. Currently, Miller is pursuing a PhD in Media Arts and Sciences from the
School of Arts, Media 1 Engineering at Arizona State University.
David Pacun is currently an Associate Professor of Music Theory at Ithaca Col-

lege, and has written on numerous topics including Japanese music and dance,
music theory pedagogy, and the music of Brahms. His “Paths between the Spiri-
tual and the Real: On the Intersection of Musical Style, Symmetry, and Cycle
in Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953)” recently appeared in a special issue of the
Journal of Film Music. He also helped to coedit Tomoko Isshiki’s translation of
A Memoir of Tōru Takemitsu by Asaka Takemitsu (iUniverse, 2010).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Yogaku - A Reappraisal

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Nationalism and Musical Style in

Interwar Yōgaku: A Reappraisal

© 2012 by the University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

appreciation—to borrow Hirota’s loaded terms—can arise only through a careful

Preliminaries and Definitions: Yōgaku

Methodology and Structure

Japanese sound is not a precondition for music to be seen as Japanese, merely

Recreating Japan in Yōgaku: Stylistic Developments ca. 1900–192015

Figure 1a–d. Harmonizing the miyakobushi scale.

Figure 2. ​Chopin, Waltz in A Minor, op. 34 no. 2.

Figure 3. ​Rudolf Dittrich (1861–1919), arrangement of “Sakura.”

composers such as Paul Bevan struggled to establish a consistent and natural

Figure 4. ​Paul Bevan, arrangement of “Manzai” (1902). From

Figure 5. ​Rudolf Dittrich, arrangement of “Jizuki-­Uta” (including

As is often observed, Japanese musical life developed rapidly following the

Figure 6. ​Rentaro Taki, Trio from Two Short Piano

Figure 7. ​Tadashi Yanada, “Jōgashima” (The rain on Jōgashima Island, 1913)

German lieder as of the operatic arias of Glinka (Taruskin 1983), or perhaps

Figure 8. ​Francesco Tosti, “Chitarrata abruzzese” (1909) (Source: Dover).

with prominent tritones and traditional tetrachord-­like constructs (m. 9

Still, following Hopkins, it may be best to understand “Japanesque” as a topic in

Figure 9. ​Yoshinao Nakata, “Cherry Blossom Lane” (ca. 1950).

Figure 10. ​Shimpei Nakayama (1887–1952), “Sunayama”

Figure 11. ​Rentaro Taki, “Kojo no Tsuki” (melody only, 1901).

Figure 12. ​Kosaku Yamada, “Kaze Hitori” (1914). The

Theorizing Japaneseness in Japanese Music: Debates in the 1930s

Figure 14. ​Shūkichi Mitsukuri, “positive” and “negative”

proffered several examples of “true” Japanese composition including his own

Figure 15. ​Kosaku Yamada, “Rokkyu” (Six warriors,

for instance “Ozami no Hana” (Thistle flower) by Kunihiko Hashimoto, reveals

Figure 16. ​Kunihiko Hashimoto, “Ozami no Hana” (Thistle

Following a brief and (seemingly muddled) summary of Tanaka’s system, the

at the famous Kindai no Chōkōku (Overcoming Modernity Symposium) held

Even after 1928 (following the appearance of talkies):

Two Examples by Shūkichi Mitsukuri

that Mitsukuri later published. Nevertheless, a full evaluation of Bashō Kikōshū

Figure 17. ​Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Bashō Kikōshū,

augmented version of the piano’s opening gesture, a correspondence made clear

Figure 18. ​Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Sakura, Sakura, op. 16,

Coda: Musical Developments 1930–1945

Figure 19. ​Kishio Hirao, “Gyofu no Uta” (Fisherman’s

Figure 20b. ​Hisatada Otaka, Suite Japan iii (“Cradle

Figure 21. ​Fumio Hayasaka, 17 Piano Pieces (Piece

nationalism. The problem—really the dilemma—of interwar yōgaku is not that it

Österreichisch-­Japanischen Beziehungen (More than engines for music: con-

John Latartara is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Mississippi

Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an ethnomusicologist specializing in modern Japa-

Christopher A. Miller is Curator of the e-­kiNETx and Cross-­Cultural Dance

David Pacun is currently an Associate Professor of Music Theory at Ithaca Col-

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Figure 2. Chopin, Waltz in A Minor, op. 34 no. 2.

Figure 3. Rudolf Dittrich (1861–1919), arrangement of “Sakura.”

Figure 4. Paul Bevan, arrangement of “Manzai” (1902). From

Figure 5. Rudolf Dittrich, arrangement of “Jizuki-Uta” (including

Figure 6. Rentaro Taki, Trio from Two Short Piano

Figure 7. Tadashi Yanada, “Jōgashima” (The rain on Jōgashima Island, 1913)

Figure 8. Francesco Tosti, “Chitarrata abruzzese” (1909) (Source: Dover).

with prominent tritones and traditional tetrachord-like constructs (m. 9

Figure 9. Yoshinao Nakata, “Cherry Blossom Lane” (ca. 1950).

Figure 10. Shimpei Nakayama (1887–1952), “Sunayama”

Figure 11. Rentaro Taki, “Kojo no Tsuki” (melody only, 1901).

Figure 12. Kosaku Yamada, “Kaze Hitori” (1914). The

Figure 14. Shūkichi Mitsukuri, “positive” and “negative”

Figure 15. Kosaku Yamada, “Rokkyu” (Six warriors,

Figure 16. Kunihiko Hashimoto, “Ozami no Hana” (Thistle

Figure 17. Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Bashō Kikōshū,

Figure 18. Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Sakura, Sakura, op. 16,

Figure 19. Kishio Hirao, “Gyofu no Uta” (Fisherman’s

Figure 20b. Hisatada Otaka, Suite Japan iii (“Cradle

Figure 21. Fumio Hayasaka, 17 Piano Pieces (Piece

Österreichisch-Japanischen Beziehungen (More than engines for music: con-

Christopher A. Miller is Curator of the e-kiNETx and Cross-Cultural Dance