A yen for the traditional: in modern Japan, street performers sell ritual and nostalgia to compete with high-tech advertising

Natural History, May, 2003 by Ingrid Fritsch

The good old chindonya, changing the world from dark to light, people both young and old clap their hands, chinchira dondon chin dondon....

--Lyrics from a chindonya troupe in Kumayama, Japan

When I tell Japanese people of a certain age that lam an anthropologist interested in chindonya, my questions invariably prompt a smile accompanied by a slightly embarrassed giggle. After my informants have reassured themselves that I really mean chindonya, they often ask, "Are they still around? I remember them from my youth."

The characters of my curiosity--the chindonya--are troupes of elaborately costumed street musicians hired to draw customers to shops, stores, cabarets, and pachinko (pinball game) parlors. Members of these troupes, made up of at least three people, parade through the streets playing an assortment of Japanese and Western musical instruments. Once their music has attracted a crowd, the chindonya--who also sport sandwich boards or carry banners displaying their employers' advertisements--deliver sales messages, distribute flyers, or perform short dramatic routines such as sword dances.

Their main instrument, the chindon, is made up of a small metal gong (the "chin" sound) and two traditional Japanese drums (the "don" sound), mounted together on a wooden frame [see photograph on opposite page]. The instrument, developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, is usually played by a man. Accompanying it is a large cylindrical drum, the gorosu, generally played by a woman. A clarinet, trumpet, saxophone,, or accordion carries the melody. The repertoire includes military marches, old Japanese ditties, songs from kabuki theaters or yose variety theaters, and sometimes jazz.

Chindonya still work the streets for advertisers, though their live promotional performances may seem old-fashioned and out of place in Japan's highly industrialized mass-media society. But throughout their history the performers have struggled against obsolescence in the face of social trends, discrimination, world events, and new technological developments. The current resurgence of interest in chindonya has benefited from the cultural need for ritual--and from favorable media attention linking chindonya to "the good old days." Yet even the waves of nostalgia have failed to create any real increase in the demand for their services. Unless the chindonya figure out how to evolve or change with the times, it seems unlikely they will be able to preserve the traditions of their profession in Japanese society.

I first encountered chindonya during a stay in Japan some years ago. On a pleasant day in April, while strolling around the city of Toyama looking for cherry blossoms, I approached the city hall, where a crowd had gathered for the annual national chindonya competition. Suddenly, about twenty-five groups of performers appeared, wearing gaudy makeup and wigs, and costumed as old-fashioned samurai, geisha, and clowns. Before parading, the groups jointly played "Take ni suzume" (Sparrow on the bamboo), an old variety-hall tune now thought of as a kind of theme song of the chindonya. It is one of the few musical pieces common to troupes all over the country.

In the past, becoming a member of a chindonya troupe was a last resort for people who had no prospects in the regular job market. Chindonya were tolerated, but looked upon with disdain. These days the social standing of the performers has improved, partly because of the sentimentalizing of the Japanese folk arts, but also because the chindonya themselves view their occupation in a more favorable light.

Chindonya troupes date back to the end of the nineteenth century, when the Japanese way of life was rapidly becoming industrialized and westernized, and manufacturers decided it was essential to advertise new products. In 1845 in Osaka, a candy salesman named Amekatsu offered his special oratorical and theatrical talents to advertise for a local variety theater. That episode is accepted as the birth of chindonya (though the term does not appear until the early twentieth century), because it is the first documented case of advertising for someone else's products in Japan. Later, under Amekatsu's followers, the activity became known as tozaiya, for the street vendors' attention-getting cries of "tozai, tozai" (literally "east-west" the Japanese equivalent of "Hear ye, hear ye!"). In 1885 in Tokyo, a similar advertising business known as hiromeya (wide eyes) recruited brass bands to march through the streets, sometimes for weeklong parades, to advertise new consumer products such as beer, cigarettes, and toothpaste.

For the past century chindonya troupes have undergone many cycles of waxing and waning. By 1910, when newspapers and other means of advertising had become widespread, many of the performers left their troupes to work as "commentators" (benshi) or musicians in silent-movie theaters. When talkies were introduced less than two decades later, many turned back to street performance, joined by touring actors and variety-hall artists put out of work by the popularity of the movies. During the Second World War street performances were prohibited altogether; afterwards, when the economy had recovered somewhat but advertising media lagged, street advertising blossomed again. In those days many circus artists also joined up, and it is estimated there were as many as 2,500 chindonya in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s.