The Japanese and Western music

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1987 by Luisa Futoransky

The Japanese and Western music

UNTIL recently, one of the many disparaging cliches used by critics when speaking of the appearance of Japanese artists in the front ranks of the world art scene, was that they were "imitators". They forgot that, to the Japanese, the work of Western artists often seems to suffer from a lack of maturity and to be contaminated with the virus of excessive originality.

In Shinto, a religion which still has considerable influence on everyday life in Japan, there is no clear-cut distinction between the divine and the human, which are linked by a principle of continuous animistic generation. In the words of the Japanese composer and musicologist Akira Tamba, "The living man's god is his deceased ancestor and, when he dies, he in turn will become the protective deity of his descendants." It is easy to appreciate, therefore, that Japanese artists do not subscribe to the idea of individual intellectual ownership with which Western creative artists are sometimes obsessed. Masters of traditional Japanese music, painters, calligraphers and actors all share the knowledge which they have acquired and developed throughout their lives with their pupils who, in turn, hand down his common stock of culture to their own successors . . .

However relevant they may be, these observations are not sufficient in themselves to explain why Japan, after the terrible turning-point in history represented by Hiroshima and the end of the Second World War, having started virtually from scratch as far as Western music is concerned, should have become the leading manufacturer of top-quality musical instruments; nor why the Japanese have become increasingly involved in the entertainment business and popular music; nor why, in classical music, Japanese instrumentalists, conductors and soloists should have come to occupy a leading place in the world's concert halls.

There can be no doubt that Japan has superimposed European ways on its own models, especially in the arts and in education. The reasons for this are bound up with sociology, philosophy and cultural policy, and lie beyond the scope of this article. What is clear, however, is that Western music has gained such a foothold that in popular parlance it has become synonymous with "music" in general. As a result, when the Japanese wish to refer to traditional music, they feel compelled to add the word "Japanese", in order to avoid misunderstandings.

This does not mean that the practice of traditional music and interest in it have disappeared altogether. Following a period of apparent eclipse at the end of the 1960s, as a result of the craze for jazz, rock and other musical forms which were taking the world by storm, the study of traditional instruments such as the shakuhachi, the koto and the shamisen has been steadily gaining ground in recent years, as is borne out by the number of such instruments being manufactured and sold. However, in terms of public concerts and other events, traditional Japanese music accounts for no more than 10 per cent of musical activities in Japan, although it should not be forgotten that such music has always been "semi-public" in the sense that it is primarily based on the close relationship between master and pupils and that traditional concerts are usually attended by groups of friends and connoisseurs. Unlike other cultural events, they attract a faithful following which does not need to be prodded by advertising, and is not a prey to the vicissitudes of fashion.

Any attempt to study the interest aroused by music in Japan would be incomplete if no allowance was made for the leading role played by women. Although this phenomenon is not confined to Japan, it is an acknowledged fact that, in the middle and upper-middle classes, the study of music used to, and to some extent still does today, bring social prestige. Japanese custom required young women of marriageable age to round off their education by taking lessons in flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, calligraphy or traditional dancing, or else by learning to play a traditional instrument. This formed the beginning of a close relationship between master and pupil which lasted for the rest of the master's life.

With the increasingly rapid pace of Westernization in the 1950s, more and more people began to learn to play the piano, violin or harp. However, the surprising thing was that young people were not content with occasional private lessons. The taste and passion for music assumed such proportions that veritable musical universities began to flourish. Today, Japan has about 150 institutions, including conservatoires, academies, universities and US-style colleges offering high-quality musical instruction. Some of them are vast institutions with their own nursery schools, orchestras, opera groups, summer camps, and primary and secondary schools.

Statistics recently published show that some 10,000 young people with higher-grade diplomas, roughly 90 per cent of them women, enter the music market every year. Some of them become teachers at the universities where they themselves studied; many others teach in small local conservatoires or simply pass on their love of music to their children. However, more and more of them are keen on pursuing their studies in the leading European centres in the hope of launching an international career. Rising living standards have enabled an increasing number of Japanese families to send their children to study in Europe, where school fees are often much lower than in Japan. More than 300 Japanese pupils are studying music or singing in Vienna alone.