Performing Japan

Performing Japan

Performing Japan Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity ❖ Edited by

Henry Johnson University of Otago

and

Jerry C. Jaffe University of Otago

PERFORMING JAPAN CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSIONS OF CULTURAL IDENTITY

Edited by Henry Johnson and Jerry C. Jaffe First published in 2008 by GLOBAL ORIENTAL LTD PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP UK www.globaloriental.co.uk © Global Oriental Ltd 2008 ISBN 978-1-905246-31-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library Cover illustration: Spring Day. Photo: Oguma Sakae

Set in 10.5/12 Adobe Garamond Pro by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed and bound in England by Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wilts

Contents ❖ Plates face page 148 Foreword List of Contributors List of Illustrations Introduction JERRY C. JAFFE AND HENRY JOHNSON

vii ix xii 1

Part I: TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Ink Traces of the Dancing Calligraphers: Zen-Ei Sho in Japan Today ROY STARRS

11

Taiko Today: Performing Soundscapes, Landscapes and Identities MILLIE CREIGHTON

34

Miki’s ‘Autumn Fantasy’ (1980): International, Japanese or Asian? KIMI COALDRAKE

68

Beyond the Court: A Challenge to the Gagaku Tradition in the ‘Reconstruction Project’ of the National Theatre TERAUCHI NAOKO

93

Spring Day, Stone Age and the Search for an Essential Japan by Koike Hiroshi JERRY C. JAFFE

126

vi

Contents

Part II: PLACE AND IDENTITY 6.

7.

Shakespeare on Show in Japan: An Anthropological Analysis of Cultural Display JOY HENDRY

139

Twenty-First-Century Enjoyment Plaza: Private Space and Contemporary Art in Mori’s World PETER ECKERSALL

156

8.

Performing Identity in Yaeyama: The Case of the Sash AMANDA MAYER STINCHECUM

9.

Recontextualizing Eisā: Transformations in Religious, Competition, Festival and Tourism Contexts HENRY JOHNSON

172

196

Part III: POPULAR CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND CONSUMERISM 10.

Local Performance of Global Sound: More than the Musical in Japanese Hardcore Rock JENNIFER MILIOTO MATSUE

11.

When is Japanese, Japanese? A Tale of Two Musicians TERENCE LANCASHIRE

12.

Internalizing Digital Phenomena: The ‘Performing’ Body at the Intersection of Japanese Culture and Technology YUJI SONE

13.

Index

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan ALISON L. GOODRUM

221 239

273

295 317

Foreword ❖ s scholars who have studied the contemporary cultural scene in Japanese performance over a number of years, we were simultaneously stimulated by the wealth and diversity of performance practices in Japan, but disheartened by the difficulty in finding information about all these many artists, events and practices (especially in languages other than Japanese). In various conversations between the editors in 2004 we groused over this situation. We both knew of specific artists, events and so on ourselves; but further, we also knew other individuals with their own specialized and unique research agendas. As these conversations continued, we imagined a book that might collect a group of such researchers together and present a diverse range of case studies on contemporary spheres of Japanese performing arts and performance. And from these conversations began an exciting journey, a process that lead finally to the present volume four years later. As we set about creating the parameters of this project, our first goal thus was this collection on the topic of contemporary performance projects. We developed some related and equally important goals, some of which are worth mentioning here. One such goal was that the collection operates with a broad, ‘Performance Studies’ approach to performance. We wanted to test what could be called ‘performance’. Further, by focusing on case studies and detailed examples, we hoped that that this collection might serve as a model of Performance Studies methodology. We also wanted the more traditional arts to be represented, albeit in their contemporary guise as a transformation or reinvention of an earlier form. Further, as Performance Studies often functions as a site for interdisciplinary discourse, we wanted this volume to both reflect interdisciplinarity and also to be of use to scholars, teachers and students working in a variety of fields. By taking a multidisciplinary approach towards Japanese Performance Studies, the case studies presented in this book will be useful to teachers, students, scholars and other cultural critics, as well as having some value to the lay reader interested in Japanese culture, particularly the

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Foreword

traveller to Japan who is interested in understanding the country’s contemporary culture. As a text for the classroom at university level, this book is aimed to those teaching courses in the introduction of Japanese language, history or culture, and Asian Studies in general. It will provide such classes with a multifaceted view of contemporary performance practices. Furthermore, the book will be of use in theatre, music, dance or visual/material culture classes that introduce Japanese forms, or which focus entirely on the performing traditions of Japan. Also, as the disciplines of Performances Studies, Popular Culture Studies and Tourism Studies continue to grow, there are more courses being added to college curricula that study performance in a wider sense. We hope that teachers and students in these classes will be interested to see the different ways we treat ‘performance’ and the different aspects of Japanese culture represented. Finally, we hoped that our approach to our subject-matter would produce a worthwhile and entertaining asset. Due to the hard work and generosity of our contributors and the thorough and insightful input of Paul Norbury and his staff at Global Oriental, we feel proud of this book and feel that we have come close to the ideals of those initial conversations of 2004. We thank all the people who have become the subjects in this book. Without them and their distinct cultural practices this book would not have been possible. Their performance practices are acknowledged and celebrated, and our representation of them aims to bring to the English reader some perspectives of several aspects of contemporary expressions of Japanese cultural identity. There are certainly many other practices, views and interpretations. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Yuki, Kayleigh, Sabrina, Søren, Lisa, Charlotte and Louis for their enduring support during the various stages of planning, writing and editing the book. Henry Johnson & Jerry C. Jaffe Dunedin, New Zealand

List of Contributors ❖ Kimi Coaldrake is Associate Professor at The University of Adelaide, Australia where she is Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Elder Conservatorium of Music as well as teaching ethnomusicology and music studies. The performance name Reiku Hirowakyō was bestowed on her in Tokyo in recognition of musical attainments on Japanese koto (zither). Her publications in the areas of traditional and contemporary Japanese music include Women’s Gidayū and the Japanese Theatre Tradition (1997). [email protected] Millie Creighton is a Japan specialist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where she serves on the Executive Management Boards of both the Centre for Japanese Research and the Centre for Korean Research. She has participated in and conducted research in Japanese performance forms including taiko and kyōgen. She has done extensive research in Japan on department stores, consumerism, tourism, popular culture, minorities, ethnicity, work and leisure, place, nostalgia, and identity. [email protected] Peter Eckersall is Senior Lecturer in theatre studies at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on contemporary Japanese theatre culture and theatre and society. He is the author of Theorizing the Angura Space: Avant-garde Performance and Politics in Japan 1960–2000 (2006) and coeditor of The Ends of the 60s (UNSW & Performance Paradigm, 2006). He is co-founder and co-editor of Performance Paradigm, Australia’s leading journal of performance studies. [email protected] Alison L. Goodrum is Reader in Fashion at Nottingham Trent University, England. Her research interest lies in fashion as a cultural economy and her past work has focused on the links between fashion, identity and nation,

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List of Contributors

particularly in the British and New Zealand designer fashion industry. She is author of The National Fabric (2005). [email protected] Joy Hendry is Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, Director of the Europe Japan Research Centre, and a Senior Member of St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Her publications include Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies (1993), The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display (2000), and Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self Representation (2005). [email protected] Jerry C. Jaffe is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is also the Programme Coordinator of the University’s Performing Arts Studies Programme. He has previously published in the areas of Japanese culture and Performance Studies in journals such as Theatre Annual and Current Issues in Tourism. [email protected] Henry Johnson is Professor at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he teaches and undertakes research in ethnomusicology, Asian studies and performing arts studies. He lectures and performs on a number of Asian instruments, including the Japanese koto and shamisen, gamelan from Java and Bali, and Indian sitar. His recent publications include, The Koto: A Traditional Instrument in Contemporary Japan (2004), Tsugaru: Regional Identity on Japan’s Northern Periphery (2005), and Asia in the Making of New Zealand (2006). [email protected] Terence Lancashire is Associate Professor at Osaka Ohtani University, Japan where he teaches classes in Japanese Studies and Comparative Cultures. He also teaches ethnomusicology for adult education at Kinran University, Osaka. His main research interests range from popular music in Japan to the traditional Japanese folk performing arts. His recent publications include Gods’ Music: The Japanese Folk Theatre of Iwami kagura (2006) and various articles in such journals as Asian Music and Popular Music. [email protected] Jennifer Milioto Matsue is Assistant Professor at Union College in Schenectady, New York, where she teaches in Music, East Asian Studies and Anthropology. She specializes in modern Japanese music, with particular interests in underground rock and electronica, wadaiko, and nagauta. She

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recently completed her book, Making Music in the Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene (2008). [email protected] Yuji Sone is a Lecturer in performance and digital culture at Macquarie University, Australia. He is a Sydney-based performance artist whose research focuses on the cross-disciplinary conditions of mediated performance and the terms that may be appropriate for analysing such work, especially from cross-cultural perspectives, such as Japanese culture and performance. Sone has published in the art and performance journals Performance Paradigm and Body, Space, Technology. [email protected] Roy Starrs teaches Japanese culture and Asian Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. From 1972 to 1974 he trained in ink painting and calligraphy at the atelier of Ibata Shotei in Kyoto, where he had a number of one-man shows of his work. His books include Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima (1994), An Artless Art: The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya (1998) and Soundings in Time: The Fictive Art of Yasunari Kawabata (1998), as well as five edited volumes including Nations Under Siege (2002), and Japanese Cultural Nationalism: At Home and in the Asia Pacific (2004). [email protected] Amanda Mayer Stinchecum is an independent scholar specializing in the history of Okinawa/Ryūkyū through textile production, technology, use and meaning. Recent publications include, ‘Yaeyama Minsā: A Cotton Sash and its Transformation across Boundaries of Usage, Class, and Meaning in Okinawa,’ in Moving Objects: Time, Space, Context (2004); and ‘Bashōfu, the Mingei Movement, and the Creation of a New Okinawa’ in Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific (2007). [email protected] Terauchi Naoko is Professor at Kobe University, Japan, where she teaches Japanese traditional culture and performing arts. Her research interests range from historical study of court music gagaku to Okinawan performing arts in Japan and diaspora. Her recent publications include, ‘Western impact on traditional music: ‘reform’ and ‘universalization’ in the modern period of Japan’ (Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 141, 2003) and Geijutsu, bunka, shakai (Arts, cultures, and society) (2nd ed), (Textbook for the University of Air) (co-authored) (Hoso daigaku kyoiku shinkokai, 2006). [email protected]

List of Illustrations ❖ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

A page from a calligrapher’s handbook, the Dictionary of Five Calligraphic Styles (Gotai Jirui) Ibata-sensei in action ‘dancing’ Ibata-sensei signing a calligraphic work Landscape of Sado Island A wadaiko (Japanese taiko) group performing A wadaiko (Japanese taiko) group performing Dadaiko drum used in the gagaku subgenre komagaku Styles of gagaku pieces Spring Day with Miura Hiroyuki et al. Spring Day with Shirai Sachiko et al. Wax model of Shakespeare Reproduction of Shakespeare’s birthplace Roppongi Hills Glass Tower entrance Roppongi Hills Arena A space of flows Louis Vuitton Murakami’s ‘Cosmos’ Minsā sash Dancers portraying farmers in ‘Kungasha’ Women of Nishi Shurakū in ‘Jitchū’ Eisā performers Okinawa island Classification of eisā Advertisement for Michelle Gun Elephant Examples of band stickers Entrance to the livehouse, 20,000volt A flyer produced by Sports Jug’s newsletter Dumb Type Dumb Type

Introduction Henry Johnson and Jerry C. Jaffe

❖ uring individual ethnographic research in Japan, the editors of this volume noted the great number of artists and performances that seem to make up an important part of what it means to be Japanese, and realized that there are very limited materials and descriptions available to nonJapanese researchers about the great wealth of what is happening in contemporary Japanese performance. This book brings together essays that address contemporary performance and culture in a range of Japanese cultural spheres. The objective is to provide discourse on Japanese culture with recent case-studies of a selected number of diverse performance events. The writers approach performance as a moment exhibiting significant displays of cultural identity. But performance in this context is defined broadly to embrace varied visual and performing arts, where the choice is made by artists to express notions of collective and sometimes individual distinctiveness. The authors in this volume are interested in instances of cultural display where identity is foregrounded as an integral feature of the performance in the first place. Deborah Klens has emphasized interpreting Japanese cultural performance, including that exhibited in the performing and visual arts, architecture and everyday life, as exhibiting cultural palimpsests (1993, 166). Permeating the contemporary milieu are multitude examples of traditional culture. As Klens wrote, ‘women in kimonos walk down the street next to salarymen in Italian suits. People often marry in Shintō ceremonies (though Western-style chapel weddings are becoming popular) and are buried after a solemn Buddhist funeral’ (1993, 166). It is such juxtapositions of symbolic images of the past with the present that help exemplify a culture that so often displays contiguous identity as part of East Asia on the one hand and the West on the other. Observers may experience a dissonance, or disruption, about the performance of culture and identity, and visitors to Japan can hardly fail to notice the seeming violence with which

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Performing Japan

the modern and the traditional co-exist and permeate each other in sometimes perplexing and contradictory ways. The meanings and uses of these forms interpenetrate with complex and surprising results. With Performing Japan: Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity we attempt to present a variety of instances in recent Japanese performing and visual arts that express or embody current notions of this self constructed of evidently dissonant source materials. Our original call for submissions tasked contributors to address contemporary Japanese cultural practices. We explained that ‘the unifying theme of the essays is to examine different performance modes within Japan. This will include . . . theatre, music and dance, and also performance in the broadest sense as suggested by the field of Performance Studies’. From this broad provocation we received diverse essays, and the ones included here found their way into three general groups. The essays in the section ‘Tradition and Transformation’ deal with performative questions within theatre, music, dance and the visual arts in traditional and contemporary forms. The essays grouped in ‘Place and Identity’ analyse the role of place and location in this culture of palimpsest and diverse homogeneity. In our final section, ‘Popular Culture, Technology and Consumerism’, topics such as popular music, media and fashion are presented. From the material that constitutes cultural detritus in life around us, commercial, traditional or otherwise, each individual takes elements of language, fashion, space and other cultural forms to assemble a personal sense of style within the social realities of their given contexts. In reference to the idea of ‘making do,’ de Certeau suggests viewing the cultural activities of consumers as personal operations, a ‘lexicon of users’ practices’ (1984, 31). The present volume concerns itself with the sense of cultural identity produced by specific artists, performances or other cultural detritus. While no one theory of identity informs every essay included in this book, as a collection each tests the question of how one specific case-study assembles the cultural material available into art objects or cultural practices. As the present overtakes the past, we re-write the past, we write the present and imagine the future. But on the parchment one can still discern the traditional as part of the present, a performance event that displays identity. One feature of ‘making do’ that casts cultural displays of identity as performance is what we see as the integral nature of ‘play’ to bricolage. The concept of ‘play’ permeates both performance studies and actor training literature (for instances of ‘play’ within performance studies literature see Turner 1987; Schechner 1988a, 1988b, 2002; and Emigh 1996, among others; in the field of actor training, find the value of play noted in Spolin 1963; Boal 1992; and Johnstone 1979). Emigh (1996) offers a continuum

Introduction

3

of the presentation of self in different performative modes along a range of ‘me’ to ‘not me’, with categories such as ‘everyday life’, ‘pretending’, ‘acting’ and so forth. A sense of play informs all of the stops on this continuum, in that there is always a tension between any personal sense of self, and the bracketing of how one presents oneself to others. Of performative modes in everyday life, Emigh asserts that ‘this capacity to maintain multiple selves for use with different people or on different occasions is at the heart of the capacity to engage in theatrical play . . . the play is between one “me” and another “me”’ (23). In the same way that Hendry and Raveri (2002) note that the notion of ‘play’, while usually associated with children, is actually a cultural phenomenon that can be interpreted in many ways throughout Japanese life, the essays in this book look at ‘performance’ as a part of being human that crosses many ritualistic and everyday aspects of social interaction and communication. Dwight Conquergood (2002) sums up the potency of the performance studies approach as follows: ‘performance studies struggles to open the space between analysis and action, and to pull the pin on the binary opposition between theory and practice. This embrace of different ways of knowing is radical because it cuts to the root of how knowledge is organized in the academy’ (145–146). By combining such spheres of cultural performance, the book will naturally have a broad readership, and one that would foster further debate and research in the areas of Japanese and performance studies. This book includes some essays on the performing arts (i.e. music, theatre and dance), but these performing arts (some are traditional) are explored in contemporary culture. A broader approach to cultural/social performance has been taken, one that makes the book unique in the contemporary study of Japanese culture. Richard Schechner (1988a), writing of his travels in India and China, defined performance thus: ‘[it] is a broad spectrum of activities including at the very least the performing arts, rituals, healing, sports, popular entertainments, and performance in everyday life’ (4). The present book addresses performances thus, providing original research of traditional arts in modern Japan, while at the same time including essays that adopt an approach that aims to interpret contemporary Japanese practices through the mode of social and cultural performance. Performance in contemporary culture embraces diverse cultural moments. Within this complex field of cultural activity, several spheres of performance stand out. There are, for instance, performance modes operating distinctly within contemporary media and other forms of popular culture; transformations of traditional culture that place past genres in contemporary contexts; as well as various manifestations of space and place acting as

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vehicles for expressing individualism, regionalism, nationalism and internationalism. It is within these three areas that the essays herein focus as a way of foregrounding what it means to be Japanese, and the means by which that identity is expressed through cultural display. The notions of performance explored in this book include an element that stresses how a sense of identity is inherent in the mode of performance under study. The essays build on a vast body of literature on identity in Japan and aim to extend discourse on this area into the sphere of performance studies. For example, identity might be concerned with modernity (Cameron 2002), media studies/popular culture (Davis 1996), internationalization (Feinberg 1993), regionalism (Guo et al. 2005), among other spheres of Japanese culture (cf. Hanes and Yamaji 2004; Herd 1987; Hoston 1994; Iida 2001a, b; Klien 2002; Kondo 1990; Leheny 2003; Luther 2001; Martinez 2004; McVeigh 2004; Nosco 1997; Pang 2000).

❖ The essays herein are organized into three specific spheres: Tradition and Transformation; Place and Identity; and Media and Popular Culture. This grouping is intended to help the reader work through the main topics of each chapter, although some chapters clearly overlap several themes, as do many performing and visual arts. There is a clear emphasis on contemporary practices, even though some essays investigate the place of the traditional in the modern cultural setting. The sub-theme that underlies each of the essays concerns contemporary expressions of cultural identity. Specific productions, events, artists, movements and case studies are the central subject matter of the essays. In this way, the book as a whole reflects the cultural scene of modern Japan over the past few years and is presented here as a series of case-studies. TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION.

Theatre, music, dance and the visual arts have traditional and contemporary forms, and each can be used to perform, to represent identity and to showcase the past, the present and the future. But how does tradition change? What place does it have in the present? What about contemporary culture? How do contemporary forms help shape a Japanese sense of identity? There are, of course, many other questions, and these help set the scene of this section: one that foregrounds the place of what were traditional visual and performing arts as important emblems of identity in contemporary Japan.

Introduction

5

The performances of traditional artistic forms in the contemporary cultural setting exhibit the metaphor of the palimpsests. Symbols of the past can have intense effects in the present day; and juxtapositions of the past and present show a culture that can perform its past in a modern-day setting with the aim of negotiating a place in the present, and contesting the place of the present in the past. Why is it that such traditional emblems of Japan find their way into the most modern contexts? For instance, there are so many tourist sites that have background sounds of koto, shamisen and shakuhachi; the ubiquitous Japanese restaurant will usually have a similar soundscape, one that is intended to remind the consumer of Japan’s past. Japan is awash with contemporary performances. In theatre studies, for example, there are, of course, the various books and articles on such forms as kabuki, noh and bunraku, but these traditional art forms – symbolic of the past they might be – tend to have little immediate impact for most Japanese in their everyday lives. Indeed, traditional artistic forms seem to be just as much alien to most Japanese as they are to many non-Japanese. Remarkably, Japan seems to have an indigenous cultural ‘other’ that embodies many artistic pursuits, many of which are almost unheard of by the majority of Japanese. They tend to represent a very small percentage of what is going on, and there is a disproportionate representation. Still, without doubt they are ‘performed’ in many meaningful ways, but what about other theatrical forms? What about other modes of performance? What about the ways Japanese so often perform their everyday lives? The essays included in this section deal with topics such as Japanese art (Starrs), Miki Minoru’s Autumn Fantasy (Coaldrake), Contemporary taiko (Creighton), gagaku today (Terauchi) and performing arts company Pappa TARAHUMARA (Jaffe). PLACE AND IDENTITY

Place emerges as space is actioned in localized events constituted by individuals (singularly or in groups). As de Certeau (1984) characterized walking as a ‘long poem’ (101), the lexicon of meaning created by moving bodies expresses individualized instances of ‘making do’ (30). As performers and artists manipulate the body within space, they express and explore what this lexicon of place and identity is, where it comes from, and what it means. The contexts in which performance are given resonate with cultural meaning. Performance sites are places in which Japanese cultural identity is not only displayed, but spaces that nurture the negotiation of that identity

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in the first place. As the product of cultural practices, performances represent people, and to a broader extent ideas of nationhood. Following on the metaphor of the palimpsest, one might ask how Japanese make do with the diverse signs, symbols and cultural artefacts to create a sense of identity through playful making do? The palette of possibilities is infused with such materials from past and present, traditional and innovative, Japanese, pan-Asiatic, and international, but with different historical relationships with various foreign nations, not to mention other ways of being Japanese (e.g. Ainu, Pacific islander, Okinawan, Korean and Chinese Japanese nationals, and the effects of inter-marriage and miscegenation). How do performing artists, visual artists and/or others in the culture-producing industries build from or react to such myriad and complex interrelationships while creating a semblance of Japanese identity and culture? The four essays in this section detail some of the ways place is embodied with cultural meaning that helps in broader identity construction. They include studies of the theme park (Hendry), Mori’s World (Eckersall), the sash in Okinawa (Stinchecum) and eisā in a tourism context (Johnson). POPULAR CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND CONSUMERS

The study of popular culture has always felt the tension between so-called high art and low art. In the context of cultural palimpsests in Japan, in which traditional and contemporary, Western forms and Asian, meld, merge and compete. Indeed, the field of popular culture is ripe with examples of hybrid issues of identity. Jack Santino provides a definition for the discipline of popular culture: ‘Popular Culture Studies is the scholarly investigation of expressive forms widely disseminated in society. These materials include but are not restricted to products of mass media such as television, film, print and recording’ (1996, 31). Santino quickly clarifies that Popular Culture Studies does not equate to Media Studies and that as a discipline it naturally covers a broad spectrum of activities, including those that are ‘non-mediated’ as well as genres comprised of multiple other genres (such as holiday celebrations). In any case, he emphasizes the importance of including the aesthetic with the sociological. ‘We need to view popular culture as a form of interaction, people interacting (sometimes mediated through technology and sometimes not) with each other, and it is to the people we must go to find out how they make meaning’ (39). The idea of ‘performing Japan’ in contemporary culture is especially pertinent to the areas of media and popular culture. The modern-day flows of cultural information through such forms is today particularly relevant for a country that produces and consumes in mass the latest technology, music

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and fashion. What are the sociological foundations for forms of Japanese popular culture? What are the aesthetic concerns for the individuals who create these forms? What are the aesthetic concerns for those who use/consume/make do with these forms? The essays within this section analyse specific forms of mediated experience in contemporary Japan and look at some of the individuals involved with their production. Topics studied here include Japanese hardcore rock (Milioto Matsue), two Japanese musicians (Lancashire), digital phenomena (Sone) and fashion trends (Goodrum). REFERENCES Boal, Augusto. 1992. Games for actors and non-actors. Translated by Adrian Jackson. London: Routledge. Cameron, Donald S. 2002. Amerika-mura: Discourses of modernity and identity in contemporary urban Japan. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Conquergood, Dwight. 2002. Performance studies: Interventions and radical research. The Drama Review 46(2): 145–156. Davis, Darrell W. 1996. Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental style, national identity, Japanese film. New York: Columbia University Press. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life. Translated by Stephan Randall. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dukowski, Tom. 2003. The emergence of karaoke in Japan as impacted by Western music. MA dissertation, California State University. Emigh, John. 1996. Masked performance: The play of self and other in ritual and theatre. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Feinberg, Walter. 1993. Japan and the pursuit of a new American identity: Work and education in a multicultural age. New York: Routledge. Guo, Nanyan et al. 2005. Tsugaru: Regional identity on Japan’s northern periphery. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. Hanes, Jeffrey E. and Hidetoshi Yamaji, eds. 2004. Image and identity: Rethinking Japanese cultural history. Kobe: Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration Kobe University. Hendry, Joy and Massimo Raveri, eds. 2002. Japan at play: The ludic and logic of power. New York: Routledge. Herd, Judith A. 1987. Change and continuity in contemporary Japanese music: A search for a national identity. PhD dissertation, Brown University. Hoston, Germaine A. 1994. The state, identity, and the national question in China and Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Iida, Yumiko. 2001a. Japanese identity, modernity and the aesthetic. London: Routledge.

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——. Yumiko. 2001b. Rethinking identity in modern Japan: Nationalism as aesthetics. New York: Routledge. Johnstone, Keith. 1979. Impro: Improvisation and the theatre. London: Metheun. Klens, Deborah S. 1993. Theatrical palimpsests. The Drama Review 37(3): 166–170. Klien, Susanne. 2002. Rethinking Japan’s identity and international role: An intercultural perspective. New York: Routledge. Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leheny, David. 2003. The rules of play: National identity and the shaping of Japanese leisure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Luther, Catherine A. 2001. Press images, national identity, and foreign policy: A case study of U.S.-Japan relations from 1955–1995. New York: Routledge. Martinez, Dolores P. 2004. Identity and ritual in a Japanese diving village: The making and becoming of person and place. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. McVeigh, Brian J. 2004. Nationalisms of Japan: Managing and mystifying identity. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Nosco, Peter. 1997. Japanese identity: Cultural analyses. Denver: Center for Japan Studies. Pang, Ching L. 2000. Negotiating identity in contemporary Japan: The case of kikokushijo. London: Kegan Paul. Santino, Jack. 1996. Popular culture: A socio-aesthetic approach. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 15: 31–41. Schechner, Richard. 1988a. Performance studies: The broad spectrum approach. The Drama Review 32(3): 4–6. ——. 1988b. Performance theory. New York: Routledge. ——. 2002. Performance studies: An introduction. New York: Routledge. Spolin, Viola. 1963. Improvisation for the theatre. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Turner, Victor. 1987. The anthropology of performance. New York: PAJ Publications.

part i

tradition and transformation

1

Ink Traces of the Dancing Calligraphers: Zen-Ei Sho in Japan Today Roy Starrs

❖ It is the body that is enlightened (Dōgen Zenji, 1200–53) INTRODUCTION: CALLIGRAPHY AS THE ‘SEED ART’ OF EAST ASIA

he high cultural status and centrality of calligraphy in the Japanese visual-art tradition, as in that of East Asia generally, is perhaps the most obvious of the defining features of that tradition. Although from a Western viewpoint it may also seem a unique feature, such is not actually the case: calligraphy is also central to much Islamic art, for instance, though for very different reasons and with quite different aesthetic results. Calligraphy is not the ‘seed art’ of Japan and East Asia because of any religious taboo against depicting the human image, but rather because of the high aesthetic and spiritual value attached to the calligraphic art itself. There are a number of historical and cultural reasons for this, which I can only briefly adumbrate here. Most obvious is the sheer visual complexity of the Sino-Japanese writing system, which still retains something of its primordial pictographic nature. The thousands of characters that comprise that system present a variety and complexity of form that no mere alphabet could even remotely match. In addition, there is a wide variety of styles in which the characters can be written, from the archaic pictographic style to the conventional block style to the most minimalist cursive style. With this degree of visual richness inherent in the writing system itself, it is easy to see why it readily lent itself, from an early stage, to high aesthetic development as an abstract art in

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visual terms (although, until quite recently, it never abandoned its representational character in lexical terms). A related and equally important factor is the close alliance between calligraphy and painting in China, Japan and other East Asian countries that adopted Chinese characters as part of their writing system. Because in China writing did not stray so far from its pictorial origins as in Western cultures that adopted alphabetical writing systems, the separation of the arts of drawing and painting from the art of writing never became as extreme as in the West (as indicated by the Japanese word kaku, which means both ‘to write’ and ‘to draw or paint’). The aesthetic consequences of this are easy to see if one glances even cursorily over the several thousand years of the Sino-Japanese painting tradition – that is, up until the modern period, when it started to come under Western influence. One finds in this tradition an effortless integration of writing and painting in the same artworks. It is not just that the writing is appended to the painting as a kind of incidental commentary; rather, in the best examples of this calligraphic/ pictorial art the writing functions as an integral part of the total aesthetic effect – in this sense, the writing ‘is’ the painting, fully as much as are the pictorial images. The visual effect of the writing has as much impact as its semantic content: in other words, how the written words look is as important as what they mean. On the one hand, then, the fact that Sino-Japanese writing still retains something of its original pictorial quality makes it, compared to an alphabetical writing system, more easy to integrate with pictorial images. On the other hand, the images themselves blend so well with the writing because they are also a kind of writing – they are written images, often executed in a calligraphic style with the same brush and ink used to write Sino-Japanese characters. Van Gogh said that all painting begins with the rough sketch, but in East Asian art it would be more accurate to say that all painting begins with the calligraphic brushstroke. In more concrete technical terms, what facilitates the intimate relation between painting and writing in East Asian art, more than anything else, is the fude or brush, since this soft, highly flexible animal-hair brush is the perfect instrument for either writing or painting, a sensitive recorder of every movement or nonmovement of the artist’s hand and body. In use now for more than two thousand years, this brush may be said to be the first secret to understanding Sino-Japanese art. It is the fude that makes possible the calligraphic nature of Sino-Japanese painting – along with, to a lesser extent, the sumi or free-flowing India ink and the ink-absorbing paper. Consequently, even Chinese or Japanese paintings that have no writing in them are still commonly painted in a calligraphic style, with the same

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repertoire of gestural brushstrokes used to write Chinese characters. Conversely, even works of pure calligraphy are displayed just as if they are paintings – for instance, on hanging scrolls displayed in the alcove (tokonoma) that is a standard feature of traditional Japanese living rooms. In more general aesthetic terms, the calligraphic nature of Sino-Japanese paintings gives them a rather flat appearance to Western eyes; they seem to have little aspiration to three-dimensionality, little use for perspective or chiaroscuro, or indeed little attempt at verisimilitude or realism of any kind. They are not mirror images or windows onto the world; they are content to be recognized for what they are: calligraphic gestures on a flat surface that are, more than anything else, direct expressions of the artist’s inner reality. But how is that inner reality conceived or defined? At this point, of course, East Asian artists must look to their own religious, philosophical and psychological traditions for intellectual clarification. And in this respect, certainly, they have been well served – as the eminent Swiss psychologist Carl Jung often pointed out, the Buddho-Daoist psychological tradition was unrivalled in its depth, richness and sophistication, at least until the advent of modern Western psychology (see Jung 1978).1 And here, indeed, we have the third and most important reason for the high status and centrality of calligraphy in East Asian culture: the religio-ideological view of this art-form that is deeply grounded in the Buddho-Daoist value-system and worldview (as well as in Confucianism, though that is of less relevance here).2 JAPANESE VERSUS WESTERN EXPRESSIONISM

In a very general way, then, the East Asian calligraphic aesthetic – prevalent not only in calligraphy and painting, but also in many other related visual art-forms – may be linked to the various Western forms of expressionism, which also aim primarily to represent a subjective state or inner reality rather than to depict the external world in a literal or conventional way. In modern Western terms, this prevailing aesthetic of traditional East Asian art may thus be described as expressionist or lyrical rather than realistic or mimetic – a ‘song of the brush’, to borrow the title of a Japanese art exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum.3 The viewer tends to focus more on the work itself, as an object of power in its own right, rather than on any external world or reality the work might point to. Of course, there are also significant cultural differences between the Japanese and Western forms of expressionism, the first of which has to do with exactly what is meant by the artist’s inner reality – that is, how this is

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constructed according to the different models of human subjectivity prevalent in each culture. As already suggested, this is a complex matter with wide-reaching ramifications in both cultures. Can one say, for instance, that the ensō or circle drawings of Zen calligraphers are expressionistic in the same sense as a painting such as Edvard Munch’s striking image of 1893, The Scream (to take two extreme examples, each iconic in its own tradition)? In Munch’s painting, arguably the seminal work of modern Western expressionism, the inner reality expressed – not only in the screaming figure itself, but in the whole distorted and garishly painted surrounding landscape – is one of an extreme personal emotion (though not necessarily the artist’s own): a neurotic fear or paranoia, a mind overcome by a panic attack or on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Of course one could see this painting as symptomatic of a general condition of alienation and anxiety in late nineteenth-century Europe, or, more narrowly, as an expression of the famous Nordic melancholy. But the point is that, in the first instance, it is an expression of personal mental imbalance, whether of the artist himself or of an imagined subject.4 The Zen circle drawings, on the other hand, are an expression of an equally extreme mental balance, a level of mental poise and of disciplined self-control that few people could aspire to. But the difference is not just between a negative and a positive mental state. Even more importantly, it is between a personal and an impersonal one: that is, between the mental state of an individual neurotic and a mental state that, according to the Buddhist way of thinking, results from the dissolution of the personal ego and the awakening of a suprapersonal, cosmic consciousness – the universal Buddha-Mind. In Alexandra Munroe’s neat summation: ‘As the ultimate form in Zen painting, the ensō represents void and substance, emptiness and completion, and the union of painting, calligraphy, and meditation’ (Munroe 1994, 94). Especially for those ink painters and calligraphers who follow the Zen tradition known as bokuseki (literally, ‘ink traces’), what is meant by the artist’s inner reality is not merely his personal, passing moods or emotions; rather it is seen as being identical at heart to the inner reality of all creation.5 He practises his art both to realize and to manifest this monistic truth. Thus, art itself becomes a form of spiritual practice, a kind of active meditation. The traditional Zen concept of artistic creation was expressed by the great scholar of Zen, Daisetz T. Suzuki, as follows: The artist’s world is one of free creation, and this can only come from intuitions directly and immediately rising from the isness of things, unhampered by senses and intellect. He creates forms and sounds out of formlessness and

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soundlessness. To this extent the artist’s world coincides with that of Zen. (Suzuki [1959] 1970, 17)

The Buddho-Daoist philosophy of an all-embracing unity – the unity of body and mind, man and nature, form and emptiness – also has concrete aesthetic consequences. Body/mind unity implies, for instance, that the painter/calligrapher’s brushstrokes are infused with his ki or life-force and express his moral character and state of mind, his heart (kokoro) and soul (tamashii) – he writes not merely with his hand, but with his whole body and mind. Calligraphers’ terms such as hitsui (brush intention) and hissei (brushforce) invoke the idea of the brushstroke as a direct psychophysical manifestation or an ‘imprint of the mind’ (Munroe 1994, 129). One of the most devastating criticisms that a student calligrapher can hear from his teacher (I speak from experience) is that his brushstrokes are soulless (tamashii ga nai).6 At the other end of the spectrum, as the artist becomes increasingly enlightened – that is, as he awakens to the full truth of his oneness with the whole of creation and his mind expands to embrace that infinite whole – his brushstrokes are thought to express something far more than his personal inner reality: they take on an awesome, almost sacred power that is identified with the mysterious power at the heart of all creation – the creative power, often symbolized by a dragon, that causes form to arise from emptiness.7 The ultimate unity of form and emptiness, as most famously expounded in the ‘heart of wisdom’ book of Mahayana Buddhism, the Heart Sutra, is regarded also as the highest truth underlying the arts of the brush: the intimate interplay of black ink and white space – in Buddhist philosophical terms, their dependent co-origination – is what makes this art-form, in aesthetic terms, simultaneously both figurative and abstract. When a beginning student is given the assignment of painting bamboo, he or she is told: ‘First you must become a bamboo.’ This is the student’s first lesson in form/emptiness: to become a bamboo he must empty his mind of everything except the bamboo (displaying what the English poet Keats called a ‘negative capability’), but this is possible only because both his mind and the bamboo already exist in a state of emptiness – that is, both consist entirely of a temporary congregation of constituent elements and thus possess no essential nature. Such is the radical non-essentialism of Buddho-Daoist philosophy, which extends to the human self as well as all other created forms. It is important to note also, from a purely artistic perspective, that the implication is that the more successful the student is in becoming a bamboo, the more successful he or she will be in painting bamboo. In other words, if his or her inner reality becomes ‘bamboo’, he or she will be able

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to represent the bamboo more truthfully in ink on paper. But this representation will not necessarily be a precise or literal one. Most often the artist will capture with a few decisive brushstrokes the most characteristic formal gestures that denote ‘bamboo’. The end result will probably be not so much a formal painting as a kind of minimalist calligraphic writing of bamboo. Traditionally, critics were fond of saying that the artist, with a few deft brushstrokes, had captured ‘the essence of bamboo’. One understands what they mean but, strictly speaking, this is an inaccurate and misleading statement, since it contradicts the non-essentialism of the East Asian art’s underlying Buddho-Daoist philosophy. It would be more accurate to say that the artist had captured ‘in bamboo’ the paradoxical interplay of form and emptiness that characterizes the whole phenomenal world. By his minimal use of brushstrokes to convey the formal idea of bamboo, the artist manages to evoke a sense not only of bamboo’s form, but also of its emptiness – albeit a pregnant emptiness that is capable of giving birth to bamboo. ZEN-EI SHO: THE MARRIAGE OF JAPANESE AND WESTERN EXPRESSIONISM?

There was a moment in the history of the separate careers of Japanese and Western expressionism when the two traditions made tentative contacts with each other and a genuine and lasting meeting of minds and even of artistic practice seemed a real possibility. This was in the early 1950s, when a recently defeated Japan opened itself wide to Western, especially American, cultural influences, and when many Western artists and writers became fascinated with Zen Buddhism and all its related cultural traditions, from rock gardening and tea ceremony to ink painting and calligraphy. American artists such as Mark Tobey and Franz Kline successfully adapted what they learned from Sino-Japanese calligraphy to their own practice of modernist abstraction, and many of their paintings bear a striking similarity to East Asian calligraphic art. To a lesser but nonetheless significant extent, this is also true of the work and artistic practice of even the leading abstract expressionist of the time, Jackson Pollock, who, of course, is often ranked as the greatest American artist of the twentieth century. Pollock’s calligraphic style of painting necessitated his move away from traditional oil paints and brushes in search of a more liquid medium – and so he ended up using house paints that he often dripped or splattered onto the canvas, which was laid out on the floor like a Japanese calligrapher’s paper. These ‘drip paintings’, with their maze of squiggly, writerly lines, were compared by one Japanese calligrapher to ‘the kyōsō or “crazy grass” style of calligraphic script, the freest form of

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self-expression in Far Eastern art’ (Munroe 1994, 129). Indeed, Pollock provides a good example of convergence in another respect too – in his answer to the above-mentioned question: what exactly is the nature of the inner reality that expressionist art is thought to express? Influenced by surrealism and by Freudian and Jungian psychology, as well as by the Zen and Asian art boom in postwar New York, Pollock, like the Japanese calligraphers and many of his abstract expressionist colleagues, became convinced that, in his spontaneous acts of creation, in the deepest throes of inspiration, he was giving expression to what might be called a ‘larger mind’. Whether this was the Freudian unconscious or the Jungian collective unconscious – and Pollock was especially attracted to Jung’s more impersonal model – it was certainly something more than his personal, conscious, everyday mind. He repeatedly insisted that ‘the source of my painting is the unconscious’ (quoted in Leja 1993, 122). And he would work himself up into a creative frenzy while immersing himself in his action paintings, aiming for an unmediated, mindless, purely spontaneous act of creation that supposedly gave direct expression to his unconscious – something like the nondeliberated, mindless (mushin) dance of the Zen calligrapher. His drip paintings in particular, inspired in part by the automatic writing of the surrealists, introduced an element of chance as well as of unconscious automatism (and the two often seem indistinguishable) and in this respect they are also reminiscent of the haboku or flung ink paintings of medieval Zen artists (Sesshū’s ‘flung ink landscape’ is probably the most famous example). In the other direction, leading Japanese calligraphers and aesthetic theorists such as Hidai Nankoku (1912-), Ueda Sōkyū (1899–1968), Hasegawa Saburō (1906–57) and, above all, Morita Shiryū (1912–98), editor of the influential journal Bokubi (Ink Art) and founder of the Bokujin-kai (Ink People Society) calligraphy group, eagerly absorbed the calligraphic abstractions of their American and French contemporaries and were inspired by these in their own efforts to introduce modernist abstraction into the ancient art of calligraphy.8 As William Seitz has suggested, they ‘borrow[ed] back their own writing methods in the abstract’ (quoted in Holmberg 1998, unpaginated). The resultant school of so-called ‘avantgarde calligraphy’, or zen-ei sho, became one of the most interesting and influential movements in Japanese art in the latter half of the twentieth century, and continues as a vital force even today. Zen-ei sho seeks to liberate calligraphy from a strict adherence to the traditional form of Chinese characters: the artist may use a character as a starting point, but is free to change it any way he or she pleases, in the interests of aesthetic effect or emotional power – in this sense creating an abstract calligraphy. Like the Western abstract expressionists, these avant-garde calligraphers often

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produce very large-scale works, presumably to achieve greater impact on the viewer. In terms of its immediate historical origins, then, zen-ei sho must be seen within a larger international context of postwar or 1950s art, especially the abstract expressionist movement with which it had something in common and with which it had fruitful interactions. In this sense, it was very much the product of postwar intercultural relations between Japan and the West, and of artistic influences or confluences that were significantly mutual in a way that had not been seen since the japonisme boom of late-nineteenthcentury Europe.9 Indeed, the postwar cross-fertilization between the Japanese avant-garde calligraphers and the (mainly) French and North American abstract expressionists is surely the most important case of mutual influence between Japanese and Western artists after japonisme. But it was not all smooth sailing: as Bert Winther-Tamaki (2001) has shown in his study of the key figures and events, the ambitious aspirations to international cultural cooperation (and international fame) ultimately were brought crashing down by the harsh realities of the deeply-ingrained cultural nationalism of both sides. Indeed, in the history of this relationship between the Japanese avant-garde calligraphers and the Western abstract expressionists over the few years that it lasted, with its typical highs and lows, one can see a fascinating microcosmic image of the dynamics of cultural relations between Japan and the West since Japan’s opening in the midnineteenth century – of which, it turns out, the late-nineteenth-century japonisme boom/bust episode of intercultural infatuation was only the first and most famous example. In the end, then, the East/West marriage of the two expressionisms was not to be. Each side found that it could not extricate itself from the cultural nationalism of its own artistic milieu. Nonetheless, the brief encounter of the two traditions had a substantial and lasting impact on both of them. No doubt more was promised than was ever delivered, but it was a fruitful relationship while it lasted, helping to give birth to a dynamic calligraphic movement in Western art (involving some of the major European and American artists of the day), and an equally dynamic and daring move into abstraction or semi-abstraction by the Japanese calligraphers, who sought at that historical moment to align themselves with the Western gestural abstractionists. But, inevitably, after the initial exciting sense of artistic liberation that the Japanese calligraphers felt on freeing themselves from Chinese characters began to fade away, they found themselves confronted by an absolutely fundamental question: without characters, what was the aesthetic basis of their art? Could it be considered calligraphy at all? In other words, what relation,

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if any, did it still maintain with the ancient tradition of Sino-Japanese calligraphy? This became known as the issue of the mojisei (‘writerly nature’) of calligraphy, and it was a hotly-debated issue in the 1950s. Certainly, in terms of viewer response, some cognizance of the millennia-long calligraphic tradition and its centrality in Japanese culture is necessary for a full understanding of the impact of zen-ei sho in postwar Japan. Although, as with all modernist art, it derived its initial impact from the shock of the new, this shock value had such an immediate effect on Japanese viewers, of course, only because of their deep and widespread familiarity with the old – that is, with traditional calligraphy. Training in calligraphy has been for centuries a normal part of every Japanese child’s education. Thus, the obvious fact is that, regardless how abstract or nonrepresentational sho becomes, moji will always play a fundamental role in it, by their absence if not by their presence. That is, their absence will inevitably be noticed by an East Asian audience brought up with the firm conviction that calligraphy involves the writing of Chinese characters; the confounding of this expectation will always form part of their response to abstract calligraphy. The artist, of course, is then able to play with or play off against this fact – for instance, with vague suggestions of recognizable moji, in the same way that a Western abstract artist such as Kandinsky is able to tease his viewers, who expect a painting to be of something, with vague suggestions of recognizable objects. In other words, it is only because calligraphy is one of the most popular traditional Japanese art-forms that avant-garde calligraphy was able to become one of the major modernist art-forms of late twentieth-century Japan, as a significant innovation in a mainstream cultural tradition. Indeed, one might say that the maintenance of avant-garde calligraphy as an ongoing vital art-form depends on the maintenance of traditional calligraphy – it is only because the latter still thrives in Japan today that the former still retains its creative power – just as, in modern Western art, there has been a continual creative interplay between abstract and figurative art, sometimes in the oeuvre of the same artist. In both cases the relation between tradition and modernity is not antithetical, but symbiotic. And this is true in another, even more important sense too: despite its initial shock value, zen-ei sho ultimately represented not a significant departure or cutting-off from the calligraphic tradition, but a continuation of it in modern form – in fact, another application of one of the most famous principles in traditional Japanese aesthetics, that articulated in the seventeenth century by Japan’s greatest poet, Matsuo Bashō: fueki ryūkō, or the principle of the harmony in art of the eternal and the current, a more impersonal version of T. S. Eliot’s tradition and the individual talent. More

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explicitly, this principle calls for the reshaping of tradition in popular modern form, with an equal emphasis on the necessity of both a traditional foundation and an original refashioning of tradition – a Japanese version of Carlyle’s sartor resartus. This became increasingly evident in the debates that raged among the avant-garde calligraphers in the 1950s: as they sought to articulate an aesthetic and philosophic basis for their artistic practice – in particular, one that would give their work a unique national character distinct from Western art – it was naturally to the aesthetic and philosophic values of the East Asian calligraphic tradition that the mainstream practitioners of zen-ei sho turned under the leadership of Morita Shiryū. Morita himself had come under the influence of the leading Japanese philosopher, Nishida Kitarō, founder of the so-called ‘Kyoto school’ of philosophy, which developed its own form of retailored Zen philosophy and aesthetics. Thus, in the case of avant-garde calligraphy at least, it is hard to accept Alexandra Munroe’s contention that postwar Japanese avant-garde art is completely uprooted from the native tradition and that it represents ‘a purge of history, a beginning from absolute nothingness’ (Munroe 1994, 22). On the other hand, it would be foolish to deny that the example of Western modernism also played a significant role in inspiring the post-war avant-garde calligraphy movement. The movement may legitimately be regarded, in fact, both as a natural outgrowth of the ancient cursive style of calligraphy (sōsho or ‘grass style’), especially the extremely free form practised by Zen monks, and of the mutual influence between Japanese calligraphers and Western abstract expressionists in the mid-twentieth century (Plate 1). The general commonalities between the East Asian calligraphic aesthetic and Western expressionism initially seemed to provide a fertile ground for intercultural exchange and perhaps even the basis of a unified East/West artistic movement, but ultimately a number of fundamental differences made themselves felt, and the two sides may be said to have retreated back into a familiar ‘East is East and West is West’ kind of cultural nationalism (see Winther-Tamaki 2001). As Winther-Tamaki has shown, raw nationalist considerations came into play: neither side wanted to be seen as tainted by an excess of influence from the other; the Japanese calligraphers, heirs of a great native tradition, did not want to be seen as overly Westernized or, worse yet, Americanized, nor did the Western artists want to be seen as mere secondhand imitators of an Oriental tradition. The postwar American artists in particular dreaded being labeled as un-American – this was the McCarthy era, after all. Besides these eruptions of raw nationalism, there were also some genuine cultural differences that ultimately came into play – chief among these, as

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one might expect, the very different cultural attitudes toward calligraphy itself, and towards the relation between writing and painting. The Western artists, of course, had been conditioned by centuries of art history to regard calligraphy as a minor and perhaps even moribund art-form, best kept strictly separate from painting. With a few exceptions such as the eccentric mystical poet-painter, William Blake (1757–1827), Western artists had not tried to integrate writing and painting since the Middle Ages, and had regarded the presence of words in paintings as an unpainterly intrusion. Although many of the abstract expressionists’ works had a kind of writerly quality – Pollock’s drip paintings, for instance – they nonetheless maintained their abstract character, excluding written words as well as images. The Japanese calligraphers, of course, were at first inspired by this level of pure abstraction, by the creative freedom it seemed to offer, and some of them went so far as to exclude all reference to the Sino-Japanese writing system from their work, creating what seems to be a contradiction in terms, a ‘wordless calligraphy.’ As already mentioned, this issue of moji-sei or the ‘writerly nature’ of calligraphy (as opposed to its zōkei-sei or ‘formal nature’) became a major and hotly contested issue among the postwar avant-garde calligraphers. Could calligraphy dispense with words and still claim to be calligraphy, or was the very idea of abstract calligraphy an absurd illogicality? This was a uniquely Japanese version of the abstract/representational debate that had been under way in the West since the pure abstractions painted by Kandinsky and Mondrian earlier in the twentieth century. On the representational side in the West were those artists and critics who argued, harking back to Cézanne, that painting, however abstracted, would lose its fundamental values if it were not ultimately grounded in visible nature. Painting pure abstractions one would end up, at best, with a kind of superior wallpaper – a work of purely decorative value. On the representational side in Japan were those calligraphers and critics who argued that calligraphy, however abstracted, would lose its fundamental values if it were not ultimately grounded in the Sino-Japanese writing system – that is, unless it were representational, not in the sense of representing recognizable physical objects, but in the sense of representing recognizable Chinese characters or other elements of Japanese writing. Otherwise one would end up with meaningless squiggles completely stripped of the allusive significance and high cultural status of East Asian calligraphy. In other words, were Chinese characters the sine qua non of the Sino-Japanese calligrapher’s art, regardless of how distorted they were in the interests of formal experimentation, or could calligraphy become a purely abstract play of lines and forms on paper, without any relation whatsoever to the writing system – something comparable to Western abstract

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expressionism – and yet still remain calligraphy?10 Morita Shiryū, who became the most influential calligrapher/theorist of the time, staked out the middle ground between traditional formalism and pure abstraction, arguing that the art of sho would lose its East Asian cultural identity if deprived of its foundation in Chinese characters.11 This cultural nationalist argument won the day – most avant-garde calligraphers seemed to agree that something was needed to distinguish their work from the various forms of modernist abstract art that were then in vogue internationally. Only a firmly-maintained link, however tenuous, with the ancient calligraphic tradition would give their art a distinctive national flavour. (Although, strictly speaking, sho is an East Asian rather than a specifically Japanese art-form – of course the main point in postwar Japan was that at least it did not belong to the all-conquering Westerners and, for similar reasons, pan-Asianism was back in style anyway.) This also meant that they should use calligraphic brush, ink and paper rather than the new-fangled implements and materials used by Western abstract expressionists (e.g. drippers, house paints, carpet-sized canvasses). Certainly, most works of zen-ei sho – at least those that are exhibited in galleries if not always those produced as part of calligraphic performances – have a far more formal appearance than, for instance, Pollock’s huge drip paintings, which attempt to submerge the viewer in an all-enveloping allover experience or environment. However remote they may become from the original ideographs that inspired them, the zen-ei sho pieces still retain some of the characteristic features of traditional works of calligraphy: defined writerly linear forms interacting with surrounding white space and confined within a definitive overall frame. They may be illegible semantically, but they are still legible pictorially, as what might called be singleimpact images. The giant Pollock works, on the other hand, might be called successive- or serial-impact paintings – and this is as much because of the all-over way they are painted, without defining borders or outlines or any use of empty space, as because of their immense size. On the other hand, since Morita and his colleagues also longed for the international recognition necessary for anyone to be recognized as a major artist in modern Japan, they also consciously shaped their art to appeal to Western tastes. (And they achieved considerable success, exhibiting at major international art shows and galleries in the 1950s and 1960s – to some extent riding on the coat-tails of the Western ‘Zen boom’ and the huge popular success of abstract expressionism.) For instance, Morita began what became something of an established convention among avant-garde calligraphers: limiting a work to one or two characters writ large rather than a series of many characters such as one would find in most

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traditional works of calligraphy (although there were precedents for big one-or-two-character works too in the Zen tradition). An important aspect of the calligraphic art traditionally was the rhythm of a long line of characters in interplay with each other: some thick, some thin; some big, some small; some dark, some light; some complex, some simple; some written quickly, others slowly, but all of them moving rhythmically together across the sheet of paper like black figures dancing across a white floor. Morita neglects this whole side of the art in favour of the dynamic impact of a single giant-sized character (written, of course, with brushes of a size no traditional calligrapher would have contemplated using). One reason for this was his awareness that Westerners could not be expected to read Japanese or Chinese: they might be able to appreciate the beauty of a single character (and they could easily be told its meaning), but, unlike East Asians who could actually read this script, it was unlikely that they would have any appreciation for the beauty of the rhythmic variations of a whole series of characters, or any ability to decipher their meaning. Ironically, Morita was probably wrong about this. As a matter of fact, many of the most calligraphic works of the Western abstract expressionists – with the conspicuous exception of Franz Kline, with whose work, especially the simple black-and-white calligraphic abstractions of the 1950s, the Japanese calligraphers around Morita were most familiar – often imitate or reproduce the serial structure of written sentences. Perhaps we might take this as a fairly typical example of the kind of misunderstanding that all-too-often arises in East/West cultural relations, with each side seriously underestimating the other’s capacity for cross-cultural appreciation and understanding. Apart from the issue of viewer response, another important reason why it proved necessary for zen’ei sho to maintain moji-sei and, in general, a strong link to the East Asian calligraphic tradition was for the sake of artist training. In line with the old adage known to all art teachers, ‘before you break the rules, you should first master them’, it is assumed that anyone who would practise zen’ei sho must first attain a reasonable level of competence in the traditional art of sho – just as, in the West, students who wish to practise abstract painting are often advised to master the techniques and principles of figurative painting first. This is not just a matter of mastering the manual skills necessary for the expert handling of brush and ink; it is also a matter of developing a calligrapher’s eye for the fundamental elements of the art: the form of the characters, their disposition in space, the expressive quality of the brushstroke, the tone and spread of the ink. The would-be calligrapher must devote years of practice to this art before achieving anything like mastery even in the writing of the most simpleseeming ideographs – for instance, the ensō or circle. The calligrapher’s

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mastery – or lack of it – is immediately apparent in the quality of the circle he or she writes. Indeed, the writing of a perfect circle requires a level of spiritual unity between mind, body and brush that can be attained only after long practice – which is why this exercise is often practised by Zen calligraphers. In this sense training in traditional sho is regarded as a necessary spiritual as well as technical and aesthetic training for the would-be avantgarde calligrapher; it is a form of active meditation that can ultimately bring him or her to the level of mind/body/brush unity required for the creation of great works of calligraphy, whether abstract or representational. Without this training and the spiritual force it bestows, calligraphy would become an empty academic exercise. What all this implies too is that the primary value of this art-form as conceived by its practitioners themselves is not formal originality, but spiritual depth or expressiveness: countless calligraphers over many generations have written the ensō, but only a few of them have managed to endow it with perfection or imbue it with transcendent force. Of course, zen’ei sho artists are more concerned with formal originality than are traditional calligraphers – that is part of their modernity, and it is what leads them to distort the traditional characters – but, because they also retain the traditional attitude regarding the ultimate spiritual basis of their art-form, they are, inevitably, less concerned with formal originality than are their Western counterparts. And this has become even more evident in the recent movement toward performative calligraphy. CALLIGRAPHY AS PERFORMANCE IN RECENT ZEN-EI SHO

Since the Japanese avant-garde calligraphy movement is now more than half a century old, the question naturally arises: can it still claim to be avant-garde (zen-ei) or have the passing years inevitably turned that designation into an absurd misnomer? More is at stake here than simply a name. Of course, the name could and perhaps should be changed, but hardcore avant-gardists will not be satisfied with a mere name change. For them the issue is cut-and-dry and reducible to a simple dogmatic rule: once an art movement has been identified as avant-garde, it can trade only upon its newness or shock-value, and that will last for only a decade or so at most. As Renato Poggioli proclaims (with a little poetic hyperbole): ‘each specific avant-garde is destined to last only a morning’ (quoted in Holmberg 1998, unpaginated introduction). In his study of zen-ei sho and its encounter with abstract expressionism, Ryan Holmberg (1998) speaks of its demise after a decade or so and argues that this was brought about by the calligraphers’ return to their native

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tradition rooted in the ideogram or moji: ‘Issues of identity and tradition thus maintained the East-West schism and ended the decade-long, experimentalist activities of calligraphy in the immediate postwar era’ (ibid.). Although Holmberg concedes that ‘many calligraphers today still regard themselves as avant-garde’, he argues that this is ‘a misnomer. What is known today as zen’ei sho (avant-garde calligraphy) is merely a style of calligraphy, completely derivative of the works from the true avant-garde movement of the immediate postwar decade’ (ibid.). Strictly speaking, it is perhaps true that, more than half a century after the movement began, its designation as avant-garde has become a misnomer. (Although even this limited point is arguable – as I have already suggested, it still retains its shock of the new value for each new generation of East Asians at least, who, of course, are still educated from early childhood with a very different idea of what is meant by calligraphy.) Nonetheless, if the word ‘avant-garde’ is problematic, perhaps a better term for today’s art-form would be something like abstract calligraphy, free calligraphy, (in the sense of vers libre or free verse) or perhaps even, increasingly, performative calligraphy. But the truth is that zen-ei sho has by now become merely a conventional term for a type of calligraphy that takes greater liberties with the forms of Chinese characters than calligraphers usually did before the 1950s. The more important question is: is there anything of lasting value in this art-form (whatever we call it), or did its value belong only to a particular historical moment? Holmberg’s own experience, so attractively described in his Preface, of the ‘profound impact’ on him of works of zen-ei sho when he first saw them exhibited at the Boston University Art Gallery in 1997, would seem to argue for a supra-historical value, since he was not viewing these works as a Japanese of the 1950s, and I doubt that it would have mattered much to him at the time whether the works were executed in the 1950s or the 1990s. At any rate, the fact remains that the zen-ei sho movement is still going strong and, I would argue, has actually developed some new dimensions or directions since the 1950s, especially in terms of its performative aspects. There is often a fine line between art that is merely derivative and art that builds upon and further develops a great tradition (which all significant art does). Certainly I would take issue with Holmberg’s harsh and sweeping assessment that all zen-ei sho since the 1950s has been completely derivative. One wonders, for instance, if he would say the same thing about all Western abstract art since the early twentieth century – has it been completely derivative of Kandinsky and Mondrian? If not, what accounts for the difference? Of course, it is true that certain specific painting styles have

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a short shelf life. Anyone who painted today in an early impressionist style, for instance, would certainly risk being regarded as old-fashioned and derivative. But I would argue that abstract calligraphy, like abstract art in general, is not a specific painting style (despite Holmberg’s claim that it is). It is a new genre or at least subgenre, not a new style, and thus, like abstract art in general, it can accommodate an almost infinite variety of styles – many of which, no doubt, are still to be discovered. Actually, this issue impinges upon a much larger debate in the modern international art world regarding the value of a work of art. With originality becoming the supreme value of so much modern art – as opposed to such traditional values as craftsmanship, draftsmanship or technical mastery of the medium – and with so much modern art seeming to depend for its impact on the shock of the new, the question arises: what happens when the new is no longer new, or when the shock wears off? Take, for instance, the Dadaist art of the 1920s, so shocking in its time, but quite tame now and, in fact, almost humorously quaint to our eyes – is such art only of historical value today? In other words, does such twentieth-century avant-garde art – including zen’ei sho – possess merely a fading shock-value and lack the kind of permanent aesthetic value that we ascribe to the great art of the past? Perhaps we could do no better here than to invoke again the seventeenth-century haiku poet Bashō’s advice to his disciples as represented by his motto: fueki ryūkō, which could be translated as ‘grounded in tradition, but going with the flow’. That is, to achieve a high and permanent value, a work of art must both be deeply rooted in its own tradition and reinvigorate that tradition with new ideas and a new style. An excessive emphasis on fueki leads to a stultifying, formalistic, academic art but, just as surely, an excessive emphasis on ryūkō leads to a superficial kind of art that lacks permanent value. It was exactly for this reason, I suspect, that calligraphers such as Morita Shiryū did not wish to cut their links with the sho tradition by completely eliminating moji. And it is also for this reason that their work continues to have a great appeal even a half century after it was created – and likewise the work of more recent free-style calligraphers. But actually the story does not end there. Although recent zen-ei calligraphers such as my own teacher, Ibata Shotei, continue to produce permanent works of calligraphic art for exhibition and sale, they have also introduced a significant change into the nature of the art by placing a new emphasis on its temporal and performative aspects. Indeed, as zen’ei sho becomes more performative, the whole issue of the artistic value of its products becomes somewhat academic. In other words, the focus is shifted away from the aesthetic value of the end product as a calligraphic objet d’art and more towards the social and spiritual value of the momentary performative

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act of calligraphic writing itself, as a kind of dance with a brush in front of an audience (Plate 2). Of course, one could see this as the Japanese calligraphers’ way of keeping abreast of movements in the wider international art world, since, like their Western counterparts, they have moved on from abstract expressionism to performance art. But, as with the Japanese calligraphic version of abstract expressionism, this new performative calligraphy is also deeply rooted in the native cultural tradition. Indeed, it is of some relevance that zen-ei sho was primarily a Kansai art-form from the beginning, and thus a product of the part of Japan that still remains closest to the traditional culture, Zen culture in particular. As practised by Kyoto calligraphers such as Ibata, what we might call ‘calligraphy as public performance’ becomes a dance-like expression of the artist’s life-force (ki) or mental/emotional state (kokoro or tamashii) before an audience, sometimes accompanied by music (even rock music), with the use of giant brushes and huge writing surfaces (Plate 3). The art of calligraphy thus becomes three-dimensional and extends into time as well as space. The actual calligraphic work on paper is now only one dimension of that art, a lasting record of the expressionist performance, the dance of calligraphic gestures witnessed by the audience at a particular moment in time. Indeed, some avant-garde calligraphers throw away their productions on paper right after the performance, proving that the performance rather than the resultant objet d’art takes priority. Thus, calligraphy becomes a characteristically disposable postmodern art-form. The fact that the Chinese characters written are often so deformed that they are unreadable by the audience also undermines the traditional high-cultural status of the work as a finished piece of calligraphy. These works of so-called abstract calligraphy record the calligraphic gestures of the artist, and thus have purely expressive rather than semantic value. But this throwaway nature of the art also has precedents in the Zen aesthetic (and iconoclastic) tradition in which finished pieces of calligraphy were regarded as mere ink traces (bokuseki) of the act of mind-manifestation that occurred in the moment of writing. That momentary act had the true taste of reality – its byproduct was only a finger pointing to the moon, not the moon of enlightenment itself. In the same way we might say that, in the new performative calligraphy, the calligrapher’s dance-like performance takes precedence over its mere ink traces. On a more practical, less philosophical level, it is also true that, because calligraphy is a spontaneous, quickly executed art-form that allows very little room for correction and none for deletion, it has always been the case that many are written but few are chosen. That is, the calligrapher usually selects only a few of his works for preservation, mounting and

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exhibition – the rest are thrown away. In the case of those works executed with giant brushes by performance calligraphers, another practical consideration comes into play: they are simply too big to mount in the traditional way (a delicate process that involves gluing the thin rice paper onto a thicker paper backing). Purists of the traditional calligraphy world may scoff at the presentation of calligraphy as a performing art before paying audiences of (mainly Western) tourists and gallery-goers, finding this to be a violation of the traditional Zen spirit of wabi, sabi and quiet introspection – a spirit opposed to all forms of showmanship and commercialization. They may also find something gimmicky or circus-like about Ibata’s use of the world’s largest calligraphy brush, and certainly it is true that a brush of that size cannot be wielded with the same masterly control as the much smaller brushes calligraphers normally use, which sensitively register every slight movement of the artist’s hand. And so it is easy to detect a whiff of fakery and vulgar showmanship in these calligraphic performances. On the other hand, it could be argued that, in more prominently involving his own body as a medium of his art, a calligrapher like Ibata is actually drawing closer to the Zen ideal of art as an unencumbered, direct expression of being. ‘It is the body that is enlightened,’ Dōgen Zenji (1200–53) famously said. And, as Daisetz T. Suzuki wrote as long ago as the 1930s: What differentiates Zen from the arts is this: While the artists have to resort to the canvas and brush or mechanical instruments or some other mediums to express themselves, Zen has no need of things external, except ‘the body’ in which the Zen-man is so to speak embodied. . . . What Zen does is to delineate itself on the infinite canvas of time and space the way the flying wild geese cast their shadow on the water below without any idea of doing so, while the water reflects the geese just as naturally and unintentionally. (Suzuki [1959] 1970, 17)

One might say that the dancing calligrapher casts ink traces on paper just as mindlessly as the flying geese cast shadows on water. It seems that even Western audiences at Ibata’s calligraphic performances intuit this fact – or are somehow convinced of it – as the following two eye-witness accounts of his recent demonstrations or performances in Australia testify: The art of Sho . . . is an ancient art valued as a visual art . . . but also a form of ‘moving meditation’ and as a means to enhance concentration, willpower and poise. We witnessed this recently at the Art Gallery of NSW [New South Wales] as Shotei Ibata, a Japanese living treasure at the age of sixty-eight, heaved the world’s largest calligraphy brush out of a bucket of ink (he almost

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couldn’t get the brush over the lip) and proceeded to sweep across a floor of paper which must have been about 4⫻6 meters in size. His state of balance was such that on his first failed attempt to lift the brush he smiled and laughed with the audience without becoming distracted from his task and the connected state that he had connected with prior to the performance. Meditation is a must for all performers of the art of sho and this is where the art becomes a mere extension of the seated meditative state. Later he told us that he never knew which calligraphic character he would draw or how he would do it – his aim was to become empty and allow that emptiness to create form. (Reiki Newsletter) A master practitioner of the art of Sho (a brush art that combines calligraphy, Buddhist philosophy and formative art), Shotei Ibata hefted his six foot tall, 40 pound ‘big brush’ and proceeded to let himself go in a moment of Zen release to produce a single character. This time, it was the character for ‘cloud’. The 300 square foot canvas is washi (Japanese handmade paper). You only get a single chance, as the brush touches the paper only once. Locked in a fleeting moment of rhythm and fluidity, both the canvas and the artist’s mind are clear and empty, with neither knowing what the final result will be until the instant ink caresses canvas. The idea is not perfect legibility but an expression of the time it was drawn, the beauty being captured as it is being written. A performance as much as a composition, the moment frozen in a dynamic stroke of muscle and concentration. (Young 1999)

At the very least, then, we can say that Ibata is serving as a kind of cultural ambassador of Japanese tradition in his worldwide performances of the Zen art of sho. Indeed, in his own writings on his artistic practice, Ibata seems well aware of his role as cultural ambassador to the West, as in these words which could serve as an eloquent justification for his presentation of calligraphy as a performing art: The art of Sho is a formative art of lines and space in which time plays an important part. The artistic meaning of lines is created and determined by the pressure applied on the brush and the direction and speed of its movement. The rhythm thus produced is not a mere rhythm of forms but a dynamic representation of the very rhythm of life as it moves on. When a work of Sho is created on a piece of paper, the limited space of the paper is transformed into an infinite space wherein the rhythm of life moves. Where strokes of the brush cross or overlap each other an effect of depth is produced. A work of Sho possesses an exquisite three-dimensional quality. The graceful art of black and white possesses a sentiment that may be thought

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Performing Japan of as a mystic manifestation of the human spirit. In recent times, particularly from the influence of the avant-garde movement, we find ourselves inclined towards stressing the formative function of our art at the expense of the form of the characters. This new art, known as Bokusho, which is derived from the art of Sho, is not based on characters but is a much more abstract form of self expression. I believe that the art of all people is ultimately a genuine expression of human life and not an art of portraying objects. The art of Sho, which has at its very basis the desire to express the human spirit, is therefore, an art which has an appeal to all. (Ibata 1971, 234–235)

As one would expect from a practitioner of quite free or abstract calligraphy, Ibata’s position on the issue of moji-sei tends to the liberal, freely interpretive side of the argument: The art of Sho is essentially an abstract art. It is not representational nor is it merely the art of refined handwriting. Characters as used in the art of Sho are no more than a convention and merely provide a field for artistic expression. Their meaning, denotative or connotative, is not considered important except in special cases. . . . Suppose the artist has chosen the character ‘kawa’ which means a river: it is composed of three vertical lines drawn from side to side. The artist is quite free to decide how thick and in what form each of these lines is to be, how they are to be spaced and with what force and speed they are to be drawn. That is the point of the art of Sho. I would like to emphasize that this is the art in which characters are used as motifs for artistic expression. One may question why characters are used. The answer lies in the beauty and variety of form – almost limitlessly variable. (Ibata 1971, 236–237)

But, as with all popularizations of a venerable high-cultural tradition – rock music versions of Beethoven’s Ninth, for instance – one cannot help but feel of two minds about performance calligraphy. Its undeniable aspects of showmanship, commercialization and aesthetic crudity are disturbing to any lover of the subtle, refined art of traditional calligraphy. (Of course, in the case of Ibata-sensei, his mastery of traditional calligraphy when he uses a traditional-sized brush is beyond question.) On the other hand, it may be urged in their favour that contemporary performance calligraphers such as Ibata have developed a whole new dimension of calligraphy, opening up a traditionally hermetic and elite art to popular and international participation and to interaction with other art-forms, especially music. In cultural-nationalist terms, these calligraphers, as evident in the above excerpts from Ibata’s writings, help to perpetuate, for good or for bad, the traditional Zen paradigm of a quintessential Japanese culture, as most famously

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articulated for the West in Daisetz T. Suzuki’s ([1959] 1970) Zen and Japanese Culture (somewhat ironically, in view of the fact that Zen itself is philosophically anti-essentialist). Would it be too cynical to suggest that this is an instant Zen designed mainly for Western consumption? Most of the calligraphers are no doubt sincere in their private pursuit of the way of the brush, but their public performances in black kimono with impressive super-sized brushes for largely tourist or foreign audiences inevitably raise such suspicions. These events can assume an almost circus sideshow atmosphere that seems diametrically opposed to the quiet, introspective, monkish tradition of Zen. Although the performance is certainly some sort of contemporary expression of cultural identity in Japan, one cannot help but wonder how deep the culture and the identity go. Do they go any deeper, for instance, than those instant Christian chapels found in Japanese cities that are purpose-built for white weddings? Perhaps not. But, as with those instant Christian white weddings, these instant Zen calligraphic performances certainly are fun to watch – and that may be sufficient raison d’ētre in itself. NOTES 1 Interestingly, it was to Jung that some of the abstract expressionists turned (Pollock in particular) for their own leading ideas about the unconscious. 2 The relation of Confucianism to the calligraphic arts is of less interest to me because my focus is on avant-garde calligraphy and the cursive tradition from which it descends. As a social and moral philosophy, Confucianism tends to emphasize ri (intellectual wisdom, reason, Logos, the Apollonian principle of order) more than ki (body-wisdom, gut-power, the Dionysian life-force) and thus tends to favour a more conservative, symmetrical, formal ‘block’ style of calligraphy and painting, a style that properly manifests the conservative, disciplined, circumspect, upright character of the traditional Confucian gentleman. 3 Exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, 25 September to 23 November 1980. 4 This is not meant to imply that the heightened emotional or mental states represented in Western expressionism are always negative: there were also significant strands of innocent, sunny lyricism in both German and American expressionism. But in the two postwar periods when these movements flourished – after the First and Second World Wars – the emotions expressed were often angry, anxious and violent, for understandable reasons. And, more to the point, the Western expressionist works, whether negative or positive in mood, did not possess the serene impersonality of Zen art. 5 The Zen bokuseki style, which might legitimately be regarded as the ancestor of zen’ei sho, originated during the Muromachi period (1338–1573) as part of a

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6

7

8 9

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Performing Japan general flowering of Zen culture. The style is characterized by bold, dynamic, free-wheeling brushstrokes and by characters writ large for dramatic effect – often just one or two or a few characters that record a Zen keyword (e.g. mu, nothingness) or a pithy and paradoxical saying (e.g. ‘When you meet the Buddha, kill him’). Much of my discussion of the techniques, teaching methods and ideology of the ‘arts of the brush’ is based on my own ‘fieldwork’ as a student of the calligrapher Ibata Shotei in Kyoto from 1972 to 1974. I thank Ibata-sensei for his patient teaching. Morita, for instance, saw the dragon as a symbol of East Asian nondualism: the unity of man and nature, and often used it as ‘the theme of explosive acts of brushwork’ (Munroe 1994, 87). The inaugural issue of Bokubi featured Franz Kline’s black-and-white ‘calligraphic’ work Hoboken on its cover. It is understandable that, when art historians look for the closest parallels to East Asian calligraphy – especially avant-garde calligraphy – in Western art, they usually point to the abstract expressionists of the 1940s and 1950s. But it seems to me that there are some much larger affinities between the East Asian calligraphic aesthetic and Western modernism in general: a central part of modernism’s programme, from its very beginnings in nineteenth-century Impressionism, was a renewed focus on the expressive or calligraphic line. Indeed, when the artists we now consider the first true moderns first appeared in Paris in the 1860s, they were dismissed by critics as mere sketchers rather than painters (see King 2006). For an excellent analysis of the issues involved in this debate, especially in terms of Japanese and American cultural nationalism, see Winther-Tamaki (2001). Much of the detail of my discussion of Morita Shiryū and the issue of moji-sei is taken from the section on Morita in Chapter 3: 4–89. I am also indebted to both Ryan Holmberg for allowing me to read his exemplary senior thesis, ‘Dragon knows Dragon: The Encounter Between Avant-Garde Calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism’ (1998), and the seminal essay collection edited by Alexandra Munroe (1994). Morita was an intelligent, sophisticated art critic and his ‘middle-ground’ stance was subtle and nuanced – I do not want to misrepresent or oversimplify it here. In an editorial he wrote for Bokubi in 1951, for instance, he argued that ‘as long as sho is our medium, we must use characters and look to literature for our material’. But he also warns: ‘We must ask ourselves if we have not been too distracted by the meaning of the characters and the literary context of texts, and thus forgotten the formal quality [zōkei-sei] of sho – the fundamental element that makes sho genuinely sho and art.’ Thus, he tried to strike an intelligent balance between moji-sei and zōkei-sei, recognizing the necessity of

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both but also emphasizing that calligraphy would lose its status as an art if calligraphers ceased to play with form. This editorial is reprinted (in translation) in Munroe (1994, 373). REFERENCES Holmberg, Ryan. 1998. Dragon knows dragon: The Encounter between avantgarde calligraphy and abstract expressionism. Boston University senior thesis. Ibata, Shotei. 1971. Japanese modern art of sho painting. Art and Australia 9(3): 234–237. Summer. Jung, Carl. 1978. Psychology and the East. Princeton: Princeton University Press. King, Ross. 2006. The judgment of Paris: The revolutionary decade that gave the world Impressionism. New York: Walker & Company. Leja, Michael. 1993. Reframing abstract expressionism: Subjectivity and painting in the 1940s. New Haven: Yale University Press. Munroe, Alexandra. 1994. Japanese art after 1945: Scream against the sky. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Reiki Newsletter. . Suzuki, Daisetz T. [1959] 1970. Zen and Japanese culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Winther-Tamaki, Bert. 2001. Art in the encounter of nations: Japanese and American artists in the early postwar years. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Young, Craig. 1999. earpollution profiles – womad, issue 1.09, September. See .

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Taiko Today: Performing Soundscapes, Landscapes and Identities Millie Creighton

❖ INTRODUCTION: DRUMMING UP IDIOMS OF JAPANESENESS

his essay explores manifestations of taiko in modern Japanese society, in contemporary Japanese life and as statements of Japanese cultural heritage outside of Japan. To analyse how taiko is used to ‘perform Japan’ and ‘perpetuate Japan’, I first introduce a series of vignettes, a taiko play in seven acts, stemming from ethnographic encounters with Japan and modern taiko. I chose seven to provide a range of taiko or taiko-style drumming activities, performed as expressions of Japaneseness, and also because seven is a number (along with numbers such as five and three) considered auspicious in Japan, hence worked into customs and rituals, and given cultural significance.

T

STAGING SOUNDSCAPES OF ‘JAPAN’ IN SEVEN ACTS

Act I. Beginnings: Performing Japanese Cycles of Life. It is a misty morning in May 2005, and Akemi and Justin are getting married in Hakone. Although they represent the no longer thought of as uncommon corollary of Japan’s push for kokusaika (‘internationalization’), that of kokusai kekkon (‘international marriage’), the form, or forms, of their wedding rites represent a fairly common pattern in contemporary Japan. With the bride dressed in exquisite celebratory kimono (in her choice of black for the predominate background colour to avoid any possibility of mud stains showing from the somewhat misty mountain weather) and groom in hakama, they take part in a Shintō-style wedding ceremony at Hakone Shrine, emblem of

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perceived Japanese antiquity, tradition and identity, attended by a select group of invited guests. Later in the day, they have a large Western-style wedding banquet and reception attended by a much larger number of guests, at which the newly established couple will make their grand entrance transfigured into Western-style attire, the bride in a salmon pink wedding gown and the groom in formal white tuxedo. Everything has a beginning and an end. In Japan, as elsewhere, these are often marked in culturally understood ways. Before the Shintō wedding ceremony begins, the stage area is nearly bare, except for a large drum on a stand off to one side. Entering the stage, a young Shintō priestess dressed completely in white, walks slowly, rhythmically towards the drum. Then, with careful poised movements, she removes the drumsticks from their resting place. Slowly, rhythmically, she raises her right arm until it is positioned above the drum, and her left arm drawn low and aft. She pauses. Then, slowly, rhythmically, her right arm comes down. The drum is struck, and her left arm rises into position. There is another drumbeat. Slowly, rhythmically, the drumbeats now sound forth and reverberate throughout the hall. The first beat of the drum marks a moment. The drumbeats call the guests to order, and send a message for them to focus their attention. The drumbeats are also an appeal to the Shintō gods, eliciting their attention for the proceedings, so that they too will be mindful when the Shintō priest, who enters after the drumbeats cease, introduces the new couple to them. Unlike Buddhism or Christianity, Shintō is not considered a ‘universal religion’. It developed in conjunction with indigenous Japanese folk beliefs about nature spirits, kami, or ‘gods’. Belief in these gods or spirits of nature were premised on specific places, which are part of the Japanese landscape or archipelago itself. As her drumbeats mark the beginning of the wedding, the Shintō priestess is performing Japan in multiple ways. She is initiating a Shintō ceremony celebrating the cycles of life and entry into a new life stage. The drumming reverberates a sense of Japanese heritage and tradition believed somehow to link existing Japanese to generations of their forebears. By enacting a Shintō ritual, she, and the priest who follows her, are also performing Japan in the sense of performing a ritual linked to the idea of the physical place of Japan as a land form. After the Shintō priest has given his message to the gathered audience, performed his customary role of mediary introducing the new couple to the Shintō gods, and given his expected edifying speech to guide the new couple through married life, he exits. The priestess re-enters to give closure to the ceremony by completing the cycle. Just as drumbeats marked the beginning of the wedding rite, they now echo out its completion. Then slowly, rhythmically,

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the drumsticks are returned to their resting place, and the Shintō priestess exits, leaving the stage of the hall as it was before beginning, nearly bare except for the large drum. The Shintō priestess is not performing taiko, per se, but the drum she uses, the movements enacted and sounds produced are recognizably similar. Taiko is understood by many Japanese as ‘something Japanese’, because it is either involved in activities that suggest a Japanese identity, or conjures up connected images and symbolic associations of similar drumming practices such as these, that punctuate the flow of Japanese daily, community and ritual life. Act II. Innovations: Shifting the Wedding Song. It is a sunny Saturday in the spring of 2005, and Eric and Keiko are getting married in the village of Bandai in Aizu Wakamatsu, close to where Keiko grew up and where Eric worked as a ‘JET’ (a teacher for the Japan Exchange and Teaching programme). They represent another case of kokusai kekkon (international marriage), one in which the couple first met abroad. Eric and Keiko have decided to dispense with the Shintō rites. However, drum beats will still sound at this wedding, this time clearly defined as taiko. As in many wedding receptions in Japan, the bride will leave and return to the reception having changed clothes, a custom referred to as ironaoshi, or ‘changing colours’ (Edwards 1987; 1989; Goldstein-Gidoni 1997, 26–27). At one point, the bride re-enters in kimono and sedately performs on the shamisen, a Japanese stringed instrument that for many is an icon of Japanese tradition and identity. After another departure and re-entry, the bride is highlighted in another musical performance of Japaneseness, but one not usually associated with bride behaviour at weddings. Instead of a white wedding dress, sophisticated evening gown or elegant kimono, the bride returns to the wedding party wearing shorts, a Japanese ‘happi’ coat, and a headband tied around her forehead, carried on the shoulders of a number of male Japanese similarly attired, all making a great deal of noise. The moment ushers in their actual taiko performance. This bride is well accomplished in musical endeavours, equally comfortable with the shamisen as she is with taiko drums with their rowdy, festival associations. The fact that this is an international marriage is not forgotten. Dressed in black tuxedo, seated at a white piano, Eric performs Schubert, while his bride accompanies him on the flute. Act III. Heartbeats: Performing Modern Japanese City Life. It is 1983, and I sit with several other students at the Inter-University Center, a centre for learning Japanese affiliated with North America’s Ivy League and Big Ten universities, and several important Japanese associations, at this time still

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located in the fast-paced district of Yotsuya, in Tokyo, Japan’s central commercial and intellectual core. In a country long conditioned to ideas of rank (Nakane 1970), Tokyo is said to be the ‘highest ranking place’, reflected in language usage by the way all directions in Japan lead ‘up’ to Tokyo, whether headed north, south, east or west. A woman from the College Woman’s Association of Japan is talking about the taiko group Kodō. This association provides a scholarship for a female student, and tries to enhance all of the students’ (males and females) ‘cultural experience’. They have decided we should attend the upcoming Kodō concert in Tokyo. By 1983, Kodō (started in 1981) is already famous in Japan for their drumming, their chosen name, and their spartan training and lifestyle. The name Kodō consists of two characters meaning ‘drum’ and ‘child’ and also conveys the meaning ‘heartbeat’. The name suggests an essential connection between the beating of the drums and the beating of human hearts, and also a sense of connectedness among people, something strongly emphasized in Japanese values. Kodō’s fame is already associated with the remote island they have chosen to live on, Sado, which in the Japanese context symbolizes a setting ‘back in time’ to a more pristine age. Magazine articles about Kodō in the early 1980s show scenes from their rigorous training on Sado (Plate 4). Trainees rise with or before the sun, and run for miles each day, spending further hours in intense physical endeavours, in addition to those spent in drumming practice, while otherwise living a very disciplined life on a regimen diet. These have associations in Japan with ideals of disciplined training, education, self-development, denial and ultimately seishin or (Japanese) spirit. However, it is not these concepts of heritage, identity, discipline or even seishin that the speaker keeps emphasizing. As a corollary of all the rigorous physical training, when members drum in concert, wearing nothing more than a loincloth type covering, their muscles ripple, such that, as she keeps telling us, it is ‘errochikku’ (erotic) and ‘sekushii’ (sexy), punctuating beats on the Kodō speech she is drumming forth, with these gairaigo, or ‘foreign borrowed words’. The male gaze is reversed. The foreign students at the Inter-University Center in 1983 did attend the Kodō concert. This was the show where I first heard Kodō perform live in Tokyo, Japan’s most dense and intense urban core. Act IV. Pilgrimages: Performing Periphery. It is the summer of 1996, and passage to the island of Sado is by ferry. From the central core of one of Honshū’s northern cities Niigata – an urban centre, but already ‘remote’ from the central counting point of Tokyo – one must first go to the outermost area adjoining the sea of Japan. In contrast to the coastline separating Japan from the Pacific Ocean, even the way this side of Japan’s main

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island of Honshū is referred to, ‘marks’ it (in anthropological terms) as more distant in the mindset. This is the northern coastline of the Japan Sea side, otherwise known as ura Nihon, the ‘backside of Japan’, in contrast to the Pacific Ocean coast which is omote or the ‘front side’ (see, for example, Bachnik and Quinn 1994; Tobin 1992). One then buys a ticket to Sado Island at the ferry station, which is old, seemingly salty, sea worn and not yet at this time redone in the popular ‘everything clean, sparkly and modern tone’, since it is, after all, a ferry terminal, the pragmatic, cheaper way for people to cross the water. Most of the year, the terminal pace is slow, with traffic mostly headed to Niigata for work there or to travel on to other large Japanese cities. The less frequent travelers to Sado are often people who left and reside elsewhere, returning to visit relatives for Japanese holiday seasons. This late August, the ferry terminal is extremely busy with a high volume of traffic to Sado, with a large influx of people with little or no tie to Sado as a place, including both Japanese and gaijin, or ‘foreigners,’ living and working in other parts of Japan, or from abroad. For a few days, Sado Island is transformed from a remote regional area for the ‘Earth Celebration’ (Plates 5, 6). There are scenes reminiscent of a Japanese summer festival. Crowds perform local folk dances in the small streets of the Ogi-chō district, wearing yukata or light cotton summer kimono. In Sado Island’s largest park, Shiroyama Kōen (‘Castle Mountain Park’), paper lanterns typical of Japanese festivals line the long rising pathway to the park’s entrance. Near the dock areas, tarai-bune, round flat ‘tub’-shaped boats made of wood, which serve as emblems of Sado’s local history, ferry the tourists and festival goers around the Japan Sea side. As at any fair or festival, stalls sell meibutsu, or local specialties, such as sasae, a snail-like seafood, and – ever popular at Japanese fairs – octopus on a stick, along with more recent Western additions of hot dogs, cotton floss and candied apples on a stick. However, at some point, something seems decidedly different. A man in a small papered booth, similar to a Western puppeteer’s box, plays the trumpet. In addition to the local ‘snake-like’ wooden folk instrument of this area, a group of Irish musicians pass by carrying harps. Given rising ‘internationalization’, pursued as a national goal in Japan since the mid1980s, it is not uncommon to see a foreigner or two, or even three or four, at a local festival even in ‘remote’ areas of Japan, but large numbers of foreigners seem to have descended on Sado (Creighton 2004). This is the Earth Celebration, which was started by Kodō on Sado Island, as I first experienced in 1996. It is a music festival, but as the name implies, also a festival emphasizing human ties to nature, and dedicated to preserving both nature as it exists on Earth and the ability to live

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a life in harmony with nature, one thus in balance with people’s inherent humanity and spirituality. The Earth Celebration on Sado reflects associations in Japan of remote areas being closer to nature, to community, to essential humanity, to remaining aspects of an otherwise ‘lost Japan’ (i.e. Creighton 1998a; b; Ivy 1995; Kerr 1996) and to desires to re-capture traditions that evoke a sense of Japanese identity. By bringing in performers representing the different music traditions of the world, the Earth Celebration tries to preserve ‘traditional’ music forms, while allowing the creative fusing of these forms. Sado was chosen as the venue for this international event because it is the ‘home place’ of Kodō. However, Kodō chose Sado decades earlier because of the strong associations within Japan of remote, localized villages as a repository of Japanese tradition, identity and interconnectedness with nature and other human beings. Act V. Festivals: Performing and Transforming Japan. It is late February 2005. Nearly everyone involved in the ski and other winter activity resorts – the inns, hotels, tourist facilities, onsen (natural hot springs), eating and retail establishments – in Nagano, Japan, manage to take a very small breather as the thousands of volunteers, coaching staffs, family members and other interested visitors depart after completion of the Special Olympic World Winter Games. Japan does not have a reputation for being progressive with regard to people with disabilities, and the perception of the disabled as ‘damaged goods’ continues (Benedict 1946, 36–37). However, in this case Japan has taken the lead among nations to be the very first country to host all three forms of Olympic Games: the Olympics, the Para Olympics and the Special Olympics at the same venue. (Since the Para Olympics are now always held at the same venue, following the Olympics, this means Japan is the first country to host the Special Olympics at the same location as its Olympic Games.) Like the other Olympic Games, the Special Olympics were featured for months before they commenced, and were the centre of attention when held. Throughout Japan, people heard and commented on former US President Clinton’s opening ceremony remarks in which he addressed the athletes with an African greeting he said meant ‘I see you,’ a reminder of how those with disabilities were once not seen in Japan (and elsewhere), because they were kept hidden to prevent shame to families, and because the facilities to deal with special needs were lacking. Japan’s Crown Prince and Princess were honorary sponsors, and the Crown Prince was present at the opening ceremonies. As a volunteer and awards ceremony announcer for the Games, working the Snow Shoeing event at the Nozawa Onsen (Hotsprings) venue, I understand the feeling of coming down to usual activity after the Games. Things have not completely settled down though. The Olympic rush is over, but it

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is still the winter sports season, and the more usual flow of winter tourists have begun to fill the inns and hotels. On my last night in Nagano, the family who run the inn where I am staying tell me there is a Nozawa festival – complete with fireworks – that night. I ask what the festival is called. The father pauses, then says, in a manner suggesting he has just thought it up, ‘it’s the Ski Festival’. Now a sport once introduced to Japan as a Western import has become the basis of a ‘traditional’ Japanese festival. With the young daughter of the innkeeper’s family in tow, I make my way through the fresh snow up the mountain towards the festival. Community volunteers hand out free cups of sake, while one may purchase typical Japanese festival goodies, like octopus on a stick and mochi (pounded rice cakes whose white colour and powdery covering suggest a wintry feeling). The festival incorporates elements of other long-existing festivals in Japan in which people carry or pass torches lit with fire. However, those carrying the torches are all on skis, gliding quickly down the mountain in two single file lines from opposite sides of the mountain, meeting and joining along the way, while we spectators watch amazed by their agility and ability. Once this carefully choreographed collective descent is completed, another form of entertainment that reverberates with a sense of Japaneseness begins. A local Nagano group begins the evening’s taiko performance. Despite the extreme cold, the male members of the group wear sleeveless vests. As they perform Japan at this new ‘traditional’ ski festival they generate enough heat through their intense drumming efforts to counter the freezing temperatures. It is spring, 2005, in another area of Japan. Teachers and volunteers work with children learning to play taiko to perform at festivals. This time, children with disabilities are included. Taiko has been embraced as a way of allowing such children to learn, and to participate in Japanese cultural traditions in ways not largely available to those with disabilities before. Rather than remaining unseen, these children are highly visible when they perform taiko. Now, they too are performing Japan, possibly a newly-transforming Japan – one that is more open to a greater diversity of people. Act VI. Superheroes: Performing Japanese Popular and Consumer Culture. It is midsummer, 2005, in a still hot and steamy Kyoto. The Gion Matsuri (Gion Festival), seen as one of Japan’s famous traditional festivals, is in full swing. All Kyoto city districts parade large floats, some in the shape of boats (Hakomori 2002, 89) with performers, along central city axes, through the historic Gion pleasure quarters, the older shopping districts and the modern business districts of Kyoto. Kyoto on one hand serves as a location reiterating a sense of history and ‘tradition’ for the Japanese populace, and on the other is a large urban centre like other highly-populated Japanese cities.

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‘Modern’ Japan is often called a shōhi shakai, or consumer society. A contemporary icon to the shrine of consumerism in Japan is the television commercial, long referred to as CM, commercial message, and more recently as CF, commercial film, suggesting a new legitimation as expressive artistic or philosophic forms that just happen to be selling products or services. Such CFs represent the modern technological age, and postindustrial society Japan has become, while CFs also frequently project espoused traditional images of Japanese identity including taiko. Where does the quest for the ‘real Japan’ end – in emblems suggesting pre-industrial lifeways, or in images of modern technological, digital, scientific and science fiction manifestations of contemporary popular culture ubiquitous in Japan? Those proffering icons of Japanese identity do not necessarily feel constrained to choose between these polarized concepts, but frequently bring them together, offering Japanese consumers both. In the summer of 2005, joining the crowds during the Gion Matsuri, flavoured ice in bright coloured plastic cup in hand, I watch taiko groups perform for the night-time festival crowds. Before leaving Kyoto, I see a CF aired in the area proffering taiko in the pursuit of consumer allegiance. The large taiko drums appear. Then the drummers appear, but they are neither dressed in loincloths, nor typical festival garb. They are dressed in full body jump suits of red with white and silver trim, with accompanying red head and face masks, typifying a common aspect of contemporary Japanese popular culture. They are a group of superheroes, taiko drumming their way into the homes of Kyoto television viewing audiences. They link motifs of Japanese traditional identity – through taiko – to something now important in most post-industrialized consumer societies, but which took a long time to gain acceptance in Japan, where until recently even major purchases were made in cash. The space-age taiko drumming superheroes are peddling a major credit card. Act VII. Connections: Performing a Japanese Heritage Abroad. In July of 2005, I also see another group of taiko performers, this time another children’s group. These children performing taiko convey the sense of Japanese cultural heritage being maintained and passed on. However, the group I am watching is not performing in Japan, nor is the identity statement of most of the audience ‘Japanese’. I have returned to my own home place of Vancouver, Canada, from a research sojourn in Japan, for an international Nikkei gathering (Creighton 2005). Nikkei means ‘in a Japanese line’ and refers to people of Japanese descent. This taiko performance is a statement of Nikkei identity, espousing a strong sense of being a member of another society, but also having Japanese cultural heritage. Taiko has long been utilized in

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attempts at staging a positive sense of Japanese cultural heritage outside Japan, and I have seen such taiko groups perform in venues such as Seattle and Los Angeles in the US, Sao Paolo in Brazil, Lima in Peru, Mexico City in Mexico and Santiago in Chile. Such international Nikkei gatherings involve Nikkei from different countries as well as attendees from Japan. Taiko performances at such events promote a sense of connection among Nikkei from diverse societies. They also involve attempts to reconnect Japan and Japanese with heritage descent communities elsewhere, not on the premise of shared contemporary culture but of shared elements of cultural heritage. In addition to being used in the performances of Nikkei identity, taiko is often a direct performance of Japaneseness outside of Japan. As the Japanese taiko group Kodō travels the world on international performing tours, these performances are frequently promoted as representing a Japanese cultural percussion form. Other Japanese taiko groups stage Japaneseness in venues throughout the world. When a Japanese taiko group performs in Wellington, New Zealand, or Tel Aviv, Israel, it is often seen by audiences as performing taiko and performing Japan. Taiko performs the ‘idea of Japan’. Just as taiko within Japan began to be embraced as a statement of universal human identity, rather than just Japanese cultural identity, taiko outside Japan began to face and address such issues. In areas where taiko groups arose to express a positive identity of Japanese heritage, there were initial tensions when people without any Japanese or Asian descent became interested in performing taiko, not just listening to it. In other cases, longterm foreign residents of Japan who had learned taiko in Japan wished to join taiko groups when they returned to their home countries, raising questions about whether the suggested boundaries of taiko as a percussion form associated with a particular cultural heritage – and the corresponding expectation that only Japanese or those of Japanese descent could perform it – should be shifted. After years of such discussion, the percussion did shift, allowing taiko to be re-staged as a drumming event that could speak to the connections among human beings more generally. Taiko came to be seen as performing Japan, but also as performing a particular variety of music produced by humanity, that anyone with training, practice and preferably a good sense of rhythm could participate in. PERFORMING TRADITION AND SPIRIT, PERPETUATING ‘JAPAN’

Taiko is perceived within and outside Japan as something ‘traditionally’ Japanese. It resonates with a sense of Japanese identity and patterns of life conceptualized as having a lengthy history. Suzuki and Oiwa (1996, 138) point out that the taiko drum is perceived as a sacred instrument because

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it is played at Shintō rituals. Shintōism, as a religion premised on the Japanese islands for the Japanese people, likewise has its own strong associations of being inherently Japanese. Kodō capitalized on taiko as a symbol of Japanese tradition precisely at a moment of modernity when Japanese were having qualms about where their sense of traditional identity could be found. The resurging popularity of taiko in Japan reflects the use of tradition to engage a people’s relationship with their own past. According to Dirks, it is the modern that invented tradition and that needs it. He writes, ‘the modern not only invented tradition, it depends upon it. The modern has liberated us from tradition and constantly conceives itself in relation to it’ (Dirks 1990, 27–28). Taiko as an emblem of tradition promises assurances of a continuity with what is asserted or believed to be a long-existing Japanese heritage in the face of modernity. Taiko drums are associated with the rituals through which cultural identity is continually reaffirmed and restated, such as in the presence of drumming during a Shintō wedding ritual as discussed earlier. Although performed in a contemporary setting and world, evocations of a seemingly timeless Shintō ceremony, and the seemingly timeless performance of taiko, link present and past through echoes of espoused tradition. Taiko serves well as a symbol of traditional Japanese identity. Taiko drums are played at festivals that reaffirm a sense of Japaneseness to contemporary Japanese (i.e. Ashkenazi 1993). They are made in long-established craft processes, and thus create a sense of linking of the post-industrial present with the pre-industrial past from which Japanese values and identity are thought to stem. Taiko also symbolizes a projected ideal of traditional community, where life was cooperative and people were mutually interdependent on each other in supposedly close and warm human relationships. The sounds of the taiko drums reached the outer boundaries of a given village community, and thus taiko serves as an aural marker of traditional community life, the pre-industrial social organization of Japan into villages, and as an emblem of the nature of uchi (inside) and soto (outside) group patterning that is thought to run through Japanese life and define social interactions. As an espoused emblem of Japanese tradition, taiko beats out reassurances that a Japanese identity persists and will prevail against the changes of time. Taiko is a culturally constructed tradition that conforms to Williams’ characterization of tradition as involving ‘an intentionally selective version of a shaping past and a pre-shaped present, which is then powerfully operative in the process of social and cultural definition’ (1977, 115). Taiko as tradition both performs Japan and promises Japan, or promises the continuity of something understood by Japanese to be an

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underlying Japanese cultural identity. Thus, it is relevant that taiko is brought in and merged with the most modern of contemporary popular culture figures such as amine or manga characters, or Power Ranger type superheroes, to coax Japanese people to overcome their reluctance to accept modern consumer practices involving credit cards. As an emblem of Japanese tradition, taiko is also associated with concepts of a Japanese spirit or seishin (Moeran 1984). Taiko is used to suggest a spiritual nature. It is played as an offering to the kami, the Shintō gods. It is played in the context of community life, in a society that has long valued the collective or group as a sort of god, and whose ethos emphasizes the interconnectedness of human beings over self-reliant individualism. It is played during matsuri (festivals), which, while fun, also have a spiritual nature with the word matsuri itself meaning ‘to offer worship’ (Gonick 2002, 25). Playing the taiko drums requires dedication, discipline and the exertion of effort in continual practice and exhausting physical work. The sense of seishin thought to be represented by taiko, thus resonates with Japanese cultural ideals of persistence, sacrifice, enduring suffering, hard work, dedication and discipline. Learning taiko also echoes Japanese ideals of traditional education, or means through which traditions are passed from one generation to another. It incorporates the Japanese concept of minarai, meaning to see and learn from others performing the practices, rather than a reliance on books or printed materials that can be used outside a context of personal relationships. Learning taiko also involves the idea of learning in and through the body, and of habitus, incorporating the body through habit to the movements. These ideas are also commonly espoused in other asserted pathways to spiritual development, or seishin, training in Japan, for example in the tea ceremony or the martial arts. The suggestion of spiritual connection or seishin that surrounds taiko also serves to assuage fears of a shifting Japanese cultural identity. Concepts of tradition and seishin come together to assure that whatever cultural influences enter Japan, whatever shifts time brings, something persists as an underlying core sense of Japaneseness. Through the assertion of a perpetual Japanese tradition and spirit, taiko players are seen to both perform Japan and perpetuate Japan. They are also involved in emergent tradition, using taiko to shape possible future constructions of Japanese society and identity. PERFORMING PLACE AND LANDSCAPES OF JAPAN

Place, perceptions of place and associations with place are immensely important in the construction of identities and a sense of meaning in life.

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In this section, I explore how taiko, particularly as shown in the rise to fame and continuing activities of the taiko group Kodō, reflects contemporary dialectics of place associations in Japan. To do this, I concentrate on the juxtaposition of taiko performances in the place of major urban centres, as in the vignette discussing the Kodō concert in Tokyo, and the place chosen and highly publicized as Kodō’s ‘home place’, Sado Island. I suggest that the landscape of Sado Island is used to image and reiterate multivocal meanings imbued with a sense of Japanese identity, tradition and historic continuity with what is conceptualized as a more pristine past. Kodō’s linking of Tokyo (along with other major cities) and Sado in taiko performance, performs Japan by linking urban places, holding higher economic and political positioning and often perceived as more Western and internationalized, but also as having less intimacy or heart, to rural, or remote places, esteemed as perpetuating the heart of a more traditional Japanese value system and way of life even if they have lower status and power. By serving both as a reminder of Japan’s large urban cores, like Tokyo, and its smaller rural towns, Kodō creates a performative linking of both aspects of contemporary Japan. Painter (1996, 200–203) similarly describes how morning television shows create a sense of the national unity of all Japan via an anchor person in Tokyo greeting local show anchors from small stations throughout the country. Drumming has long been associated with ideas of tradition, heritage and community in Japan (Schnell 1999). As I have stated, drumming is common to Shintō and other rituals, and was used to mark the traditional boundaries of villages, which reached as far as the sound of drums could be heard. In its rise to fame, Kodō drew well on such symbolic associations. The spread of their fame and popularity reflects the reality of a contemporary, highly urbanized Japan. They were promoted through urban based media – newspapers, magazines, television – and their performances in urban areas given great attention. However, the remote location of Sado Island, where they chose to live and train, was pivotally positioned in their promotion. Kodō drew on the suggestion of taiko as ‘traditional Japanese music’, thus music containing a Japanese spirit, or seishin. Their chosen name, Kodō (meaning ‘drum’ and ‘child’ or ‘children’), suggested the power of drums and the simplicity of children. It also suggested they were children of Japanese tradition and spirit. The association of the name Kodō with ‘heartbeat’ was also embraced. Perhaps the most pivotal in terms of symbolic associations was the landscape of Sado Island, Kodō’s adopted ‘home place’. Kodō’s choice of Sado Island is significant because Sado serves as a metonym for the metaphors of place that have embraced Japan since the 1970s. By the 1970s, Japan was enmeshed in what has been called a ‘retro

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boom’. The Japanese scholar Akatsuka (1988) designated this as ‘our retrospective age’. The ‘retro boom’, which continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in somewhat altered form into the twenty-first century, involves a renewed interest in things considered part of a Japanese heritage, in traditions from the past, and in its later stages in renewed interest in specific epochs of Japanese history (Creighton forthcoming). It romanticizes Japan’s rural areas and village lifeways, with the domestic travel and tourism industries focusing on travel promotions featuring rural areas rather than just big cities and Tokyo Disneyland as was more common in the 1950s and 1960s. When Japan was trying to economically ‘catch up with the West’, rural and village areas tended to be seen as boring and unsophisticated (see Kelly 1986; Martinez 1990; 2004). When, however, the long sought after modern Western urban lifestyle was achieved, many Japanese began to lament what was lost in the process, and looked to the past and rural areas to assuage this sense of loss. The nostalgia for a lost Japan that sought out and romanticized rural places was also a search for a desired return to more meaningful human relationships with other people, with community and with nature. Sado Island symbolized for many Japanese stronger ties to other people, to nature and to the natural landscape, in contrast to the anonymity and convenience of big cities. Early reports and magazine features on Kodō emphasized this, focusing on Kodō’s non-performance life and training on Sado Island. There was a suggestion that Japanese tradition involved a spiritual element that required being in accord with nature and living in a community-based style reminiscent of village life. Early features on the group showed their rigorous training regimen on Sado, indicating that Kodō drummers were living difficult and disciplined lives interacting with the elements of nature. The intense physical exercise they pursued to maintain muscle tone for performances, such as running during the early morning hours, was portrayed as an engagement with the natural environment of a place that itself was conceptualized as ‘natural’. To get in touch with a Japanese spirit was seen to require involvement in a place more pristinely set apart from Westernized city cores. Linked to Japan’s retrospective search to reconnect with nature and more remote areas was a renewed quest for community and collective identity. Postmodernity gave rise to concerns that the valued basis of essential human ‘belongingness’ thought to once comprise community village life had been sacrificed to achieve economic goals. According to Befu (1983, 259), internationalization resulted in a Japanese ‘identity crisis on a massive scale’. Such concerns prompted a nostalgic lament for ‘the real Japan’ and for a Japanese lifestyle and identity that could – it was hoped – still be found.

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Sociologist Fred Davis (1979, 107) characterizes nostalgia as a ‘collective search for identity’ that ‘looks backward rather than forward, for the familiar rather than the novel, for certainty rather than discovery’. Smith (1982, 128) points out that the ‘past will always seem more stable than the present’ so images of the past can be invoked to refute the perceived threat of cultural loss to which the processes of modernization and Westernization have subjected Japan. Tuan points out that places, particularly those that can prompt associations with the past or a past way of life, are projected as anchors of apparent stability in the face of time’s perceived incessant change. He writes that ‘if time is flow, then place is pause’ (Tuan 1974, 198). Potential contradictions abound in the imaging of Sado as the pristine place of a pre-industrial Japanese spirit, and its use as a natural setting for the Earth Celebrations. The local dwellers of Sado Island, like other Japanese, live in the present time, and the sudden influx of large numbers of outsiders for the Earth Celebrations often disrupts local life, and can at times be a threat to the unsullied natural environment. However, it may not matter dramatically to the human soul that such contradictions potentially exist. Social analysts such as Tuan (1977, 194) point out that the ‘cult of the past calls for illusion rather than authenticity’. Nostalgic images associated with remote areas such as Sado suggest a recreation of the past in the present and thus serve present needs. They also help link the present via the past to the future, suggesting that a particular vision of the future can be shaped through actions in the present by building on valued heritage from the past. In this case, invoking the sense of past, and of Japaneseness associated with Sado, addresses fears of a vanishing Japanese cultural identity. Just as taiko is Japanese, the islands of the Japanese archipelago themselves are seen as ‘Japanese’ and as tied to the lifestyle of the Japanese people. The landscape of the small island of Sado becomes an iconic embodiment of all the islands of Japan, and thus Japan itself. Kawano (2005, 54–74) suggests that ‘place’ becomes imbued with and takes on moral values in ways similar to how these are habituated into human beings where they become ‘embodied’, and that such values become emplaced in the landscape. Landscapes of Sado become representative projections of the emplacement of deeply-held Japanese attitudes and values. Davis (1979) argues that collective nostalgia often occurs with largescale changes and cultural transitions that leave masses of people feeling lonely or estranged from others. Japan has a long history of urban centres, but historical associations of community, and continuing predominant symbols of this, are found in rice-growing or fishing villages. I have noted elsewhere that ‘images of a symbolically mediated past agrarian existence have come to represent not just the ideal of community but also the good

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life, wholesomeness, and the moral values of Japan’ (Creighton 1997a, 242). Sado as place is reified as representing wholesomeness along with the moral and spiritual values of Japan. It does so because it serves as an appropriate image of furusato, or ‘home village’, and thus reflects discourses surrounding the search for furusato in contemporary Japan. Furusato is associated with the desire for community. Furusato literally means ‘old village’ but commonly refers to one’s birthplace, ‘hometown’, or more accurately in the Japanese context, ‘home village’ (see Creighton 1997a). Just as the ideal of ‘home town’, as suggested in Tracy Kidder’s (1999) Pulitzer prize winning novel by that name, bears heavy sentimental weight among Americans encapsulating such ideas as community, support, warm human ties and a sense of belongingness, furusato – home village – represents similarly valued sentiments among Japanese. Bestor (1989, 265) contends that in contemporary Japan, images of community have cultural and emotional value. Images of community are recognizable to ‘members of society as a whole and [are] unassailably legitimate because they invent and then represent a history of cultural continuity with the pre-industrial past, the cultural legitimacy of which no one could or would dispute’. Several Japan scholars have discussed how furusato has been reified while also decontextualized (e.g. Creighton 1995b; 1997a; 1998a; b; 2001; Ivy 1988; 1995; Robertson 1987; 1988; 1991; 1995; 1998). Suggestions of furusato are frequently depicted by images of rustic landscapes, remote waters, dilapidated shrines, often without any necessary indication of the actual place location. Whereas once furusato suggested the actual place one was born and raised, there is the suggestion in modern Japan that any remote area can represent a generalized furusato or a furusato of Japan, as evidenced in the savings bond campaign showing children involved in traditional localized area festivals, with the caption, ‘watakushi no furusato, watakushi no Nippon’ or ‘My furusato, my Japan’ (Robertson 1988; Creighton 1997a; 2004). This statement usurps the strong affective attachment to a place and for a community, and instead associates this with an asserted national community in a manner suggested by Anderson’s (1983) critique of the nation as an imagined community. It also suggests people can experience and consume any localized place of Japan as a replacement for their formally place-based actual furusato, or provide furusato-like feelings for those who did not have strong community ties growing up. The affective power of furusato imagery is invoked in its associations with motherhood and motherly love as suggested by Matsumoto (1980; see also Robertson 1988, 500). In the Japanese context, both furusato and ‘mother’ reflect a desire for belongingness. According to Tuan (1974), for small children a person can be a place. Both furusato and mother are

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projected as ‘places’ where one can lean on someone else, be indulged and taken care of. Both are prototypes of amae, snuggly, ‘sweet’ relationships of dependency often affirmed in Japan (Doi 1986; see also Creighton 1993, 4–14). In Tuan’s (1977, 177–178) terms, mother and furusato are ‘intimate places’ of nurturing where ‘fundamental needs are heeded and cared for without fuss’ and ‘places’ representing security and stability. Sado island thus comes to represent maternal Japan, or Japan as mother. The suggestion of return to nature is likewise the suggestion of return to mother, or the essential naturalness of the pre-birth bond with mother. Just as humans have a bond with the Earth, they have had in their initial existence such a bond with mother. Thus the concept of Mother Earth, and mother come together in place. This is further exemplified in the suggestion of taiko as a traditional aspect of Japan or of Japanese identity. Kodō reiterates this through the characters used in its name (‘child’ and ‘drum’), and the additional association of ‘heartbeat’ to suggest the essential human connection to drumming, based in an essential human connection to Mother Earth, linked via one’s own mother. It involves the recognition that a primary primordial experience for all of us was the sound of our mother’s heartbeat while we were in uterus. In Tuan’s (1974; 1977) discussion of topophilia (love of place) he points out that human sentiments of place are ‘grounded’ in childhood experience, where sensations play a major role. Although vision is the primary sense humans rely on, it is not the sense providing the strongest emotional associations, which tend to be much more heightened with touch, smell and sound. It is believed that the sense human beings utilize most before birth is that of sound (hence the modern popularity of music tapes to enhance intellectual development of the not yet born, and inventions like the ‘preg-o-phone’), making the pulsing rhythm of the heartbeat primordially important, and creating an intense emotional association with rhythm and percussion – even if we are not sure where it comes from – throughout life. Thus, returning to furusato by going to Sado can be seen as returning to mother and also recreating the heartbeat of mother for others, thus allowing others to reconnect with mother, with a sense of Japan as mother, and with a sense of nature as ‘Mother Earth’. It is also common in contemporary Japan that projections of remote or rural lifeways thought to be more representative of pre-industrial community values involve ideas of traditional ‘craft’ and craft lifestyles. Just as there is a suggestion that modern people have lost their essential connection to nature, there is also a suggestion that their life has been distanced from the satisfying engagement in a craft lifestyle, and products created by hand, with materials derived from nature (see Creighton 1998b; 2001; Hareven 2002). Nostalgic forays frequently call for a renewal of craft involvement.

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Projections of Kodō’s lifestyle on Sado Island, and imagery surrounding the Earth Celebration, highlight suggestions of craft. A small local history museum on Sado is dedicated to the history of Sado craft productions, with many installations that highlight craft processes found elsewhere in Japan, such as weaving and carving. The Earth Celebration embraces the return to craft movement. Craft exhibits are set up to accompany these celebrations. In one case, the wife of one of the drummers has an exhibit of Japanese embroidery of white on blue (indigo) cloth. Pottery and origami are on display. Promotional panels for the Earth Celebration, as I first experienced it, showed a snail-like image against a monotone background, achieved through a natural dying process, representative of a craft process. PERFORMING LOCAL JAPAN, PERFORMING INTERNATIONALIZATION

In the preceding section, I discussed ways taiko is used to perform concepts of core and periphery to link the idea of local Japan into a national identity the hub of which is found in Japan’s pivotal cities such as Tokyo. In this section, I explore the use of taiko to support the idea of ‘localism’ by performing local place identities. I then look at how taiko is used in seemingly contrasting attempts to perform an internationalized Japan or express a Japanese or Japanese descent identity in the international arena. After that, I return to a renewed focus on taiko playing on Sado Island, particularly for the Earth Celebration, to discuss the movement from taiko as a statement of Japanese identity to taiko as an affirmation of universal humanity and a statement of global identity as ‘citizens of the earth’. Performing Local Place Identities

While taiko on one hand reverberates with a sense of being a traditional Japanese music form, it is also frequently performed in an assertion of particular local place identity within Japan. Such performances of ‘localism’ (Creighton 1998a; 2007; forthcoming) can evoke traditionalistic idioms of Japaneseness conceptualized as having long historic continuity, or assert newly created place traditions as stemming from some sort of pre-existing Japanese cultural motifs. To exemplify this, I refer to the presence of drumming generally, and taiko performances specifically, at two of the festivals discussed in the vignettes, the Gion Matsuri (Gion Festival) of Kyoto and the newly proclaimed (at least by one informant), Sukii Matsuri (Ski Festival) of the Nozawa Hotsprings resort area of Nagano.

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In Japan, particular local identities get ‘emplaced’ at a national level as places take on an identity statement for an area. Whereas Tokyo is the emblem of the modern, cosmopolitan, urban core, where all areas of Japan come together and where Japan connects with the international world, Kyoto is the emblem of ‘traditional Japan’. Although in many ways daily life in the two cities is similar, Kyoto is strongly associated with a sense of ancient Japanese history and tradition (Umesao 1992). Domestic and international tourists flock to Kyoto to visit the Nijō Castle, built in the early 1600s, and the many ancient shrines and temples located throughout the city. In the remaining geisha districts, maiko (young geisha in training) continue to parade the streets, while able-bodied young males still pull rikisha (rickshaw) to provide tourists the historic feel of an old Kyoto. Although life is continually changing in fast-paced Japan, Kyoto – despite all the changes also occurring in and to it – is proffered as a balm to all Japanese to assure the timelessness of a Japanese soul. An advertising campaign series run in 2005 expressed the relief found in the supposed reassurance that Kyoto eternally encapsulated Japanese history and tradition as ‘Nihon ni, Kyoto ga atte, yokatta’ (‘Isn’t it good that in Japan, there’s Kyoto’). The Gion Matsuri is a hallmark festival in the annual calendar of Kyoto based traditional Japanese events. Occurring over a period of a few days in the heavy heat of a Kyoto summer, like other local festivals in Japan, the Gion Festival was once – and to the locals still is – a means of reaffirming local municipal community place identity. Different districts of the city make and bring large ‘floats’ to central areas where they are positioned and then lit up during the nights of the festival period. The final day of the festive period, during the immense heat of the day, the floats are carried and dragged by members of the district they represent. The floats frequently stop while turning corners, as people operating them perform skits for the street audiences before the floats complete their turns and continue on their way. Japan’s percussion traditions are a resounding part of the parade performance, with gongs and drums on the upper parts of the floats, which are played while the parade goes along. Thus, this festival, perceived as a hallmark of Japaneseness, resounds with forms of percussion associated with taiko. In addition to the drumming on floats, taiko performances are held during the Gion Festival. Along the designated festival streets there are stages set up for performances to entertain the strolling crowds during the nights the floats are ‘docked’. Local taiko groups highlight such performances, providing the expected energy and sounds associated with a ‘traditional’ Japanese festival. The winter festival I witnessed at the Nozawa Hotsprings resort in 2005 was conceptualized as a ‘new festival’. However, it too was a strong

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affirmation of both Japaneseness and specific place identity as part of Nagano, Japan. Nagano hosted the 1998 Olympics and Para Olympics, and Nozawa was one of the Olympic venues. The new festival developed in conjunction with the Olympics, when there were hordes of visitors to the area for the international event, and continued in following years. It took on new relevance in 2005 when the Nagano Olympic sites hosted another international athletic event, the Special Olympic World Winter Games. The informant who explained the festival to me was an award winning skier himself, an area innkeeper and from a family in which the younger brother won a silver medal in skiing at a previous Olympics. The Ski Festival reiterates a particular place identity while proffering a sense of Japanese identity. The Nagano Alps has many renowned domestic tourist destinations, attractive because of their onsen (hot springs), a popular part of Japanese bathing tradition (Clark 1994), ski slopes for winter sports activity and scenic hiking areas in other seasons. The Ski Festival highlights an important aspect of Nagano, and in this case Nozawa Onsen (Hotsprings) identity, its reputation as a skiing locale. This particular local place identity also speaks to international influence on the area. Skiing was popularized in such locations in Japan initially as a winter sport adopted from abroad. The Ski Festival thus speaks to Nozawa Onsen’s special place identity as a ski and winter sports area, along with its role as an international hosting venue of the various Olympic Games. The highly choreographed lines of fire carrying, meeting and merging skiers reflect these international associations of the Nagano Alps, but are also seen as symbolic of furusato in that skiing is now thought of as a long existing tradition of the place, with most members of the community socialized into skiing practice from early childhood. Other aspects of the Ski Festival satisfy usual expectations for Japanese festivals, highlighting a sense of Japanese identity. To offset the cold, warm sake – itself an icon of Japanese identity – is given to festival attendees, along with zenzai, a hot bean with rice cakes dessert. Such food and drink, made from the Japanese staples of rice and beans, while in this context ‘treats’, are also reminders of daily life sustenance obtained through Japanese cultural practices and via the land of Japan. Entertainment offerings in the form of a local taiko performance also speak to concepts of Japanese identity and tradition. The taiko group performing is a local group from Nagano, whose taiko performs Nagano place identity, while linking local place identity through the concept of local Japan, to a larger sense of shared Japanese identity, and to internationalization (as discussed below).

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Synchronizing Rhythms of Internationalization

While the new traditional Ski Festival is a strong example of specific local ‘place making discourses’ (Ben-Ari 1995), given its appearance in conjunction with the hosting of the Olympics, it also reflects Japan’s push for kokusaika or internationalization, which has been particularly strong since the 1980s. Scholars such as Robertson (1997; 1998) point out that although two of the most frequently espoused motifs of late twentiethcentury Japan, furusato, emphasizing local place identities, and kokusaika, emphasizing developing internationalized identities, seem opposing, they are really two sides of the same coin. Internationalization is promoted at the local level, while ‘localism’ is used to assuage fears of internationalization, and localized place identities are showcased as regional representatives of Japan for the outside world. Taiko is staged as a drumming form within Japan that represents community at the local level of intimate human connections, while outside Japan, taiko represents Japanese music and heritage. Japanese taiko groups performing elsewhere are often billed as performing traditional Japanese percussion. This occurs whether groups are famous or not. Local or university groups often perform abroad, and such performances carry connotations of being not only a percussion form, but a particularly Japanese one. As a famous taiko group, Kodō regularly performs abroad, where their drumming is positioned as ‘Japanese’. A recent review, for example, mentions their ‘traditional Japanese music’ and ‘distinctly Japanese music’ (Byrne 2005). Former Grateful Dead drummer, Mickey Hart, is said to actively promote Kodō in the West as a representation of ‘traditional Japanese music’. As someone who has played and participated in taiko workshops abroad, I am aware of taiko in its international or global ramifications. It is a music form with enthusiasts, followers and players who gather to practise or play in studio or rehearsal rooms all around the world. Often in these cases, taiko is an affirmation of an identity of Japanese descent outside of Japan, and of Asian descent more generally. I have witnessed this with taiko played during summer Bon Odori (the Japanese summer festival period in which the dead are suggested to annually return to their home place for a brief visit with relatives and community), celebrations of Japanese descent heritage in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, USA, during Asian Heritage month in Winnipeg and Edmonton, Canada, at the annual Powell Street Festival of Japanese Canadian heritage in Vancouver, Canada, in events carried out in Nikkei (Japanese descent) areas of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Lima, Peru, Santiago, Chile and

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the San Juan colonies in Bolivia, and in events staging Japaneseness in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In more recent manifestations of taiko abroad, its ‘internationalizing’ forms are apparent. Previous discourses of identity merge with discourses of inclusion and heritage fusion. In many places outside Japan, taiko groups first consisted of people of Japanese descent. Later, drummers of Asian descent other than Japanese also became performers. Since taiko was initially seen as representing a heritage identity, there was once some resistance to the idea that anyone could play, even those with no Asian descent. However, now with the presence of a wide variety of players and participants from all ethnic backgrounds and age groups, this has come to be accepted. Members from other ethnic heritages bring in different forms or experiences; there is recombination. A member of one Canadian taiko group composed a new taiko number called ‘Lazy Susan’ (after the name of rotating party serving trays). This taiko playing Chinese-Canadian woman positioned the new piece as expressing recollections of Chinese-Canadian family life. Another taiko group started in Vancouver with all white drummers who had learned taiko during extended residence in Japan. Initially, there seemed to be tension with taiko players of Japanese descent, particularly because the white drummers who had lived in Japan had better Japanese language and cultural competency than the drummers of Japanese descent who had not lived in Japan. Despite early tensions, the groups later began to play and perform in concert together. At the same time that there is growing acceptance of taiko as a music form that a diversity of people can participate in, there persists the suggestion that taiko still represents Japanese heritage and identity, but as one example of a universal form of music tradition that others may also learn. Along with this is the idea that creative new forms fusing different music traditions from throughout the world are possible and desirable. Drummers from African traditions have engaged with taiko or shakuhachi players in attempts to create new fusions of music forms. A recent Kodō CD release attempts just that. In collaboration with Mickey Hart, they attempt to synchronize the rhythms of the world, African, Brazilian and Turkish drums, Japanese taiko, Indian tabla and American blues harmonica all coming together in a new performance of global rhythm. At one and the same time on this CD, Kodō’s taiko rhythms are performing Japan, and performing internationalization. Sado as Site of ‘Chikyūjin’ (Citizens of Earth)

By the 1990s, with Kodō’s introduction of the Earth Celebrations, a shift began to occur in the imaging of Sado Island as the home base of Kodō.

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Symbolic projections of Sado continue to resonate with idioms of Japanese identity, nostalgia for past lifeways and a sense of traditional spirit. But as the venue for the Earth Celebration, Sado came to express a broader identity extending to all humans. The Earth Celebrations involve a call to ‘celebrate’, but also to ‘save’ the Earth and the possibility of a human community in balance with nature and the Earth. Important here is how Sado was first reified as representing wholesomeness and the moral values of Japan, and then how that was extended to the moral values of humanity writ large. Groups from throughout the world have been invited to Sado for the Earth Celebrations, and, along with taiko, global music traditions are performed at these festivals. Taiko is taught in workshops held during the Earth Celebration. Other workshops teach styles of music developed elsewhere, beyond Japan, and beyond Asia. Some workshops do not teach specific music forms, but attempt to help people get in touch with their inherent musical natures, with the suggestion that music is a ‘natural’ thing for human beings developing out of the sense humans have of the natural world and experiences with it, such as hearing the sounds of wind blowing, water vapour rising from a boiling pot, bamboo creaking, a frog jumping into a pond. Some workshops explore how musical instruments came into being from natural materials and grew out of human awareness of sounds emanating from them. The Earth Celebration at Sado at one and the same time embraces the extreme local, while espousing the global. Although Sado stands as one of those remote places, representing the ‘womb of Japan’, the Earth Celebration has evolved to celebrate not just Japan as place, but the Earth as mother place for all peoples. So while there is the rhetoric of Japaneseness associated with the rhetoric of nostalgia, this at some point has been broadened to all of humanity. Musicians are invited from all parts of the globe, and concerts featuring their music forms are highlighted along with taiko performances. Into this remote heartland of Japan, lots of visitors come for the festival, including many foreigners. Reflecting Japanese attempts at kokusaika or ‘internationalization’, in recent years large numbers of JETs, as they call themselves, can be found at the Earth Celebrations. JET is an abbreviation for Japan Exchange and Teaching. JETs (such as the young man featured getting married in the second vignette) are native English speakers stationed throughout Japan to teach English or assist Japanese school English teachers. However, JETs, like gaijin more generally can no longer simply be considered ‘soto’ (outside) elements of ‘uchi’ (inside) Japan. As much as icons of tradition, they too are an integral part of the contemporary performance of Japanese culture and society.

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Kurita (1983) contends that the new nostalgia results from Japanese beginning to view their traditions the way foreigners do, and thus beginning to love them. The suggestion in part is that foreigners are just as likely, or even more likely, to recognize the value in supposedly traditional elements of Japan. Although it is prohibitively expensive for many foreigners to come from abroad just for the Earth Celebration, foreign teachers located in Japan come in large numbers. This sudden global presence during the festival is often a strange experience for the ‘real’ local rural dwellers of Sado Island. Given its remote location, many local Sado dwellers, particularly older ones, once never thought they would encounter or interact with foreigners, often exoticized as ‘glamourous gaijin’ in person. Gaijin is used to mean ‘foreigner’ or non-Japanese, and most commonly suggests white foreigners (Creighton 1995a; 1997b). Moreover, to the local dwellers, the Kodō drummers themselves are ‘outsiders’ even though they are Japanese, because in contrast to many islanders, they did not grow up on Sado or come from families that had lived there for generations. Local dwellers accept the presence of the Kodō drummers on Sado, but often do not grasp the extent of their global fame. Suddenly, every other year, the small community is descended upon by foreigners who can outnumber the local natives, to appreciate what is conceptualized as a traditional Japanese music form and the quaintness of Sado village-like life, but the natives find it hard to understand why this draws so much attention. In addition to highlighting a local place, the Earth Celebration also invokes a global appeal for harmony among all people and with the Earth, rather than a sense of extreme nationalism. The extreme local is thus used to connect with the extreme global, as the uchi (inside) of Japan interfaces with the soto (outside) of the international and global world. There have been other cases of bringing together the local and the global in remote areas. The international festival called ‘Nibutani Forum’ held in the village of Nibutani, in Biracho, Hokkaidō, in 1993, was an interface of uchi and soto. Nibutani Forum was an international festival hosted by indigenous Ainu, whose largest remaining concentration in Japan (and the world) is in Nibutani, Japan, to commemorate the United Nations declaration of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous Peoples. In this instance as well, a specific remote, rural, local area, a place representing close ties to nature, was at one and the same time highlighted for its extreme localness and promoted as a site of international activity and association. In both cases, Nibutani and Sado, the particular traditional heritage associated with the place, and associations of sacredness of the land in relationship to human endeavours, created a metonymic

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connection with these concepts in relationship to people with the Earth in general, and outside of particular national associations, while at the same time invoking particular national associations. In the case of Nibutani Forum, this involved the Ainu quest for the Japanese state to recognize their minority and indigenous status, while networking internationally with other aboriginal groups (Creighton 1995c; 2003). The Nibutani Forum provided a stage for espousing asserted aboriginal ideals of a life lived within a sense of community, in harmony with the spirit world and with nature as encapsulated in the Ainu concept of Ainu Moshir (see Creighton 1995c; 2003). In the case of the Earth Celebrations, similar ideals of nature are associated with the local place setting, while a music form representing Japanese traditions, taiko, is used to highlight both a sense of Japanese cultural identity and also the broader musical impulse of humans more generally. While ‘internationalization’ in the Japanese context frequently ends up being a means of reaffirming how Japan is different from other countries, and therefore an affirmation of Japaneseness by the juxtaposition of motifs of Japanese cultural identity with those that are considered not Japanese (Creighton 1991), the Earth Celebrations went beyond this to promote a potential global identity. This may in part be in keeping with Kodō’s marketing attempts to appeal to an international and not just Japanese audience given its desires for global popularity. However, as an expressed philosophic ideal it speaks to a possibility of new forms of community and creativity beyond national or cultural boundaries. Through the Earth Celebrations, taiko performs the possibility of a new Japan, one in which ‘internationalization’ really involves attempts to reach beyond boundaries of understanding, embrace new connections and human networks, and emphasizes a sense of global community over a national one. PERFORMING A POTENTIALLY NEW JAPAN

Newer scholarly understandings of tradition also suggest that it is ‘emergent’, a means by which people in the present use the past to shape possible futures (Williams 1977). Different voices within a society or cultural setting can utilize tradition in diverse and sometimes opposing statements of cultural identities to re-confirm or, conversely, re-negotiate the accepted social order. In this section, I discuss ways taiko is used not just to perform Japan, but also to transform Japan, by looking at taiko groups comprised of Burakumin, the disabled and non-Japanese residents of Japan.

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Performing Japan Burakumin: Honouring and Challenging ‘Tradition’

Taiko involves traditional Japanese craft in terms of the making of drums. Associations of nature and craft come together in the drums, which are made from natural elements – wood and tanned hides. However, the case of taiko is quite different from other re-romanticizations of Japanese craft traditions. ‘Holism’ is an espoused ideal of craft involvement in Japan, suggesting that participants in something should know all aspects of it and all processes involved in it. Thus, in order to engage in calligraphy, calligraphers are expected to learn to grind ink. To be a silk weaver one should know how to cultivate silk worms, spin and dye thread (see Creighton 1995a; 1998b; 2001). However, historically, the making and playing of the drums were kept separate. Drummers did not make the drums, and the drum-makers were often not allowed to play the drums. This is because the drum-makers were Burakumin. Burakumin are a group who have faced discrimination for centuries in Japan, whose membership stems from descent from an occupational caste that dealt with the dead, and from others who were itinerant or without land. As those assigned tasks dealing with human or animal dead, Burakumin tanned animal hides, and therefore made drums. Burakumin were considered polluted, while taiko was seen as a sacred and spiritual tradition. Recently, some Burakumin have been actively protesting this history through taiko by forming their own taiko groups and drumming to educate others about their identity issues. One Burakumin taiko group chose the name Ikari, or ‘Anger’, to express their feelings about the historic and ongoing discrimination Burakumin face in Japan. To embrace the concept of ‘anger’ is particularly noteworthy given Japan’s strong emphasis on wa, or ‘harmony’, where even the idea of anger is often repressed. In addition to performing in Japan, Ikari has also travelled and performed outside Japan to bring international awareness to their situation, and this has an influence back in Japan given a high social concern for Japan’s international image. After Ikari performed in Vancouver, Canada, a long-established Vancouver taiko group created a taiko performance drama telling the story of a Burakumin drum maker who longed to play the drums rather than just make them. His dream was eventually supported by some other members of the community as inroads into the problems of prejudice and discrimination were made. Ikari continues to bring attention to the social positioning of Burakumin within Japan, with the hope that, as in the skit written by the foreign taiko group, greater interaction with and awareness of Burakumin will help shift long-existing patterns of

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discrimination towards this group remaining in Japan. In this case, the Burakumin taiko players have embraced an espoused motif of Japanese tradition, are emphasizing their historic and ongoing role in the making of the drums, but are also utilizing this icon of Japanese tradition to question aspects of traditional thinking that perpetuate social prejudices. The Disabled: Drumming for a More Inclusive Society

Taiko performances by children are often highlighted to reiterate the idea of passing a sense of Japanese tradition into the future. Vignette V discussed a typical local event in Yokkaichi in Mie prefecture. The crowds applauded as a local group dressed in the local black and orange colours beat out their best taiko performance. The scene was noteworthy in that while emphasizing a sense of Japanese history and heritage, there was an inclusion less likely historically, several children with disabilities playing along with the majority of the group’s drummers who did not have disabilities. Inclusion in taiko was important to the children with disabilities because it meant involvement in an activity that was part of usual upbringing and socialization for other children. By helping make the presence of the disabled seem natural in performing Japan, teachers, youth leaders, community members and the children themselves are performing a potentially changing Japan, where the presence of those with disabilities is accepted, and seen as normal, as greater attempts are made to integrate all members of society into fuller social participation. Taiko performances surrounding the 2005 Special Olympic World Winter Games held in Nagano Prefecture, or as part of events like the Nozawa Onsen (Hotsprings), Ski Festival following it, are also relevant to this. Individuals with disabilities were not members of the taiko performing groups, but taiko was being presented and performed as an identity statement and icon of Japaneseness at events presenting the prospect of a more open Japan in which individuals with disabilities would be accepted into fuller social participation. Such performances including taiko occurred in conjunction with other exhibits of typical Japanese motifs, for example origami demonstrations and Girls’ Day dolls at venues where youth with disabilities were present and interacted with visitors, along with exhibits of art works by the disabled. The conjunction of these involved the performance of Japan as a society in which once invisible members kept hidden because of their disabilities could now more openly be included in the visible performance of daily life and as contributors to Japanese identity and tradition.

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Performing Japan Non-Japanese: Creating a Society Valuing Diversity

At many festivals and events, non-Japanese taiko players are now part of the performance. In some cases these are long-term residents or students from abroad, who are known as gaijin, ‘foreigners’ or ‘outside people’. Tensions surrounding foreigners continue to exist in Japan, and many never feel fully accepted into Japanese life even if they acquire high levels of linguistic and cultural competency. In some cases, events that seem to be staged to spotlight the possibility of foreigners achieving competence in Japanese life are subverted in the end to reaffirm a belief in Japanese uniqueness and a sense that foreigners can never truly be competent at Japanese customs (Creighton 1995a). However, the increasing presence and visibility of foreigners in Japanese life, and the increasing presence of foreigners with Japanese-language competency in particular, is making inroads into the long-held beliefs that Japanese ways of life, of understanding human relations and the Japanese language are too difficult for outsiders to learn. Programmes such as the JET programme, have brought interaction at the person-to-person level between Japanese and foreigners in even very localized or remote areas of Japan, in ways that have begun to shift Japanese understandings through direct personal contact. Some non-Japanese are seriously involved in the study of taiko. It no longer seems particularly unusual to see an accomplished gaijin member of a group performing taiko in Japan, or at some point involved in taiko as performing Japan outside of Japan, as discussed for some of the taiko groups performing in other countries. In other cases, taiko performances associated with specific area events or festivals have in recent years spotlighted non-Japanese Asian residents. One community with large numbers of Chinese workers present referenced the presence of these members of the community in the taiko group performing for the summer festival. Such public recognitions of community diversity are part of new attempts to build a sense of local community through furusato zukkuri (furusato or community making) that embrace diversity among new and old elements residing in local communities. CONCLUSIONS: PERFORMING JAPAN, PERCUSSING HERITAGE AND HUMANITY

Contemporary taiko is a means of performing Japan. Taiko performs Japan through a variety of contexts, both directly in what have come to be seen as taiko performances, and also in related drumming practices that are a

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part of a variety of Japanese customs. Taiko serves well as an emblem – and performance – of Japanese identity, precisely because taiko as percussion is seen as linked to a variety of customary and ritual behaviours that permeate Japanese cultural practice and social life. The now famous taiko group Kodō ‘played’ on these associations of Japanese culture, tradition, identity and seishin or spirit. Their choice of Sado Island as their ‘home village’ and as a projected taiko furusato highlighted associations of Japanese tradition, identity and a connection to a pre-industrial past. Sado Island symbolized the natural, rural, remote and small village community life at the core of Japanese icons of identity, and was promoted as a taiko venue precisely at a point in history when Japanese were seeking out such remote locations as motifs of furusato, home village, desiring the reassurance that such remote locations were still the curators of a Japanese identity and repository of Japanese core traditions. Views of Sado Island served as metonymic images of the Japanese islands more generally, and thus of Japan. Both taiko and Sado perform a modern yet nostalgic Japan. Nostalgia is not just about the past, but often an indicator of a person or people’s perceived rupture from the past. Nostalgia can also be about the future. I have suggested elsewhere that, ‘nostalgia for a lost past, rather than stagnating people in the past, can be a collective means to move forward into the future by quelling fears about an uncertain present’ (Creighton 1997a, 252). In Japan, the nostalgia surrounding places like Sado Island and Japanese heritage symbols like taiko reaffirms cultural values of espoused traditional life, a closeness to nature and an emphasis on human interconnectedness and belongingness. In contemporary post-industrial Japan, images of community, as Bestor (1989) has suggested, represent continuity with the past in a way that is socially valued and not open to dispute. Once asserted, this sense of cultural continuity with the past is linked to the future, exemplified in the slogan of the Japan National Tourist Organization: ‘Japan . . . where the past meets the future’ (Creighton 1997a, 252). However, the analysis of taiko and Kodō’s use of Sado Island presented here is not sufficiently understood only as performing Japan in terms of proffering symbols and statements of tradition, or even of perpetuating Japan by suggesting a future continuity with an idealized past. Taiko is used by Kodō and many other diverse taiko groups not only in performing Japan, but also in attempts at transforming Japan. Both culture and the concept of tradition are, as discussed and developed by Kendall (1996), ‘emergent’. They are constantly being shaped in the present towards a future form and towards a continually re-negotiated sense of

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social order. Since its early days when training on Sado was projected only as a symbol of Japaneseness, there has been a shift in the taiko group Kodō’s use of Sado occurring with the Earth Celebrations of the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. The Earth Celebrations still highlight the idea of nature, and of close human bonds, but they are now also used to project the possibility of creating ‘global furusato’ by embracing ties to nature and the Earth as part of the human – not just Japanese – experience, broadening the suggestion from Japanese identity to a broader human experience connecting all humans on and to the Earth. Thus, the identity shift celebrated at the Earth Celebrations on Sado Island now proclaims the shared human identity of chikyūjin (people of the Earth) as well as Nihonjin (people of Japan). This increasing inclusion proclaimed by taiko within Japan is mirrored by an increasing attitude of inclusion in taiko outside Japan, where trained taiko players from a variety of backgrounds are now accepted as a ‘natural’ part of the performance. Other taiko groups work towards transforming Japan through performing Japan in other ways. There have been cases in the past where taiko has been used to project a more homogeneous Japan, and for militaristic or nationalistic purposes, such as in the pre-Second World War period. However, there are also many taiko groups drumming to perform a Japan they suggest can be potentially different in the future. The all Burakumin taiko group performs to challenge persisting forms of discrimination against this minority that are also linked to a pre-industrial past. The inclusion of those once hidden from society such as the disabled, and those once denied given Japan’s self asserted identity as a homogeneous society, such as minorities or resident foreigners, performs the possibility of a new Japan. The projected future of Japan performed is one that can still embrace symbols of identity and tradition linking it to a presumed pre-industrial past and therefore perpetuating certain cherished cultural values, while also allowing changes towards greater inclusion, greater recognition of diversity and greater understanding of the ways ‘being Japanese’ also involves the more universal interconnections of ‘being human’. In performing Japan, many contemporary taiko groups are transforming Japan, or at least attempting to do so. Taiko groups are performing Japan and perpetuating Japan, while simultaneously creating new percussion pieces and fusions of taiko with other music forms, with the suggestion that taiko can both be seen as a ‘Japanese’ tradition and also as one of humanity’s traditions, a particular variation of the musical heritage of all peoples, thus potentially representing a global, and not only Japanese, community and heritage of humanity.

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EPILOGUE

In June 2006, in celebration of their twenty-fifth anniversary, Kodō teamed up with renowned kabuki onnagata (male actor of female parts) Bandō Tamasaburo for a taiko drama performance of ‘Amaterasu’. Staged in Kyoto’s traditional Minami-za theatre, and embracing the Japanese identity icon of the sun goddess, Kodō’s taiko anniversary celebration returned full circle to traditionalistic idioms of Japaneseness. Cycles complete themselves and begin again. In the following months, Kodō’s taiko again reverberated with drumbeats of humanity’s global identity with their ‘One Earth Tour’ performances – a far cry from the Japanese traditionalistic associations of the sun goddess Amaterasu – their choices for the Earth Celebration on Sadō Island in August 2006, a collaboration of taiko, with Fench Guiana born and New York based dance artist Tamango and his ‘Urban Tap,’ along with performers of hip hop, break dancing and Brazilian capoeira. The anniversary taiko also seemed to bring full circle my own journeys into the drumbeats of Japanese tradition and internationalization. I first heard of taiko and of Kodō shortly after the group emerged from university educated Japanese women who were members of the College Women’s Association of Japan. Now, as a visiting professor at one of Japan’s renowned historic women’s universities, it is I as a foreign professor of Japanese Studies who is introducing Japanese university women to Kodō and their taiko performing dialectics of identity, tradition and transformation. Cycles complete themselves and begin again – sometimes in somewhat altered ways – as the beat goes on, all the while performing Japan. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My research on contemporary manifestations of taiko benefited from several supporting sources, including a UBC/HSS research grant related to taiko under the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grants received from the Centre for Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia to conduct research on Nikkei networking through North and South America, and an invitation from Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea, to present my research on Japanese taiko for comparative insights to Korean percussion traditions. In particular, I would like to thank Kobe College (Kobe Jogakuin Daigaku), a women’s university and 130 yearold educational institution in Japan, along with the Kobe College Corporation-Japan Educational Exchange (KCC-JEE) based in the United States, for the Drake Guest Professorship and research funds that assisted in the finalization of this work.

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Akatsuka, Yukio. 1988. Our retrospective age. Japan Quarterly 35(2): 279–280. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. New York: Shocken. Ashkenazi, Michael. 1993. Matsuri: Festivals of a Japanese town. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Bachnik, Jane M. and Charles J Quinn Jr, eds. 1994. Situated meaning: Inside and outside in Japanese self, society, and language. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Befu, Harumi. 1983. Internationalization of Japan and nihon bunkaron. In The challenge of Japan’s internationalization: Organization and culture, edited by Hiroshi Manneri and Harumi Befu. Tokyo: Kodansha. Ben-Ari, Eyal. 1995. Contested identities and models of action in Japanese discourses of place-making. Anthropological Quarterly 68(4): 203–218. Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the sword. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Bestor, Theodore. 1989. Neighborhood Tokyo. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Byrne, Richard. 2002. Kodo: Head beats and heart beats. The Globalist Saturday, 14 September. Clark, Scott. 1994. Japan, a view from the bath. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Creighton, Millie. 1991. Maintaining cultural boundaries in retailing: How Japanese department stores domesticate ‘Things Foreign’. Modern Asian Studies 25(4): 675–709. ——. 1993. ‘Sweet love’ and women’s place: Valentine’s Day, Japan Style. Journal of Popular Culture 27(3): 1–19. ——. 1995a. Imaging the Other in Japanese advertising campaigns. In Occidentalism: Images of the West, edited by James Carrier. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——. 1995b. Japanese craft tourism: Liberating the crane wife. Annals of Tourism Research 22(2): 463–478. ——. 1995c. The Non-Vanishing Ainu: A damming development project, internationalization and Japan’s indigenous Other. The American Asian Review 13(2): 69–96. ——. 1997a. Consuming rural Japan: The marketing of tradition and nostalgia in the Japanese travel industry. Ethnology 36(3): 269–254. ——. 1997b. Soto Others and uchi Others: Imaging racial diversity, imagining homogeneous Japan. In Japan’s Minorities: The illusion of homogeneity, edited by Michael Weiner. London: Routledge.

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——. 1998a. Pre-industrial dreaming in post-industrial Japan: Department stores and the commoditization of community traditions. Japan Forum 10(2): 1–23. ——. 1998b. Weaving the future from the heart of tradition: Learning in leisure activities. In Learning in likely places: Varieties of apprenticeship in Japan, edited by John Singleton. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ——. 2001. Spinning silk, weaving selves: Gender, nostalgia and identity in Japanese craft vacations. Japanese Studies 21(1): 5–29. ——. 2003. May the Saru River flow: The Nibutani Dam and the resurging tide of the Ainu identity movement. In Joining past and future: Japan at the Millennium, edited by David Edgington. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ——. 2004. From the heart of Japan to the heartbeat of humanity: Re-Sounding rhythms of taiko, traditions, and identities. In The Korean beat: In search of the origins of Korean culture, edited by Sem Vermeersch and Kim Tshung-sun. Daegu: Keimyung University. ——. 2005. Nikkei ethnicity and identity through Japanese diaspora transnational networking. Gengo Bunka Kenkyu: Ritsumeikan Studies in Language and Culture 17(1): 1–19. ——. 2007. Changing heart (beats): From Japanese identity and nostalgia to taiko for citizens of the Earth. In East-West identities: Globalization, localization and hybridization, edited by Chan Kwok-bun, Jan Walls and David Hayward. Leiden: Brill. ——. Forthcoming. The heroic Edo-ic: Travelling the history highway in today’s Tokugawa Japan. In Japanese tourism and culture of travel, edited by Sylvie Anguis-Guichard and Opkyo Moon. New York: Routledge. Davis, Fred. 1979. Yearning for yesterday: a sociology of nostalgia. New York: Free Press. Dirks, Nicholas B. 1990. History as a sign of the modern. Public Culture 2(2): 25–32. Doi Takeo. 1986. The anatomy of dependence. New York: Kodansha. Edwards, Walter. 1987. The commercialized wedding as ritual: A window on social values. Journal of Japanese Studies 13(1): 51–78. ——. 1989. Modern Japan through its weddings: Gender, person, and society in ritual portrayal. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra. 1997. Packaged Japaneseness: Weddings, business and brides. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Gonick, Gloria Ganz. 2002. Introduction to Shinto festivals. In Matsuri!: Japanese festival arts, edited by Gloria Ganz Gonick. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Textile Series No. 6.

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Hakomori, Yo-Ichiro. 2002. The sacred and the profane in matsuri structures. In Matsuri!: Japanese festival arts, edited by Gloria Granz Gonick. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Textile Series No. 6. Hareven, Tamara K. 2002. The silk weavers of Kyoto: Family and work in a changing traditional industry. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Ivy, Marilyn. 1988. Tradition and difference in the Japanese mass media. Public Culture Bulletin 1(1): 21–29. ——. 1995. Discourses of the vanishing: Modernity, phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kawano, Satsuki. 2005. Ritual practice in modern Japan: Ordering place, people, and action. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kelly, William W. 1986. Rationalization and nostalgia: Cultural dynamics of new middle class Japan. American Ethnologist 13: 603–618. Kendall, Laurel. 1996. Getting married in Korea: Of gender, morality, and modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kerr, Alex. 1996. Lost Japan. Melbourne and London: Lonely Planet Journeys. Kidder, Tracy. 1999. Home town. New York: Random House. Kurita Isamu. 1983. Revival of the Japanese tradition. Journal of Popular Culture. 17(1): 130–134. Martinez, D. P. 1990. Tourism and the Ama: The search for a ‘real’ Japan. In Unwrapping Japan, edited by Eyal Ben-Ari, Brian Moeran and James Valentine. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. ——. 2004. Identity and ritual in a Japanese diving village: The making and becoming of person and place. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Matsumoto, Ken’ichi. 1980. Sengo sono Seishin Fukei: Kotoba (The postwar spiritual environment: Language). Asahi Shinbun 19 August. Moeran, Brian. 1984. Individual, group, and seishin: Japan’s internal cultural debate. Man 19: 252–266. Nakane, Chie. 1970. Japanese society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Painter, Andrew. 1996. Japanese daytime television, popular culture and ideology. In Contemporary Japan and popular culture, edited by John Whittier Treat. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Robertson, Jennifer. 1987. A Dialectic of native and newcomer: The Kodaira Citizen’s Festival in suburban Tokyo. Anthropological Quarterly 60(3): 124–136. ——. 1988. The culture and politics of nostalgia: Furusato Japan. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 1(4): 494–518. ——. 1991. Native and newcomer: Making and remaking of a Japanese city. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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——. 1995. Hegemonic nostalgia, tourism, and nation-making in Japan. Senri Ethnological Studies 38: 89–103. ——. 1997. Empire of nostalgia: Rethinking ‘internationalization’ in Japan Today. Theory, Culture & Society 14(4): 97–122. ——. 1998. It takes a village: Internationalization and nostalgia in postwar Japan. In Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schnell, Scott. 1999. The rousing drum: Ritual practice in a Japanese community. Honolulu: University of Honolulu Press. Smith, M Estellie. 1982. The process of sociocultural continuity. Current Anthropology 23(2): 127–142. Suzuki, David and Oiwa, Keibo. 1996. The Japan we never knew: A journey of discovery. Toronto: Stoddart. Tobin, Joseph. 1992. Preschools and the pedagogy of selfhood. In Japanese sense of self, edited by Nancy Rosenberger. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1974. Topophilia, a study of environmental perception, attitudes and values. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ——. 1977. Space and place: the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Umesao, Tadao. 1992. Kyōto bunkaron (Cultural theory of Kyoto). Umesao Tadao Genshū 17. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3

Miki’s ‘Autumn Fantasy’ (1980): International, Japanese or Asian? Kimi Coaldrake

❖ colourful flyer inserted into the October 2004 edition of a monthly Japanese music journal announced the performance of the Asia Ensemble directed by Miki Minoru (Hōgaku Jānaru 2004). This concert for the newly established ensemble on 9 November at Tsuda Hall in Tokyo was to feature outstanding soloists on p’ipa (Chinese four string plucked lute), da san xian (Chinese large long necked three-string plucked lute), morin huur (Mongolian horse headed two-string spike fiddle), Japanese 21string koto, and shakuhachi (Japanese vertical bamboo flute). The flyer announced that the programme would include ‘Origin’ written for the group by Miki as well as one of his most popular works, ‘Autumn Fantasy’ (‘Aki no Kyoku’) (1980). This concert was just one of many taking place in Tokyo in 2004 to celebrate forty years since the establishment of the ensemble Nihon Ongaku Shūdan (also known as Pro Musica Nipponia or Ensemble Nipponia) and the rise to popularity of the genre now known as gendai hōgaku, a contemporary tradition that incorporates new music for traditional Japanese instruments. These concerts are part of the postwar articulation of cross-cultural fusion that has had great audience appeal in Japan and elsewhere in the world.1 Such crossing of cultural traditions is certainly neither new to Asia nor to the musical world more generally. Constructions of Asia as the ‘East’, the ‘Orient’ or the ‘Other’ have persisted since the late nineteenth century. For Western countries represented by Europe and the United States of America, the exoticism of Asia has been articulated as part of the discourse of ‘Orientalism’ associated with the seminal writings of Said (1979) in which Western cultures have characterized their engagement with Asia in

A

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terms of a binary opposition between ‘East’ and ‘West’. At the same time, Asian and other non-Western cultures have embraced the notion of the ‘West’ under various headings such as ‘modernization’, ‘globalization’, ‘internationalization’ (see Baumann 2000) or interculturalism (see Um 2005). In the context of these representations, composers such as Takemitsu Tōru, Tan Dun, John Cage or Lou Harrison are seen by some (e.g. Corbett 2000) in terms of engaging in asymmetrical power relationships that simultaneously show and subvert this ideology of ‘otherness’ through their music in order to seek legitimacy. As Everett (2005, 176) has argued, it is time to set aside such constructions to consider the way that postwar composers reveal highly individual aesthetic ideologies or poetics of interculturalism that ‘demonstrate marked attempts at reconciling differences between or seeking a confluence across cultural traditions and norms’.2 This chapter examines the composition ‘Autumn Fantasy’ for shakuhachi and 21-string koto3 in order to explore Miki’s sensibilities and aesthetic goals in his attempts to reconcile differences across traditions of Western and Japanese music. It explores the ways the work performs Japan at two historical moments – in 1980 at the time of its premiere, and then in 2004 during celebrations to mark thirty-five years since the development of the 20-string koto. It argues that while ‘Autumn Fantasy’ articulates Miki’s vision to internationalize traditional Japanese instruments, it both supports and problematizes Japanese notions of identity. In order to situate ‘Autumn Fantasy’ within this broad issue of the contemporary construction of cultural identity, this chapter also discusses the way that music performance has been a site for the negotiation of cultural identity in Japan at times of national and global change.4 Constructions of cultural identity in recent times have undergone subtle but important changes (see Iida 2002, esp. 1–24).5 For example, the serious scholar of Japan and Japanese culture cannot ignore contemporary debates over the theory of cultural nationalism in Japan and elsewhere (see e.g. Starrs 2004).6 This theory is concerned with the distinctiveness of the cultural community as the essence of the nation, and how this notion is often utilized to regenerate a sense of national community ‘creating, preserving or strengthening a people’s cultural identity when it is felt to be lacking, inadequate or threatened’ (Yoshino 1992, 1). Cultural nationalism is closely linked with the 1970s intellectual debate that raged among elites over nihonjinron (literally ‘discussions of the Japanese’). It promoted the uniqueness of the Japanese people and drew from aspects of everyday Japanese culture to illustrate its perspective. By the 1980s the limitations of the model were emerging, with scholars arguing it had developed in response to the threat created by

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Westernization rather than inherent special qualities of the Japanese people (e.g. Befu 1980). Such shifts in position reinforce the need to situate any discussion of culture and music in late twentieth-century Japan within broader social and political contexts in order to gain a better understanding of Japanese identity and its articulation through music.7 The use of music to negotiate identity is not new. Its underlying premise recognizes the close relationship between music in society and its cultural context.8 As Stokes has argued, ‘music is socially meaningful . . . because it provides means by which people reorganize identities and places, and the boundaries which separate them’ (1994, 5). Constructions of identity have been explored in the study of tribal groups (e.g. Feld 1982; Seeger 1987) and in contemporary urban settings (e.g. Turino 1984). More recently, identity has been the means to understand the contact between musical cultures in the modern age (e.g. Stokes 1994; Kartomi and Blum 1994). Furthermore, the concept has been used to confront the issue of music and the racial imagination (Radano and Bohlman 2000), to move beyond the expression of ‘ethnicity’ to a more critical understanding of diaspora and displaced communities (e.g. Lau 2001; Um 2005). Such studies reinforce the way that music, music-making and music-listening enable participants to discover, renew or review connections between many layers of experience in the nexus between the social, economic and political environment. At the same time, they may assert an identity that mediates temporal and spatial disjuncture. Identity is therefore a means of recognizing those with whom one shares values, experiences and beliefs, as well as those considered to be different whether at the level of self, community or nation. It is an inherently complex, dynamic, social and interactive process in which an individual’s identity is inextricably bound with that of the collective. As Born and Hesmondhalgh have noted, ‘it is precisely music’s extraordinary powers of imaginary evocation of identity and cross-cultural intersubjective empathy that render it a primary means of both marking and transforming individual and collective identity’ (2000, 32). This chapter, therefore, is not only concerned with the individual identity of Miki and his individual aesthetic ideology at the moment of creation, but also with understanding the delivery of the music and its reception over time in order to bring into focus the importance of sonic phenomenon in addition to human agency in the construction of meaning (see Everett 2004, 21).9 While it shows Miki’s individual articulation of these processes, it nevertheless highlights broader issues for Japanese composers in the twentieth century, composers who have sought to work out their creative selves in the context of their cultural, political and educational environment, as well as in response to musical sources available to them.

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Identity, thus, should not be perceived as a single conception, but as a range of subtle and changing representations by the individual and the collective that change with time and place. It is useful here to regard the range of interpretations of socio-cultural identity through music as a series of distinct moments or forms. Born and Hesmondhalgh (2000, 35–36) offer four distinct potential moments or structural articulations of music and identity in order to account for the range of musical constructions of identity and difference. First, there is a purely imaginary identification in which the music works to create a form of collective fantasy or ‘imagined tourism’ in order to negotiate a sense of self as a precondition for the formation of new identities. The second type of connection between music and identity occurs when music prefigures identity in a process of reconstructing boundaries of ‘self ’ and ‘other’ by testing emergent or real forms. The third type of imaginary identification takes place when music works to reproduce identity in a way that allows the individual to reinforce or to memorialize extant identities through means that may forcefully repress change. Finally, ‘after the fact’ reinterpretation occurs when the music-making event is subsequently debated and becomes reinserted as the representation of changing socio-cultural identity. These articulations offer clues to understanding Miki’s negotiation of identity through the performance of ‘Autumn Fantasy’. This discussion now turns to a profile of Miki to establish important aspects of his education and career that have had an impact on the creation, performance and reception of ‘Autumn Fantasy’. It then introduces the musical work itself before moving to a closer examination of the constructions of cultural identity through the performance of ‘Autumn Fantasy’, first at its premiere in 1980 and then twenty-four years later in 2004. MIKI MINORU: A PROFILE

Miki was born in Tokushima on Shikoku island in Japan in 1930, the same year as was his compatriot Takemitsu Tōru (1930–96). Despite early exposure to Japanese music through his father who was a shakuhachi player, Miki studied to be a composer of Western music, graduating from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music in 1955. He only later turned to traditional Japanese instruments composing ‘Sonnet’ for three shakuhachi in 1962. His prolific output ensured that by 2004 he had written more than 200 works, ranging in duration from two minutes to three hours and encompassing a range of styles including Western classical and Japanese forms.10 Miki wrote the first work for the newly developed 20-string koto in 1969, extending the expressive possibilities of the traditional 13-string instrument

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while offering the potential to create new contemporary music (see Wade 1994).11 By 2004 he had written more than seventy compositions specifically for the 20-string instrument, now extended to a standard form of 21strings.12 These included seven concerti with ensembles using both Western and Japanese instruments (e.g. Concerto Requiem, 1981, as well as composition with voice and koto such as ‘Karaku: Berodashi Chonma’, 1980). The 21-string koto also has a major role in his seven operas written between 1975 and 1999.13 ‘Autumn Fantasy’ remains one of Miki’s most popular and frequently performed works and was used in 2004 to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the development of the 20-string koto. Miki has close associations with the ensembles that have played his music. In 1964 he co-founded Ensemble Nipponia (later known as Pro Musica Nipponia) and was its Artistic Director for twenty years. During this period he aimed for wider recognition of traditional Japanese instruments at home and in the international performance scene. By 1994 Miki was closely associated with Orchestra Asia and its combination of traditional instruments from China, Japan and Korea. He subsequently helped to establish Ora-J in order to develop further opportunities to write for traditional instruments and promote global harmony (see Miki 2001, 196– 198). The Asia Ensemble in 2002 was an extension of these goals. Publicity described the performance on 9 November as one which would showcase talented performers of Asian instruments in an international chamber ensemble. It aimed ‘to aspire to an Asian music identity and to display the ideal of “live together–play together”’ (Hōgaku Jānaru 2004). ‘AUTUMN FANTASY’: A MUSICAL PERSPECTIVE

‘Autumn Fantasy’ is written for 21-string koto and shakuhachi in ‘D’. It has two movements with a total duration of thirteen and a half minutes.14 ‘Autumn Fantasy’ premiered on 11 December 1980 and was performed by Sakata Seizan (shakuhachi), who had commissioned the work, and Nosaka Keiko (koto). Both musicians at the time were members of Ensemble Nipponia with Miki as the Director. Miki has subsequently transcribed the composition for flute (or oboe, clarinet or violin) and piano (or harp) (1989a). The first movement of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ is a five minute free-flowing Prologue in a gentle dialogue between the instruments. It has a traditional five section (dan) structure with each section subject to variation and interpolated with canonic motives. Interestingly, in a break with tradition, Miki stipulates that the opening four bars, which serve as an introduction, be played with free rhythm. He subsequently employs constantly changing

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metric notation in order to articulate his desired phrasing. This is not only visually complex, but also a hallmark of his composing style. The theme melody is built on the tonalities of traditional tunings of nijū-kumoijōshi for the koto and in-scale for shakuhachi. Even so, the opening strongly resonates within D minor and is suggestive of Western harmonic practice. The theme is developed in a heterophonic manner, building to a climax at the midway point where a slightly varied version of the original theme brings the movement to a close. The contrasting second movement, also called ‘Autumn Fantasy’ (‘Aki no Fantaji-’), juxtaposes the two instruments. The shakuhachi theme, for example, presents a sustained flowing melody against which the koto offers a colourful, distinct rhythmic and melodic counterpoint. This movement is a synthesis of Western and Japanese compositional practice at every level. It is an extended tripartite (ABA) form in duple metre that is reminiscent of the traditional jo-ha-kyū (literally ‘introduction-developmentrushing’) form while having echoes of the dan structure of the Prologue. It employs D minor in Western harmonic language, but incorporates Japanese practice such as motivic patterns and tetrachords. It continues to develop the dialogue between solo and accompaniment – the koto emphasizing the harmony of the shakuhachi in the A section that contrasts with the B section’s sparse texture and focus on the melody. In both movements, upper and lower neighbour tones and heterophonic elaboration provide the essential momentum through tension and release practices clearly derived from traditional repertoire. Furthermore, both instruments employ a blend of traditional and Western practice to create distinctive tonal colouring. They both use extended techniques such as clearly defined dynamics. For example, the koto provides contrasting tonal colouring sounds between pizzicato in the left hand and plectra attack in the right hand, as well as bending pitches or using harmonics while the shakuhachi incorporates new glissando and tenuto techniques. Nevertheless, performers themselves remark that the music plays ‘naturally’ under the fingers, demonstrating Miki’s command of traditional techniques and ability to extend them so that he does not place impossible demands on the player (see Miki 1996a). ‘AUTUMN FANTASY’ IN 1980 Setting the scene

‘Autumn Fantasy’ in 1980 explored Western and Japanese concepts and musical practice within the nexus of government policy and contemporary

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music-making of the time. Even while there was a folksong (min’yō) boom and interest in folk arts (minzoku geinō), there was also increasing access to television and other media technologies giving greater awareness of world music and events. These developments extended to composers who were by 1980 starting to gain higher international profiles through exchange programmes to countries such as the United States and Australia. It was part of the continuing shift from schools of composition based on a particular approach to composers developing an independent, creative voice in the context of their changing environment and new resources (see Everett 2005, 179–182, esp. Fig. 11.1). There was also an increasing interest in composing for traditional Japanese instruments. This gained momentum from the 1970s with the granting of commissions for compositions using traditional Japanese and Western instruments by the National Theatre of Japan (see Motegi 1999), and Stockhausen’s ‘LIGHT-HikariLIGHT’ for gagaku ensemble (1977), which stimulated many new works. Government funding was not only focused on supporting newly emerging music forms. Rather, there was recognition of the need to document traditions in order to preserve them for future generations. The Agency for Cultural Affairs consequently conducted a project over more than a decade to record performances from an aging group who still had direct links to rapidly disappearing folk traditions. At the same time the Victor Record Company was preparing a five-record set of the ‘Best 30’ of modern koto music, which was released in 1982. It presented works written between 1920 and 1980 by twenty composers including Miyagi Michio, Sawai Tadao and Nagasawa Katsutoshi. No works by Miki appeared in this collection and ‘Autumn Fantasy’ does not appear, probably because it was only premiered in 1980 and had yet to achieve popularity (see Hōgaku Jānaru 2005a, 34– 35). Nevertheless, 1980 and the following years are regarded as an important period for the development of the repertoire of art music that experimented with Japanese and Western music concepts to create a hybridized form. Motegi, for example, identifies four stages starting from the 1920s, the fourth emerging after 1980 when composers inspired by Western music (yōgaku) used techniques of traditional instruments in experimenting with their own ideas about Japanese cultural identity (Motegi 1999, 28). Miki and ‘Autumn Fantasy’ clearly belong to this stage.15 Miki and Internationalization

At its premiere, ‘Autumn Fantasy’ was contemporary and new by virtue of the agency of its delivery through the 21-string koto, and by its compositional innovations (including the patterns and techniques of playing and

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the choice of the ensemble that mixed traditional shakuhachi and contemporary koto). Thus, ‘Autumn Fantasy’ demonstrated change at every level of Japanese traditional practice (see Wade 1994, 234–235). It was a further movement away from the simple borrowing of ideas as sanctioned by midtwentieth-century practice towards ‘what is now a time-honoured tradition in the eclectic world of modern Japanese art and music: the continual interplay between local, traditional and global ways of framing knowledge’ (Herd 2004, 56). This ability to frame Japanese tradition in a broader global and international perspective is neither surprising nor antithetical to traditional culture. Rather, internationalization in the form of the influence of other cultures has been central to the ongoing formation of a Japanese cultural identity, not only in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century (e.g. Darling-Wolf 2000; Galliano 2002; Herd 1987), but also in prehistory from as early as the Yayoi period (200 BC–AD 300 ) when Japan looked beyond its own shores for stimulus. The 1980s thus saw a politically-generated call for internationalization (kokusaika) as a motivational catch-cry for cultural activities and economic trade. Surprisingly, this encouraged the thorough domestication of Japanese culture and the dissemination of Japanese culture throughout the world (Ivy 1995, 3; see also Ryker 1991). Whatever the ultimate outcomes, in the initial stages this drive to engineer the internationalization of Japanese culture linked well with Miki’s own vision to internationalize traditional Japanese instruments that he had started to explore from the 1960s during his time as Artistic Director of Pro Musica Nipponia. This process of internationalization was not simply one involving the de-contextualization of traditional instruments by moving them to new stages and the dissemination to international venues in new combinations of instruments. Rather, Miki saw that instruments had potency as vehicles for the expression of cultural identity, indicated by his statement that ‘tone colour between Japanese and Western instruments stimulates a strong sense of cultural duality’ (Miki 1989b, 165). His comments on his own compositional processes are most revealing: Even when writing for Western instruments, I often write with Japanese instruments in mind. . . . I have felt that if I did not work to define my own identity through an extensive variety of means, without relying exclusively on the particular nature of my background, modern music would come to have a sense of uniformity, of poverty for me. (Miki 1989b, 166)

Clearly, he does not see music forms in a clear-cut duality of Japanese and Western concepts. He uses the instrument to manipulate aesthetic resolution or difference as he sees fit.

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By 1980, Miki was at a turning point in his career, seeking to redefine his musical identity by shifting from the use of traditional instruments as the agency of delivery in order to focus on voice and opera. Yet, works like ‘Autumn Fantasy’ had established practices that he explored in these later works. He noted: There are absolutely no untouched traditional materials [in the opera ‘Jōruri’]. Rather elements of both East and West are combined to yield a new musical identity; that is the two cultures are filtered through myself so that aspects of each emerge in a new musical language. (1989b,167)

He called this process ‘assimilation’, one which derives its source from his early musical environment.16 Such individual statements are an example of the process of negotiation identified by Everett (2005, 176) as the poetics (aesthetic ideologies) of interculturalism in which the composer is attempting to reconcile differences between or seeking a confluence across cultural traditions. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ represents Miki’s poetics in 1980; it is Miki’s way to imagine how two musical worlds might be reconciled even though there is no assurance that this reconciliation will ever be realized. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ as International

The discussion so far has focused on ‘Autumn Fantasy’ and Miki’s negotiation of an individual identity and personal aesthetic. It is now appropriate to examine the way that the collective musical identifications with ‘Autumn Fantasy’ were formed and influenced by the larger discourse of internationalization dominating the political, economic and social agenda in Japan in the 1980s. At this point we can assess how ‘Autumn Fantasy’ negotiated this new agenda. First, the title of ‘Autumn Fantasy’, which Miki himself used, offers multiple readings to performers and audiences. On the unpublished version of the score for Sakamoto Seizan the title is written in Japanese characters as ‘Aki no Kyoku’ and in English script it becomes ‘Autumn Fantasy’. This is not a direct translation, but simultaneously highlights both the differences between, and an attempt to, reconcile musical cultures. The English title evokes the genre of fantasia in the general sense of ‘product of the imagination’. This term, in use in Europe by the sixteenth century, emphasizes free invention. By the twentieth century, there was a renewed interest in the fantasy form by composers such as Schoenberg who wrote ‘Phantasy for Violin and Piano Accompaniment’ op. 47 and Vaughan Williams with his popular ‘Fantasia on Greensleeves’. By comparison, the Japanese title ‘Aki no Kyoku’ immediately resonates within the traditional koto

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repertoire. A work with this title is found in tegotomono, a genre in the form of song-interlude-song. It is part of a group of four seasonal compositions known collectively as ‘Kokingumi’ that date from the nineteenth century and draw on Imperial poetry from the tenth-century anthology, Kokinshū (Wade 1976, 32–33). At the time of their composition they were noted for their musical innovations while simultaneously linking the new contemporary forms to historical tradition through their texts. By incorporating the two titles, Miki draws on prior references of both Japanese and international audiences while simultaneously exploring two musical concepts with specific and different cultural references. This argument is reinforced when one turns to the titles on commercially released CD recordings. In 1994, for example, in the first digital release for the international market the work appears with the English title first and the Japanese in a secondary position (Miki 1994a). This negotiation of musical cultures is further reinforced both visually and linguistically by the title of the second movement, which employs the Japanese character for ‘aki’ (‘autumn’) and ‘fantaji-’ (‘fantasy’) in katakana (the Japanese phonetic syllabary representing non-Japanese sounds). This juxtaposition of Japanese and Western linguistic sounds extends to the notation of the musical sound. The musical score for ‘Autumn Fantasy’, as for most of Miki’s works, is presented in a Western-derived stave format incorporating additional signs and symbols to represent the techniques and colours of the instruments. Stylistic and tempo directions are annotated in both Japanese and Italian. For the music specialist without knowledge of Japanese language, the music notation does not easily ‘translate’ to performance. By contrast, for musicians who are more accustomed to reading different scores within the Japanese tradition and Western context, it is read with greater facility. This situation is addressed by Miki through published versions of other scores that not only make them more accessible, but also reinforces the notion of internationalization. Works published by the company Ongaku no Tomo appear with English and Japanese annotations and more recently, as interest in Miki’s works has grown in China, other publications have appeared with Chinese and Japanese (e.g. Nishi 2004). While performers work with such different representations to interpret and deliver the sonic and cultural phenomena, audience engagement occurs at the point of reception through performance, recordings and other means including publicity and programme notes. In the performance of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ in 1980, the appearance of the musicians on a Western concert hall stage, seated on chairs, and wearing traditional kimono provided a visual reinforcement of the synthesis of cultures heard in the music itself. How the listener perceived these constituent elements depended on

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their personal experiences of culture and the local meanings they attributed to music. In Japan, the different meanings could coexist even while they may have had the undercurrents of political ideologies or served to essentialize Western musical culture. This brings the discussion to the second way in which ‘Autumn Fantasy’ negotiates Japanese identity against the background to internationalize in the 1980s. Miki’s recasting of local Japanese culture and instruments (especially koto and shakuhachi) into Western and global frameworks created a hybrid music with a distinct Japanese sensibility. It appealed to the Japanese public through its connections to familiar traditions. Such connections to established cultural traditions while linking them to a broader fascination with the ‘exotic local’, provided a sense of continuity that deeply resonated with Japan’s idea of nation (Ivy 1995, 329–365; Mitsui 1998). Thus, ‘Autumn Fantasy’ not only signals an engagement with the modern world, it also serves to reinforce an idealized sense of self: as insiders in the Japanese nation against the outsiders of the international world at a time of change. In this way, the ‘international’ was negotiated by means of a reconsideration of the national and traditional self that allowed individuals as well as community groups to test the fundamental boundaries between insider and outsider.17 Such testing of the boundaries reflects the broader, often conflicting, negotiations between nationalism and internationalism taking place in Japan in the ebullient 1980s. On the one hand, Japan was fostering the belief in its own uniqueness through the nihonjinron debate, simultaneously perceiving its own culture by virtue of its reflection through the mirror of other cultures. On the other hand, in its anxiety to be regarded as a modern state with legitimacy in the eyes of the global community, it did not wish to take for granted the importance of the sense of nation simply through a nostalgic appeal to an unbroken line of tradition. It therefore aligned itself with Western economic models of capitalism and industrialization. In the process, the West was regarded not as the ‘other’, but perceived as a member on the same side as Japan. Asia at this point stood in imaginary opposition (Iyotani 1995). ‘Autumn Fantasy’ exemplifies this negotiation of identity. ‘AUTUMN FANTASY’ IN 2004 Setting the scene

Japan in 2004 was marked by a range of events both at home and overseas that seriously tested its sense of historical and social identity. Briefly, it was a year when Japan played a prominent role in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’

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including the sending of Self Defense Forces to the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. This sparked debate over the need for constitutional reform for future military roles and generated violent response from China and other Asian nations over its colonial history and militarism. The possibility of female succession to the royal line also served as a catalyst towards other revisions of the postwar constitution and featured prominently in national and international media. As noted earlier, there were extensive celebrations in 2004 in recognition of forty years since the establishment of Pro Musica Nipponica and reflections on developments in contemporary music in the period (e.g. Hōgaku Janāru 2004b, 12–17). Similarly, a large number of concerts and other events were held to showcase the 20-string koto, by now with twentyfive strings, and acknowledge the thirty-five years of music and musicmaking since its development. It was not only a celebration by composers and performers of the experiences engendered by the instrument and the broader gendai hōgaku genre, but it was also a time for re-assessment of the impact of the music on audiences. For older audiences it was a time of reflection on post-war regeneration and major changes in the music scene that also saw many traditional performing arts search for ways to survive in the contemporary context (e.g. Coaldrake 1997). In addition, the 1982 LP record set of top koto works was to be replaced by Victor in September 2005 with a proposed five-disc CD of the ‘Best Modern Koto Hits’ that ranked the music of Sawai Tadao at number one (Hōgaku Janāru 2005b, 34–37). The only work of Miki’s to appear on the list was ‘Autumn Fantasy’ which ranked number twelve while Miki himself ranked seventh overall among the composers (see Hōgaku Janāru 2005b, 36). Traditional instruments, meanwhile, were no longer confined to concert halls and private teaching studios, but featured prominently in alternative live and club house venues. Tower Records and other charts also attracted crossovers from traditional areas with the likes of Yoshida Brothers on shamisen having won the attention of teenagers and student audiences at home and overseas. The changing labels of such music are of great interest too. The term ‘hōgaku’ previously applied to traditional Japanese music such as gagaku now shifted as part of the globalization of popular music industry to a generic use for music of Japanese origin as distinct from ‘yōgaku’ or music in Japan inspired by Western music. Japanese traditional instruments and music-making also had an increasing profile among the younger school-age children. In 2002, the introduction of traditional music and instrument lessons by the Ministry of Education into sections of the compulsory curriculum not only regenerated traditional forms, but also generated a whole support industry of teacher

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training, instrument-making and other educational resources (see Johnson 2004b). This too was a significant change in the educational philosophy that had been in place for fifty years and had its roots in the introduction of Western music in the Meiji era (e.g. Coaldrake 1990). It signalled a rediscovery of traditional roots that may be interpreted as an example of the government use of the national education system to propagate what it defined as a Japanese identity (Befu 1993, 5). Miki and the Negotiation of Identity in 2004

A broader understanding of Miki and the negotiation of identity through his music in 2004 is highlighted by the events at the time of the performance of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ at the Asia Ensemble concert on 9 November. First, a CD of the same name and with the same graphics was simultaneously released on the date of the concert (see Miki et al. 2004b).18 It demonstrated the way that Miki had developed a strong marketing sense and grasp of the commercial industry, which enabled him to maximize the outreach of his music and delivery of his message. In Japan at least, this had the desired effect for publicizing the new CD. Hōgaku Janāru, which had advertised the performance in October 2004, subsequently featured the CD in its Cross Review in February 2005 (Hōgaku Janāru 2005b, 39). Four independent critics offered their assessment of it ranging from comments that it was ‘music of the gods’ highlighting the instruments and performers (‘four stars’), to suggestions that it was easy new-age listening that was more academic than musically challenging (‘two and half stars’). Similar marketing methods are also seen in the periodic announcements on his website and through email listing with information on his activities, new compositions and performances of his music, which disseminate information among performers, other musicians and the public (see www.m-miki.com). It is an outreach not only to Japanese audiences, but also deliberately seeks to reach global contacts through his own English communications. Second, the Asia Ensemble events joined other celebrations for the development of the 20-string koto. For example, Ora-J, as mentioned above, another ensemble established by Miki, had dedicated its 9 March concert earlier in 2004 to highlight the 20-string koto and Miki’s works, this time in the context of an exploration of the Japan-China musical relationship. Meanwhile a monograph was published documenting Miki’s thirty-five years’ involvement with the 20-string koto (Nishi 2004). Of particular interest is the fact that the title of this publication included the Japanese characters for ‘new’ and ‘koto’ typically read as ‘shinsō’ but identified in furigana in the text as ‘niigoto’ by Miki to create the neologism.

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These activities in 2004 certainly exemplified Miki’s use of music as a means of negotiation of identity and reconciliation of cultures. Ogoura Kazuo, the President of the Japan Foundation, a key stakeholder in the provision of funding for cultural activities, noted at the time that there was a blurring of the boundaries between cultural traditions and contemporary forms. It was seen in an increasing tendency to move beyond transmission or at least as a passing from experts to non-experts in ‘simple’ performance to a national policy for joint performances and exchange. He called for the encouragement of human contact using ‘Japanese culture to provide an “open space” where people of different nationalities and among various layers of society may interact with each other’ (Ogoura 2004, 26). Miki’s work with Asia Ensemble offered space for the interaction of performers of different nationalities and exchange of musical ideas. Such ideas were not new to Miki. In the first half of the 1980s he had noted: ‘Even in the field of serious music, ethnic mixtures should be an important theme’ (1989b, 167). He had nevertheless advised caution: ‘Of course if the ethnic mixture is not one of kindred spirits, each of artistic merit, the resultant union will be little more than a meaningless exercise’ (ibid.). Asia Ensemble clearly represented to Miki a union of kindred spirits by virtue of links along the Silk Road to Japan, these Asian roots reflected by the title of his new work, ‘Origin’, performed by the ensemble at the concert. Such representations are probably as much due to the shift in his world view as the opportunities gained by association with the highly-skilled musicians of different countries now resident in Japan. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ as Authentic Japanese Culture

The negotiation of identity and culture was not merely through the sounds of the music, but through the engagement with the more tangible forms of the instruments. The past experiences with shakuhachi and koto as traditional instruments became a powerful vehicle for legitimizing the contemporary forms by associating them with the cultural past. They successfully triggered the intense nostalgia for a traditional Japan that prevails in contemporary life (see Ivy 1995, 26). The sense that modern Japan rests on the foundations of tradition is integral to the construction of continuity between generations especially in times of enormous social change as occurs today. It offers some comfort that there is underlying stability, even if only in people’s imagination, that helps to address the alienation of many in the modern industrialized state. Japanese audiences, for example, could see the 21-string koto as an historical artifact with links to the ceremonial traditions of the Japanese Imperial Court and to Asian connections

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through links with the Silk Road. Yet they could simultaneously perceive it as contemporary and modern, thus conforming to the sense of Japan as a modern international nation. Such negotiations confirmed Miki’s own vision to internationalize traditional instruments in a process of reanimation rather than memorialization of tradition. It is a pattern of borrowing, adopting and reinterpretation into Japanese culture repeated across the centuries that has resulted in their thorough domestication into Japanese artistic life. It was not an imagined construction. Rather, by 2004 the 21-string koto was often labelled publicly as ‘traditional’, as for instance in publicity and programme notes for Pro Musica Nipponia. This koto is thereby able to establish a link with what is perceived as a culturally authentic form regardless of its actual more recent history of development. This in turn imbues the music and the instrument that produces it with positive values and engages the sense of belonging, shared values and experiences. This reconstruction or renewal of tradition is part of a process of selective remembering in which there is a willingness to conflate the past with the present. It often becomes part of the personal and collective narrative in the construction of a national identity particularly at a moment of threat or rapid social change (see Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, 4–5). It is done in order to assert and maintain a sense of cultural difference at a time of perceived loss of culture in the global modern world. Thus, Miki used ‘Autumn Fantasy’ on 9 November 2004 to represent Japan in a performative gesture that can be interpreted as ‘Japanese’, an identity constructed through the music as it negotiated between the personal, political and social agenda of the moment. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ as Asian

The performance of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ and its inclusion in the repertoire of Asian Ensemble also highlights the way Miki was using the music and the ensemble to construct and negotiate identity through music. As noted earlier, identity may simultaneously manifest itself in a range of representations. The performance in 2004 provides evidence of such multiple representations. Even while Japanese government policies of cultural nationalism were using traditional music in schools to propagate a sense of being Japanese, and the government was aligning itself internationally both in Asia and globally, Miki as Artistic Director of Asia Ensemble deliberately chose to include ‘Autumn Fantasy’ in the performance using only the Japanese title, ‘Aki no Kyoku’, in a programme that was promoted as ‘aspiring to an Asian music identity’ (Hōgaku Jānaru 2004). It thereby

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positioned Japan and Japanese music with its traditional links, without reference to the English-speaking world, as part of the broader construct of ‘Asia’. It was a way to rediscover Japanese musical roots in Asia,19 once more conflating the past with the present to reaffirm a sense of belonging at a time of inadequacy and global threat in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.20 By virtue of Asia Ensemble, Miki was continuing to seek a way to share his personal beliefs and enter into the broader political discourse of Japan in Asia and Japan as a partner in peacemaking at a time of perceived threat to global stability. By engaging a range of audiences through the performance of works such as ‘Autumn Fantasy,’ as well as the coming together of Asia Ensemble, Miki was offering participants a construction of an Asian musical identity with diverse voices that joined in a cohesive whole. This construction, even if only transitory or imagined, played with the critical boundaries of insider and outsider (uchi/soto), testing the cultural sameness yet difference of shared values and beliefs and experiences within the Asian music community: it offered a point of reference to minimize the features that draw distinguishing lines between Asian cultures (traditional Japan here was no longer aligned with the West); it stood in its own right as a representative member of the Asian community; it portrayed Asia, and by extension Japan, in a positivist idealized manner as a homogenized cultural group; it was an uncritical self-affirmation and search for patterns across the geographical area in order to establish a sense of community; and it was an extension of Miki’s earlier vision of an Asian community in which Japan was part of a particular relationship with East Asia, a vision that had reflected the prevailing political agenda of the 1980s. Such constructions were reinforcing the performances of Orchestra Asia with which Miki was closely associated in 1993–94, and which showcased only China, Korea and Japan despite the ‘Asian’ label. A decade later again, as awareness of minorities had at least been raised, so Miki’s ‘Asia’ in 2004 had become a little more inclusive with Asia Ensemble including the involvement of a performer of Mongolian horse-headed fiddle (morin huur) and repertoire reflecting the music along the trade routes of the Silk Road. It is especially heard in the composition ‘Origin’ and highlighted in his notes to accompany the CD (see Miki 2004a). This position was less tokenistic than the mere inclusion of a horseheaded fiddle might imply. Miki is documented fifteen years earlier as reassessing his ideas about his own identity and their reflection in his music (Miki 1989b). While Miki had already applied the process of ‘assimilation’ in the creation of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ and subsequent works in the early 1980s, a few years later he commented in an interview that he was

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increasingly aware of the way Japanese were perceived as a single ethnic group and was concerned at the parallels with the situation in pre-Second World War Nazi Germany (see Miki 1989b, 167–169). Thus, about the time of writing ‘Autumn Fantasy’ he was already becoming interested in what he subsequently termed ‘konketsu’ (‘ethnic diversity’ or ‘ethnic mix’), partly in response to the continuing conflicts in the world and partly from his own observations. He declared openly that ‘only through konketsu can we guarantee peace’ (Miki 1989b: 167). Such sentiments were clearly crystallized in his subsequent activities with Ora-J and articulated with new clarity in 2004 with Asia Ensemble through the statement of his motto ‘Live Together/Play Together’ seen in publicity and CD notes (Miki 2004a). It can be seen as a broader shift from a general identification of Japan with Western geopolitics in which Asia was in opposition as ‘the outsider’ to a position that drew Asia within the imagined frame as insiders or ‘family’ and set the West to stand outside that frame.21 As Artistic Director of the Asia Ensemble, Miki was thereby reinserting ‘Autumn Fantasy’ into the public domain as Asian. From his position, it can be seen as a reinterpretation, after the fact, of a work long-held within Japan as a showcase of the internationalization of traditional Japanese instruments. In 2004, ‘Autumn Fantasy’ had yet to be more generally claimed to represent Japanese identity within Asia and yet to be fully reinserted in this way into historical interpretations. It was nevertheless testing the concept of being Asian. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ thus stands as a twenty-first-century re-presentation of Japanese reflexivity in terms of cultural subjectivity within Asia, a negotiation that has occurred across the centuries. CONCLUSION

‘Autumn Fantasy’ offers insights into the contemporary construction of identity in Japan and the ways that the performance of music as a symbolic representation of culture is deeply embedded in the Japanese sense of self as individuals and as a nation. Closer examination of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ in the context of 1980 and the following decade reveals how the 1970s and 1980s debate on the uniqueness of Japanese people and their culture came at a time when the push to internationalize and align with the West positioned Japan within the imagined community of Western nations. In this context ‘Autumn Fantasy’, by representing the international and Western music practice even while it still reflects links to Japanese cultural traditions, is an example of the ongoing discursive and practical reflexivity associated with music (Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000, 36). By comparison,

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the 2004 performance of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ came at a time of strong politically-inspired national culturalism that had, in part, been delivered through the new policy for music education from 2002. This shift in government policy stimulated a renegotiation of boundaries of ‘self ’ and ‘other’ to realign Japan more closely with Asia even as political events on the Asian mainland caused a reconsideration of those political alignments. In these circumstances, Miki’s positioning of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ within Asia Ensemble was ‘performing Japan’ through the music and thereby articulating a re-interpretation of Japanese identity as Asian. This did not simply replicate past constructions, but through his artistic conception as Artistic Director of the performance, Miki was testing an idealized new Asian music identity both as a personal statement and as a vision that could be explored by others. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ highlights the way that Miki, in the process of composing and delivering his music over the course of twenty-five years, has been susceptible to complex, changing and even conflicting interactions and musical identifications. Furthermore, it demonstrates the way that Miki has served as a cultural broker, strategically using music and music culture not only to negotiate his own personal identity, but also to test different identities for Japanese audiences; performing identities we have seen may be labelled variously as international, Japanese or Asian. Aware of broader politics, Miki has continued to stimulate debate and engender a sense of community by seeking to strengthen cultural ties through his music and music-making. Thus, the contemporary construction of cultural identity through performance must remain open to the moment of its musical articulation. We need to understand fully the complex layers of meaning associated with the creation, delivery and reception of the music – why a work is created, when a work is performed, who is performing, who is listening and why it is performed. Anything less leaves the performance as a mere sonic outcome rather than a cultural phenomenon. NOTES 1 The term ‘cross-cultural’ is used here in the sense offered by Everett to embody ‘the perspective we bring, individually and collectively, in attributing specific cultural references to art music with regard to artistic production and/or social reception’ (2004, 21). 2 This argument finds its parallel in the work of MacKenzie (1995) who has argued that Western approaches to the Orient, as tested more widely in Western arts such as visual arts, music and architecture, can be seen to have

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Performing Japan been achieved through a spirit of respect and search for syncretic culture even when entangled in a web of power relations. The term in Japanese is ‘nijūgen’ (literally ‘20 strings’). It has been used as a generic label for the contemporary koto with 20, 21, 25 (see Johnson 2004a; Miki 1996a, 168–175). To avoid confusion, descriptions will represent accurately the number of strings for the instrument under discussion. I first heard of Nihon Ongaku Shūdan during its Australian tour in 1975 and attended my first concert in 1979 as a graduate student at the University of Hawai‘i. Since that time I have continued to observe closely the developments with the ensemble, the performers and the composers even while my own status has shifted from graduate student to traditional licensed (natori) performer and professor of koto, and to a senior academic position in the music school of a university in Australia. In that position, I became adviser to the Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts over an eighteen-month period that culminated in the 1994 Festival. A feature of that Festival was The Two Worlds’ Music programme in the Adelaide Town Hall, which highlighted Miki and Pro Musica Nipponia, as they were by now known. It showcased compositions from Miki as well as other Japanese and Australian composers, drawing the ‘two worlds’ together to share sonic and cultural experiences. My participation in that programme also extended to interpreter, performer on koto, presenter of radio broadcasts, public lectures on Miki’s music, and Master of Ceremonies for the Pro Musica Nipponia concerts. I thus played an active role in helping to negotiate the identity of Miki and the ensemble as representing Japan to audiences in Australia. In time I have come to reflect in depth on these experiences and continue to consider the way such events construct and negotiate identity for all participants. In this process, the social construction of ‘self ’ and the particularity of Japan and ‘things Japanese’ had been articulated in its opposition to the Western universal ‘other’. Moreover, the pervasive accounts of Japanese homogeneity that this position had generated have only recently been challenged with discussion of the rights and identities of minorities in Japan (e.g. Weiner 1997). Befu (1993, 107–108) provides a concept of cultural nationalism for Japan. It has three areas: (1) Sentiment often associated with political action; (2) Political and social development including language, cultural ties and economic developments; and (3) Ideology that celebrates the collective identity of a people. He does, however, advise caution over offering a single sentence definition in view of the variety of its manifestations (1993, 5). Cultural nationalism is, nevertheless, distinguished from political nationalism, which seeks to achieve a representative state and secure citizenship for its members giving political reality to the collective experience.

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7 In addition, recent scholarship has also framed discussion in terms of studies of the reception or consumption of intellectual ideas of Japanese-ness and extended to include Japanese popular culture (e.g. Darling-Wolf 2000; Whittier Treat 1996), and extended further to consider the broader Asian experience in order to gain a better understanding of discourses of national distinctiveness as articulated through the consumption of popular culture (see Yoshino 1999). 8 See Merriam (1964) and its subsequent refinement by Rice (1987); see also Turino (1999). 9 A detailed analysis of the musical outcomes and their interpretation by the performers themselves is the subject of a paper presented to the 28th Annual Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, Sydney, 28 September to 1 October 2005. For further discussions of compositional strategies in traditional koto music see Coaldrake (1989). 10 For current details of Miki see http://www.m-miki.com. 11 The koto is now available in many different types. The 13-string instrument was originally introduced from China some time before the seventh century as part of music for the Imperial court, with solo and chamber repertoire developed from the seventeenth century that still forms the core of traditional performances today. The 17-string instrument was created by Miyagi Michio (1894–1956) in 1921 and mainly used as a bass instrument for ensembles and Western-influenced music. The 20-string instrument was developed by Nosaka Keiko in 1969 as a solo instrument for contemporary music and subsequently expanded to the now popular 21-string instrument (Miki 1996b; 2001, 186–187; Wade 1994). There are also 25-string and 30-string instruments, among a variety of other koto types (see Johnson 2004a; b). 12 On previous occasions he had commented that the 20-string koto was an instrument of the twentieth century, but that as the twenty-first century approached, a 21-string instrument seemed appropriate to represent contemporary times (e.g. Miki 1994b). In reality it seems more likely range and technical considerations were the impetus for the number of strings (see Wade 1994, 245–246). 13 For a full list of Miki’s works with 20-string koto see Nishi (2004, 46–51). 14 A recording of ‘Autumn Fantasy’ is available see Miki (1994a). The score for shakuhachi and 21-string koto used in this research was obtained and used with permission from Pro Musica Nipponia. 15 Beyond the historical perspective that such categories provide, it is also possible to consider the strategies employed in the process of the bringing together of different musical ideas in art music whether by Japanese, Asian or Western composers. Everett offers seven compositional strategies for integrating Asian and Western musical resources under three groupings, namely, transference,

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Performing Japan syncretism and synthesis (see Everett 2004, 15–19). It is synthesis in which the composer ‘transform[s] traditional musical systems, forms, and timbres into a distinctive synthesis of Western and Asian musical idioms’ (Everett 2004, 16) so that they are no longer able to be discerned as separate elements. This strategy certainly describes Miki’s compositional outcome in ‘Autumn Fantasy’. With hindsight Miki regarded his early works such as ‘Paraphrase after Ancient Voices’ (1969) as resulting from an effect he called ‘dissimilation’ (see Miki 1989b, 170–172). In Japan the behavioural principle of uchi (‘inside’) and soto (‘outside’) is inculcated from birth. It is recognized that uchi locates the self and provides the point from which to encounter the world (see Kondo 1990, 148–151). It is used to recreate and redefine the boundaries of social and personal identity that are contextually defined and are the very essence of individual and collective or community identity. The CD was a compilation of recordings with three tracks for the ensemble, including Miki’s ‘Origin’ (2002) written for the ensemble at the time of its establishment and solo items for each instrument. While ‘Autumn Fantasy’ as a duet was included in the Asia Ensemble live performance on 9 November, a solo 21string koto work, ‘Hanayanagi’ (‘The Greening’), which was especially popular in China, was released on the CD in order to showcase the solo performer. At a performance in 1996, for example, he remarked in his verbal introductions that Chinese and Asian string instruments had 21-string versions so he felt that to be truly Asian the Japanese koto should have twenty-one-strings (Miki 1996c). Miki’s interest in promoting global peace and engagement with Asia can be tracked through his career over the last thirty years with, for example, compositions such as ‘Concerto Requiem’ (1981) as well as his close involvement with Orchestra Asia and the establishment of Ora-J. More recently it is seen with compositions such as ‘Koto Pieces for Peace’ (2003). This shift was part of a broader repositioning seen in popular culture markets and literature in Japan (e.g. Tsuriya 2005; Yamato 2002; Yoshino 1999). REFERENCES

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Born, Georgina and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western music and its others: Difference, representation, and appropriation in music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coaldrake, A. Kimi. 1989. Breaking the sound barrier: The inner world of Japanese music. Miscellanea Musicologica 16: 71–78. ——. 1990. Building a new musical tradition: The sōgakudō and the introduction of Western music in Japan. Musicology Australia XIII: 35–41. ——. 1997. Women’s gidayū and the Japanese theatre tradition. Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies Series. London: Routledge. Corbett, John. 2000. Experimental Oriental: New music and other others. In Western music and its others: Difference, representation, and appropriation in music, edited by Georgina Born, and David Hesmondhalgh. Berkeley: University of California Press. Darling-Wolf, Fabienne. 2000. Texts in context: Intertextuality, hybridity, and the negotiation of cultural identity in Japan. Journal of Communication Inquiry (April) 24(2): 134–155. Everett, Yayoi Uno. 2004. Intercultural synthesis in postwar Western art music: Historical contexts, perspectives and taxonomy. In Locating East Asia in Western art music, edited by Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ——. 2005. ‘Mirrors’ of West and ‘mirrors’ of East: Elements of gagaku in postwar art music. In Diasporas and interculturalism in Asian performing arts, edited by Hae-kyung Um. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Feld, Steven. 1982. Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics and song in Kaluli expression. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Galliano, Luciano. 2002. Yōgaku: Japanese music in the twentieth century, translated by Martin Mayes. Lanham, Maryland and London: The Scarecrow Press. Herd, Judith. 1987. Change and continuity in contemporary Japanese music: A search for national identity. PhD dissertation, Brown University. ——. 2004. The cultural politics of Japan’s modern music: Nostalgia, nationalism and identity in the interwar years. In Western music and its others: Difference, representation, and appropriation in music, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hōgaku Jānaru. 2004. Asia Ensemble 9 November Performance, 213 (October): Insert. ——. 2005a. Anata ga erabu ‘Gendai no Sōkyoku Besuto’ anke-to shūkei kekka happyō, 221 (June): 34–37. ——. 2005b. CD[DVD book] Cross Review, 217 (February): 37.

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Iida, Yumiko. 2002. Rethinking identity in modern Japan. Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) East Asia Series. New York and London: RoutledgeCurzon. Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. Discourses of the vanishing: Modernity, phantasm, Japan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Iyotani, Toshio. 1995. Globalization and culture. The Japan Foundation Newsletter XXIII(3): 1–5. Johnson, Henry M. 2004a. The koto: A traditional instrument in contemporary Japan. Amsterdam: Hotei. ——. 2004b. The koto, traditional music and an idealized Japan: Cultural nationalism in music performance and education. In Japanese cultural nationalism: At home and abroad, edited by R. Starrs. Folkstone: Global Oriental. Kartomi, Margaret and Stephen Blum, eds. 1994. Music cultures in contact. Sydney: Currency Press. Kondo, Dorinne L. 1990. Crafting selves: Power, gender and discourses of identity in the Japanese workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lau, Frederick. 2001. Performing identity: Musical expression of Thai-Chinese in contemporary Bangkok. SOJOURN 16(1): 37–70. MacKenzie, John M. 1995. Orientalism: History, theory and the arts. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Merriam, Alan. 1964. The anthropology of music. Evanston Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Miki, Minoru. 1989a. ‘Autumn Fantasy’ for flute and piano. Score. Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha. ——. 1989b. The role of traditional Japanese instruments in three recent operas, translated by John Tedford. Perspectives of New Music 27(2): 164–174. ——. 1994a. Autumn Fantasy for shakuhachi and twenty-string koto. Minoru Miki selected works II. A New Aspect of Japanese Contemporary Music-6. Compact Disc. Camerata 30CM-55. Track 3. ——. 1994b. Interview. The nightly planet. ABC Radio National, Adelaide, Australian Broadcasting Commission 9 March. ——. 1996a. Nihon gakkihō. Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha. ——. 1996b. Nijūgen koto ga sekai no koto ni naru hi o. Hōgaku Jānaru 119 (December): 20–22. ——. 1996c. Verbal Introduction. Concert of Chamber Music Works by Minoru Miki. Miki and members of the Yui Ensemble, Tokyo. 2 July. ——. 2001. Opera ga dekiru made. Tokyo: Chuo Art. ——. 2004a. Ajia ansemburu ni tsuite Notes to Compact Disc. Asia Ensemble. Dir. Minoru Miki. Compact Disc. Yui. YUCD-0001. n.p. ——. et al. 2004b. Asia Ensemble. Directed by Miki Minoru. Compact Disc. Yui. YUCD-0001.

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Mitsui, Toru. 1998. Domestic exoticism: A recent trend in Japanese popular music. Perfect Beat 4(3): 1–12. Motegi, Kiyoko. 1999. The creation of tradition at the National Theatre of Japan: A descriptive documentation. Contemporary Japanese music: Ichiyanagi Toshi. Works commissioned by the National Theatre of Tokyo Series 1, ed. Japan Arts Council and Theatre Research Office, Research and Training Department, National Theatre of Japan. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 21–35. Nishi, Kōichi, ed. 2004. Minoru Miki koto works. Niigoto to no michiyuki sanjūgonen. Tokyo: Yui Shuppan. Ogoura, Kazuo. 2004. Japan’s new cultural diplomacy: A personal view with an historical perspective. International House of Japan Bulletin 24(2): 16–27. Radano, Ronald and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 2000. Music and the racial imagination. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Rice, Timothy. 1987. Toward the remodeling of ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology 31(3): 469–488. Ryker, Harrison. 1991. Introduction. In New music in the Orient, edited by Harrison Ryker. Buren, The Netherlands: Frits Knuf Publishers. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Seeger, Anthony. 1987. Why Suyá sing: A musical anthology of an Amazonian people. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Starrs, Roy, ed. 2004. Japanese cultural nationalism: At home and abroad. Folkstone: Global Oriental. Stokes, Martin, ed. 1994. Ethnicity, identity and music: The musical construction of place. Oxford: Berg. Tsuriya, Mayumi. 2005. Omoshiro Nihon ongaku in Ajia. Tokyo: Tōkyōdo. Turino, Thomas. 1984. The urban-mestizo charango tradition in southern Peru: A statement of shifting identity. Ethnomusicology 28(2): 253–270. ——. 1999. Signs of imagination, identity, and experience: A Peircian semiotic theory for music. Ethnomusicology 43(2): 221–255. Um, Hae-kyung, ed. 2005. Diasporas and interculturalism in Asian performing arts. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Wade, Bonnie. 1976. Tegotomono: Music for the Japanese koto. Council on Intercultural and Comparative Studies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ——. 1994. Keiko Nosaka and the 20-stringed koto: Tradition and modernization in Japanese music. In Themes and variations: Writings on music in honor of Rulan Chao Pian, edited by Bell Yung and Joseph S.C. Lam. Cambridge, Mass. and Hong Kong: Department of Music Harvard University and The Institute of Chinese Studies Hong Kong. Weiner, Michael. 1997. Japan’s minorities: The illusion of homogeneity. London: Routledge.

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Whittier Treat, John, ed. 1996. Contemporary Japan and popular culture. Richmond, England: Curzon. Yamoto, Hiroko. 2002. Nihon no taiko, Ajia no taiko. Tokyo: Seikyusha. Yoshino, Kosaku. 1992. Cultural nationalism in contemporary Japan: A sociological enquiry. New York: Routledge. ——, ed. 1999. Consuming ethnicity and nationalism: Asian experiences. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

4

Beyond the Court: A Challenge to the Gagaku Tradition in the ‘Reconstruction Project’ of the National Theatre Terauchi Naoko

❖ agaku is the oldest surviving genre of traditional Japanese music (Plate 7). It has been preserved in the Imperial court and in Buddhist and Shintō ritual for more than 1300 years, but has made new steps towards public accessibility in the modern era. Endeavours to popularize gagaku for the masses have occurred from time to time since the beginning of the twentieth century, although it was not until the 1970s that more rapid and drastic change gave rise to diversification of both the context and content of gagaku. This chapter explores the history of the transformation and recontextualization of gagaku, as well as outlining how what is generally understood as one of Japan’s most ancient music genres has been reshaped and negotiated only relatively recently to produce an image of one highly significant aspect of Japanese cultural identity. From the 1970s, public appreciation through academic research into and public concerts of gagaku took three main avenues: (1) traditional (or classical) repertoire, selected from the standard scores compiled in the Meiji era (1868–1912) by Kunaichō Gakubu (Music Department of Imperial Household Agency) and known as ‘Meiji Sentei-fu’ (Gagakukyoku 1876), and ‘reconstructed’ pieces; (2) crossover works with Western art music; and (3) fusion with popular music. Regarding the third category, recent debates on the music of Tōgi Hideki (e.g. Bürkner 2004; Lancashire 2003) are stimulating, and many articles have been written on the compositions that

G

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use gagaku instruments of such twentieth-century composers as Mayuzumi Toshirō and Takemitsu Tōru (e.g. de Ferranti and Narasaki 2002). As for the classical repertoire of gagaku, there has been an enormous accumulation of research on the current traditions and ancient features of gagaku, the latter having been given relatively more importance. Approaches to reconstruct the ancient forms of gagaku ensembles based on analysis of manuscripts of old notation have, however, been limited to within academic circles, and the results are rarely performed. On the other hand, since opening in 1966, the National Theatre (Kokuritsu Gekijō) has emphasized the importance of gagaku as an important national genre by producing several gagaku concerts, and staging reconstructions of ancient pieces and instruments as well as the traditional (classical) repertoire. A series of Gagaku Kōen, or gagaku concerts, tried various experiments with reconstructed pieces, and has made a great contribution to the development of contemporary artistic music, undermining the generally accepted image of gagaku as ‘eternally classic’ or ‘noble unchanged music’. The National Theatre’s gagaku concerts have played an important role as a site of collaborative creation between the first and second categories noted above. In scholarly discourse on gagaku, the National Theatre’s achievements, however, have not been considered from the perspective of existing between academic research on reconstruction on the one hand and Western avant-garde music on the other. This chapter examines the new movements and popularity of gagaku by analysing the National Theatre’s activities over the last four decades, and evaluating them within the history of gagaku and Western contemporary art music. The chapter begins by giving a brief introduction to the history of the popularization of gagaku since the Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin) of 1868 until the 1960s. This is followed by a close examination of the gagaku concerts and activities of the National Theatre. SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF THE MODERN PERIOD

The Meiji government introduced Western music systematically in the late nineteenth century in an attempt to modernize the Japanese cultural environment (Nakamura 1993; Tsukahara 1993). The governing elites tried to ‘universalize’ Japanese music by showing its reorganized and ‘reformed’ versions to Western countries (Terauchi 2003). Gagaku, which is considered to be the most sophisticated and noble genre of traditional Japanese music, and therefore seen as a Japanese counterpart to Western classical music, was also modified through its direct connection with the reorganization of imperial rituals (Terauchi 1999; Tsukahara 2005). The

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gagaku ensemble Gagakukyoku, the forerunner of the present-day Kunaichō Gakubu, was established in 1870 at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, and started selecting standard pieces for its repertoire and editing the gagaku notation known as Meiji Sentei-fu. The editing process was completed in 1876, with additional pieces added to the repertoire in 1888. Gagaku musicians were also required to work on Western music regarded as suitable for the new era from 1874. They were thus tasked with maintaining, explaining and showing their hereditary tradition to the public, including foreigners, while at the same time learning Western music (Terauchi 2005a; Tsukahara 1999; 2001; 2004). In other words, gagaku, which had until the Edo period (1603–1868) been ceremonial music exclusively enjoyed by aristocrats, gradually changed its function to become a device to represent imperial authority to Japanese subjects while also acting to represent the refinement, nobility and consistency of Japanese music to Westerners. The introduction of gagaku to a wider range of people was undertaken by the government mainly as part of a campaign to explain Japanese music to the Western world in the Meiji era.1 In the Taishō (1912–26) and early Shōwa (1926–89; i.e. before 1945) eras, however, individual musicians were more conscious of their past traditions and the future development of gagaku, and became eager to popularize their music amongst ordinary Japanese people. Their activities ranged from the establishment of gagaku groups to organizing concerts, publishing a journal, undertaking and circulating academic research, transcribing gagaku pieces into Western staff notation, and arranging orchestral versions (Terauchi 1999). Several private gagaku groups were organized in the Taishō and early Shōwa eras, among which Gagaku Fukyū-kai and Gagaku Dōshi Kyōkai are outstanding examples. Gagaku Fukyū-kai was established by court musician Tōgi Tamishirō (1876–1932) in 1930.2 Tōgi gave lessons in the use of gagaku instruments, together with a few other court musicians, and published a monthly journal, Gagaku, for several years. Another influential gagaku musician of the time was Konoe Naomaro (1900–32). Konoe was not born into a hereditary gagaku family, but became deeply involved in the genre and dedicated his later years to its popularization.3 He was originally affiliated with Gagaku Fukyū-kai, but he established a new group, Gagaku Dōshi Kyōkai, in 1931. Gagaku Dōshi Kyōkai also held gagaku seminars for the general public and gave monthly concerts, in which some experiments in ‘revival’ were attempted, such as the use of reconstructed instruments and the performance of women’s bugaku dances, which had until this time been forgotten or lost from the repertoire. Preceding these two groups, Eikyoku-kai was established by Ōhara

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Shigeakira (1883–1961) and others in 1916. This group was primarily concerned with gagaku vocal genres such as saibara, rōei and waka hikō, or the recitation of waka poems.4 It is notable that Eikyoku-kai and Gagaku Fukyū-kai seized the opportunity to establish themselves at particularly large-scale events: the grand funeral of Emperor Meiji (1912), the coronation of Emperor Taishō (1915), the funeral of Emperor Taishō (1926) and the coronation of Emperor Shōwa (1928). Namely, at a time when attention was drawn to national and royal displays, they established the groups to explain and disseminate the music that was used in the ceremonies.5 New gagaku ensembles, therefore, were started due to the interest in gagaku by the public, as well as the enthusiasm by gagaku musicians to disseminate it. Another method of popularization of gagaku was the explanation of the genre through the mass media (i.e. newspapers and journals). These explanations ranged from just a few lines of simple information on an upcoming event to relatively long academic articles on specific topics. The first music journal in Japan was Ongaku Zasshi (1890–98), followed by others such as Ongaku Shinpō (1904–8), Ongakukai (1908–23), Gekkan gakufu (1912– 41), Ongaku sekai (1929–41) and Firuhāmonī (1928–). Tōgi Tetteki (1869– 1925) was one of the writers who presented various articles on gagaku and Japanese and Western music in the mass media from the late Meiji era through to the Taishō era.6 Also, around 1930, Konoe Naomaro revealed his policy concerning Gagaku Dōshi Kyōkai and the results of his research in newspapers and journals. Western staff notation was strategically used to popularize gagaku. Repeated attempts to transcribe Japanese music into Western notation were made by the government from the 1880s.7 Transcription was considered to be not merely an explanation of the characteristics of scales or melodic patterns, but also proof of systematic consistencies between Japanese and Western music, and hence countries. In 1907, a large-scale transcription project was launched by the Hōgaku Chōsa Gakari, an institute for investigating Japanese music that was established in Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō (Tokyo Music School).8 According to sources preserved in the library of Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku (Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music), various genres such as heikyoku, gagaku, shamisen music, sōkyoku, yōkyoku and min’yō were transcribed. Gagaku transcription was worked on quite systematically, developing principles as the project progressed from 1916 to 1927. The gagaku notation is very detailed and provides invaluable information on gagaku practice of the Taishō era (Terauchi 2000; 2001; 2002). Later, in the 1930s, Konoe Naomaro also transcribed some twenty pieces of the gagaku sub-genres tōgaku,

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komagaku and saibara, and rearranged several pieces into orchestral versions (Terauchi 1999). The musicologist Kanetsune Kiyosuke (1885– 1957) published his own transcriptions of six saibara pieces in the same period (Kanetsune and Tsuji 1930). Court musicians Yamanoi Motokiyo and Shiba Shikehiro also published transcriptions after the Second World War (Shiba 1955; 1956; 1964; 1968; 1969; 1971; 1972; Yamanoi 1961; 1966). Shiba’s works are particularly magnificent in scale, covering the whole Meiji Sentei-fu repertoire. It is important to note, however, that the transcriptions of Konoe, Yamanoi and Shiba (excluding those by Kanetsune) are not faithful to contemporary practice. Their notations include hypothesis or ‘ideal features’ resulting from their historical or theoretical research.9 Insistence on the ancient ‘ideal features’ tends to be regarded as negative retrospection in some cases, but it actually could allow a new creation, different from current forms. The germination of creative activity in the name of ‘reconstruction’, which would flourish from the 1970s in the National Theatre’s project, could already be found in Konoe and Yamanoi’s achievements before and immediately following the Second World War. Japanese society experienced dramatic change following the Second World War. Gagaku, however, retained the context of court music because of the continuation of the imperial system, and gagaku is still considered the noblest and most refined music directly associated with royal rituals in contemporary society. Deeply influenced by this context, activities to popularize gagaku in the 1960s were motivated by a desire to let people know this somewhat secret and divine ritual music, which was usually performed at the heart of the court. While gagaku maintained its court music context, it also became an artistic form of music open to public appreciation. In addition to public concerts, audio and visual media have played an important role in the development of gagaku since the 1960s. Several private groups were established for the purpose of holding concerts and creating recordings. Gagaku Shigenkai (1957–78) was a group substantially composed of Kunaichō Gakubu musicians who joined together to record music and hold concerts outside the court setting, as in their official capacity their musical activity was strictly limited to court rituals. Jūnionkai (established in 1977) is composed of several court musicians and Buddhist and Shintō priests, a group familiar with gagaku in their daily services. Gagaku Taikei (1961) was the first large-scale recording (LP record) by Gagaku Shigenkai, which was reissued as a CD in 2002 (Shiba 2002). This recording is now of historical importance as a source through which one can trace the practice of performers from the previous two generations.

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In 1978, the gagaku ensemble Tōkyō Gakuso was established, which was followed in 1985 by Reigakusha. These two groups differed from their predecessors in that they consisted of many young, non-hereditary, professional musicians. Tōkyō Gakuso was reorganized from Gagaku Shigenkai and still includes many court musicians, while Reigakusha contains none except for Shiba Sukeyasu (b. 1935), one of the group’s founders and director.10 Both groups have often appeared on stage at the National Theatre and other concert halls, and have released many CDs since the 1980s. The former group performs a more classical repertoire, while the latter performs newer, contemporary compositions and reconstructed pieces. The emergence of many young professional (and non-hereditary) musicians was supported by amateur gagaku groups researching and practising in universities of arts. In Tokyo, for instance, several members of Reigakusha first started learning and studying gagaku in Tokyō Geijutsu Daigaku or Kunitachi Ongaku Daigaku (Kunitachi College of Music), then after graduation they continued to take lessons from the court musicians individually or in such groups as Ono Gagaku-kai (established in 1887)11 or Nihon Gagakukai (established in 1962),12 and finally participated in Reigakusha. Shiba began to teach in Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku and Kunitachi Ongaku Daigaku from the late 1970s, and worked with talented young students turning them into professional artists. Other methods of disseminating gagaku also accelerated from the 1960s. For example, the liner notes of records or books, such as Nihon no koten Geinō, Gagaku (Geinōshi Kenkyū-kai 1970), attempted to describe the musical characteristics, theory, history and social background of gagaku in a comprehensive and systematic fashion. The scholar Hayashi Kenzō (1898–1976) developed academic research on gagaku, focusing in particular on modal theory and the playing techniques of the Nara and Heian periods (710–1185) (Hayashi 1964; 1973; Tōyō Ongaku Gakkai 1969). Many excellent researchers have followed Hayashi, but unfortunately their scholarly discourses are not necessarily matched by the sound of the music performed on stage. This is due to the fact that while gagaku had utilized notation in the form of tablature from very ancient times for its transmission, the signs employed for this notation are highly abstract. This means that once music is lost, it is almost impossible to reconstruct playing techniques and practices that are not obvious from the abstract signs. A strict insistence, therefore, on using the data available from the old manuscripts results in the reconstruction of a skeleton of the melody that is not ‘attractive’ in a concert. On the other hand, a series of ‘reconstruction’ concerts held by the National Theatre are not highly regarded by academic researchers because they have not followed a ‘scientific’ methodology. In

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this paper, however, I refer to ‘reconstruction’ not in terms of precise reproduction, but rather as the reinterpretation of tradition, a notion that opens new possibilities for creation. GAGAKU CONCERTS IN THE NATIONAL THEATRE: COLLABORATION, RECONSTRUCTION AND WESTERN ART MUSIC

Since its opening in 1966, the National Theatre has recognized gagaku as an important genre for performance. Gagaku concerts at the National Theatre have been performed under the strong leadership of the producer Kido Toshirō (b. 1930).13 A diverse range of gagaku music has been performed over the last four decades, which can be classified into three types: (1) the classical repertoire, with pieces selected in the Meiji Sentei-fu of Kunaichō Gakubu; (2) reconstructed pieces from Heian- and Nara-period manuscripts from both Japan and China; and (3) contemporary gagaku, or new compositions. My analysis is based on the sources published to commemorate the National Theatre as well as brochures from concerts (e.g., Kokuritsu Gekijō 1986; Kokuritsu Gekijō Chōsa Yōsei-bu Jōhō Shisutemu Shitsu 1996). Table 1 shows a list of Gagaku Kōen (gagaku concerts) that have been held at the National Theatre until 2005. Since gagaku was still unfamiliar music to most Japanese people in the 1960s and 1970s, the concerts aimed to provide public access and help in the understanding of this music. For the first seven concerts, all music was chosen from the standard repertoire of Meiji Sentei-fu and performed by Kunaichō Gakubu. The majority of each concert continued to be chosen from the classical repertoire until the eighteenth concert. To maintain public attention, each of these concerts had a special topic or theme: for example, a focus on chōshi (modal theory) in the first, fourth, sixth and seventh concerts; difference between bugaku (dance music) and kangen (instrumental music) (in the tenth concert); different dance types, hiramai and hashirimai (in the eleventh and thirteenth concerts); and hyōshi or rhythm (in the fourteenth and sixteenth concerts). Most importantly, however, is the fact that the classical repertoire is almost always part of a concert programme, even when reconstructed and contemporary pieces are featured. There is a nine-year gap between the thirty-seventh concert of October 1985 and the thirty-eighth concert of February 1994. During this time, gagaku was staged in another performance category, ‘Ongaku Kōen’ (literally, ‘Music Concert’) approximately twice a year. On the resumption of Gagaku Kōen in 1994, the proportion devoted to the classical repertoire increased, with the conservative tendency becoming especially prominent in the twenty-first century.

07/11/1966

Kangen: Sōjō to hyōjō

Bugaku

Bugaku

Kangen: Ichikotsuchō to ōshikichō

Bugaku

Kangen: Banshikichō to taishikichō

1

2

3

4

5

6

18/01/1969

29–30/10/1968

13/03/1968

29/10/1967

01/03/1967

Date

Title of Recital

a

a

a

a

a

a

Type

Table 1 List of Gagaku Kōen Held at the National Theatre

Sokō no kyū, Rindai, Etenraku, Somakusha no ha, Kenki kodatsu, Chōkoshi, Keibairaku no kyū, Gakkaen, Akatsuki ryōō, Rinko kodatsu

Goshōraku ichigu, Chōbōraku, Somakusha, Taiheiraku

Ichikotsuchō chōshi, Karyōbin no ha, Kyū, Konju no ha, Tōgan, Shukōshi, Ōshiki chō Chōshi, Kishunraku no ha, Kaiseiraku, Etenraku, Saiōraku, Senshūraku

Manjuraku, Batō, Ōnintei

Enbu, Shunnōden, Kotokuraku, Chōgeishi

Sōjō chōshi, Minoyama, Shunteiraku, Konju no ha, Tori no kyū, Tōgan, Butokuraku, Hyōjō chōshi, Ise no umi, Kanshū, Etenraku, Kōyō, Keitoku

Detail of Content

Type of Instruments

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Group/Artist

Kangen: Watashimono

Bugaku: Shitenōji Shōryō-e

Gagaku

Kangen: Kangendachi to Bugakudachi

Bugaku: hashirimai

Komagaku

Bugaku: Hiramai

Kangen: Ikkogaki

Gagaku

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

30/10/1973

03/03/1973

31/10/1972

26/02/1972

30/10/1971

27/02/1971

31/10/1970

29/10/1969

01/05/1969

a, c

a

a

a

a

a

a, c

a

a

T. Takemitsu ‘Shūteiga’*, Shōwaraku, Sanju, Ayagiri

Bairo, Genjōraku, Batō, Rinko kodatsu, Tōrika, Kaiseiraku, Jisuiraku, Etenraku, Senshūraku

Manzairaku, Chikyū, Ama, Ninomai, Rindai, Seigaiha

Hassen, Nasori, Chikyū, Ringa

Batō, Kitoku, Ranryōō, Nasori, Konju, Genjōraku

Gakkaen, Genjōraku, Batō, Chōgeishi, Taiheiraku, Keibairaku, Batō, Chōgeishi

T. Mayuzumi ‘Shōwa tenpyōraku’*, Genjōraku, Soshimari

Enbu, Soriko, Juttenraku, Sen’yūga, Karyōbin, Kochō, Saisōrō, Taiheiraku

Katen no kyū, Konju no ha, Butokuraku, Etenraku, Seigaiha, Senshūraku

traditional

traditional

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Shitennōji Garyōkai

Kunaichō gakubu

23/02/1974

Kangen: Nobe tada byōshi

Bugaku: Tsugaimai

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Sokō ichigu’

Bugaku: Taikyoku to kikyoku no saikō

Bugaku hōe: Mikkyō jōdo

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Banshiki sangun, jo’: Chōshū chiku-fu ni yoru saikō shoen

Kangen

Kangen: Tōgaku taikyoku no fukkyoku

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

04/02/1978

31/10/1977

25/02/1977

18/09/1976

30/10/1975

22/02/1975

29/10/1974

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

a, b

a, c

b

a, s

a, b

a

a

a

Type

Toraden, Ryūkaen, Butokuraku, Tori no kyū

Stockhausen ‘LIGHT’*, Manzairaku, Genjōraku, Shundeika

Banshiki sangun, jo

Shika hōyō, Hokke hakkō

Sokō ichigu, Kananfu

Sokō, Senshūraku

Shunnōden, Shintoriso

Tori no ha, Tori no kyū, Manzairaku, Bairo

Detail of Content

traditional

traditional

traditional

Type of Instruments

Gagaku shigenkai

Gagaku shigenkai

Gagaku shigenkai

Ono gagaku-kai, Enryakuji hōgi onritsu kenkyūjo

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Group/Artist

Bugaku hōe: Anyō rakudo

Kangen: Chōshū chiku-fu ni yoru ‘Banshiki sangun’

Bugaku

Kangen: Gagaku no shiki: ‘Kangen ongi’ ni yoru

Bugaku hōe,: Mandara-ku

Reigaku: ‘Sōrō kodatsu’: Chōshū ōteki-fu yori

24

25

26

27

28

29

10/02/1981

30/10/1980

29/02/1980

28/09/1979

28/02/1979

31/10/1978

b

a, c, s

a, c

a, c

b

a, s

traditional

Sōrō kodatsu

Shōmyō, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Ōgenraku’*, Manjuraku, Kotokuraku, Genjōraku, Chōgeishi, Shishi Komainu

reconstructed

traditional

Konju no ha, Karyōbin no traditional kyū, Tori no kyū, Ranryōō, Nasori, Katen, K. Yoshikawa ‘Gi hoon ichikotsuchō chōshi’, Kaiseiraku, Jisuiraku, Konju no ha, Y. Kanno ‘Gi seihoku hyōjō chōshi’, Bairo, Etenraku, Somakusha

T. Takemitsu ‘Shūteiga ichigu’*, Ranryōō, Nasori, Katen

Banshiki sangun (no ha, kyū)

Shunnōden, Enbu, Karyōbin, Kochō, Shishi, Komainu, shōmyō

Tōkyō gakuso, et al.

Tōkyō gakuso, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, et al.

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso, Enryakuji hōgi onritsu kenkyūjo, Wakayama Taneo shachū

30/10/1981

Bugaku hōe: Nyoze gamon kyō kuyō

Saiiki no oto: Hichiriki 04/03/1982

Bugaku hōe: Myonon giki

Gongu: Kinzoku no oto

Bugaku hōe: Ungen

Fue: Iki no hyōjō

30

31

32

33

34

35

14/02/1984

30/09/1983

18/03/1983

30/10/1982

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

a, c

b, c, s

b, c

b, c, s

b, c

a, b, c, s

Type

Kodaibue no tame no saishi, Ryōō ranjo, Shunnōden, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Hikari nagi’,

Banshiki sangun, Shishi, hakuzō, Genjōraku, shōmyō, J. C. Eloir ‘A l’approche de feu méditant’*

Y. Kanno ‘Itsutsu no rekitei’*, Dunghuang music ‘Keibairaku’ etc.

Shishi, Komainu, Chōka manzairaku, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Gennenraku’*, ‘Ōgenraku’

U. Torikai, K. Yoshikawa, Y. Kanno ‘Gatsuryō’, Dunghuang music

Shōmyō, M. Ishii ‘Hitenraku’*, Ranryōō, Bairo

Detail of Content

reconstructed

traditional

reconstructed

reconstructed

reconstructed

reconstructed

Type of Instruments

A. Suzuki, K. Uesugi, S. Shiba, et al.

T. Ōno, K.Tōgi, S. Shiba, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, et al.

J. Sugawara, M.Takada, et al.

Tōkyō gakuso, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, et al.

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, et al.

Group/Artist

Bugaku: Ten’en chihō

Bugaku hōe

Bugaku: Genjōraku monogatari

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Sokō ichigu’

Gagaku to shōmyō ni yoru Heian no utage to inori

‘Shunnōden’ wo kiku

Bugaku

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

27/04/1997

09/04/1996

29/09/1995

11/11/1994

25/02/1994

30/10/1985

28/09/1984

a

a, c

a, b, s

a

a

a, c, s

a, b, c

Manzairaku, Batō, Engiraku, Ama, Ninomai

Shunnōden ichigu, I. Nodaiara ‘Uchinaru tabi’*, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Ōgenraku (revised)’

Enzui bugaku, Manzan gohō, Y. Kanno ‘Saigyō: hikari no michi’*

Sokō

Genjōraku, Batō, Nasori, Ranryōō

Enbu, Ranryōō, Nasori, shōmyō, T. Hosokawa ‘Tokyo 1985’

Enbu, Somakusha, Chōka manzairaku, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Kumo no kishi, kaze no ne’*

M. Ishii ‘Hiten seidō’, K. Yoshikawa ‘Kaze no misaishin’*

traditional

almost traditional

reconstructed

reconstructed

Kunaichō gakubu

Reigakusha, Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, Matsuyama Ballet company, et al.

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso, K. Hōshō

Tōkyō gakuso, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, Matsuyama Ballet company, et al.

T. Ōno, K. Tōgi, S. Shiba,Tōkyō gakuso, et al.

Bugaku

Gagaku: Koten to sōsaku

Gagaku sennen: Sonokoro miyako ni hayaru mono

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Manjuraku ichigu’

Bugaku

48

49

50

Jo to nokorigaku: Oto no asobi. Asobi no oto

45

46

Kangen

44

47

27/09/1997

Gagaku: Kodai kara gendai e: kofu no fukkyoku to sōsaku sakuhin

43

19/05/2001

17/11/2000

24/06/2000

13/11/1999

26/06/1999

13/11/1998

11/07/1998

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

a

a

a, b

a, c

a

a

a, c

b, c

Type

Enbu, Kishunraku, Kotoriso

Manjuraku

Kanshū, Hashirii, Etenraku, Ryōzen miyama, Goshōraku no kyū, Dunghuang music

Sokō no kyū, Hakuchū, Somakusha no ha, Senshūraku, J. Cage ‘Ryōanji’, K. Fujiie ‘Ten no yōna chi, soshite chi no youna ten’*

Enbu, Taiheiraku, Chōbōraku

Kishunraku no jo, Etenraku (hyōjō), Bairo, Etenraku(bans– hikichō), Somakusha no ha

T. Takemitsu ‘Shūteiga ichigu’, Harusugi, Jisei, Goshōraku ichigu

Shishi, Seijōraku, T. Yoshimatsu ‘Tori yume mai’*

Detail of Content

reconstructed

traditional

traditional

almost traditional

Type of Instruments

Kunaichō gakubu

Tōkyō gakuso

Reigakusha

Reigakusha

Kunaichō gakubu

Tōkyō gakuso

Kunaichō gakubu

S. Shiba, T. Ōno, M. Miyata, et al.

Group/Artist

Kangen: Heian kizoku ga kiita oto

Kangen: Watashimono: 08/11/2002 Kisetsu no oto wo kiku

Kangen: Tsuki okashiki 15/11/2003 hodo ni on asobi hajimarite

Gagaku: Denshō no bi wo kiku

53

54

55

56

13/11/2004

08/11/2002

Nikkan kyūchū ongaku 07–09/05/2002 kōryū ensōkai

52

16/11/2001

Gagaku: Sennen no oto wo kiku

51

a

a, c

a

a

a

a

Niwabi, Asakura, Shunnōden, Ringa

S. Shiba ‘Kinka rinzetsu’, Shukōshi, Ranryōō, T. Tōno ‘Gekkaraku’*, Y. Kanno, ‘Tsuki no isō’*

Harusugi, Issei (hyōjō, banshikichō), Ranryōō, Konju no ha, Shinra ryōō no kyū (ichikotsuchō, sōjō)

Anatō, Tori no ha, Mushiroda, Konju no ha, Butokuraku, Koromogae, Manzairaku, Toku ha kore, Etenraku, Keitoku

Kitoku, Etenraku (hyōjō, ōshikichō), Ryōō, Komaboko, Azuma asobi, Korean aak

Manzairaku, Keitoku, S. Shiba ‘Shōtora shion’

traditional

S. Abe, S. Shiba, K.Tōgi, H. Bunno, et al.

Reigakusha

Kunaichō gakubu

Tōkyō gakuso

Kunaichō gakubu, Korean National Center for Traditional Performing Arts, et al.

Jūnionkai

18/02/2005

Bugaku

Shōga: Koe de kanaderu kangen

Kuniburi no utamai

57

58

59

a

a

a

Type

Ōnaobi uta, Yamato uta, Ruika, Tauta, Ōuta, Kumemai

Shōga

Sanju, Kitoku, Ikko, Shinmaka

Detail of Content

Type of Instruments

Kunaichō gakubu

S. Anzai, K.Tōgi, H. Bunno, et al.

Kunaichō gakubu

Group/Artist

a = classical, b = reconstructed, c = contemporary, s = shōmyō. If the programme includes type b or c, the instrument type (traditional/reconstructed) is indicated in the ‘instrument’ column. * = commissioned composition Contemporary pieces are shown with the name of the composer and the title of the piece in single quotation marks. Traditional pieces are listed without question marks.

12/11/2005

04/06/2005

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

Beyond the Court

109

The nineteenth gagaku concert was held in 1975 with the title, ‘Revival of Taikyoku (Large Piece) and Kikyoku (Rare Piece)’, which stressed the reconstructed nature of the works. The pieces ‘Sokō Ichigu’ and ‘Kananfu’ were performed by Kunaichō Gakubu. ‘Sokō’ is listed in Meiji Sentei-fu, but is rarely played in its entirety. ‘Kananfu’ was a lost piece, and the music was reconstructed by Shiba Sukeyasu based on various scores that have been preserved in the families of the gagaku musicians, with dance revived by Tōgi Masatarō (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1975, 5). The National Theatre started to work more intensively on reconstructed pieces from the twentyfirst concert in 1977, when the piece ‘Banshiki Sangun, Jo’ was performed by the group Gagaku Shigenkai, which followed the reconstruction by Shiba. Shiba carried out the reconstruction of almost all the pieces staged in the concerts that followed in response to requests from the producer, Kido. The piece ‘Banshiki Sangun’ was ‘revived’ based on the historical source Shinsen Gakufu (also known as Chōshūkyō Fue-fu or Hakuga no Fue-fu) of AD 966, which had been edited by Minamoto no Hiromasa, a renowned gagaku musician of the Heian period. Shiba also revived other pieces using this source: ‘Banshiki Sangun, Ha and Kyū’ for the twenty-fifth gagaku concert of 1979; ‘Sōrō Kadatsu’ played for the twenty-ninth gagaku concert of 1981; and ‘Shishi,’ ‘Komainu’ and ‘Chōka Mazairaku’ for the thirtysecond concert of 1982. Shiba extended his interest to other sources too, such as Kaichū-fu, from which ‘Shishi’ and ‘Komainu’ were staged for the twenty-fourth concert in 1978, Tonkō Biwa-fu14 for the thirty-first concert in 1982, and Tenpyō Biwa-fu15 for the second Ongaku Kōen of 1983. Ancient Chinese modal theory was applied for the first time in the ‘reconstruction’ of ‘Sōrō Kadatsu’ in the twenty-ninth concert (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1981, 14). Different approaches to reviving pieces were found in the fortieth concert, which featured ‘Tenjō no Enzui’ and reconstructed an aristocratic banquet scene with various songs, as well as the forty-eighth concert in which Shiba revived songs such as the saibara ‘Hashiri-i’ and the imayō ‘Ryōzen Miyama’.16 In earlier gagaku concerts, reconstructed melodies were performed using contemporary gagaku instruments. The twenty-ninth concert was not only important because of the application of ancient modal theory, as noted above, but also because it utilized ‘reconstructed’ Shōsō-in instruments for the first time. This concert marked Kido’s introduction of the concept ‘reigaku’, a term derived from the legendary Chinese musician Reirin and originally used to denote gagaku in general. Kido used this term, however, to indicate a reconstructed repertoire played with reconstructed instruments. He argued that the National Theatre’s reigaku project would

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Performing Japan

challenge tradition in the contemporary context (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1981, 14). Kido used the term six times in Ongaku Kōen (Table 2), as shown in the following Ongaku Kōen subtitles: 1985 (third concert) ‘Reigaku: Reconstruction of Ancient Instruments and Performance: New Experiments with Traditional Music’. 1986 (fourth concert) ‘Reigaku: Performance of Reconstructed Ancient Instruments: A Tradition Without History’. 1987 (sixth concert) ‘Reigaku: Reconstruction of Ancient Instruments and Performance: Discovery of New Sounds’. 1988 (eighth concert) ‘Reigaku: Performance of Reconstructed Ancient Instruments: “Now” for the Future Perspective’. 1989 (tenth concert) ‘Reigaku: Performance of Reconstructed Ancient Instruments’. 1993 (seventeenth concert) ‘Reigaku: Performance of Reconstructed Ancient Instruments: Revival of Chinese Unearthed Instruments and Shōsō-in Instruments’.

Of course, other concerts that do not employ the title ‘Reigaku’ also contain revived music, and the categories Ongyoku kōen and Shōmyō kōen also contain reconstructed music (see Table 3). Kido also used the concept ‘bugaku hōe’ in his interpretations. Originally a Buddhist service, bugaku hōe involved a variety of gagaku accompaniments and bugaku dances. When performed in the National Theatre, the concerts included chanting by priests as well as bugaku dances within a religious (or pseudo-religious) structure based on Buddhist cosmology. The National Theatre also holds another type of Shōmyō kōen, where authentic Buddhist ceremonies such as Tōdaiji Shuni-e or Daigoji Ninnō-e are staged.17 In the early period, bugaku hōe took the form of Buddhist ceremony combined with classical gagaku pieces, for example in the twentieth concert of 1976 and the twenty-fourth concert of 1978. Bugaku hōe from 1980 to 1985 are more ambitious, however, combining Buddhist chant with classical, reconstructed or contemporary gagaku. Shōmyō also exploits new possibilities as vocal expression rather than as ritualistic device. Kido recognized that both shōmyō and gagaku are descended from the rich culture of Tang dynasty China, which was a mixture of instruments and songs from various areas of the Asian continent (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1985, 17). Kido intends to modify shōmyō also into contemporary artistic music. The reconstruction of instruments occupied an important position in the plans of the National Theatre. The reconstruction of instruments is often mistakenly assumed to be an easy process compared to that of music

Reigaku: kodai gakki no fukugen to ensō: dentō ongaku no atarashii kokoromi

Reigaku: fukugen sareta kodai gakki no ensō: rekishi no nai dentō

Bugaku

3

4

5

30/09/1986

07/03/1986

08/03/1985

27/04/1983

25/06/1982

Gaku to kyoku 2: onjō, koe no dentō

Kugo (Gaku to kyoku 3)

19/06/1975

Shōsō-in to gagaku no kan: Tō no ongaku no isan

2

1

Date

Title

a, c

b, c

b, c

b, c

a, c

a, b

Type

J. Cage ‘Renga’, Shōwaraku, Ninnaraku, Genjōraku, Kitoku

Y.Kanno ‘Jusō’*, T. Hosokawa ‘Balaban no tame no ongaku’*, ‘Shichigen solo no tame no ongaku’*, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Toki no tatazumai’*, M. Ishii ‘Hyōbyō no hibiki’*, Dunghuang music

U. Torikai ‘Yoriai’, H. Watanabe ‘Sugagaki’ S. Shiba ‘Ninjōmai’

Gubu no onjō, shōga (Koranjō, Taishikichō bongen, Hyōjō chōshi, Konju), T. Takemitsu ‘Shūteiga’ U. Torikai ‘Misaishin’*, ‘Genka’, ‘Bankasō’, ‘Sōrō kodatsu’

Chōshū chiku-fu ni yoru ‘Somakusha’

Content

Table 2 Extracts from Ongaku Kōen including gagaku pieces

S. Shiba, et al.

S. Shiba, et al.

shichigen gakki, shigen biwa, gogen biwa, genkan, etc. ōteki, genkan, baraban, shichigen gekkin kugo, haishō, gogen biwa, etc.

Tōkyō gakuso, et al.

S. Shiba, U. Torikai, M. Akao, et al.

kugo, etc.

traditional

Tōkyō gakuso, et al.

S. Shiba, et al.

Performer

traditional

traditional

Instruments

Reigaku: kodai gakki no fukugen to ensō

Bugaku

Reigaku: fukugen sareta kodai gakki no ensō: ima asu wo chōbōshite

Samazamani jōsō suru ongaku shiin (scene)

6

7

8

9

Title

Table 2 (continued)

b, c

a, c, s

b, c

Type

10–11/11/1988 a, b, c, s

11/03/1988

29/09/1987

13/03/1987

Date

Y. Takahashi ‘Zanshi kyoku’*, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Mizu no koe’*, Dunghuan music, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Sapporo’, S. Shiba ‘Gyōdō ranjō’, ‘Karura’, J. Cage ‘Ryōanji’ Banshiki sangun, Manjuraku, Kanshū, Ringa, Bairo,Y.Kanno ‘Hosshōji tō kuyō’*, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Toki no tatazumai’, M. Ishii ‘Hyōbyō no hibiki’*, T. Takemitsu ‘Shiki’

Kanshū, Batō, Kishunraku, Soriko, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Yami wo tokashite kureru kage’*

Yugami jōshi, Gyokuju goteika, ‘Ryū no tanjō’, Y. Kanno ‘Tenkyūgi reigaku jūsan kidō’*

Content

Performer C. Fukunaga, Y. Yamaguchi, M. Miyata, et al. T. Ōno, K. Tōgi, S. Shiba, Tendai shōmyō, Shingon shōmyō, et al. S. Shiba, K. Sawai, A. Nishigata, et al.

S. Shiba, Reigakusha, K. Arai, Y. Yamaguchi, S. Yoshihara, et al.

Instruments koto (Shōsō-in), etc.

koto (Shōsō-in), etc.

shitsu, etc.

ōteki, genkan, hōkyō, etc.

Reigaku: fukugen sareta kodai gakki no ensō

Ongaku

Daihyō kyoku wo iroirona katachide

Futatsu no onaku shiin (scene): Meiji Sentei-fu to reigaku

Dentō ongaku wa ima

10

11

12

13

14

a, b

a, c, s

a, c

28/02/1991

b, c

15–16/11/1990 a

28/02/1990

29/09/1989

23/02/1989

U. Torikai ‘Sau Mau Di’*, Watatsumidō ‘Sōki, sōshingetsu, shingetsu’, Chōshū-chiku-fu

Sōjō chōshi, Shunteiraku, Ryūkaen, Kaibairaku, Tori no ha, kyū, Hyōjō chōshi, Goshōraku no kyū, Manzairaku, Ringa, Etenraku, T. Kosugi ‘Module’, *, T. Hosokawa ‘Tori tachi he no danshō II’, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Prana’, J. Cage ‘Ryōanji’

Bairo, Manzairaku, Etenraku, Keibairaku, Dunghuang music

T. Ichiyanagi ‘Jitsugetsu byōbu issō’*, shika hōe, Tagyūraku, Narosi,

Y. Takahashi ‘zanshi kyoku’, ‘Muten’*, H. Miyake ‘Shingen kyoku’*, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Mizu no koe’, ‘Mizu no sōtai’*, Hakuchū, Hyōjō chōshi, Bongen

S. Shiba, A. Nishigata, Watatsumidō, et al.

kugo, genkan, haishō, etc.

T. Ōno Tōkyō gakuso, S. Shiba, et al.

ōteki, genkan, haishō, etc.

S. Shiba, et al.

S. Shiba, Tendai shōmyō, et al.

ōteki, etc.

traditional, koto (Yayoi), wagon, koto (Shōsō-in), etc.

S. Shiba, K. Sawai, A. Nishigata, et al.

shitsu, koto (Hōryūji), genkan, etc.

Reigaku: fukugen 14/01/1993 shita kodai gakki no ensō: yomigaeru Chūgoku shutsudo to Shōsō-in no gakki

Shiragi goto no fukugen to kodai gakki no ensō

17

18

08/07/1994

30/09/1992

Bugaku hōe: kansō no yamagoshi amida

16

27/09/1991

Bugaku hōe: kangen ongi

Date

15

Title

Table 2 (continued)

b, c

c

a, s, e

a, c, s

Type

U. Torikai ‘Raiki’, Y. Takahashi ‘Tori no asobi’, M. Ishii ‘Reigaku no tame no rekinen 1200’, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Mizu no sōtai’,

Y. Takahashi ‘Unebiyama’*, H. Miyake ‘Shingen kyoku’, T. Hosokawa ‘Shichigen solo no tame no ongaku’, M. Ishii ‘Hyōbyō no hibiki II’, ‘Hiten seidō’, Y. Kanno ‘Jusō II’, L. Harrison ‘Yottsu no haishō to uchimonoi no tame no kumikyoku’*, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Prana’

Bosatsu, Karyōbin, Sanjūnisō, Y. Takahashi ‘Bosatsu kangen dennō date’*

M. Ishii ‘Isetsu: Urashima Tarō’*, Bugaku mandaraku, Shunnōden sattō, Kotoriso, Chōgeishi

Content

G. Kataoka, Reigakusha, Reiyūkai, Y. Takahashi, et al. S. Shiba, et al.

S. Shiba, et al.

gogenkin China), etc.

shiragigoto, koto, haishō, etc.

S. Shiba, M. Miyata, Kongō no buji, Tōkyō gakuso

ōteki, genkan, hōkyō, etc.

traditional, electronic

Performer

Instruments

Kofu no fukkyoku to kodai gakki no ensō

Tonkō monjo to gagaku: kodai gakki no ensō

19

21

05/07/1999

05/07/1999

b, c

b, c

T. Ichiyanagi ‘The Way’, R. Terashima ‘Tairiku, hantō, shima’*, Dunghuang music

Y. Kanno ‘Hoshi no hayashi’* Dunghuang music, T. Nakagawa ‘Giji shintakuroku’*, Y. Takahashi ‘Kisshōkyō’* Reigakusha, K. Sawai, et al.

Reigakusha

kin, tobio no koto, etc.

ōteki, genkan, hōkyō, etc.

07/06/1985

24/04/1987

28/04/1988

28/04/1989

27/04/1990

26/04/1991

o5 Iki no isō: koe to kangakki

o6 Shōmyō to koe

o7 Yamatogoto: yamatogoto to wagon

o8 Yamatogoto II fukugen: Yayoi no koto

o9 Saibara, rōei, azuma asobi

Date

o3 Shōga

Title

a

a, c

a, c

c, s

c, s

a, c

Type

Anatō, Minoyama, Koromogae, Ise no umi, Kashin, Akatsukiryōō, Harusugi, Azuma asobi

Y. Takahashi ‘Ari no susabi no Arisu’*, wagon ‘Sugagaki’, ‘Hikiawase’, ‘Katagaki’

K. Yoshikawa ‘Tabibito kaerazu’*, Mikagura

Amida keka, M. Fujieda ‘Tengoku no natsu’*

Nyorai bai, Unga bai, T. Hosokawa ‘Kansō no shushi’

Banshikichō chōshi, Ryōōranjo, T. Takemitsu ‘Enbai’ from ‘Shūteiga’, Y. Kanno ‘Tenkyū ni futatsu no tōi hoshi wo’*

Content

Table 3 Extracts from Ongyoku kōen and Shōmyō kōen including gagaku pieces

D. Amano, S. Shiba, et al. S. Shiba, K. Tōgi, Tsurugaoka hachimangū S. Shiba, K. Tōgi

ōteki, genkan, haishō, etc. yamatogoto (Shōsō-in) etc. koto (Yayoi), etc.

Kunaichō gakubu

K. Arai, D. Amano, S. Shiba, et al.

traditional, ōteki, etc.

traditional

T. Ōno, S. Shiba, K. Tōgi, et al.

Performer

traditional

Instruments

08/04/1995

13/11/1986

30/09/1988

16/11/1989

o13 Kagurauta

s21 Koe to reigaku no tame no jōka: Nishiwaki Junzabō no shi niyoru

s23 Bugaku hōe: shishin sōō

s24 Shōmyō: denshō: fukkyoku to sōsaku

c, s

c, s

c, s

a

a, s

Jūjukai kanjō, Tanzei amidakyō, A. Nishimura ‘Koe to reigaku no tame no awa no uta*, J. Kondō ‘Koe to reigaku no tame no jōka’

Sanjūnisō, M. Ishii ‘Momotarō onitaiji’*

Shingon shōmyō ‘Rishu zanmai’, Tendai shōmyō ‘Hokke zanmai’, J. Kondō ‘Koe to reigaku no tame no jōka’*

Mikagura

Junshi ōjō kōshiki

Kunaichō gakubu M. Takada, etc.

Tōkyō gakuso, Tendai shōmyō onritsu kenkyūkai Shingon shōmyō, Tendai shōmyō, H. Nakamura, et al.

ōteki, genkan, haishō, etc.

ōteki, genkan, haishō, etc.

ōteki, genkan, haishō, etc.

G. Kataoka, Shingon-shū, Buzan-ha et al.

traditional

traditional

a = classical, b = reconstruction, c = contemporary, s = shōmyō, e = electronic music, * = commissioned composition (first stage), o = Ongyoku kōen; Shōmyō kōen = s.

28/04/1993

o11 Gokuraku shōga: junshi ōjō koushiki

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if there is precise information available about the instrument. There are, however, many unknown processes for making instruments, and the techniques available for constructing parts or tuning pitches are often invisible. A process of trial and error is inevitable and instruments, therefore, strongly reflect the interpretation of their maker.18 The majority of the National Theatre’s instruments have been reconstructed from Shōsō-in treasures (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1995), with a few based on relics from other Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples, or items that have been unearthed. Some Asian traditional instruments that are still in use today have also been copied. These instruments have been used in staged performances immediately following their reconstruction. First used to play revived melodies such as ‘Sōrō kodatsu’ in the twenty-ninth gagaku concert, these instruments soon began to be used in contemporary compositions commissioned by the National Theatre. Kido stated, in regard to a series based on revived music and instruments, that it was a musical movement designed to remove the generally accepted historical view of traditional instruments as a return to an original point, instead aiming to reinterpret tradition (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1989, postscript). Commissioned works for reconstructed instruments appeared quite often on stage from 1981 to 1999, which marks an important epoch in the history of gagaku and Japanese avant-garde music.19 ‘Shōwa Tenpyōraku’ by Mayuzumi Toshirō (1929–97) was the first contemporary piece that was staged in a gagaku concert in the National Theatre, and was performed by Kunaichō Gakubu in the ninth concert in 1970.20 In the fifteenth concert in 1973, Kunaichō Gakubu performed ‘Shūteiga’ by Takemitsu Tōru (1930–96). This piece was then developed into a large-scale suite of six sections entitled ‘Shūteiga Ichigu,’ and was performed by Tōkyō Gakuso at the twenty-sixth concert in 1979.21 Works commissioned by foreign composers were sometimes staged, for example Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ‘Licht’ in 1977 and Jean-Claude Eloir’s ‘A L’approche de Feu Méditant’ in 1983. John Cage’s ‘Ryōanji’ and the reigaku version of ‘Renga’ were also performed in 1986 (see Table 2). The compositions performed until 1980 used ordinary gagaku instruments, but, as mentioned above, once reconstructed instruments were introduced on stage for ‘revived’ ancient melodies in 1981, new compositions also started adopting these ‘new’ instruments, or, to be more precise, the National Theatre commissioned pieces suitable for the newly-reconstructed instruments. The commissioned works were often for small ensembles so that the reconstructed sounds could be clearly heard by the audience. Table 4 shows the relationship between the completion of instruments and the concerts in which they were featured. While this table

Ongaku Kōen 6 Ongaku Kōen 8 Ongaku Kōen 10

koto (Shōsō-in) shitsu (China, Maōtaibo grave)

kin (Hōryūji), wagon (Shōsō-in)

1984 1985

1987 1988

1989

1994

Source: Kokuritsu Geikijō (1988, 1994 and 1995).

Ongaku Kōen 18

shiragi goto (Shōsō-in)

1993

1990

Ongyoku Kōen 7 yamatogoto (tobi no o no kin) Ongyoku Kōen 8 (Kashihara city) gogen kin (China, Sōkō itsubo grave), koto Ongaku Kōen 17

1983

kugo, henshō (Nikkō Tōshōgū), kin, Ongaku Kōen 2 sahari (Buddhist instruments) (gaku to kyoku 3) shigen biwa, gogen biwa, genkan (Shōsō-in) shichigen gakki (Shōsō-in) Ongaku Kōen 3

1982

haishō, shakuhachi, ōteki (Shōsō-in) jiko, hōkyō (Shōsō-in), henkei, ceramic Gagaku Kōen 29 shakuhachi, ōteki, hichiriki (Hakone jinja) baraban, mei (ethnic instruments) Gagaku Kōen 31

1975 1981

Concert

Instruments

Year

Table 4 Reconstructed instruments and their debut concerts

Y. Takahashi ‘Unebiyama’: gogenkin, shichigenkin, shichigen gakki, gogen biwa, etc. Y. Kanno ‘Hoshi no hayashi’: shiragi goto

U. Torikai ‘Yoriai’: shichigen gakki, H. Watanabe ‘Sugagaki’: shigen biwa, gogen biwa, genkan, etc. ‘Yugami jōshi’, ‘Gyokuju goteika’, etc.: koto Y. Takahashi ‘Zanshi kyoku’, T. Ichiyanagi ‘Mizu no koe’: shitsu Y. Takahashi ‘Muten’, H. Miyake ‘Shingen kyoku’: kin, shitsu K. Yoshikawa ‘Tabibito kaerazu’: wagon Y. Takahashi ‘Ari no susabi no Arisu’: yamatogoto

‘Sōrō kodatsu’: ōteki, ōhichiriki, shakuhachi, jiko, haishō, u, henkei, henshō, hōkyō, etc. U. Torikai, K.Yoshikawa, Y. Kanno ‘Gatsuryō’, Dunhuang music: balaban, mei, etc. U. Torikai ‘Misaishin’: kugo, haishō, etc.

Contents

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shows when the instruments were introduced in performance, they were also repeatedly employed in a variety of pieces. Kido has written an interesting programme note on this point: I don’t like the phrase ‘Silk road’ with its retrospective taste and exoticism which reminds us of nostalgia and rapture. Rapture paralyses our insight to be able to observe sounds clearly. My reconstruction of ancient instruments does not derive from my interest in custom or history. I have worked on this project not seeking a refined sound of contemporary improved instruments but the intact and wild reverberations of primitive instruments. This is not the sound of Tenpyō, but the sound of a primitive era based on the concept of that period. (Kokuritsu Gekijō 1988, postscript; translated by author).

Although some of his meaning is not necessarily clear, Kido expressed his enthusiasm to deconstruct the generally accepted idea of the music of the ‘Silk Road’, to examine again the sound produced by simple, and ‘wild’ ancient instruments.22 CONCLUSION

The National Theatre has staged various forms of gagaku in its series of concerts since 1966 under the strong leadership of Kido. The National Theatre started with a standard classical repertoire, and then began to work on the reconstruction of lost pieces from the Nara and Heian periods. It has further undertaken the reconstruction of instruments, applying them to the performance of the revived melodies. The National Theatre has also commissioned new compositions from artists within the Western classical tradition, some performed with standard traditional instruments, others with the reconstructed ones (Plate 8). To fully explore the possibilities of the revived instruments, Kido utilizes a complex notion of ‘reconstruction’ that seduces one into the nostalgia of the musical tradition by paradoxically ‘resetting’ that tradition. For Kido, reconstruction is not simply tracing back through time to find the past, but to return to a primordial world of sound, one deriving from cosmology or human origins, transcending time. To him, ancient instruments may be a kind of media to that world. The National Theatre’s pursuit of an ‘original’ sound seems to culminate in the last few years before Kido retired in 1996. In reality, however, these ‘reconstructed’ ancient instruments are something of a double-edged sword. The newly-born instruments are not mature in terms of playing techniques or musical expression. Their sounds might be wild and fresh, but their melodies, textures and structures as a whole are

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not necessarily well rendered, and unfortunately, only a few of the commissioned pieces have been played more than once. In addition, Kido’s goal of ‘setting gagaku free from tradition’ is something that can only be understood by those few people with a deep knowledge of traditional gagaku. Those who are fully acquainted with this classical idiom find the sounds of the reconstructed instruments and newly-composed pieces interesting, but it is quite wise that the National Theatre’s gagaku programme always combines traditional and ‘reconstructed’ or contemporary pieces so as to give the audience an opportunity to compare different styles. Since the 1990s, gagaku has become much more popular than ever before, due to recordings and activities of musicians such as Tōgi Hideki, whose work fuses gagaku with pop music and has reached a mass audience. In this diversified context, it is all the more interesting and important to watch both the future ambitions of the National Theatre and how they are realized. NOTES 1 The governmental institute, Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari, or Music Investigation Institute, which was established in 1879, aimed at studying Japanese traditional music as well as Western music. The result of the research of the Institute was published as Ongaku Torishirabe Seiseki Shinpō-sho in 1884, and translated into English in a report on the result of the investigation concerning music in 1885. The Institute also edited Sōkyoku-shū (1888), an anthology of koto music with Western staff notation and Romanized verses. These documents were sent to world expositions held in Europe and the US (Terauchi 2005a; 2006). All materials in this paper have been translated from Japanese into English by the author. 2 Tōgi was born into the noble clan of Yotsutsuji Kinmasu and later adopted into the family of gagaku musician Tōgi Suenaga. 3 Konoe was the son of high-ranking noble and politician Konoe Atsumaro; his eldest brother, Konoe Fumimaro, was a prime minister; and his second eldest brother was Konoe Hidemaro, a conductor and composer. 4 Ōhara published a book on waka recitation entitled Utakai no sahō in 1926. 5 Detailed contents of funerals and coronations, including musical aspects, were reported repeatedly in contemporary newspapers and music journals. 6 Tōgi’s real name is Tōgi Sueharu. He was a hereditary gagaku court musician (he retired quite young in 1897), and was talented in various fields, such as performance, composition, acting in Western plays and as a researcher (Terauchi 2005b). 7 For example, Ongaku torishirabe seiseki shinpō-sho (1884; 1885) and Sōkyokushū (1888).

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8 Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari was developed into Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō in 1887, which was reorganized into the current Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku (Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) in 1949. 9 For instance, in Konoe’s and Shiba’s works, the intervals F-E and C-B, are all notated as F#-E and C#-B, which are correct according to the modal theory in the Heian period. A specific rhythmic pattern in gakusō (hayagaki pattern) in Shiba’s notation is also different from present-day practice (Terauchi 1999). 10 Shiba is a ryūteki player. The third son of Shiba Sukehiro, he served in the court until 1984 and was active in performing both classical and contemporary gagaku repertoire, the reconstruction of lost pieces, composing and writing. He also devotes himself to fostering young gagaku musicians. 11 At the beginning of the Meiji era, a chief priest from Ono Terusaki Jinja in Tokyō, Ono Ryōdō, established the group in his shrine. Instructors are from Kunaichō. 12 Established by Oshida Yoshihisa, a friend of Konoe Naomaro. 13 Kido graduated from Keiō University and worked at the National Theatre from 1966 to 1996. 14 Pipa notation found in Dunghuang cave, China. 15 Biwa notation found at the Shōsō-in repository in Nara. 16 These songs are mainly reconstructed from medieval sources. 17 Some concerts included the bugaku hōe style (see Table 3). 18 Programme notes sometimes explain the process of making instruments. 19 After 1999, commissioned compositions were sometimes staged, but they were mostly for the usual gagaku instruments (see also works by Tōno Tamami and Kanno Yoshihiro in 2003). 20 Mayuzumi had already composed pieces like ‘Bugaku’ (1962), which was inspired by gagaku. 21 The piece was staged again at the forty-fourth Gagaku Kōen in 1998, and was played by Kunaichō Gakubu. Reigakusha also performed it in the concert halls of Suntory Hall in Tokyo and Carnegie Hall in New York. Reigakusha’s album, Shūteiga (Sony Records International 2002: SICC85) was awarded the grand prize at the Arts Festival 2002 hosted by the Cultural Agency, Japan. 22 A series of commissioned works of the National Theatre has been published since 1999 (see works by Nihon Geijutsu Bunka Shinkōkai and Kokuritsu Gekijō Chōsa Yōseibu Geinō Chōsashitsu). REFERENCES Bürkner, Yukie. 2004. Tōgism: Die Musik des Tōgi Hidekis (Stüdien zur traditionellen Musik Japans, Band 10). Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel.

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de Ferranti, Hugh and Narasaki Yōko, eds. 2002. A way a lone: Writings on Tōru Takemitsu. Tokyo: Academia Music. Gagakukyoku, ed. 1876 [1888]. Meiji Sentei-fu (a collection of handwritten gagkau scores preserved in Kunaichō Gakubu). Geinōshi Kenkyū-kai, ed. 1970. Nihon no koten geinō 2, gagaku. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Hayashi, Kenzō. 1964. Shōsō-in gakki no kenkyū. Tokyo: Kazama Shobō. ——. 1973. Higashi ajia gakki kō. Tokyo: Kawai Gakufu. Kanetsune, Kiyosuke and Tsuji Shōichi. 1930. Nihon ongaku shūsei dai ippen dai isshū: saibara. Tokyo: Nanki Ongaku Toshokan. Kokuritsu Gekijō, ed. 1975. Bugaku: taikyoku to kikyoku no saikō (brochure of the nineteenth gagaku concert). ——. 1981. Reigaku: Sōrōkodatsu: Chōshū ōteki-fu yori (brochure of the twentyninth gagaku concert). ——. 1985. Bugaku hōe (brochure of the thirty-seventh gagaku concert). ——. 1986. Kokuritsu gekijō nijūnen no ayumi (twentieth anniversary commemorative book). Tokyo: Kokuritsu Gekijō. ——. 1988. Reigaku: fukugen sareta kodai gakki no ensō: ima asu wo chōbō shite (brochure of the eighth ongaku concert). ——. 1989. Reigaku: Fukugen sareta kodai gakki no ensō (brochure of the tenth ongaku concert). ——. 1994. Shiragi-goto no fukugen to kodai gakki no ensō (brochure of the eighteenth ongaku concert). ——. 1995. Kodai gakki no fukugen (reconstructed music instruments of ancient East Asia). Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha. Kokuritsu Gekijō Chōsa Yōsei-bu Jōhō Shisutemu Shitsu, ed. 1996. Kokuritsu gekijō sanjūnen no kōen kiroku: gagaku shōmyō, chūsei geinō, tokubetsu kikaku kōen hen. Tokyo: Nihon geijutsu bunka shinkō-kai. Lancashire, Terence. 2003. World music or Japanese: The gagaku of Tōgi Hideki. Popular Music 22(1): 21–39. Nakamura, Rihei. 1993. Yōgaku dōnyūsha no kiseki: Nihon kindai yōgakushi josetsu. Tokyo: Tōsui Shobō. Nihon Geijutsu Bunka Shinkōkai and Kokuritsu Gekijō Chōsa Yōseibu Geinō Chōsashitsu, supervised and eds. 1999a. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 1: Ichiyanagi Toshi. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 1999b. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 2: Mamiya Michio. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 1999c. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 3: Ishii Maki. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2000. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 4: Takahashi Yūji. Tokyo: Shunjūsha.

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——. 2001a. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 5: Kanno Yoshihiro. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2001b. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 6: Yoshikawa Kazuo. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2001c. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 7: Mizuno Shūkō. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2002a. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 8: Noda Teruyuki. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2002b. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 9: Niimi Tokuhide. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2003a. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 10: Nishimura Akira. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2003b. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 11: Kitazume Michio. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2003c. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 12: Yoshimatsu Takashi. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2003d. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 13: Fujieda Mamoru. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2003e. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 14: Miyashita Susumu. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2005. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 15: Nodaira Ichirō. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. ——. 2006. Kokuritsu gekijō ishoku sakuhin shirīzu 16: Torikai Ushio. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Ōhara, Shigeakira 1926 Utakai no sahō, Tokyo: Eikyoku-kai. Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari, ed. 1884. Ongaku torishirabe seiseki shinpō-sho. Tokyo: Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari (reprinted in Yamazumi Masami, ed. 1971. Yōgaku Kotohajime: Ongaku Torishirabe Seiseki Shinpō-sho. Tokyo: Heibonsha). Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari, ed. 1885. Report on the result of the investigation concerning music. Tokyo: Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari. Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari, ed. 1888. Sōkyoku-shū. Tokyo: Tokyo Ongaku Gakkō. Shiba, Sukehiro. 1955. Gagaku: Dai isshū: kangen sōfu. Tokyo: Ryūginsha. ——. 1956. Gagaku: Dai nishū: saibara sōfu. Tokyo: Ryūginsha. ——. 1964. Gagaku kakyokushū: gosenfu ni yoru. Tokyo: Kunitachi Ongaku Daigaku Shuppanbu. ——. 1968. Gosen-fu ni yoru gagaku sōfu: maki ichi kakyoku hen. Tokyo: Kawai Gakufu. ——. 1969. Gosen-fu ni yoru gagaku sōfu: maki ni kangenkyoku hayagaku hen. Tokyo: Kawai Gakufu. ——. 1971. Gosen-fu ni yoru gagaku sōfu: maki san kangenkyoku nobegaku, taikyoku hen. Tokyo: Kawai Gakufu.

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——. 1972. Gosen-fu ni yoru gagaku sōfu: maki yon komagaku, bugakukyoku hen. Tokyo: Kawai Gakufu. Shiba, Sukeyasu. ed. 2002. Gagaku taikei. Tokyo: Victor Dentō Bunka Shinkō Zaidan. Terauchi, Naoko. 1999. Kindai ni okeru gagaku no fuhenka: Konoe Naomaro no gyōseki wo chūshin ni. Kokusai Bunkagaku Kenkyū 12: 19–49. ——. 2000. Tōkyō ongaku gakkō, Hōgaku chōsa gakari ‘Gagaku kifuhō hikae.’ Nihon Bunkaron Nenpō 3: 1–19. ——. 2001. Hōgaku chōsa gakari ni okeru gagaku saifu no keii. Nihon Bunkaron Nenpō 4: 18–40. ——. 2002. Nijusseiki ni okeru gagaku no tenpo (tempo) to furējingu (phrasing) no henyō: Gaisubāgu (Gaisberg) rokuon to Hōgaku chōsa gakari no gosenfu. Kokusai Bunkagaku Kenkyū 17: 85–111. ——. 2003. Western impact on traditional music: ‘Reform’ and ‘universalization’ in the modern period of Japan. Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 141: 13–53. ——. 2005a. Nihon bunka no tenji: 1884 Rondon (London) eisei bankoku hakurankai ni tenji sareta nihon no ongaku shiryō. Kokusai Bunkagaku Kenkyū 24: 1–29. ——. 2005b. Nijusseiki shotō ni okeru atarashii ‘Nihon ongaku’ sōsei no kokoromi: Tōgi Tetteki no ‘Shin kokumin-gaku.’ Nihon Bunkaron Nenpō 8: 33–52. ——. 2006.The way of presenting Japanese culture: The musical instruments and documents displayed in the Hygiene Exposition of London 1884. Butai geijutsu kankyō no kokusai hikaku: chiteki shien shisutemu no kōchiku ni mukete (the Report of research subsidized by Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai, 2003–2005): 78–96. Toyō Ongaku Gakkai, ed. 1969. Gagaku: Kogakufu no kaidoku. Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha. Tsukahara, Yasuko. 1993. Jūkyū seiki no nihon ni okeru seiyō ongaku no juyō. Tokyo: Taga Shuppan. ——. 1999. Meiji sannen gagaku kyoku secchi zengo. Shōwa ongaku daigaku kenkyū kiyō 18: 21–37. ——. 2001. Kindai gagaku seido no kenkyū: senzenki no kunaishō gakubu wo chūshin ni (Report of the research subsidized by Nihon gakujutsu shinkōkai, 1998–1999). ——. 2004. Meiji jūichinen no Shikiburyō gagakuka. Bulletin of Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku 29: 79–95. ——. 2005. Bakumatsu ishinki no gagaku saihen. Meiji ishin to rekishi (Meiji ishin kenkyū 7): 32–55. Meiji ishin-shi gakkai, ed. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Yamanoi, Motokiyo.1961. Fuzoku yakufu. Tokyo: Iwamani Shoten. ——. 1966. Saibara yakufu. Tokyo: Iwamani Shoten.

5

Spring Day, Stone Age and the Search for an Essential Japan by Koike Hiroshi Jerry C. Jaffe

❖ If the essential quality of classical art can be described as the whole space calling upon a kind of holiness and singing with it to the maximum, then my art possesses all the ingredients of that (Koike 1993–94).

‘ apan is soft and safe – it seems to be wrapped up in a warm surface. On the other hand I cannot shake off the feeling that today’s Japan is saturated by deep fear and darkness’, Japanese director Koike Hiroshi observed in his programme notes to Spring Day (1997). Koike interrogated this hidden anxiety in this production by his dance-theatre company Pappa TARAHUMARA. (This is Koike’s preferred presentation of the company’s name when represented in English.) Koike founded Pappa TARAHUMARA in 1982, then calling it Tarahumara Theatre. In 1987, he changed the name to its current form. In that time Koike has produced over thirty productions and has performed on tour or in festivals in the United States, Canada, Europe and throughout east Asia. This same sense of anxiety has been linked by John Clammer to Japan being a ‘very self-conscious culture’: ‘concern amounting often to anxiety with the “correct” appearance of one’s individual self ’ (1992, 197). In the context of Japan’s culture of shopping, Clammer posits that the acquisition of goods is one strategy Japanese adopt to reassure them of this anxiety. Strained, anxious leisure is one of the motifs of Spring Day, as will be explained below.

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Koike’s concern for Japanese culture as expressed in the quotes above manifest in a style of international humanism in which he searches for texts, images and styles of performances to create eclectic forms of archetypes of the human experience. Their name is highly suggestive of this project. Koike’s choice is two-fold, one relating to the indigenous people of Mexico and the other relating to Antonin Artaud’s writings about these people. Koike and other members of his troupe have an expressed interest in the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. When explaining their choice of name, they write in one publicity package available in English that the name refers to ‘an area in Mexico that is called the Land of Tarahumara.. . . What we have aimed for is to try somehow to capture and present the special wonder of Tarahumara culture, inexpressible and interpretable in modern rationalistic terms. . . . we aspire to an overall image of wonder and joy.’ In the same public relations statement they caution, however, ‘we have not directly incorporated Tarahumara culture as such into our pieces’ (Pappa TARAHUMARA 1992). Pappa TARAHUMARA is known for its precise choreography and abstract performance tactics. Koike is a charismatic visionary bringing his own quest for wisdom to his productions. Koike sees performance as restorative and as a space for rebirth. In his programme notes to the German performances of Pappa TARAHUMARA’s Parade, he described his ‘task’ as ‘to discover the centre of world, to give a form to it and present it as a work of time-art within a medium in space’. This centre he understands as ‘something which lies at the bottom of a profound, unconscious structure. Something we might be able to call an unstoppable impulse goes backward to an ancient and pre-modern times. I would like to restore this impulse to the present.’ In 1998’s Spring Day, such inspiration takes the form of a performance whose world is one not quite of the living or dead, or of the memory, or of the now, but of liminal figures that do not seem directly aware of their hazy, marginal status. Yet, that marginal status manifests in the forlorn ferocity that characterizes much of the performance. I will describe and analyse the group’s aesthetics with reference to two particular productions, Spring Day (1998) and Stone Age (1991). By utilizing Uchino’s (2006) mapping of contemporary Japanese avantgarde theatre practices, a context is created for understanding Koike’s aesthetics in exploring notions of contemporary Japanese identity through performance. In ‘Mapping/Zapping “J” Theatre at the Moment,’ Uchino presents a ‘cognitive map of what is happening in Japan’s theatre culture at present’ (2006, 132). He logs forty theatre companies upon two axes: Literary/Text versus Performance/Body in one direction and Gadget (Relativist=Postmodernist) versus Real (Essentialist=Modernist) in the

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other. This results in four zones, or general clusters of companies and artists, which he loosely categorizes thus: Real and Literary is the ‘Return to Shingeki’ zone; Literary and Gadget is the ‘Re: Little Theatre’ zone; Gadget and Performance/Body is the ‘Contemporary Dance’ zone; and finally, Real and the Performance/Body is the ‘Return to Angura?’ zone. Also, as a mapping of recent activities, Uchino specifically focuses on younger or more recent companies. He writes, ‘I deliberately chose to highlight the younger generation of practitioners, most of whom were born after the 1970s’ (2006, 132). Koike and Pappa TARAHUMARA are older than this time-frame, and are not included in Uchino’s ‘J’ Map (though they might fit in well with his general grouping of older artists from the angura movement, such as ‘Terayama Shūji, Kara Jurō and Suzuki Tadashi’ (2006, 134). However, Koike is also a contemporary practitioner, and so I would like to briefly place him and Pappa TARAHUMARA onto Uchino’s map to give some sense of how he fits into current trends. Working from Uchino’s two axes, in the first instance, Pappa TARAHUMARA trends more towards emphasizing Performance/Body over Literary/ Text. Many Pappa TARAHUMARA productions have been adapted from literary sources, but in the adaptation process realizing ideas and themes from the source material through movement, choreography and image have been Koike’s primary approach. On the other axis of Gadget (Relativist= Postmodern) vs. Real (Essentialist= Modernist), it is tempting to place Koike’s work towards the Postmodern, as on the one hand it is highly surreal and abstract and on the other Koike bills Pappa TARAHUMARA as a dancetheatre company, and so the work resembles ‘Contemporary Dance’. Uchino mentions that the artists in the zone ‘Contemporary Dance’, have been ‘Influenced by such choreographers as Pina Bausch’ (2006, 135) and certainly Koike’s work has been described as reminiscent of Bausch. Koike also emphasizes dance skills as an integral part of training, both in his performers and his training centre, the Hiroshi Koike Performing Arts Institute. However, thematically, I am less convinced of the priority of the dance influences; also, Koike’s body of work as well as his own commentary aligns more profoundly with the Modernist sensibility associated with Uchino’s ‘Return to Angura?’ zone. As Uchino characterizes this zone, ‘physical expression is the main resource for performance’ (2006, 136). For example, Uchino sites butō (Butoh) performer Wakikawa Kairi as resting within this zone. In particular, I find Koike is interested in ideas of essential experiences and the ‘real’ Japan. As I elaborate on Koike’s work below, these dual concerns with Body and with the Essential will be explored further. I first met Koike in 1997 in Tsukuba City, Japan, in his capacity as the Director of the Tsukuba Cultural Foundation, which sponsors a yearly

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performing arts festival of local theatre groups. In 1999, Pappa TARAHUMARA had their only US tour to date and I was able to follow them through two of their venues, observing performances and undertaking interviews with members of the group. From 17 September to 2 October, they brought their original piece Spring Day to five American cities. On this tour I caught up with them at both the University of Connecticut’s Jorgensen Auditorium and Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center. I obtained access backstage, including rehearsals, the actors and technical crew, and to Koike himself. Surrealistic in style, Spring Day is inspired by a story by Japanese writer Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939) entitled Shunchū. The Hopkins Center’s programme notes to Spring Day described Izumi’s novel as ‘an illusory love story’ of imagination and fantasy that is ‘closely tied to Nō and Kabuki’. Koike often draws from literary sources for his inspiration, having staged performances based on, for example, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Gabriel Garcia Marcus’s ‘A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings’ as well as a recent adaptation of Chekov’s Three Sisters. Koike’s strategy, though, is not to adapt such sources directly, but to explore them for themes or images that become the basis for his highly stylized dance movement and poetical language. Art Critic Itō Junjō recognizes Koike’s works as having fellowship with the ‘increasing number of dance artists who have focused since the ‘80s on visual presentations’ like ‘figures such as Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch and Saburō Teshigawara’ yet also ‘has something which makes them quite distinctive’ (1993–94, np). Itō claims for Koike a deep sense of cultural pluralism and deep exploration of visual elements as highly developed theatrical language independent of language, words or meaning. One publicity statement by the troupe states: ‘It is when the elements of performers, music, stage objects and light become one that the spectacle starts generating its own poetry’ (Pappa TARAHUMARA 1992). In Spring Day, one image leads suggestively to the next (Plates 9, 10). The plot does not follow a typical narrative structure of explicit causality. Even so, Koike utilizes a very strict structure that has the play moving through three distinct sections. The first is a dreamlike dance section dominated by hues of blue, including plain blue jumpers for the five dancers. This becomes contrasted when two of three female dancers leave the stage only to reappear shortly in very feminine red dresses. This contrast established one of Koike’s themes, the contrast of gender roles. This section culminates with the appearance of a floating, upside-down pyramid (floating geometric shapes are another typical Pappa TARAHUMARA device) and the five performers arranged around the stage in a tableau highly suggestive of some abstract ritual.

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In this first section, Koike introduces one other important motif, returned to again and again in sections two and three, the exploration of the image of the square, the triangle and the circle. Performer Ogawa Mariko becomes a ghostly figure quietly walking the stage amongst the other dancers, turning pages in a notebook that reveal these three geometric shapes. The shapes then figure prominently in the tableau that ends the section. As with much of the symbolism in the piece, Koike eschews giving direct explanations to his images. At a post-performance talk at the Jorgensen, audience members asked Koike how they should interpret the geometric shapes (and other enigmatic images). His primary reply, through an interpreter, was to ‘take it as you saw it’. He did add, however, that some Zen philosophers consider those three shapes to be an expression of the most fundamental aspects of life, and so that might be one way to begin thinking about the use of the shapes in his performance. The second section revolves primarily around the motif of a ‘day at the beach’. In this case, four of the ghost-like performers appear in pastel swimming clothes and begin a series of movements meant by Koike to parody the modern Japanese fetish of hiding one’s anxieties in manic but superficial brightness. Both hilarious and disturbing, the foursome enacts the usually joyful action of relaxing at the beach with such intensity that a clear dichotomy exists. As Koike wrote in his programme notes: Brightness turns the other way around to generate deep fear and sorrow. In this sense, superficial cheerfulness and explosive energy are important and essential. How could one create the depth and heaviness of sorrow and darkness? What is essentially lightness expressed heaviness. It is crucial that one embodies two-sided hope and despair.

Section two ends with one of the performance’s most moving and intriguing moments. Performer Mura Hiroyuki opens his beach umbrella to discover a red dress like those worn by the women in part one. He dons the dress and adopts a melancholy androgynous attitude, stunning as both evocative and depressing. Koike suggests in programme notes that this undressing and redressing, this transformation, embodies what he considers a modern Japanese sense of gender confusion, and the move towards androgyny. Of (erotic) displays, de Certeau once suggested aptly that: The confession of the heart, and in a more radical but (paradoxically) symbolic way, the undressing of the body function as the allegory of a quest for pleasure, for communion, or for reality. It is a demystification even if it still retains the form of a myth. The search for truth is thus ‘represented’. (1997, 22)

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Similarly, and with a similar sense of postmodern ethics, Koike wants to display this confusion concerning androgynous identity as both myth and deconstructed myth. Such movements of ambiguous representation form both the structure and the theme of Spring Day, and they reveal in the art of Koike a quest for desire, communion and a restless search for the real Japan – or at least a real Japanese identity. The transition to the third section is demarcated by the utilization of front projection as an eight-feet high horse’s face appears on a large screen behind the actors. Section three moves gently away from dance and into text-based vignettes. The actors speak or sing in Japanese while title screens and/or programme notes provide the audience with English translations. This section itself has several discrete portions. The first part seems to be the most direct reference to Izumi’s stories, depicting several expressionistic dream characters (re-)enacting a story of unspoken love that is clearly heading towards sadness. Never is this made explicit, and all five actors adopt a variety of personae, so within a short time there is not a coherent sense of character, but rather of a searching for character. One of the most striking scenes of the third part included a doppelganger effect (which is in fact another of Spring Day’s reoccurring motifs) achieved by having two of the female cast members, Ogawa and Sekiguchi Makie, on stage wearing matching red dresses used earlier in the play. They do not communicate directly, but engage in parallel gestures and share similar spoken text. Given the mirror-like image the two performers create, their liminality is again underscored by Ogawa’s embodiment of nearing the end of some unsuccessful journey and Sekiguchi’s (using much the same gestures and words) sense of having recently completed some unsuccessful journey. As this section ends comes another striking moment as performer Matsushima Makoto begins singing in the folk style of Okinawa. The lyrics are translated in English as ‘Driven by love I am here/Driven by love I am in the tatami.’ His song continues until the words evoke the geometry again: ‘Even the face has changed/Becoming a slave of love/Circle Triangle Square as a symbol.’ After a few more lines of dialogue, the performance moves into a dance sequence, which serves as a kind of Epilogue. These last ten minutes or so seemed the weakest of the entire piece and, as intriguing as the first eighty minutes were, struck me as anti-climactic. Although a last exhibition of the outstanding stamina and technique of the performers, and Koike’s keen eye for choreography, this dance did no work to elaborate any further on any of the themes or motifs established throughout the piece. Anyone, Japanese or otherwise, who experiences a Pappa TARAHUMARA performance may be left overwhelmed with questions. The more

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inquisitive and open the audience members, the more powerful their reaction to the piece. Those with less patience for non-linear, non-Aristotelian performances may be impressed by the skill of the performers as dancers, but may be turned off by Koike’s poetic exploration without explanation. Japanese theatre critic Senda Akihiro once characterized Pappa TARAHUMARA’s aesthetic style as comparable to ‘a Rorschach test’ (1997, 273). This description is apt, and Spring Day certainly captured the feeling of a psychological test for the audience member’s heart and soul. Pappa TARAHUMARA’s work extends beyond stage productions. They have produced several CDs of original music, they have established a oneyear training programme (the Hiroshi Koike Performing Arts Institute), and they manage a small performance space in Tokyo called Pappa Café, which is available to local performance groups at very low rates. Thus, as the notes in A Visual Feast state, ‘it is working as Pappa TARAHUMARA’s casual networking spot’ (Pappa TARAHUMARA 1992). Koike’s interest in the Tarahumara Indians alluded to above in the explanation of their name is not only an allusion to some romantic notion of primitive tribal symbolic art, but also to French theatre critic Antonin Artaud. Artaud himself spent some time in Mexico studying the Tarahumara culture and wrote several papers and letters on the topic. Administrative Director and long-time member Seiya Yoshi told me in a personal interview that Koike originally drew the company’s name in reverence to Artaud’s writings. Artaud wrote of his travels in Mexico: The land of the Tarahumara is full of signs, forms and natural effigies which in no way seem the result of chance, as if the gods, whom one feels everywhere here, had chosen to express their powers by means of these strange signatures in which the figure of man is hunted down from all sides. (1976, 379)

The Tarahumara Indians served as inspiration to Artaud; and his writings about them served to inspire Koike. In an email communication with me in 1999, Koike revealed: ‘In my younger days I felt Artaud was the special person in the twentith-century theatre world. He changed the idea of theatre and started to draw [upon] the human being’s spiritual sense.’ Yoshi wanted to emphasize to me, however, that Koike no longer consciously follows Artaud’s aesthetic concerns and would rather distance the troupe from the aesthetic ideas of Artaud. I sense that this is due to Koike’s own sense of self as he has matured as an artist over the past twenty years. However, one can still recognize as an Artaudian aesthetic in the work of Pappa TARAHUMARA. For example, consider such a densely constructed and deeply moving performance as 1991’s Stone Age.

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Amongst monolithic angular set pieces vaguely suggestive of stone formations, a single performer swims very slowly across the stage space. Dressed in black, this lone swimmer is joined by other performers who swim or dance across the space. Initially, the performers seem stubbornly to not interact; rather they slowly evolve their own stage-images as they explore the playful set. All is bathed in cool lights suggesting to this audience member an ocean at dusk. The first few minutes continue in this vein and then the piece proceeds to explore a variety of images and relationships as performers come together and part. At one point, boats appear; another sequence of several minutes involves the placement of candles around the stage; seven foot conical shapes float by, sending performers into an excited state contrasting the usual restrained pace of the performance; a six-foot diameter apple appears that also floats by; and the final portion of the performance has the cast manipulating set’s pieces in the construction of a low wall that comes to divide the stage. So as Stone Age comes to end, the cast builds its wall. It is the most concerted behaviour displayed in the piece; it is the most singular image offered. What this closing image evokes, especially as a culmination of the past hour, may be as individual as ‘a Rorschach test’. Yet, that Koike’s theatrical visual language evokes any response is part of Koike’s personal journey for a universal centre, the metaphysical, mythical world, of which he once wrote: ‘In ancient times, the supernatural stood in front of people like a huge wall’ (Pappa TARAHUMARA 1992). A reviewer once described Stone Age as ‘spectacular and enriching’ (Ebara 1991). Ebara wrote: ‘The staging lasted little over an hour, but I felt as if I have lived through the eternal flow of time;’ and ‘The performance gives me a mysterious impression, as if inorganic substances were becoming organic, and blood was starting to circulate.’ Ebara also described the miseen-scène as being ‘like a mobile abstract painting.’ Koike wrote in his director’s notes some of his basic intentions for the piece: ‘Stone Age’ is not a story about stone age times. It does not grow out of any particular love of that era, but only seeks to represent something of the stone age spirit and present visions of that primal time: the sweetness of air, the deliciousness of food, what needed to be seen or heard in order to survive; what people felt when the looked at the earth, and what their sensations were on entering the sea.

He continues his project of searching for archetypical humanism within a sense of contemporary Japan. He invents new myths from questions about stories, old or new, Japanese or international. Of the empty centre that

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Japan is so famous for, Koike once wrote in his programme notes for Parade/Bush of Ghosts that ‘Japan is, after all, an island nation in the “Far East”. But “Japan” also moves about. I feel the need to give form to the flexible centre of the world.’ Japan has a strong and lengthy history of diverse theatrical practices, including such well-known forms as nō, kabuki, bunraku, etc. As Koike’s work is so visual and his performers so athletic, one might wonder how Koike positions his work within this classical Japanese traditions. Largely, he characterizes his work as contemporary. He does say that the physicality might be reminiscent of the precise choreography of nō, but hastens to clarify that such similarities reflect more upon the training and sensibilities of the performers than upon his own primary interests. In conversation he has added that he is more influenced by classical ballet for its light, vertical style. In work in which he creates images around such a theme, Koike is careful not to manipulate his audience to specific necessary conclusions; his aesthetic is much more dialogic. Performer Tanaka Yūko offered one idealized vision of what Pappa TARAHUMARA may expect from its audience in these programme notes for Parade and The Bush of Ghosts for the forty-third Berliner Festwochen (Berlin and Chemnitz), 1993–94: ‘You may see and hear what you have not seen or heard. And as the wind drifts through your mind, you will set sail for the crystal waters of the unknown.’ Artaud demanded that ‘the question, then, for the theatre, is to create a metaphysics of speech, gesture and expression, in order to rescue it from its servitude to psychology and “human interest” ’ (1958, 90). Since 1982, Koike has led an aesthetic journey in quest of such a theatre. Critic Itō once claimed a special place for Pappa TARAHUMARA among Japanese avant-garde theatre as uncharacteristically free of political ideology; uncharacteristically free of even convention. He wrote: ‘It made me sense of whole new range of theatrical possibilities’ (Itō 1993–94). In the description of Pappa TARAHUMARA found in their own documentation, A Visual Feast, the group claims that ‘Pappa TARAHUMARA productions try to liberate themselves from “meaning” leaving members from the audience to control their own imaginations’ (Pappa TARAHUMARA 1992). This open dialogic quality was noted by critic Senda in his review of another Pappa TARAHUMARA piece, ALEJO-to Praise the Wind (1987). Of Koike’s complex aesthetic vision, Senda wrote that ‘in Koike’s work there is no sense of confrontation with the audience that has remained central to the work of the avant-garde theatre. In this production, we seem to witness a vital, happy whirlwind pass before us, and we are free to interpret or explain as we will’ (1997, 273).

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This concern for liberated meaning is tied to a general romantic notion of the ‘universal’, which the company expresses when they write of the group’s primary mission to be ‘the coordination of diverse activities to deliver a universal message’. No particular message is offered, although one might infer their message as being imbedded in their process. Koike described himself as above all a seeker-of-wisdom and finds himself drawn to the theatre because ‘it provides a space into which to pack “present time” ’. This phenomenological revelling in the process of collective creation with a live audience becomes at once a working method, an aesthetic, a philosophy and perhaps a message. As Koike wrote in an email communication to me in 1999: ‘I think there is no big difference among theatre, dance, music and philosophy . . . I understand well the importance of the technic.[sic] It makes the performance strong, but I think no meaning without philosophy and heart.’ A quest for the universal is consistent with other avant-garde theatre artists in Japan. This may in part be due to Japan’s generally homogeneous society; it may also reveal a romantic streak in Japanese contemporary arts. Kitazawa Masakuni suggests as much when he writes: ‘[I]f we restore the performative to society we would regain the collective imaginary. This imaginary, the universal immanent, is realer than real. The universal immanent can be reached only by means of performance’ (1992, 172). Citing the traditions of the Hopi Indians, Kitazawa asserts that ‘[t]he mythical and imaginary world is as real as the so-called real world. It may even be more real . . . the imaginary and the real are not separated but rather are integrated into the symbolic’ (1992, 161). Koike too writes of reformation and rebirth. As noted above, he describes his ‘task’ as ‘to discover the centre of world, to give a form to it and present it as a work of time-art within a medium in space.’ This centre he understands as ‘something which lies at the bottom of a profound, unconscious structure. Something we might be able to call an unstoppable impulse goes backward to an ancient and pre-modern times. I would like to restore this impulse to the present.’ In light of Klens’s (1993) ideas of palimpsests in Japanese performance, one sees in Koike’s vision of anxiety found in Spring Day and Stone Age a confluence of influences and source materials both Japanese in origin and international in character. What these bring to his works is an interrogation of what exactly defines theatre. His ‘dance-theatre’ company exemplifies for contemporary Japanese performance an interdisciplinary aesthetic of style, philosophy and practice that is exploring a unique idiom for presenting performances locally and globally. Koike views Japanese theatre in an international way; he is eclectic with a bricolage

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approach to devising original performance; and he is ‘performing Japan’ in a way that challenges notions of performance practices. REFERENCES Aratud, Antonin. 1958. Theatre and its double. Translated by M. C. Richards. New York: Grove Press. ——. 1976. Selected writings. Edited by Susan Sontag. Translated by Helen Weaver. Berkeley, University of California Press. Clammer, John. 1992. Aesthetics of the self: Shopping and social being in contemporary urban Japan. In Lifestyle Shopping: The subject of Consumption, edited by Rob Shields. London: Routledge. de Certeau, M. 1997. Culture in the plural. Translated by Tom Conley. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Ebara, Yoshihiro. 1991. ‘Review: Stone Age.’ TEATRO (June). Reprinted in Pappa TARAHUMARA: A Visual Feast. Documentation on the company. Itō, Junjō. 1993–94. The Feast of the gods. Programme notes for Parade and The Bush of Ghosts, for the forty-third Berliner Festwochen (Berlin and Chemnitz), 1993–94. Reprinted from Dance Magazine (August), 1992. Kitazawa, Masakuni. 1992. Myth, performance, and politics. The Drama Review 36(3): 160–173. Klens, Deborah S. 1993. Theatrical palimpsests. The Drama Review 37(3): 166– 170. Koike, Hiroshi. 1993–94. Flexible Centre. Programme notes for Parade and The Bush of Ghosts, for the forty-third Berliner Festwochen (Berlin and Chemnitz). Pappa TARAHUMARA. 1992. A Visual Feast. Documentation of the Company. Graphic design by Ujino Muneteru. Tokyo: SAI Inc. English-language publicity pamphlet provided by Pappa TARAHUMARA. Senda, Akihiko. 1997. The voyage of contemporary Japanese theatre (Gendai engeki no kokai). Translated by J. Thomas Rimer. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Uchino, Tadashi. 2006. Mapping/zapping ‘J’ theatre at the moment. Performance Paradigm 2: 132–138.

part ii

place and identity

6

Shakespeare on Show in Japan: An Anthropological Analysis of Cultural Display 1

Joy Hendry

❖ n the town of Maruyama, on the tip of the Bōsō Peninsula, some two and a half hours by train from Tokyo Station, is to be found a complete reproduction of Shakespeare’s birthplace (Plates 11, 12). It was constructed as a venture combining local government funding and donations, with grants from national and prefectural authorities to encourage redevelopment in rural areas, and it leads off from a ‘Rosemarry [sic] Garden’, which was a prior development there. Inside the birthplace, there are representations of material life in the time of Shakespeare’s youth, and as visitors walk through the house, a hostess explains various details of sixteenth-century English life. There is a wool store with a clerk keeping a tally of deliveries. In the pantry it is explained that the lids of the chests can be upturned for kneading dough and carrying it out to the oven in the yard. There is a beautiful bed of the type in which young William might have been born, complete with linen and lace made especially for it in England, and there is a model of Will’s father, working at the trade of making gloves. In the parlour, a model of Will’s wife plays with their children, and, finally, upstairs, where there is a good view of the road to London, a model of the young Bard himself is to be found gazing down that road, his young son Hamnet on his knee. The year is 1587, just before William left to seek his fortune in that city.

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Now, cultural reconstruction of one sort or another is rather common these days, and it can be found in many countries of the world. In Britain, for example, there is a reconstruction of Chaucer’s tales in Canterbury, and at the Jorvik Viking Centre in York may be found a lively depiction of the lives of our Nordic invaders. In the United States, Colonial Williamsburg aims to reconstruct its eighteenth-century life in original and renovated buildings, recently adding slave quarters and a nearby Indian village to complete an earlier view that ignored all but the white settlers. In Thailand, a peaceful park named ‘The Ancient City (Moang Boran)’ has been set aside to display a whole range of the country’s architectural history, some in reconstructions, some in copies, and some as real buildings transported to the park. And there are many more. There is one major difference in the reconstruction of the Shakespearean family home in Japan, however, and this is the factor which brought it to the attention of an anthropologist, rather than just a tourist. Whilst in Britain (and elsewhere) we tend to focus on representations of our own history, and these might be subject to the critical examination of an historian or an archaeologist, Japan has drawn on the whole world in seeking to offer amusement to fill an increasing volume of leisure time. Thus, just as my fellow anthropologists worry about their rights and abilities to represent ‘the other’ people they have chosen to study, my selected people have turned right around and started representing, nay displaying, a culture I had rather regarded as mine. In fact, Japan is rather good at cultural display. At the height of a late twentieth-century boom in the depictions of foreign countries, a Japanese tourist had the choice of a rich abundance of parks where they could experience replicas and reconstructions of buildings, furniture and all manner of other artefacts from a variety of different countries. There was quite often a literary theme, and usually some live performances punctuated a day’s sojourn in the parks. In the northern island of Hokkaidō, for example, they could visit Canadian World, where scenes from the life of Anne of Green Gables nestled in a landscape reminiscent of Prince Edward Island, the home of L. M. Montgomery, her creator. A little to the south, in the Tōhoku region, visitors to Swiss Village were encouraged to climb a green pasture to Heidi’s cottage, and gaze through her bedroom window at a local mountain, said to resemble the Matterhorn. In Parque España, in south central Japan, one could stroll streets designed to evoke the atmosphere of a Spanish city, accompanied by the strains of wandering minstrels, pause to examine a reproduction of Gaudi architecture, and linger over sangria whilst dancers perform.2 A chief landmark of a Russian village, in the north of central Japan, was a beautiful domed church,

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exquisitely decorated inside and out, displaying an attention to detail also physically demonstrated by artists from Moscow who worked on the handpainting of nesting dolls to be sold as souvenirs. In a Dutch park named after the Queen’s palace, Huis ten Bosch, it was possible to pass several days in a luxury hotel, or buy a second home on the canal, with neither a passport nor even a smattering of a strange tongue. The literary themes were several, and the performances that took the stage in the World Bazaar came from the variety of countries that the title would suggest. Some parks combined influences from different countries. One, a definite commercial venture in the fourth main Japanese island of Shikoku, offered an ‘Oriental Trip’ from a curious Occidental perspective, leading the visitor through a Greek village into a bazaar belonging to an unspecified Middle-Eastern location. The path moved on past a representation of a firstcentury Nepalese shrine, in fact a fair, if cleaned-up copy of Swayambu, actually to be found just outside Kathmandu. On up a flag-bedecked hillside, dotted with ‘real’ Himalayan rocks, a steep path led to a reconstructed Bhutanese building, from which could be viewed an extensive copy of a Thai temple. Back down the trail and an appealing Chinese restaurant complex offered a range of delicious refreshments for purchase. Another such park opened into an apparently English neighbourhood, where one could visit ‘Alice’s house’, drink coffee in a Beatles memorabilia double decker bus, and then board a steam engine to ride along a 15 inch gauge miniature railway, copied exactly from one in Kent, England, to arrive in Canada again. The return walk passed through an area of old Japanese houses, where the practise of traditional crafts could be observed, and examples purchased from the artists. This park, known as Rainbow Village, illustrates the idea that cultural tourism may involve not only foreign countries, but Japan’s cultural history too, and there were several other places where houses from particular locations, or particular periods of time, may be examined in detail (see, for example, Creighton 1997; Ehrentraut 1989; 1993; 1995; Ivy 1995; Moon 1997). Most of these places are called tēma pāku, a Japanese-language rendering of ‘theme park’, and possibly for that reason they are spurned by many Japanese academic colleagues, as well as by foreign friends who visit Japan. In English, or anyway British English, a theme park is a place to go with children, a fun-fair with rides and excitement, but not usually much more. Indeed, an adult alone in such a place could well feel out of place, possibly even suspicious. The Japanese parks do sometimes have rides, but they are not essential, and they are often separated from the main cultural areas by a long walk or a boat trip. It is also quite acceptable, and popular, for adults to visit the parks entirely devoid of children.

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In the US, ‘theme parks’ are more likely than in Britain to feature cultural display, and a very obvious influence on the Japanese parks is the Walt Disney phenomenon, for they have all developed since Tokyo Disneyland was installed and became immensely popular and successful. Indeed, the year in which it opened, 1983, has in Japan been dubbed rejā gannen, or ‘the first year of leisure’ (Notoji 1990, 226). Foreign villages in Japan actually share many of the features of Disneyland: an enclosed, sanitized space, where visitors may make a fantasy excursion and enjoy almost all the excitement of travel abroad with none of the fear and inconvenience. Tokyo Disneyland is an impressive attempt to replicate the original Californian version of Disneyland and therefore Walt Disney’s reproduction of the dream of his own American cultural heritage, rather than the foreign countries we have seen here, but most American interpretations of the Japanese parks analyse them firmly in the same postmodern idiom (see, for example, van Maanen 1992). As Eco (1987) pointed out for Disneyland and many other American examples of cultural reproduction, they may be ‘fake’, but they are so superbly successful that they become ‘hyperreal’. In other words they are preferable to reality. Eco’s most impressive example is actually to do with animals, but it is worth recounting for it makes the point so well. In reference to a ride called the Jungle Cruise, where a technique known as audioanimatronics ensures the thrill of encountering wild animals at regular intervals, he writes: Disneyland not only produces illusion, but – in confessing it – stimulates the desire for it: a real crocodile can be found in the zoo, and as a rule it is dozing or hiding, but Disneyland tells us that faked nature corresponds much more to our daydream demands. [On] a trip on the Mississippi, where the captain of the paddle-wheel steamer says it is possible to see alligators on the banks of the river, and then you don’t see any, you risk feeling homesick for Disneyland, where the wild animals don’t have to be hoaxed. Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can. (Eco 1987, 44)

Eco’s favourite rides at Disneyland actually involve simulated human beings, in features such as Pirates of the Caribbean, however, and he speaks of being ‘dumbfounded by their verisimilitude’. Here, according to Eco, Walt Disney ‘finally managed to achieve his own dream and reconstruct a fantasy world more real than reality, breaking down the wall of the second dimension, creating not a movie, which is illusion, but total theatre, and not with anthropomorphized animals, but with human beings’ (Eco 1987, 45). In fact the ‘human beings’ are robots, but Eco feels that human beings could

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do no better and their imitation has reached such a state of perfection that after seeing it, reality will always be inferior. Further fuel to the now rather easy postmodern arguments is to be found in the ‘partially authentic reconstructions of vernacular architecture’ (Urry 1990, 99), the ‘visual spectacle’ (84) and the ‘playfulness’ (100) of replicas and reconstructions of the ‘best bits’ of foreign countries. Where the aim is to reproduce the ‘atmosphere’ (funiki) of a Spanish town, the fictional world of Anne of Green Gables, or the proposed daily life of William Shakespeare, the parks could quite easily be described as ‘simulacra’, in the manner suggested by Baudrillard (1983). According to tourism theorists, while ‘modern’ tourists set out in quest of authenticity and ‘real experiences’, postmodern ones, in recognition of the flimsiness of reality, content themselves in the consumption of ‘signs’ or representations. After all, ‘travels in hyperreality’ are superior to the ‘real thing’. Not only are they easier to visit, but they can also be relied upon to be open, and to be doing what the visitor expects. The creators of the Japanese parks we have mentioned do tend to choose the best they can find in the countries they wish to represent, and in that sense they may offer a more compact and convenient experience than a visit to the ‘real’ place, but there are several reasons why we should look beyond Disneyland to understand them. First, Japanese tourists still travel to foreign countries in good numbers, despite the devaluation of the yen, and, according to unpublished research carried out in England by my masters student Bronwen Surman, they are particularly after ‘real things’ – the ‘real’ Rosetta stone, the ‘real’ Bronte house, the ‘real’ home of Beatrix Potter and the ‘real’ birthplace of William Shakespeare. Second, research on Tokyo Disneyland would suggest that it means something rather different to its Japanese visitors than the original does to its American audience (see, for example, Brannen 1992; Notoji 1990; Raz 1999). When it was being designed, the Walt Disney Company apparently suggested local features, such as Samurai Land or the depiction of a Japanese story, to convert the American dream to a Japanese one – but the new owners were determined to ‘copy’, as faithfully as possible, the original Anaheim Disneyland. ‘We really tried to avoid creating a Japanese version,’ a spokesman proclaimed, ‘We wanted the Japanese visitors to feel they were taking a foreign vacation by coming here, and to us Disneyland represents the best that America has to offer’ (Brannen 1992, 216). Far from being a fake so splendid that it becomes a hyperreal version of the world, or a simulacrum so total that it represents a mere flight of the imagination, Tokyo Disneyland is perceived as a facsimile of a ‘real’ park that may also be visited. It was a model for the foreign villages that

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followed, an early example of a new genre of amusement location in Japan, just as it was in America, and maybe they can all be deemed to epitomize the postmodern condition, but it is interesting and informative to look a little further into this theory by returning to the example with which this chapter opened, a more recent case of Japanese cultural facsimile. The theme here was even more ambitious, namely, as the brochure tells us, ‘the Greatest Playwright of all Time’. The birthplace itself is in fact set in rather spacious grounds, all devoted to explaining and illustrating more about sixteenth-century England. There is, for example, a well-stocked ‘physic garden’ containing a good range of medicinal and culinary herbs, and a notice board offers an explanation of their uses. There is also a neatly trimmed ‘knot garden’, also sporting several life-size sculptures of ancient Romans and Greeks, their presence explained in terms of their influence on Shakespeare, so that, for example, the Tales of Trojan Wars are here related to Troilus and Cressida. There is also a beautiful reconstruction of the house of Will’s mother, Mary Arden, cited as an example of the dwelling of a prosperous rural family of the time. Inside is a café where one can – possibly somewhat anachronistically – taste and purchase herbal teas and spicy ‘cookies’, or buy souvenirs of country dolls and dried flowers. In this park, too, is the only reconstruction in the world of ‘the New Place’, home of the Bard in later life, which actually burnt down in the eighteenth century, and is here reconstructed from documental evidence. Inside, the visitor can meet a talking, moving (audioanimatronic) version of the man sitting at his desk. There are also several alabaster models of scenes from his plays, and glass cases behind them contain explanations of how the works are classified, descriptions of London of the time, and a detailed diagram about the building of the original Globe Theatre, which has now also been reproduced in London as well as Tokyo. There is even an interactive exhibit citing references to flowers mentioned in the plays – by lifting up a little door where the painted flower is shown, underneath may be found references to the same plant in the plays. This Japanese park may be called a ‘theme park’, but its content is rather sophisticated for such a term, though it does compare quite well with the abundance of heritage museums that have also appeared around the world. Colonial Williamsburg, after all, aims to recreate life in eighteenth-century Virginia, many of its buildings original, preserved from some of the modern technologies (though not air-conditioning), or even redesigned to give the impression of life at that time. During tours of the houses, characters in costume speak as if they were living in the eighteenth century, and visitors can participate in a debate in the Capitol, listen to a court hearing

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or witness the triumphal pipes and drums celebrating twice weekly the momentous decision to declare independence from their British governors (see Handler and Gable 1997 for more detail). At Sovereign Hill, in Victoria, Australia, an attempt has been made to recreate life at the time of the gold rush. Visitors may try their hands at panning techniques before being guided through mines now preserved only to illustrate the type of work that used to be carried out down there. There are parks such as these in Europe too. Beamish, in County Durham, England, is a particularly fine example, but the oldest park preserving traditional houses in this way is to be found in Skansen, an island that forms part of Stockholm, where a man by the name of Hazelius ran the gauntlet of considerable scorn and disbelief in the nineteenth century when he first tried to persuade people to put money into such a venture (Hudson 1987). One of the complaints was about moving houses from their original sites in different parts of Sweden for the purpose of preservation and display. Now the park is a prototype for several others in European countries, some of which are even called ‘skansens’ after the initial venture. In Den Gamle By, a particularly charming version at Aarhus in Denmark, for example, one can again hear the story of the founder’s initial rejection by the chairman of the board of the pre-existing local museum who ‘snorted with anger’ when he heard words like ‘reconstruction’ and ‘restoration’ (Bramsen 1971, 14). These parks of heritage are all called museums now, but they still run into problems when the subject of authenticity is raised. From museum purists, they are criticized for attempting to arrest the ravages of time, historians point out that the worlds they create are unreal, sanitized versions of the past (Handler and Saxton, 1989; Macdonald and Fyfe 1996; Pearce 1994). At Den Gamle By, attempts are made to depict disorder as well as beauty, and both here and at Sovereign Hill, they try to represent dirt and death in their displays to help overcome the artificially pleasant aspect. Colonial Williamsburg makes a very clear distinction between itself and the nearby theme park of Busch Gardens, where Big Ben appears at the centre of Banbury Cross, and the Loch Ness monster is a roller coaster. Trustees of the preserved eighteenth-century town claim that many of the houses are on their original sites, but there are problems of authenticity here too. Air conditioning is an obvious example, the built up roads less evident until it is explained that house owners refrained from carpeting the bare boards because of the ubiquitous mud. The parks are still concerned with depicting reality, however, despite the glitches, and comparing Japanese parks of cultural display with these Western examples might justify trying to place them within an apparently global framework of

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‘modernity’, rather than postmodernity, established by studies of tourist behaviour. First, visits to all the manifestations of heritage, whether in theme parks, museums or just quaint parts of town, have been interpreted as expressions of nostalgia, what Graburn has called ‘one of the most powerful of all modern tropes of attraction’ (1995, 166). This would apply in Japan to displays of its own past, but it could be seen as forcing the argument somewhat to include the past of the whole world in Japan’s heritage, despite the adoption of much Western influence. If one postulates, however, that Japan – at least until very recently – regarded itself has having overtaken much of the rest of the world in economic achievement (and therefore again ‘modernization’), the parks might be made to fit Dean MacCannell’s idea that ‘the best indication of the final victory of modernity over other sociocultural arrangements is not the disappearance of the nonmodern world, but its artificial preservation and reconstruction in modern society’ (1989, 8). It is perhaps stretching the imagination a little too far to suggest that Japan regards most of the rest of the world as ‘nonmodern’, but the activities of Japanese domestic tourists might well illustrate his maxim that ‘sightseeing is a ritual performed to the differentiations of society’ (ibid.). Japan’s foreign villages would appear to illustrate par excellence MacCannell’s further elaboration of this idea, originally proposed as a comment on the widespread existence in cities around the world of ‘wildlife and exotic plant collections’ in botanical gardens, and the Egyptian obelisks in London, Paris and New York City, that: Modernization simultaneously separates these things from the peoples and places that made them, breaks up the solidarity of the groups in which they originally figured as cultural elements, and brings people liberated from traditional attachments into the modern world, where, as tourists, they may attempt to discover or reconstruct a cultural heritage or a social identity. (1989, 13)

There are still some crucial differences, however – not least of which being that even controversial museums emphasize that they deal with original buildings and what they think of as real objects. At first sight, Japan may appear to illustrate, even exemplify, many of the principles of modernism, if not postmodernism. Indeed, there are those, such as Miyoshi and Harootunian (1989, x), who have argued that many of the principles – of both – actually originated in Japan. It cannot be denied, however, that linear global theories such as these were developed in a framework of Western social science, and from an anthropological standpoint, the reconstruction of the life of William Shakespeare should also be analysed in the context of a more Japanese interpretation of their parks.

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First, let us examine the local version of authenticity. At the entrance to the park, there is a notice that explains very clearly that the buildings are copies, but these are ‘careful’ copies of original sites in Stratford-uponAvon, where the Shakespeare family lived in the sixteenth century. The materials were brought from England, and they were constructed by English specialists using the techniques of the original buildings. Julian Bicknell, the architect and master planner, confirmed personally to me that no nails had been used, and that the furniture, fixtures and fittings had all been made, by hand, using natural linen, wool and dyes. The design was created in consultation with John Ronayne, also a consultant for the new Globe Theatre in London and a member of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. More importantly, the resulting buildings, according to this notice, appear as Shakespeare saw them, ‘unsullied by the passage of time and the changes of their later occupants’. The idea of the park is to ‘bring to life the world of William Shakespeare’, and his house, at the time he lived in it, was not 300 years old. In other words, this version of the birthplace is, in a Japanese view, more authentic than the real house in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, for it is more like the house of Shakespeare’s experience. Can this be hyperreality? Let us look at some more Japanese examples. It is, of course, a perfectly legitimate Japanese method of historical preservation or conservation to reconstruct ancient buildings, and a famous example is to be found at the sacred Shintō building, the Grand Shrine of Ise. Built of unpainted wood, with a thatched roof, this shrine has been kept new and fresh for some 1300 years by being rebuilt, reportedly along exact ancient lines, every twenty years. Not only is the form and style of architecture preserved through copying, then, but the tools and techniques of construction have been passed down from generation to generation since the seventh century (Guo 1999). Brochures about the shrine point out that attempts elsewhere at that time to achieve eternal continuity for religious temples through construction in stone are now mostly no more than ruins – or, I might add, reconstructions. In a similar manner, Japanese ritual objects, purchased at the New Year and other special occasions, are thought to be effective only throughout that one year, after which they must be burned and replaced. Not only do they lose their protective power, but they become tatty and dog-eared, to put the issue colloquially, and this quality is not really admired. In keeping with this indigenous sentiment, then, the National Museum of Ethnography in Japan, while it might preserve and display ancient objects from Europe and other countries, tends to renew items on display in the section devoted to Japanese ritual practices. In other words, a ‘real’ object,

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ancient and dilapidated, need not be more highly prized for display than a good replica, even in a museum. A precious object of ancient origin is valued, to be sure, but it might be thought preferable to keep it carefully wrapped up than on view in a glass case. This is also a country in which copying is a valued skill, and mimesis, in Taussig’s (1993) sense, with its ability to override sensory/intellectual distinctions, is an excellent analytical notion to understand Zen activities such as martial arts and the tea ceremony, as Cox (2003) has pointed out. The most effective way of learning in these fields is thought to be by faithfully copying the teacher’s every move, and artists and artisans equally learn by reproducing innumerable copies of an example produced by a master or mistress of the art or craft. As many manufacturers around the world have seen to their economic detriment, Japan’s success in copying technology does not preclude subsequent creativity, and it is a stunning way to acquire a skill. Of course, as art historians know, this used to be a perfectly acceptable way to acquire artistic skills in Europe as well, and Japanese anthropologistturned-semiotician, Yamaguchi Masao, has pointed out that Japanese are not necessarily offended when they are accused of ‘aping’ the West (1991, 65). In a paper entitled ‘The Poetics of Exhibition in Japanese Culture’ he offers a second way to examine the too easy application of theories of linear progression to understanding examples of cultural display by introducing some Japanese ideas on the subject. First, he considers the term, ‘mitate’, which he describes as ‘in a sense, the art of citation’, used ‘to extend the image of an object’ and ‘transcend the constraints of time’. A mundane way he chooses to explain this concept in the context of display is to apply it to the use of a toy shop window to stimulate a child’s imagination to seek the goods available inside. In like manner, he goes on to explain that mitate is a technique of using a mundane object to evoke images of mythology or classical reference, so that in a scene from the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, for example, a snow-covered mound in a garden is named after a mountain in China, known to be particularly beautiful after a snowfall (ibid.). Another example he gives is the use of yama, a word meaning mountain, but mountains are the homes of deities and the idea of yama is thus extended to stand for a place for communicating with the gods, or simply expressing the sacred. A small mound of sand may evoke the idea of a mountain, then, as may a rock in a tiny garden. Sometimes these rocks stand for specific mountains that feature in Japanese mythology, as may a pile of cakes created for a ceremonial meal. Things that are fabricated to represent a model of a primordial object are called tsukuri, Yamaguchi goes on, and

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this is a device to associate something in immediate view with things of the distant past. Tsukuri also means ‘to make’, or ‘to fabricate’, and the mitate is always a simulacrum, or a pseudo-object, quite in the way that Baudrillard first used the term, Yamaguchi asserts, ‘not as a fake, but as a positive process’ (ibid.). He suggests that one reason that Japanese people view positively their imitation of Western technology is that in the nineteenth century the Western world was seen as a kind of Utopia presided over by the gods, and they wanted to transplant constituent elements into their own country.3 At the opening of the twenty-first century, few Japanese may retain illusions about the presence of a Utopia, or even many gods, in the West, but it does not prevent them from still selecting elements they admire to fabricate in their own efforts to transcend the constraints of time – and space. In fact, I contend that this kind of activity is not as alien in the homeland of Shakespeare as might at first be suggested by this brief mitate of Japanese cultural relativism. In the nineteenth century, in England too, wealthy aristocrats began to construct Japanese gardens on their estates – perhaps to demonstrate their status and economic resources, but also perhaps because they were beautiful, and stood for a distant country with almost mythological associations itself. Cultural display took off in a big public way in the Europe of the time, in the various expositions that also often included Japanese gardens and villages, and Yamaguchi contrasts the mitate or tsukuri idea of display with the way ‘objects of everyday life became divorced from the contexts to which they originally belonged’ and ‘acquired new levels of significance as emblems of the power of the regime that organized the space of exposition’ (ibid., xx). It is hardly surprising that a Western interpretation of cultural display became associated with nineteenth-century notions of progress, for technological progress is precisely what some of the Expositions, and later Worlds Fairs in America, were displaying. Nations also used the display of peoples they had colonized as a means of justifying their own imperial endeavour, showing simpler examples of daily life to depict themselves at the pinnacle of achievement (Benedict 1983; Greenhalgh 1988; Rydell 1993). Japanese exhibitors gradually came to join the fray by making their own contribution as an empire rather than being placed on a scale of evolutionary development (e.g. Conant 1991; Hotta-Lister 1999), and in the more recent universal exhibitions, Japan now offers some of the biggest and most impressive displays (cf. Harvey 1996). Bearing all this in mind, it would not be unreasonable to compare the careful reconstructions of foreign buildings in Japanese ‘theme parks’ with collections of foreign objects, dare I say trophies, now regarded as national

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treasures in famous establishments such as the British Museum. Like museums, wherever they are found, the parks turn culture into an object, classifying it and materializing it. Both play a role, pointed out by anthropologist Sharon Macdonald, of not just displaying the world, but of structuring a way of seeing and comprehending the world (1998, 7). Museums in the West developed in the wake of exploration and imperialist expansion (cf. Prösler 1996), and the Japanese parks could perhaps be seen as expressing a reversal of Western, ‘Orientalist’ forms of representation, and a re-ordering of the world from an Asian point of view (cf. Carrier 1995). However, recent EXPOs have lost much of their political import. In Lisbon in 1998, for example, the theme was ‘the ocean’, and apart from the exclusion of Indonesia and the privileged siting of the pavilion of East Timor, the serious concerns, around the theme of fun, were much more with making the public aware of environmental threats and displaying Portugal’s historical relationship with the sea. The exhibitions from different countries seemed to be examined by the public with a rather healthy version of curiosity about the world around them, a curiosity that also made them willing to wait four hours to view a pavilion reconstructing the contents of the main oceans of the world and another five to travel virtually to an imaginary city at the bottom of one of those oceans. If we strip away notions of progress and the political implications that have quite rightly consumed those who examine forms of cultural display, we might find ourselves comparing our carefully constructed Japanese parks with a phenomenon of the period of their attention in the Shakespeare park, namely the cabinets of curiosities which are seen as the forerunners of museums. Their owners struggled with classification of their contents, just as we have struggled to classify the Japanese parks, but from a Japanese perspective, I suggest that the Maruyama Shakespeare Park actually provides a better context for its collection of objects than most museums are able to do, even today. In order to appreciate this context properly, we also need to adopt a degree of scepticism about the special value attached to the conservation of ‘real things’, brought back from distant lands by a random collection of travellers, traders, colonial administrators and even scientists, in the wake of their nation’s forays into the acquisition of territory occupied by people with curious cultural artefacts. In the Museum of Man in Japan, rather than the Museum of Mankind now incorporated into the British Museum in London, indigenous people were invited to build new versions of houses typical of areas ranging from Alsace to Alaska, all negotiated with the help of anthropologists.

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Even in Europe, the character of museums is of course changing, and anthropologists at the Museum of Mankind do also negotiate temporary exhibitions with the people concerned. The emphasis on observation and learning largely aimed at an intellectual and social elite, is giving way to ideas of interaction, experience and entertainment, very often designed to popularize the activity, and raise funds through entrance fees. A last visit to the Maruyama Park may inform us in this endeavour too, as well as helping to overcome its too easy classification as frivolous. It is, like other Japanese parks, a commercial venture, and one of their common aims, once they have made the enormous investment in infrastructure, is to find ways of bringing their visitors back again, to make them ripītazu (‘repeaters’), as the word adopted into Japanese from English goes. In an interview with a representative of the park, I learned that the ‘harudo’ (or hardware) of the construction of these novel parks must be complemented by ‘sofuto’ (changing entertainment), and they offer events, such as poetry readings, maypole dances and theatre workshops, as well as a festival of plays every April to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday. The Shakespeare park itself was designed to extend the success of the Rosemarry Garden, which my informant explained brings people back because it appeals to all five senses, with the ‘back music’ they provide to complete the experience. The aromas of the physic garden provide such completion in the Shakespeare Park. He made another interesting point about developing a successful park, and that is that it must appeal to ‘the Japanese heart’ – it must build on and elevate the visitor’s knowledge so that they will go away feeling satisfied. The word he used, takameru, may also refer to ‘elation’ of the spirits, ‘elevation of ideals’ and ‘ennobling character’. The park must make a deep impression, he said, and then they will come back. Little mention was made of education, but then in a Japanese study of theme parks, Itō Masami argues that education in a Japanese sense must be kept hidden if a theme park is to convert visitors into ‘repeaters’ (1994, 60). Education or no education, ‘elation of the spirit’, ‘elevation of ideals’ and ‘ennobling character’ sound pretty good aims for a museum too, whether one’s heart is Japanese or not. Itō Masami actually discusses the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, as the earliest collection opened to the public, in his attempts to trace the development of contemporary theme parks in Japan, and comments on the way that the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka introduced both the ideas of replicas and amusement under the leadership of its first director, Umesao Tadao. In fact one witty writer he cites described it as an ‘amuseum’ (ibid.). Itō also cites the influence of

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European amusement parks such as the Vauxhall Gardens in London and the Tivoli gardens in Copenhagen on the general development of theme parks, including Disneyland (ibid.). In fact, General Pitt Rivers, founder of the museum of that name in Oxford, also built his first ethnographic museum within pleasure gardens at Farnham, where they apparently included a small Indian house, in order to encourage visitors to come and see his collection as part of a day out. The Horniman Museum in London is set in its own pleasure gardens, complete with bandstand, and it comprises a collection of objects acquired from around the world by the philanthropical tea merchant, Frederick John Horniman, who donated it to the people of London for their recreation, instruction and entertainment. Another characteristic of the postmodern, according to John Urry (1990, 130), is the way ‘living’ and ‘open air’ museums allow an element of fun and sound rather than ‘hushed silence’ and ‘standing in awe’ of glass cases. This feature would take postmodernism back to the nineteenth century if we consider the way Horniman and Pitt-Rivers sought to provoke curiosity in the artifacts of other cultures through pleasure parks, but another of Urry’s postmodern features, this time the ‘curious mixing of museum and theatre’ (1990, 132) in the Jorvik Centre and the Canterbury Tales, could bring us back to the sixteenth century, via twentieth-century Japan, if we concede that the Maruyama Shakespeare park might be considered a form of museum. Museums had yet to be invented in the time of Shakespeare, though this is precisely when the cabinets of curiosity began to appear, but the theatre was certainly a place where people went for pleasure and a day out, and it was here that they were presented with depictions of the people of other cultures, both spatially and back in time. As in kabuki theatre of Japan, it was on stage that comments on contemporary life were disguised in the presentations of classical heroes, and the audiences were likewise noisy and cheerful. Yamaguchi uses kabuki theatre as another example to illustrate the meaning of the term mitate as a means to evoke images of mythology or classical reference, but he notes too that theatres in the Renaissance were built in terms of Neoplatonic systems of thought, designed to reflect the system of the universe. This feature of Shakespearean times is illustrated in the theatre in the Maruyama park, which also demonstrates that they were sites of classical reference. If simulacra of other times and cultures is postmodern, then so clearly was the Renaissance, which can also boast elements cited above of ‘partially authentic reconstructions of vernacular architecture’, the ‘visual spectacle’ and ‘playfulness’ in the way the classical world was replicated. They were

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‘modern’ too, if we follow MacCannell’s idea that ‘the final victory of modernity over other sociocultural arrangements is not the disappearance of the nonmodern world, but its artificial preservation and reconstruction’ (1989, 13). Our Bard, real or mythological, may even have approved of the anachronistic glitches at Maruyama, for in Act 2 of Julius Caesar, for example, he scripts in the chiming of a clock which would hardly have been available to a Roman emperor, but which could be heard at precisely that time from the Globe theatre in London. He probably would not have cared either about the unusual spelling of Rosemarry. Examining these ‘amusing’ parks in the context of wider Japanese ideas and values show them to be a much more culturally anchored phenomenon than the global version of postmodern analysis would suggest. Seeing them in this somewhat unorthodox historical perspective suggests that their combination of cultural forms might even have rather appealed to the Renaissance audiences of William Shakespeare himself. NOTES 1 This chapter is a revised version of an inaugural professorial lecture given at Oxford Brookes University, and subsequently at Mary Washington College in Virginia, USA. Much of the material has been developed in more detail in Hendry (2000). 2 Some of the parks are still open to visit, but others succumbed to the economic recession and closed down. For consistency and to avoid putting out false information, I will refer to them all in the past tense referring to the time in the late 1990s when I did the research for this chapter. 3 A single example that illustrates the depth of difference in understandings of the world at the time was recounted by Fukuzawa Yūkichi, one of the first Japanese to travel to and interpret the West in Japan, when he found that the beautiful soft material that had been imported to make small purses in Japan was not only spread over whole floors in America (as carpet), but walked upon by people wearing footwear – in Japan left at the door to keep the inside of a house free from the dirt of the outside world. REFERENCES Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulacra and simulations. Translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitcheman. New York: Semiotext. Benedict, Burton. 1983. The anthropology of world fairs. London & Berkeley: The Lowie Museum of Anthropology & Scolar Press. Bramsen, Bo. 1971. The old town in Århus. Århus: Århus Oliefabrik.

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Brannen, Mary Yoko. 1992. ‘Bwana Mickey’: Constructing cultural consumption at Tokyo Disneyland. In Remade in Japan, edited by Joseph Tobin. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Carrier, James G., ed. 1995. Occidentalism: Images of the West. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Conant, Ellen P. 1991. Refractions of the Rising Sun: Japan’s participation in International Exhibitions 1862–1910. In Japan and Britain: An aesthetic dialogue 1850–1930, edited by Tomoko Sato and Toshio Watanabe. London: Barbican Art Gallery. Cox, Rupert. 2003. Zen arts in Japan. London: Routledge. Creighton, Millie. 1997. Consuming rural Japan: The marketing of tradition and nostalgia in the Japanese travel industry. Ethnology 36 (3): 239–254. Eco, Umberto. 1987. Travels in hyperreality. London: Picador. Ehrentraut, Adolf. 1989. The visual definition of heritage: The restoration of domestic ritual architecture in Japan. Visual Anthropology 2: 135–161. ——. 1993. Heritage authenticity and domestic tourism in Japan. Annals of Tourism Research 20: 262–278. ——. 1995 Cultural nationalism, corporate interests and the production of architectural heritage in Japan. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie et d’anthropologie 32(2): 215–242. Graburn, Nelson. 1995. Tourism, modernity and nostalgia. In The future of anthropology and its relevance to the contemporary world, edited by Akbar Ahmed and Cris Shore. London: Athlone Press. Greenhalgh, Paul. 1988. Ephemeral vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Expositions and World Fairs, 1851–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Guo, Qinghua. 1999. Architectural conservation in Japan: Authenticity and unity. Japan Foundation Newsletter 26(5–6): 15–17. Handler, Richard and W. Saxton. 1989. Dyssimulation, reflexivity, narrative and the quest for authenticity in ‘living history.’ Cultural Anthropology 3(3): 242–260. Handler, Richard and Eric Gable. 1997. The new history in an old museum: Creating the past at Colonial Williamsburg. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Harvey, Penelope. 1996. Hybrids of modernity: Anthropology, the nation state and the Universal Exhibition. London and New York: Routledge. Hendry, Joy. 2000. The Orient strikes back: Cultural display in a global perspective. Oxford: Berg. Horne, Donald. 1984. The great museum. London: Pluto Press. Hotta-Lister, Ayako. 1999. The Japan/British Exhibition of 1910: ‘Gateway to the Island Empire of the East.’ Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library.

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Hudson, Kenneth. 1987. Museums of Influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Itō Masami. 1994. Hito ga atsumaru tēma pāku no himitsu. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha. Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. Discourses of the vanishing: Modernity, phantasm Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MacCannell, Dean. 1989. The tourist. New York: Schocken Books. Macdonald, Sharon. 1998. The politics of display. London: Routledge. Macdonald, Sharon and Gordon Fyfe, eds. 1996. Theorizing museums: Representing identity and diversity in a changing world. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review. Miyoshi Masao and H. D. Harootunian, eds. 1989. Postmodernism and Japan. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Moon, Okpyo. 1997. Tourism and cultural development: Japanese and Korean contexts. In Tourism and cultural development in Asia and Oceania, edited by Shinji Yamashita, Kadin H. Din and J. S. Eades. Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia. Notoji, Masako. 1990. Dizuniirando to iu seichi (The Sacred Place called Disneyland). Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho. Pearce, Susan, ed. 1994. Museums and the appropriation of culture. London: The Athlone Press. Prösler, Martin. 1996. Museums and globalization. In Theorizing museums: Representing identity and diversity in a changing world, edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review. Raz, Aviad. 1999. Riding the black ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Asia Centre and Harvard University Press. Rydell, Robert. 1993. World of fairs. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Stanley, Nick and Siu King Chung. 1995. Representing the past as the future: The Shenzhen Chinese Folk Culture Villages and the marketing of Chinese identity. Journal of Museum Ethnography, 7: 25–40. Taussig, Michael T. 1993. Mimesis and alterity. London: Routledge. Urry, John. 1990. The tourist gaze. Sage: London. van Maanen, John. 1992. Displacing Disney: Some notes on the flow of culture. Qualitative Sociology 15(1): 5–35. Yamaguchi, Masao. 1991. The poetics of exhibition in Japanese culture. In Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Levine. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

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