ISSN 2029-2074

FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ – THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC

Sepp Linhart Head of Department for East Asian Studies, University of Vienna (Austria)

Keywords: image of Japan in the West, geisha image, Russo - Japanese War, Pacific War, Tin Pan Alley songs, German pop music. Pagrindinės sąvokos: Japonijos įvaizdis Vakaruose, geišos įvaizdis, Rusijos ir Japonijos karas, Tin Pan Alley dainos, vokiečių populiarioji muzika.

Introduction

This paper puts forward the hypothesis that especially since the begin- ning of the twentieth century our image of Japan has been heavily influ- enced by Western popular music with Japan themes. The overwhelming importance of popular music became evident especially since the spread of the gramophone and the talkie or sound film. Since the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present time popular music always ap- peared together with visual images, so that the influence is not restricted to what we are hearing over and over again, but is reinforced through pictures. In spite of this tremendous impact on our perception the impor- tance of popular music for the formation of our image of Japan during the last more than hundred years has hardly ever become the object of serious research with the exception of some outstanding works such as the opera Madama Butterfly. 14 SEPP LINHART

The Development of Light Western Music with Japanese Themes

The first traces of Japanese motives in Western music go back as far as the 17th century. Called Japanesenspiele in German, the Jesuits produced a number of plays about the Christian martyrs of Japan. They contained some songs about Japan, in which only little exoticism can be found. After the opening of Japan by the US, some Westerners, who came to Yokohama or Nagasaki, remembered simple Japanese songs, but this did not have any impact on Western music. During the Meiji period, though, some Western music specialists worked as oyatoi gaikokujin in Japan and began to com- pose music about Japan. One example is the Austrian Rudolf Dittrich, who from 1888 to 1894 was employed as director of the Tokyo Music Academy. After his wife’s death, Dittrich stayed together with a geisha and probably was taught several Japanese songs by her. His Japanese compositions inclu- de Tayori (choir), Tekona (march), Yoi (march), Nippon Gakufu (6 Japanese folksongs), Nippon Gakufu 2 (10 Japanese folksongs), Rakubai (Japanese song), Two Old Classic Chinese Dance Melodies: Konju raku and Butoku raku, i. e. gagaku pieces, as well as a Hymn on the Declaration of the Consti- tution (Suchy 1990, p. 119), since this event took place when Dittrich stayed in Japan. Although his Japanese folksongs were arranged in Western style for piano and published in Europe, I doubt whether they had much influ- ence on the Western image of Japan. The first Western musical piece which left a profound impact was with- out any doubt the British opera The Mikado or The Town of Titipu (1885) by the composer Arthur Sullivan and the librettist W. S. Gilbert, a satire on British politics and society in a Japanese custom. Although the satire was hardly understood in non-English-speaking countries this opera became a world success, and is frequently performed until today. One of the songs in this opera, ‘Miyasama’, is a genuine Japanese song, namely ‘Tokoton yare’, a titillating soldiers’ song composed in the early years of the Meiji period by Ōmura Yasujirō with words by Shinagawa Yajirō (Bradley 2003: 618). All the other music in The Mikado is not about Japan. Similar remarks can be made about the operetta The Geisha. A Story of a Teahouse (1896) by Sydney Jones, Owen Hall, and Harry Greenbank which was at least as suc- cessful as The Mikado. Apart from the title person and the song ‘Chon Kina’, a genuine Japanese song from a rather infamous milieu (Linhart 1992), this operetta which has been called the first British musical, does not tell us FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 15

much about Japan. But together with Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly (1904) these three musical stage works created the basis for a huge number of ‘pop’ songs about Japan. Madama Butterfly became the most often performed opera in the US until today, and it was made into a silent movie as early as 1915 and into many sound films afterwards. Given these facts, we can include this opera into popular culture, even though it is of course a part of high culture, too. When Puccini wrote his opera, he was among others influenced by the dancer and actress Sada Yacco, who toured Europe and Northern America in company with her husband Kawakami Otojirō between 1899 and 1902 with an enormous success (Pantzer 2005). Another successful Japanese ac- tress was Hanako, who performed in Europe and Northern America be- tween 1901 and 1922, for more than twenty years (Lee 1981; Sawada 1984). Besides many Japanese troupes of vaudeville and other artists also toured the West, but are today completely forgotten. They all contributed to create an image of Japan that was to be reflected in the many popular songs about Japan which appeared in the first half of the twentieth century. The two musical stage works The Geisha, and Madama Butterfly, and the two Japanese performers Sada Yacco and Hanako, geishas by profes- sion before they started their careers in Europe and the US, were highly instrumental in creating the popular image of the Japanese woman as being a geisha. Being a geisha meant to be a beautiful, sensuous Asian woman wearing a kimono, whose main purpose in life consisted in serving a man in any possible way, a woman who never became a danger or a challenge for a man, a woman who was born to endure everything a man could do her wrong without ever complaining about her fate.

Western songs about Japan 1900-1944

At the beginning of the twentieth century, music was still mainly live music as it had been all the time since men started to sing. Live musicians performed songs in cafés and restaurants, in film theatres and on street corners, and people arranged private meetings to make music at home. In order to enable people to perform music themselves that they had heard on any of these occasions, publishers offered the professional and the amateur musicians alike sheet music, as soon as it had become a fashion that com- posers wrote single songs. Oriental songs, songs that treat oriental themes, 16 SEPP LINHART

are an important subcategory of the so called Tin Pan Alley songs1, the American pop music of the first half of the twentieth century, and Japanese songs make up one important subcategory of the Oriental songs2. Sheet music usually consisted of four to six pages. The first page was an eye-catcher through which consumers were to be persuaded to buy this musical piece. Therefore many talented designers were active in this busi- ness and created beautiful and sometimes innovative title pages. The mu- sic was usually for voice and piano. For professionals the songs were also published as arrangements for so called saloon orchestras, small groups of musicians, as they often performed in restaurants and similar places. I tried to find as many popular songs with Japan themes from 1900 to 1944 as possible and ended up with 130 songs from Northern America and European countries in my collection on which the following analysis is based. It has to be said, that there existed already a lively exchange of popu- lar music between the continents at this time, and songs which turned out to be successful were exported from the US to Europe and also the other way round. Most of the songs in my corpus are American songs, while a minority is from Germany and Austria, and only very few from other countries. The first conspicuous phenomenon is that there appeared quite a num- ber of songs which supported the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War, songs with titles such as ‘The Jap behind the gun’ (1904), a march and two step by A. E. Wade, ‘The little brown man of Japan’ (1904) by William H. Penn and Georg Totten Smith, ‘The little Jap’ (1904), a characteristic two step by Percy Wenrich, ‘Little Fighting Soldier Man’ (1905) by Lilian Coffin or (Prince Fushimi’s song) ‘A soldier of old Japan’ (1905) by Richard C. Dill- more. All these songs are anti-Russian and pro-Japanese, as if they were made for the Japanese immigrants who concentrated on the West coast, but they were all published on the East coast. After the Russo-Japanese War this positive attitude towards Japan con- tinued in the popular songs, even though around 1906 and 1907 there were rumours that Japan and the US were going to war because of their conflict

1 Tin Pan Alley was an expression for a district in a city in which the music publishers were concentrated. In New York City, this was on West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. Tin Pan Alley songs were published as sheet music at least until the 1930s, or according to other opinions until the 1950s. 2 An interesting overview of Oriental Tin Pan Alley songs can be found in the January 2003 issue of Parlor Songs on the website: http://www.parlorsongs.com/issues/2003-1/thismonth/feature. php. FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 17

of interest in East Asia. The other problem which the Japanese constituted for the Americans was that of the overambitious and over-diligent Japanese immigrants to the West coast, and I found one song, ‘Look out California beware!’ (1916) by Edith Malda Lessing3 which is as racist as one can think of. But generally, such songs are the exceptions to the rule. As soon as the Russo-Japanese War was over, the Japan song scene was dominated by ‘gei- sha songs’, sheet music with a beautiful fantasy geisha on the tile page as an eye-catcher. The contents of these geisha songs by and large correspond to the geisha image of Japan, as we have seen above. Since there are so many of these songs, I introduce only two examples:

Example 1: ‘Lotus San’ (1908), music by Dolly Jardon and lyrics by Edward Madden

Far in old Japan/ lived sweet Lotus San/ eyes a-shining,/ heart a-pining/ for a soldier man. From across the sea/ handsome as could be/ came a-suing/ gently wooing,/ bold American. And when she’d serve him tea,/ beneath the cherry tree,/ her laugh would ring/ whene’er he’d sing/ so tenderly.

/Chorus:/ Sweet little Geisha maid,/ Why are you so afraid?/ Tell me what magic lies/ hidden in your almond eyes? Don’t hide behind your fan/ Sweet maid of old Japan./ Time is flying,/ love is sighing,/ pretty little Lotus San. This song is a love song about a Japanese girl and an American soldier. What is interesting for the geisha image are the attributes assigned to the Japanese girl by the name of Lotus San. She is called a geisha maid, is sweet, is pretty, has shining eyes, has a magic in her almond eyes, is laughing ten- derly, is hiding behind her fan, serves him tea. This is a stereotypical ideal- ized image of young Japanese women which can be found in many similar songs.

Example 2: ‘When It’s Moonlight In Tokio’ (1917), music by Charles P. Shisler & Billy James, lyrics by Bobby Heath Dear old Japan I hear you calling me,/ Tho’ I am far away;/ I dream of you and think about you, too,/ Thru all the night and day. I have spent my time in many lands,/ I’ve seen beauty ev’rywhere,/ But Tokio, when bathed in moonlight’s glow,/ Is beauty sweet and rare.

3 Published in the American Magazine Section of the Chicago Examiner, Sunday, July 23, 1916. 18 SEPP LINHART

/Chorus:/ When it’s moonlight in Tokio,/ ‘Mid the flowers,/ When the lanterns are burning low,/ Happy hours!/ Ev’ry girlie in old Japan/ Finds she’s loving some Jappy man,/ Sings while holding his little hand:/ “Hully up, hully up, I’m waiting.”/ Down thru Japanese Lovers’ Lane/ They are strolling,/ Each boy humming the same refrain:/ “My Butterfly, I love but you,/ Tell me you love me true,”/ When it’s moonlight in Tokio! In contrast to example 1, ‘When it’s moonlight in Tokio’ is more about the atmosphere in the ‘paradise’ Japan. Here Japan itself is sweet, especially in the moonlight. Moonlight, flowers, and lanterns are the attributes of Ja- pan, which is sweet, rare, and far away. Because it is far away, it has to be exotic, and the Japanese girls who are likened to butterflies speak funny English and pronounce ‘r’s like ‘l’s. We can even say that in this song Japan itself as a country becomes a kind of ‘geisha’. Songs like the two mentioned ones abound, but there are also other songs, which treat Japan with sympathy but without exaggerated exoticism, like ‘The Japanese sandman’ (1920), before the war the most famous song about Japan. It became immediately a jazz standard tune and was part of the repertory of Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Django Reinhardt among others. I tried to put all the 130 songs about Japan published between 1900 and 1944 into the three categories ‘love songs’, ‘military songs’ and ‘other songs’ and grouped them into 5-years-groups. The results are hardly surprising:

Table 1: Western* songs about Japan, 1900 to 1944

Period Love songs Military songs Others Sum 1900-04 17 4 6 27 1905-09 8 4 4 16 1910-14 4 1 3 8 1915-19 26 2 3 31 1920-24 10 0 13 23 1925-29 7 0 5 12 1930-34 2 2 0 4 1935-39 0 0 2 2 1940-44 0 6 1 7 Sum 74 19 37 130 * These songs were published in the US, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Australia, Argentina and Peru. 80% are from the United States, though. FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 19

57 % of all songs were love songs, but 14 % were military songs. Most of the ‘love songs’ are ‘geisha songs’, songs in which the word ‘geisha’ is mentioned explicitly or which are songs about a young beautiful Japanese woman that a Westerner would call a ‘geisha’. One important clue to decide whether a song is a ‘geisha song’ or not, is the picture on the cover page of the sheet music. I therefore also made an analysis of the covers of the 130 songs in my corpus, the results of which are given in table 2. Again, the results are not surprising. 52 % of all cov- ers show a woman which in the West would most likely be called a ‘geisha’. The other codes assigned to Japan are also not astonishing at all with the exception of the poppy. It seems that today Japan is no longer associated with poppy flowers, but eighty or ninety years ago it obviously was. It might be that the memory of the opium wars that took place in the Far East was instrumental in creating this false impression of Japan being a county of poppy flowers. Perhaps we should also have a look on names in these songs. Tokio or Tokyo is mentioned seven times, and Yokohama four times, while no other place names appear. Tokyo and Yokohama in the first half of the 20th century were obviously the most famous cities of Japan for the West. The variety of women’s names is much greater. Put into alphabetical order they are: Chu-Chu-San (published in 1919), Fu-Ji (1919), Hanako (1909), Kakuda (1914), Karama (1904), Li-Ho-San (1919), Lotus-san (1908), Mi-Mo-San (1915), Mi-Mo-San (1925), Mi Mo San (1917), Miss Suzuki (1920), San Yan (1919), Suki San (1917), Ti-O-San (1920), Whoa San (1903), Yo-san (1903), Yo San (1904), Yo-San (1919), and Yuschi (1920).

Table 2: The most frequent visual codes for Japan on Western sheet music covers, 1900-44 (130 songs)

Percentage Frequency and Code More than 50% (67) ‘geisha’ More than 15% (24) lantern, lampion, (22) fan, (20) Mt. Fuji, (19) water More than 10% (16) cherry blossoms, (14) temple, (13) pine trees, (13) Hinomaru flag or sun More than 5% (11) Jap. umbrella, (9) torii, (8) round bridge, (8) chrysanthemum, (8) poppy, (8) man, (7) woman, (7) iris, (7) building, (7) tea tableware More than 3% (6) soldier, (6) gun, (6) lotus flower, (6) flower vase, (6) moon, (5) sail- ing boat, (4) children, (4) samurai, (4) crane 20 SEPP LINHART

Some of these names sound more Chinese than Japanese, and some do not conform with Japanese phonemics, but this is the freedom typical for popular music, which does not have to be authentic, neither in its symbols nor in the facts. The military songs flourished from 1900 to 1909, or more exactly be- tween 1904 and 1905 at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, and again dur- ing the Pacific War from 1941 to 1944. The songs from the Pacific War were of course totally different from the mentioned Russo-Japanese War songs. In contrast to Japanese war songs which stressed the purity of the Japanese soldiers, American war songs condemned the ugly enemy. Put into images, Japan, the ‘lovely geisha’, after the Pearl Harbor attack was immediately re- placed by Japan, the yellow peril. On the covers of the war time sheet music, the Japanese enemy was drawn as a little ugly yellow man, and the song titles are most revealing: ‘Get your gun and come along, we’re fixin’ to kill a skunk’ (1941); ‘Good-bye Mama, I’m Off To Yokohama’ (1941); ‘There’ll be a little smokio In Tokio’ (1941); ‘You’re a sap, mister Jap’ (1941); ‘We’re gonna have to slap the dirty little Jap and Uncle Sam’s the guy who can do it’ (1941), ‘Bomb Tokyo!’ (1942), ‘Cowards over Pearl Harbor’ (1942), ‘‘Here I go to Tokio’, said Barnacle Bill, the sailor’ (1942), ‘It’s a K.O. for Tokyo’ (1942), ‘It’s taps for the Japs’ (1942), ‘The cranky old Yank in a clanky old tank’ (1942), ‘We’ve got to do a job on the Japs, baby’ (1942), ‘Johnny Zero’ (1943), ‘The rising sun has gone down for all time’ (1945)4. Other titles of songs for which I do not have more information, are ‘Let’s take a rap at the Japs’, ‘Oh, you little son of an Oriental’, ‘When those little yellow bellies meet the Cohens and the Kellys’, and ‘We’re going to find a fellow who is yellow and beat him red, white and blue’, and ‘The Japs haven’t got a China- man’s chance’, which was renamed ‘The Japs haven’t got a ghost of a chance’ (American Attitudes 2008), because the expression ‘Chinaman’s chance’ was no longer politically correct towards the ally China. While these American songs are full of hatred and contempt for the Japanese who in the songs were compared to monkeys, rats, snakes, skunks and other animals, one might expect that in Germany during the Second World War songs which carried a positive image of Japan would appear, since Germany and Japan were allies, but I did not come across a single German song about Japan published during the war. The last German songs with a Japan theme were ‘Sonne über Japan’ (Sun above Japan) and ‘Kleiner

4 Many of these songs can be heard on the website American Attitudes 2008. FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 21

japanischer Schmetterling’ (Little Japanese butterfly), both from 1934. It might be that the Japanese embassy in Berlin intervened against ‘geisha’ songs, and that songs about the Japanese soldiers’ bravery were equally not welcomed by the German authorities for whom the German soldier had to be the bravest in the world.

Songs about Japan in Germany and Austria after 1945

During the first years after World War II, there were no songs about Japan, neither in the US nor in Europe. The fascination of Japan had dis- appeared, both as a country of lovely ‘geishas’ and as a country of brave warriors. Although the US started already in 1947 to build up Japan as a capitalist stronghold against communist China, the hatred against Japan in American heads was too outspoken to allow light music to be composed about Japan as before the war. In Germany, fear of contact with the former ally Japan was dominant. A positive attitude towards Japan might have been mistaken as a sign of Nazism. After the American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, Japan gradu- ally became a full member of international society again. In October 1956 the Soviet Union and Japan issued a joint declaration about the restoration of relations, and in December 1956 Japan became a member of the United Nations. At the time of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo 1964, Japan had re- gained its former status as one of the world’s leading nations. This renewed status was an important precondition for the Western popular culture’s new concern with Japan. In this chapter I will concentrate on Japan in the popular music of Ger- many and Austria, because after the mentioned interruption of the treat- ment of Japan themes in Western popular culture following the Pacific War there appeared so much on Japan in almost every Western country that an analysis of the whole ‘West’ became impossible. On the other hand, Ger- man popular culture is much easier for me to analyse because I grew up in this milieu and under the influence of it. The one work which broke the ice between Japan and the West in West- ern popular culture was the filmSayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando and Miiko Taka as American-Japanese lovers fighting against a world of prej- udices and misunderstanding. This successful movie which was awarded several Golden Globes contained also a song with the same title, composed 22 SEPP LINHART

by the famous Irving Berlin and sung by the Japanese female jazz singer Nancy/Miyoshi Umeki5, the first Oriental to receive a Golden Globe. The song with the lyrics ‘Sayonara,/ Japanese goodbye,/ whisper sayonara,/ but you must not cry!’ became a great success like the film. But there existed al- ready another ‘Sayonara’-song from 1955, which starts with the lyrics, ‘The time has come for us to say Sayonara./ My heart will always be yours for eternity’. This song was composed by Hasegawa and Yoshida6, while the lyrics are by Freddy Morgan. In Germany this song proved to be a much greater success than the Irving Berlin song, and this might have to do with its performance. It was produced in 1957, probably after the successful film, with a German translation spoken by the British Chris Howland over the English original song. Whereas today, with a majority of German songs produced in English, this record sounds really funny, for the audience in 1957, which was still mainly used to hear German songs, this half English, half German version of ‘Sayonara’ was much more welcomed than a song in English only and became a great hit. ‘Sayonara’ is not a straightforward ‘gei- sha’ song, but it conveys the bitter-sweet atmosphere of a love affair between a Westerner and a Japanese woman which cannot last for long. Another song which paved the way for more songs with a Japanese theme was sung by Austrian sports’ superhero Toni Sailer, the winner of 7 alpine skiing gold medals in the 1956 Winter Olympics and the 1958 world championships. Toni Sailer, who after his successes in sports entered a sec- ond career as singer and movie actor, enjoyed a special popularity in Japan and even acted in the Japanese ski filmGinrei no ōja (The King of the Silver Mountains) in 1960. One of his German songs ‘Am Fudschijama blüht kein Edelweiss’ (No Edelweiss is blossoming on the Fujiyama) is about Japan, and it is again a ‘geisha’ song. The singer pretends that he left Japan, even though a beautiful ‘geisha’ asked him to stay. It is quite clear that ‘geisha’ in this song’s context means only a beautiful Japanese woman, and not a real geisha. With Toni Sailer’s song all of a sudden the ‘geisha’ songs returned to German popular music after a twenty-five years’ long absence. Table 3 gives an (incomplete) overview of the Japan songs which appeared in Germany between 1960 and 1975 and it shows clearly that the Tokyo

5 Some people say that this song was sung by Miiko Taka in the film. 6 It is often stated that the music is by Hasegawa Yoshida, but since both names are family names rather than first names I suppose it was done by two people jointly. I could not yet find out, though, who Hasegawa and Yoshida are, whether they are Japanese or Japanese Americans. FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 23

Olympics were instrumental in bringing forward a small Japan boom in Germany’s popular music. Immediately after World War II, German popular music was dominated by songs about Italy. This boom changed into a boom of songs about Hawaii and the South Seas, and in the six- ties into a comparatively small Japan boom. The most conspicuous year in this respect was 1963, the year before the Olympic Games in Tokyo. The factors which were mainly connected with this boom apart from the Olympics, were the appearance of two very successful songs about Japan, ‘Mitsou’ and ‘Sukiyaki’, as well as the activities of a Japanese singer duo, The Peanuts, in Germany. ‘Mitsou’ appeared in the top 20 hits of the German charts in July 1963 and kept this position until December for half a year (Tolksdorf). Sung by the young French singer Jaqueline Boyer who had won the Eurovision’s Grand Prix in 1960, ‘Mitsou’ is a song full of stereotypes about Japan and an

Table 3. German songs with a Japan theme 1960 to 1975

Year Song title Artist 1960 Am Fudschijama blüht kein Edelweiss (No Edel- Toni Sailer weiss is blossoming on the Fujiyama) 1962 Geisha Twist Yvonne Carré 1963 Mitsou Jaqueline Boyer, Arite Mann 1963 Kimono aus Tokio (Kimono from Tokyo) Arite Mann 1963 Sukiyaki Blue Diamonds, Yvonne Carré 1963 Yokohama Baby Thomas Fritsch 1964 Tokio-Geisha Blue Diamonds 1964 Souvenirs aus Tokio (Souvenirs from Tokyo) The Peanuts 1964 Happy Yokohama The Peanuts 1965 Nagasaki-Boy The Peanuts 1965 Butterfly Jaqueline Boyer 1967 Bye, Bye Yokohama The Peanuts 1967 Fudschijama Moon The Peanuts 1968 Der Mond vom Fudschijama (Fujiyama Moon) Jaqueline Boyer 1972 Osaka Jürgen Drews 1973 Ich komm’ wieder kleine Geisha (I‘ll come again, Jean Claude little geisha) 1975 Sayonara Butterfly Ingolf Janson 24 SEPP LINHART

example par excellence for a ‘geisha’ song, although it does not contain the word ‘geisha’. The lyrics of the song are very simple: Es war am Fudschijama, im Kirschenparadies [It was near the Fujiyama in the cherry paradise],/ Er war aus Yokohama und fand sie einfach süß [He was from Yokohama and thought her to be sweet!]!/ Mitsou; Mitsou, Mitsou! Mein ganzes Glück bist du [Mitsou, Mitsou, Mitsou, you are all my happiness]!/ Den Kimono trägt keine so schick wie du alleine [No woman wears the kimono as elegantly as you do]!/ Mitsou, Mitsou, Mitsou! Was sagst denn du dazu [Mitsou, Mitsou, Mitsou, What do you say]?/ Ich weiß was für uns beide, das wär so schön, Mitsou [I know something for the both of us that would be wonderful, Mitsou!]/ Heute abend ist Laternenfest [Tonight there is the lantern festival], wo sich manches gut bereden lässt! [A good opportunity for talking things over]/ Wenn der Mond scheint in der Lotoszeit [When the moon is shining at the lotus time], ist die Liebe nicht mehr weit [love is not far away]! The lyrics of this song contain 45 nouns, 21 times the name Mitsou, and 11 Japan specific words like the proper names Fujiyama, and Yokohama, as well as cherry blossom time, cherry paradise, kimono, lampion, lantern, lantern festival, lotus time and silk. Compared to these 32 ‘Japan nouns’, the song contains only 13 ‘neutral nouns’. The song was so successful in the Federal Republic of Germany that the German Democratic Republic recorded its own slightly different version sung by Arite Mann. One remarkable feature of this hit song is its title. As we have seen it was very common with American songs to give them a woman’s (fantasy) name as their title, but in Germany ‘Mitsou’ is an exception. I found only one other Japan song, ‘Miss Suzuki’ (1920), which also has a proper name as its title, although this is a family name. Mitsou could be the Japanese name Mitsu, but in the song the accent is put on the second syllable which makes it sound quite differently, as if the final vowel were a long vowel. On the oth- er hand, the titles of the 17 songs in the table frequently contain Japanese place names to mark them as Japan songs. Fujiyama, Tokyo, and Yokohama each are used three times, and Nagasaki and Osaka one time each. Titles without place or proper names include the Japanese words geisha (three times), kimono, sayonara and sukiyaki (one time each). Two titles contain the word butterfly, which by many Westeners is at once associated with Jap- anese women or geisha, since the tie of a sash (obi) looks like the wings of a butterfly and because of the operaMadama Butterfly. Not a single song has ‘Japan’ or ‘Japanese’ in its title, only code words which stand for Japan. ‘Mitsou’ stayed for six months among the top 20 hits of the charts, but its best result was place no. 8 for two months. ‘Sukiyaki’, on the other hand, FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 25

went as high as no. 2, but it could keep its position among the top 20 hits only for four months (Tolksdorf). Both songs reached their highest rank- ing in September 1963. ‘Sukiyaki’ is of course nothing else than the song ‘Ue o muite’ (Looking up) which was distributed in the US as ‘Sukiyaki song’, a genuine Japanese song which became a world hit. It is said that 13 million copies of this song were sold internationally and that it was cov- ered by dozens of singers all over the world. The first version of this song was recorded by Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen in 1963. Since it was assumed that the original title ‘Ue o muite’ would be too difficult for Westerners, the title was changed into ‘Sukiyaki song’, because sukiyaki at that time was the most popular Japanese dish in the West. After the initial success, Capitol Records and His Master’s Voice released the original song in Japanese sung by Sakamoto Ky ū, but retained the new title ‘Sukiyaki song’. In the Cash Box charts of top singles, Sakamoto gained the number one position for four consecutive weeks from June 15 to July 6 (Cash Box), a position never to be regained again by any Japanese artist. Because of the American success, the Sakamoto original Japanese version was also distributed in Germany, but there the song became only successful when it was sung in German by the Blue Diamonds. The Blue Diamonds were a pair of Dutch brothers of Indonesian ori- gin, who had become famous with their version of the evergreen ‘Ramona’. It seems that the producers of the German version of ‘Sukiyaki’ selected these singers because of their Asian look, which probably was thought to give the song a more authentic Japanese flavour. While the ‘Sukiyaki song’ was distributed as an instrumental version and in its original Japanese ver- sion in Great Britain and in the US, in Germany it was immediately turned into a ‘geisha song’. The German lyrics sing of the most beautiful woman in the world, with whom the protagonist ate a wonderful sukiyaki dinner in Nagasaki (for the sake of the rhyme). The wonderful woman by the name Tamiko, probably inspired by the 1962 John Sturges filmA Girl Named Ta- miko, invites the hero into her house amidst a flower garden, but when he returns some time later, she is gone. It should be noted that neither the Japa- nese original nor the English versions by A Taste of Honey (1981) or 4 P. M. (1995), which also reached the top ten in the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart contained any exotic Japanese flavour, which was apparently still deemed necessary in Germany during the sixties. The same tendency to make music more exotic can also be found in the songs by the Japanese duo The Peanuts (Za Piinattsu) who were ac- 26 SEPP LINHART

tive in Germany between 1964 and 1967. Although two of their songs happened to make their way into the German charts, the twins who were rather well-known in Japan were not really successful with their songs in Germany, but they contributed greatly to strengthen the ‘geisha image’ of Japanese women. Appearing on many TV shows in miniskirts as well as in kimonos, their image was that of ‘modernized geishas’. It must not be overlooked, though, that their activities in Germany can be summed up under the phrase of self-orientalization. To sum up this period, we can say that Japan songs started with the sen- timental song Sayonara which brought Japan much sympathy and which set the tone for the songs to come. Almost all songs appearing after ‘Sayonara’ were songs about the love between a Western man and a Japanese ‘geisha’. They usually were slow, quiet, kitschy, tawdry, and full of false emotions, and they presented an image of Japan as that of a ‘good old world’. Basically in these songs there is no difference to the songs from the first three decades of the 20th century: Japan is the lost paradise beyond the sea, the land of our longings, in which the most beautiful and most endearing females in this world, the submissive ‘geisha’, live.

The change around 1980

While the image of Japan in Western popular music did not change for a long time, Japan gained a new position in the world. In 1968 the Japanese GNP became the second largest of all capitalist countries, and during the seventies the Japanese economy grew stronger in spite of the Nixon shock of 1972 and the oil shock of 1973. Suddenly Japanese management meth- ods were highly evaluated in the West and Japan became a kind of new economic model. These developments of course also had repercussions in popular music and the old-fashioned ‘geisha image’ was replaced by a new image that can be seen in three megahits with Japan themes which appeared around 1980, and which no longer corresponded to the hitherto exotic image of Japan. In the beginning of 1980, the short-lived British new wave guitar group The Vapors issued ‘Turning Japanese’ as their second single, which reached number three in the UK single charts and became widely known inter- nationally. The song is not really about Japan, but the refrain ‘I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so’ remained strongly in the ears of every listeners. This was at the time when all Europe- FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 27

ans and Americans looked to Japan as to whether they could imitate some- thing from Japan, and therefore the song was really a timely piece. One year later, in August 1981, the Scottish folk singer Aneka even climbed to number one in the British single charts with her song ‘My Japa- nese Boy’. This song became also a number one hit in Sweden and Switzer- land, number three in Germany and number four in Austria, while in the US its highest rank was number 15. The remarkable thing about this song is the fact that it tells the Madama Butterfly-story the other way round: A Western girl is left by her Japanese lover and she longs for him. For almost a century the story had been about a Japanese woman discarded by her Western male lover, who as a good submissive ‘geisha’ accepted her tragic fate. The Aneka song gets along without a victimized ‘geisha’, the victim now being a Western woman. It is certainly no error to interpret this song as a symbol of changed power relations between Japan and the West. The Japanese boy is the strong winner who went away without caring for the poor Western girl. Like ‘Turning Japanese’, ‘My Japanese Boy’ does not contain any Japanese or oriental codes, and this holds also true for the third song in this group. In 1984 the German synthpop band Alphaville had a tremendous suc- cess with ‘Big in Japan’, which reached the number 1 position in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and in the US dance charts, number 3 in Norway, number 4 in Austria, number 5 in the Netherlands, and number 13 in France. The title for this song was taken from a not at all important Brit- ish punk band, active in 1977/78 only. Without explanations the lyrics are hardly understandable, but according to the band members it is a song about a pair of lovers who wants to get rid of heroin (Alphaville). As such it has of course nothing to do with Japan, and it is not exotic at all, but the refrain “Things are easy, when you’re big in Japan, when you’re big in Japan” expresses a certain longing for Japan. In 1984, when everybody hummed this song, Japan was on the peak of its economic success, and it is doubt- ful whether this song would have become successful if ‘Japan’ had been replaced by any other country’s name. It is difficult to say which songs were more successful, ‘Mitsou’ and ‘Su- kiyaki’ from 1963 or the three mentioned songs from the beginning of the eighties, but without any doubt these five songs were the most widely known songs connected with Japan, even if some of them did not really have much to do with Japan, as is the case with ‘Turning Japanese’ and ‘Big in Japan’. Interestingly, the great hit songs from the eighties refrain from any exotic 28 SEPP LINHART

garnishment, even though the videos accompanying the songs are full of it. Japan in the eighties is no longer an exotic wonderland, it has become an eco- nomic wonderland, and the image in the Western popular songs changed ac- cordingly.

The image of Japan in present day German popular music

While at the present there is no German pop hit song about Japan, popular enough as to be compared to the three mentioned songs from the eighties, there is reason to believe that an imagined Japan still plays an im- portant role in Germany’s popular music world. I would like to enumerate a few examples as proof for this statement. In 2006 the Japanese girl group Vivace started another career in Ger- many under the name of Shanadoo, an undertaking similar to that of The Peanuts in the 1960ies. The four pretty girls sing their songs in English, in mixed English and Japanese or in Japanese only, and their repertoire of songs includes Germany produced Japanese songs like ‘Konnichi wa’ or ‘Sayonara iro wa blue’, ‘Japan’ songs like ‘My Samurai’, ‘Ninja Tatoo’ or the evergreen ‘My Japanese boy’, Asia songs like ‘Fly me to Shanghai’, or inter- national pop music like ‘King Kong’, but not a single German song. That means that this group which in Japan is only singing commercials’ songs but is not active as a pop group, is working in Germany as an international group singing songs in English or in Japanese, and it is accepted as such by the German audience. Rollergirl, a German pop singer who is performing on roller skates, in 2002 recorded the song ‘Geisha dreams’, the title of which reminds one of the classical ‘geisha’ songs, but it is a quick beat disco song, and not at all a sentimental love song. The song shows sympathy with the assumed dreary life of geishas in Tokyo who have to serve and to be nice to men whom they do not love: ‘Perfect body and perfect smile/ An illusion for a while/ Born to love and trained to please/ And paid to put your mind at ease/ But don´t you see, but don´t you feel that love is free?/ Refrain/ Ichi-gi ichi-go/ All alone in Tokyo/ Don´t you see? Don´t you know?/ They got nowhere else to go/ Ichi-gi, ichi-go/ Far away from Tokyo’. Another remarkable singer is Bushido, a so-called gangsta rapper. He does not rap about Japan, but he got fascinated with bushidō when he once FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 29

heard about it and thus he chose to make Bushido his artist name. The son of a Tunisian immigrant to Germany and a German mother, who has a shaved head and wears fantasy kanji tatoos, is singing rightist songs and is one of the most controversial persons in the German popular music scene. Since he postulates that Bushido is the name which fits him best, the inference can be made that for the average German Japanese bushidō is what Bushido says in his statements or in his songs. Bushido is said to be anti-Jewish, anti- American, anti-homosexual, islamistic, and male chauvinist, and his songs are officially labeled as harmful to minors. Thus, Anis Mohamed Youssef Ferchichi, who calls himself Bushido, by using this name, evokes also nega- tive images of Japan. Bushido, who started his career around 2000, has up to now two no.1 albums in the German charts, and since 2004 he had about twenty singles in the German charts, which means that he is presently one of the really big people in German pop music. Finally, mention has to be made of a boys’ group with the name Tokio Hotel, the most successful German group over the last years. Tokio Hotel is a teenager band which was formed in 2003 with 14 to 15 year old boys, and became immediately a great success. It received the MTV Europe Mu- sic Award 2008 in the category Headliner, i.e. for the most impressive live band of the year. From 2005 onwards, the band had four no. 1 singles in the German charts and it is now widely known all over Europe as well as in North and South America. The remarkable thing about this group is their appearance: they, and especially their lead singer Bill Kaulitz, look like peo- ple who just walked out of a manga. There are speculations that the band was formed with this outfit in order to attract manga fans. Moreover, they are said to imitate J-Pop and especially the Visual-Kei scene. What is also interesting is the rather unusual band name Tokio Hotel. The explanations for this name by group members themselves are not very convincing. Hotel is taken from the fact that they spend a lot of their time in hotels, and Tokio was chosen because Tokyo is the most glittering city in the world. In any case, it is an absolutely new phenomenon that top artists like Bushido and Tokio Hotel make a reference to Japan in their names. Perhaps one might think that this has nothing to do with the Japa- nese image in Western pop music, but on the other hand we can assume that these trends express a total renunciation of the long dominating ‘gei- sha songs’ and correspond to a new image of Japan which is already in the heads of the young people all over Europe. 30 SEPP LINHART

Conclusion

The globalization in the second half of the 19th century with the forced opening of Japan led to the production of numerous songs about Japan in the first half of the 20th century. These songs express nostalgia for a ‘good old world’, for a paradise beyond the ocean with the main actors there being beautiful young women in kimonos, who do everything for men. During the years before and amid WWII there was an interruption, and in the US many anti-Japanese military songs were produced instead of kitschy ‘geisha songs’. From 1960 onwards a continuation of the old trend can be noted, but from around 1980 new tendencies can be detected. While at the one hand there still is a continuation of the traditional Japan image in the form of ‘geisha songs’, which are no longer popular, though, on the other hand there can be noted a discarding of old symbols and codes for Japan, as well as a complete abandonment of Japanese decorations in the music, so typical for the older pop music. Instead, a search for new themes is conspicuous, which does not stop at the themes of the songs, but also relates to the names of groups and their appearance. The most suitable explanation for these tendencies is that Japan during the past thirty years and with its economic success became quite a ‘normal’ country like all the other countries for the people in the West. Another explanation would be that the Western Japan songs became globalized, but at the same time Japanese popular culture is now also influencing the Western pop world, so that the biased images of the past are no longer necessary.

Bibliography Alphaville (no year indicated). http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphaville_(Band). Accessed January 20, 2009. American Attitudes. 2008. American Attitudes Toward The Japanese Part 2: Pearl Harbor in Music. In The Authentics History Center: Primary Sources from American Popular Culture. http://www.authentichistory.com/ww2/music/PHattitudes.html. Accessed January 31, 2009. Bradley, Ian (ed.). 2005. The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cash Box Top Singles 1963 (no year indicated). http://cashboxmagazine.com/archives/60s_ files/1963.html. ccessedA January 19, 2009. Lee, Sang-Kyong. 1981. Hanako. Eine Karriere vor dem Hintergrund des ‘Japan-Kults’ in FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC 31

Europa. In Alexander Slawik and Sepp Linhart (eds.) Die Japanerin in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Wien: Institut für Japanologie (=Beiträge zur Japanologie 17), p. 47-59. Pantzer, Peter (ed.). 2005. Japanischer Theaterhimmel über Europas Bühnen. Kawakami Otojirō, Sadayakko und ihre Truppe auf Tournee durch Mittel- und Osteuropa 1901/1902. München: Iudicium. Rinharuto, Seppu. 1992. Chonkina - 19-seiki Kyokutō ni okeru ‘me no hoyō’. In Yokoyama Toshio (ed.): Shikaku no 19-seiki. Kyōto: Shibunkaku 1992, p. 269-326. Sawada Suketaro. 1984. Little Hanako. The Strange Story of Rodin’s Only Japanese Model. Nagoya: Chunichi Publishing Company. Suchy, Irene. 1990. Versunken und vergessen - Zwei österreichische Musiker in Japan vor 1945. In Sepp Linhart and Kurt Schmid (eds.): Mehr als Maschinen für Musik. Beiträge zu Geschichte und Gegenwart der österreichisch-japanischen Beziehungen. Wien: Literas 1990, p. 89-121. Tolksdorf, Markus (no year indicated). Infinity charts: German Top 20 - Top 300 of the Years 1960–1964. http://ki.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~topsi/deu_60s1sthalft. html. Accessed April 21, 2008.

Abstract

Ever since the first performance of the British comic operaMikado in 1885 Japan played an important role in Western popular music. In the 20th century hundreds of songs treating the theme Japan were composed in North and South America, in Australia and in all countries of Europe. In my paper I first try to give an overview of the variety of songs which referred to Japan (love songs, war songs etc.) before I proceed to an analysis of several pieces as to their lyrics, Japanese elements in the music and the beautiful covers of the sheet music. As can be expected most songs are expressions of the prevailing Japan stereotypes in a society at a certain point of time. The second part of the paper deals with changes in these songs, which have been showing an even greater output over the past forty years together with Japan becoming an important global player. It is interesting to note, though, that several of the most successful songs do no longer sell ‘Geisha and Fujiyama’ stereotypes but rather give a more balanced view of Japanese phenomena, while songs with stereotypical contents continue, but seem to have a smaller audience.

Santrauka Jau nuo pat pirmojo komiškosios britų operos „Mikado“ pasirodymo (1885) išryškėjo Japonijos vaidmens vakarietiškoje populiariojoje muzikoje svarba. XX a. Šiaurės ir Pietų Amerikoje, Australijoje ir visose Europos valstybėse buvo sukurta šimtai dainų naudojant Japonijos tematiką. Prieš pradedant analizuoti keleto kūrinių lyriką, japoniškus elementus ir gražius natų viršelius, pirmiausia straipsnyje apžvelgiamos įvairios dainos (meilės, karo ir kt.), mininčios Japoniją. 32 SEPP LINHART

Kaip ir buvo galima tikėtis, dauguma šių dainų yra atitinkamu laikotarpiu visuomenėje dominavusių Japonijos stereotipų atspindys. Antroje straipsnio dalyje nagrinėjamas šių dainų kitimas, kurio atvejų per paskutinius 40 metų, Japonijai tapus svarbia pasaulio dalimi, labai pagausėjo. Įdomu tai, kad keletas pačių garsiausių dainų jau nepopuliarina geišos ir Fudžijamos stereotipo, o pateikia harmoningesnį japoniškojo fenomeno reginį, ir, nors stereotipinio turinio dainų vis dar klausoma, jos, atrodo, pritraukia mažesnę klausytojų dalį.