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2014 Japanese Musical Modanizumu: Interwar Y#gaku Composers and Modernism Kathryn Etheridge

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COLLEGE OF MUSIC

JAPANESE MUSICAL MODANIZUMU:

INTERWAR YGAKU COMPOSERS AND MODERNISM

By

KATHRYN ETHERIDGE

A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2014 Kathryn Etheridge defended this dissertation on April 29, 2014.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

Denise Von Glahn Professor Directing Dissertation

Lauren S. Weingarden University Representative

Douglass Seaton Committee Member

Charles E. Brewer Committee Member

Jimmy Yu Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

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This is dedicated to my husband, Seth. He knows why.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many teachers, mentors, colleagues, organizations and friends helped to make this project successful. Foremost among them is The Presser Foundation, which provided me with the means—through a generous Graduate Music Award—to travel to Tokyo to conduct archival research. I am also indebted to the Florida State University College of Music faculty for awarding me a Curtis Mayes Orpheus Grant, which allowed me to purchase many of the Japanese sources that I utilized in the creation of this dissertation. My dissertation would not have been possible without the extensive assistance of Morimoto Mieko and the entire staff at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo. With their help, I was able to locate and acquire copies of so many valuable sources on modern Japanese composers; I did not know that most of these sources even existed before I began my research at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan. I owe a special thanks to Morimoto-sama for her patience with me (especially given my poor grasp of the Japanese language) and for her willingness to help me get in touch with the copyright owners for Yamada’s and Sugahara’s compositions. Everyone with whom I interacted at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan was extremely helpful and kind to me; I have never had such a lovely experience at an archive as I did there. Equally helpful was the staff at both the Kunitachi College of Music Library and at the National Diet Library in Tokyo. In particular, I want to thank Dr. Cathy L. Cox, who helped me register at the Kunitachi College of Music Library and who provided me with many useful leads concerning Japanese sources. While I often utilized intermediaries to contact the estates of Japanese composers, I was overwhelmed by the assistance that I received in obtaining copies of scores and manuscripts from the copyright holders of Sugahara Meir’s and Yamada Ksaku’s music. The materials that I received from them will fuel my scholarship on Sugahara Meir and Yamada Ksaku for many years to come, and I cannot thank the copyright holders enough for the opportunity. I also want to thank Ms. Reiko Yamagishi from JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) for her assistance with Japanese copyright of music publications. I owe special thanks to Dr. David Pacun from Ithaca College for answering so many of my questions early on in the dissertation process, and for providing me with sources and contacts in Japan. Dr. Pacun’s research on Yamada Ksaku gives me hope that Japanese composers of the early twentieth century will receive increasing coverage in Western publications in the future.

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Gratitude is also due to my wonderful translation-checkers, Yasuko Harada in Tokyo and Mayumi Shirai in Tallahassee, who spent countless hours checking my translations and providing me with invaluable information about the Japanese language. I must also thank my Japanese teachers at FSU, including Soichiro Motohashi, Brian Jun Thompson, and Kentaro Tabata, who provided me with the initial tools for understanding Japanese and who thus made so much of this project feasible. And although I did not get to work with her for long, I want to thank Dr. Laura Lee, the Director of the Japanese Program at FSU, for loaning me a copy of Kinugasa Teinosuke’s 1926 film, Kurutta Ippēji (1926). It was through watching this film that so much of my interest in Japanese modernism blossomed. Since I began this project I have received much-needed assistance from many family members and friends, including Jennifer Talley, Sarah Kahre, Joel Dobson, and especially my mother, Juanita Etheridge. I have my family and friends to thank for keeping me sane when the going got rough. The past four years have been a wonderful adventure of academic discovery for me, and I could not have asked for a more considerate doctoral committee to help me through this process. Many thanks go to Dr. Douglass Seaton, Dr. Charles Brewer, Dr. Lauren Weingarden, and Dr. Jimmy Yu for their feedback and guidance. I also want to thank Dr. Frank Gunderson, Coordinator of the FSU Musicology Department, for encouraging me early on to write a dissertation on a Japanese topic. Finally, I must thank my Major Professor, Dr. Denise Von Glahn, for being the most amazing mentor and friend that I could ever hope to have in this profession. Dr. Von Glahn gave me the courage to see this project through to its completion and she fueled my enthusiasm and fortified my confidence through hours of discussion and numerous email correspondences. She was patient through all of my many “show and tell” sessions; she listened to all of my disheartened rants and exhilarated raves; and she could always provide me with the right push at the right time. Dr. Von Glahn, it has truly been a pleasure to work with you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Music Examples ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii Note on the Text ...... ix Abstract ...... x 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 2. HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR JAPANESE MUSICAL MODERNISM ...... 51 3. YAMADA KSAKU: MUSICAL AMBASSADOR, MODERNIST CULTIVATOR ...... 100 4. SUGAHARA MEIR AND JAPANESE NEOCLASSICISM ...... 130 5. THE MODERN GIRL AS ARTIST AND ACTIVIST: YOSHIDA TAKAKO ...... 173 CONCLUSION ...... 197 APPENDICES ...... 205 A. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE PHOTOGRAPH OF YOSHIDA TAKAKO ...... 205 B. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE MUSIC BY SUGAHARA MEIR ...... 207 C. SUGAHARA MEIR, NAINEN KIKAN EXCERPTS (ORIGINALS) ...... 209 REFERENCES ...... 219 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 231

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LIST OF MUSIC EXAMPLES

3.1. C-miyakobushi scale (top) and C-miyakobushi treated as F natural minor scale (bottom)...... 121

3.2. Yonanuki scales in C major and C minor...... 122

4.1. Nainen kikan, piano and guitar, mm. 1-2...... 148

4.2. Nainen kikan, mandolin I, mm. 15-16...... 148

4.3. Nainen kikan, bass clarinet, mm. 37-38...... 149

4.4. Nainen kikan, flute, mm. 47-49...... 149

4.5. Nainen kikan, mandolin and double bass, mm. 71-75...... 150

4.6. Nainen kikan, mandolin I and II mm. 80-81 in original score (top) and transcription (bottom)...... 150

4.7. Nainen kikan, trombone, mm. 105-09...... 151

4.8. Nainen kikan, mm. 112-15...... 152

4.9. Nainen kikan, mm. 148-51...... 153

4.10. Nainen kikan, mm.163-65...... 154

4.11. Fuefuki me, systems 1-2...... 164

4.12. Fuefuki me, systems 4-5...... 165

4.13. Tetrachord types according to Koizumi...... 166

4.14. Fuefuki me, systems 7-8...... 167

4.15. Fuefuki me, systems 15-17 (poetic stanzas 11-12)...... 168

4.16. Japanese y scale on C...... 168

5.1. Canone, mm. 1-3.5...... 180

5.2. Canone, mm. 8-16...... 181

5.3. Canone, mm. 30.5-36...... 182

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LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 Yorozu Tetsugor, Motarete tatsu hito (1917) ...... 25

5.1 Yoshida Takako, c. 1936 ...... 179

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NOTE ON THE TEXT

In this dissertation Japanese texts (including names, titles, and other words) have been transliterated according to the modified Hepburn Romanization system as it is employed in the American Library Association-Library of Congress (ALA-LC) guidelines. Macrons are used to indicate long vowels—such as and ū—with the exception of words that have been standardized in the English language, such as Tokyo and Osaka. The complete list of rules governing the Romanization of Japanese text according to ALA-LC guidelines is provided on the following Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/japanese.pdf (accessed 26 April 2014). In accordance with Japanese practice, Japanese names are written surname first. Exceptions are made for Japanese-born individuals who have adopted the Western order of surname last in their publications (for example, scholars Teruka Nishikawa and Kimiko Ito). In order to avoid confusion in the case of Yamada Ksaku, who changed the spelling and ordering of his name multiple times, the Japanese name ordering and “Ksaku” Romanization are maintained herein. Appearances of his Romanized name in publications, however, each retain their original published spelling (“Kôsçak” or “Koscak” in American publications, for example). The Romanization of Sugahara Meir’s name was provided by the copyright holder of Sugahara’s music. All translated excerpts in the dissertation were created by the author, unless otherwise stated.

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ABSTRACT

Although “modernism” has been understood by many scholars worldwide first and foremost as a Euro-American, multi-faceted aesthetic movement, modanizumu (“modernism”) has also been conceptualized by Japanese and Western scholars alike as a historical and artistic epoch in Japan. In previous scholarship on Japanese ygaku (art music in a Western style), modernism is almost always identified as a post-1945 phenomenon. Post-war Japanese musical modernism, however, has a prehistory written by Japanese artists and intellectuals in the early twentieth century, especially between 1905 and 1937 (the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War). The products of these “interwar” modernists have often been dismissed by post-war scholars as the vacant copying of contemporary Western styles, most especially in music. But Japanese artists in music and other creative fields reacted to modernity in a variety of noteworthy ways, while consciously positioning themselves within an international modernist culture. This dissertation demonstrates that while Japanese artists drew heavily upon Western styles they were also responding to and writing about internationalism, fragmentation of established arts organizations and their respective ideologies, substantial breaks from tradition, and the theorizing and practical development of innovative methodologies in their search for the artistic “new” at roughly the same time that Western artists grappled with parallel issues. In many cases the Japanese responded quite differently to these issues from their European and American counterparts. Ultimately I argue that interwar ygaku is another fruitful avenue for the study of Japanese modernism, alongside the expanding body of scholarship on Japanese modernism within other fields. The primary focus of my project is on ygaku written by Japanese composers during the Japanese interwar era. I examine how several composers saw themselves and their music in relation to the broader context of Japanese modernism by examining their music, writings, and biographies. The music of these composers encompasses a variety of styles and mediums; it also reflects a hybridity that incorporated local traditions, so that the result was not mere imitation but hybrid creations that captured each individual composer’s responses to specific conditions of his or her time and place. By bringing music to the forefront, I contribute to interdisciplinary discourse on Japanese modernism, a topic that has received increased attention over the past twenty-five years. I also address a lacuna in Japanese modernist studies: ygaku has received startlingly little attention in x

English-language scholarship on Japanese modernism. This lacuna is even more glaring because many scholars have discussed the influence that Japanese art and music have had upon Western modernism, but they have not considered the reciprocity of this process. While music reflects many of the same modernist values as other Japanese contemporary arts, it also presents differences that complicate current views of Japanese modernism. Many interwar Japanese groups and individuals claimed analogous Western movements as their major influences; as a result, it has been tempting to view Japanese creations as “Japanese versions” of these Western movements. However, the artists within these movements desired to change fundamentally the direction of their nation’s creative activities, not in a Western direction but in a new Japanese one. The first two chapters of the dissertation provide broad historical and cultural context for my case studies of interwar composers. Chapter One considers multiple conceptions of “modernism” through close examination of key sources relating to interwar music and modernist aesthetics in various contexts. As this chapter demonstrates, interwar Japanese ygaku has not received the same attention as the literary and visual arts have in regards to Japanese modernism, especially in English language sources. Chapter Two reviews the history of Japan between 1868 and the late 1930s as it relates to music. Each of my three case studies (Chapters Three, Four, and Five) focuses on one composer whose aesthetic stance and/or practical application of modernist thought reflected broader trends of the interwar era. Yamada Ksaku (1886-1965) served as an unofficial arts and music ambassador; he also represents an early generation of graduates from the Tokyo Music School and the shared practices of those graduates studying abroad in Germany. Unlike Yamada, Sugahara Meir (1897-1988) was largely self-taught, and he did not travel to Europe until after the end of World War II. He championed modern French music, and his own works exhibit a Japanese neoclassical style. As a female composer, Yoshida Takako (1910-56) offers a completely different perspective on interwar ygaku. Through her roles a progressive composer and as a social activist, Yoshida emulated the Japanese “Modern Girl,” an archetype closely associated with Japanese interwar modernism.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Although “modernism” has been understood by many scholars worldwide first and foremost as a Euro-American, multi-faceted aesthetic movement, “modernism” has also been conceptualized by Japanese and Western scholars alike as a definite historical and artistic epoch in Japan.1 Thomas Havens explains that this modernism is characterized in music, visual art, and literature by a hybridity of modern Japanese culture and Western thought, and the assertion of greater individualism and subjectivity.2 In previous scholarship on Japanese music, such hybridity, individualism and subjectivity is almost always identified as a post-1945 phenomenon.3 Post-war Japanese musical modernism, however, has a prehistory written by Japanese artists and intellectuals in the early twentieth century, especially between 1905 and 1937 (the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War).4 The products of these “interwar” Japanese modernists have often been dismissed by post-war scholars as the vacant copying of contemporary Western styles, most especially in music. But Japanese artists in music and other creative fields reacted to modernity in a variety of ways, while consciously positioning themselves within an international modernist culture as individuals and coteries that bridged multiple fields of artistic production.5 The aim of this dissertation is to show that while Japanese artists drew heavily upon Western styles, they were also reacting to and writing about internationalism, fragmentation of established arts organizations and their respective ideologies, substantial breaks from tradition, and the theorizing and practical development of innovative methodologies in their search for the artistic “new” at roughly the same time that Western artists grappled with parallel issues. In many cases, the Japanese

1 Roy Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Global Oriental, 2012), 7. 2Thomas R.H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts: the Avant-garde Rejection of Modernism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 15. 3 David Novak, “Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onky,” Asian Music (Winter/Spring 2010): 48-49; Judith Ann Herd, “Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music,” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, ed. Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 43; David Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” Asian Music 43, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2012), 5. 4 Many Japanese- and English-language authors have focused upon the years between the World Wars (1919-1940) as the definitive interwar era, for the West as well as Japan. However, I use the term “interwar” here in an expanded context, due to Japan’s comparatively small involvement in World War I, but much bigger and more domestically significant involvement in the Russo-Japanese War; the decisive and unexpected victory over a (at least nominally) Western nation in this conflict signaled to the rest of the world Japan’s arrival as a major global power. 5 Havens, 17. 1 responded quite differently to these issues from their European and American counterparts, in part because of the particularities of modernization in Japan and Japanese cultural history. Drawing on a wealth of recent studies on Japanese modernism, which describe a similar time period and geographic location in such fields as literature, visual arts, architecture, and film, what kinds of questions can we ask of music? How is music different? More importantly, why has the art music of interwar Japan not received the same attention as achievements in other artistic fields? Such questions led me to examine how a number of interwar Japanese composers saw themselves and their music in relation to this cultural and global context, and to analyze their music, writings, and biographies. I will describe each composer’s style of Japanese modern art music during the interwar era, specifically within the broad genre of ygaku (Japanese art music in a Western style). Although some compositions of interwar ygaku composers are analyzed herein as pieces of musical modernism—works of art that share many of the same aesthetic values displayed by non-musical Japanese modernism, and musical modernist compositions in the West—I am also concerned with the culture in which these compositions were created, and how Japanese composers of this time period viewed music, modernism, and modernity. How did these composers construct their identities, and how do such identities reflect the particular time and place in which they composed? How does each composer understand, embody, or even reject the interface of Westernization and Japanese tradition? Thus in my study, musicology intersects with the disciplines of literary and art history, and post-colonial and globalization studies.

Conceptualizing Japanese Musical Modernism

By bringing music to the forefront, I am contributing to interdisciplinary discourse on Japanese modernism, a topic that has received increased attention over the past twenty-five years. I am also helping to fill a lacuna in Japanese modernist studies: ygaku (and even the music and musicians of Japanese traditional genres, or hgaku) has received startlingly little attention in English-language scholarship on Japanese modernism. At the same time, publications on ygaku have largely avoided any significant discussion of modernism in the context of the interwar era. Only two major texts in English deal extensively with the musical culture of early- twentieth-century Japan: Martin Mayes’s translation of Luciana Galliano’s Ygaku: Japanese

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Music in the Twentieth Century (2002; original Italian, 1998) and E. Taylor Atkins’s Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001). Both are extensive sources, yet neither of these books addresses the issue of musical modernism in art music during the early twentieth century. Both Ygaku and Blue Nippon show the vibrancy of musical production during the interwar era, however, and both reference diverse individual publications and specialist journals in which concert, traditional, and popular music composers discussed modern music and aesthetics. Atkins even includes a section on “Jazz and Modernism” in his third chapter, “‘Talkin’ Jazz: Music, Modernism, and Interwar Japan’s Culture Wars.” Atkins’s study provides valuable examples of the use of modernism-related terminology in music publications, even though he does not devote a significant amount of space to discussing ygaku. Galliano’s book provides a veritable “who’s who” of early-twentieth-century Japanese ygaku composers and their journals; while she does not spend much time on pre-World War II musical developments or expressly modernist music, she provides a basic starting point for any inquiry into ygaku. Bonnie Wade discusses both ygaku and hgaku in Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).6 This book is focused on the relational role that Japanese composers have played in their society since the early twentieth century. Rather than compose music as an autonomous art, most composers are grounded in “the social,” or as Wade summarizes it, they remain “connected to the people,” even today. Wade contends that the artistic flexibility of modern Japanese composers is a direct result of the environment fostered by the Japanese government when it decided to modernize the country as a response to encroaching foreign powers, specifically the systematic introduction and absorption of Western music in Japanese culture. The arts helped establish the modern, united nation-state. The introduction of Western music afforded Japanese composers the opportunity for the creation of new music, ygaku as well as hgaku. Wade explores how and why that environment emerged, and for whom and why composers might create new music. As a study of Japanese “modern” music, this book focuses on the repercussions of past music-related activities as they impact contemporary composers in Japan. Wade defines musical “modernity” as including all of Japanese history since the 1872 decision to integrate Western music into Japanese society and,

6 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 3 quoting Carol Gluck, describes it as “processes of change that have not yet ended.”7 She mostly speaks of modernity in this period as a set of three environments—education, the consumer music industry, and wartime government-sponsored commissions—that afforded Japanese individuals the possibility to create new music. She briefly describes the interwar period—which, for Wade, is 1919-37—as a turbulent time for modern composers, who had to contend with push-back from reactionary nationalist forces wishing to emphasize the uniqueness of Japanese culture (“Japanese essence”), especially during the early Shwa era leading up to World War II. Wade frames the most successful composers of the interwar era as those who struck a balance between traditional Japanese and Western elements. Among the ygaku composers she discusses, Yamada Ksaku gets the most attention, although even he is a marginal subject in the book. Kiyose Yasuji, Ifukube Akira, and Matsudaira Yoritsune are also briefly mentioned as representatives of interwar “Western-informed music.” Wade does not use the term “ygaku.” Miyagi Michio (1894-1956), a representative of the hgaku “performer-composer,” receives much more attention than the aforementioned composers. The general historical background that Wade provides has served as an important source for my own study of modern Japanese music history; however, “Japanese modernism” has no real place in her book.8 A popular gateway topic for ygaku in English-language scholarship is nationalism. In her essay “The Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music: Nostalgia, Nationalism, and Identity in the Interwar Years,” Judith Ann Herd looks at the political, social, and economic demands of a rapidly modernizing population and its flexible appropriation of Western art music to meet these changing demands.9 Herd understands pre-World War II ygaku as a more creative and original genre than does Galliano, but she claims that true innovation and creativity in Japanese art music prior to 1930 was limited to very few composers, most especially Yamada Ksaku. In her article “The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese Contemporary Music,” Herd goes into more detail about nationalism in music of the interwar era.

7 Carol Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now,” The American Historical Review 116, No. 3 (June 2011); quoted in Wade, 7. 8 Wade does mention “modernist” composers and uses the term “high modernism” (presumably Western modernism) multiple times in her book; she does not, however, define these terms in relation to Japanese composers and their music. Wade apparently uses the term “modernism” in a pre-World War II context to refer more narrowly to the avant-garde and “art for art’s sake” aspects of Euro-American modernism. 9 Judith Ann Herd, “The Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music: Nostalgia, Nationalism, and Identity in the Interwar Years,” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, ed. Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 40-56. 4

In “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” David Pacun seeks to unfold the aesthetic, cultural, and technical aspects not only of the music but also of the interwar period in Japan, which for Pacun, as for Wade, does not begin until after World War I. He believes that ygaku has been treated poorly in previous English-language studies. Citing Galliano’s Ygaku, Peter Burt’s The Music of Tru Takemitsu (2001) and Steven Nuss’s “Hearing ‘Japanese,’ Hearing Takemitsu” (2002), Pacun describes how such scholarship positions interwar ygaku as a link between the outright importation of Western culture at the onset of the Meiji period and the musical independence achieved by postwar composers through the creative adaptation of traditional Japanese music.10 Through this positioning, the music of interwar composers is denied its own agency. The implied East/West dualism negates just how quickly imported ideas became indigenous ones in early-twentieth-century Japan and ignores difficult issues of musical style, theory, and ideology, especially as regards Japanese nationalism and imperialism. From this perspective, Pacun writes, “‘good’ ygaku is that which unites or synthesizes the two poles, while ‘bad’ ygaku is that which contains overt Western influence or only pays lip service to traditional practices.”11 Thus Pacun tries to draw attention to the historical, political, and cultural context in which the music was created, encouraging his readers to take the music seriously as “a direct and valid expression of daily life,” rather than as a missed opportunity to express “authentic” Japaneseness.12 As essays that were published in the same anthology, Henry Johnson’s “A Modernist Traditionalist: Miyagi Michio, Transculturalism, and the Making of a Music Tradition” and Alison Tokita’s “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region 1914-1942” together call attention to the current state of Western scholarship on Japanese interwar music. Writing from the standpoint that modernism and traditionalism were mutually supportive in interwar Japan, Johnson portrays hgaku performer-composer Miyagi Michio (1894-1956) as a

10 Peter Burt, The Music of Tru Takemitsu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Steven Nuss, “Hearing ‘Japanese,’ Hearing Takemitsu,” Contemporary Music Review 21, No. 4 (2002): 35–71. I would add to Pacun’s list Judith Ann Herd’s “Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music. Herd describes compositions of the interwar era (including those of Yamada Ksaku) as indicative of a “cultural purgatory” that composers had to “escape” before they could “progress beyond the borrowing stage” (43). Also, it does not surprise me that Pacun chose two sources about Takemitsu as examples of scholarship that support the “East/West” dualism of ygaku. This ideal with regards to Takemitsu is one that has been repeated in some form or fashion in many music history textbooks of the recent past; in other words, Takemitsu receives praise for being one of the first composers of the postwar era to “successfully” synthesize Western and Eastern stylistic elements and aesthetics. 11 David Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” 7. 12 Ibid., 8. 5

“modernist traditionalist,” a pioneer who moved the “past into the present.” While Japanese modernism could be interpreted as simply the adoption of the ideas of Western modernism, or perhaps be linked with the notion of Westernization, Johnson affirms that it was in fact a movement that reflected the social, cultural, and political context of the time; Westernization was indeed prevalent, but it was the reaction to that influence that gave Japanese modernism its distinctive qualities in comparison to other modernisms.13 Alison Tokita, on the other hand, contrasts Japanese “modernity” (modan) with “modernism,” the latter term inhabiting a very strict set of parameters that convinces Tokita of its absence in Japanese music prior to World War II. These parameters include “avant-garde compositional techniques of atonality, twelve- note composition, [and] serialism,” the composers of which were interested in “non-Western music” and “technology.”14 Tokita writes that, since the adoption of Western music was seen as a form of modernity in Japan, the Takarazuka Revue and the Takarazuka Symphony Orchestra served as catalysts for modernity in Western coastal Japan through their introduction of Western music to the general public. Unfortunately, Tokita provides little more than this in her classification of modernism, even though her language very clearly implies a Euro-centric view. But even her conception of musical modernism complicates her notion of modan: “technology” was certainly a central focus of both modernity and modernism. One could also make an argument for ygaku composers’ interest in “non-Western music” given the numerous interwar publications by Japanese composers on Japanese traditional music. Music continues to be largely overlooked in discussions of Japanese interwar modernism, despite an increase in publications on Japanese interwar modernism in fields other than music. This lacuna is made even more problematic by the fact that many scholars have discussed the influence that Japanese art and music have had upon Western modernism, yet few have considered the reciprocity of this process.15

13 Henry Johnson, “A Modernist Traditionalist: Miyagi Michio, Transculturalism, and the Making of a Music Tradition,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Global Oriental, 2012), 247. 14 Alison Tokita, “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region 1914-1942,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 411-12. 15 Scholars who have discussed the influence of Japanese art and music on Western musical modernism include Anthony W. Sheppard (in multiple sources including his 1996 dissertation “Modernist Music Theater: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance” and the 2008 article “Continuity in Composing the American Cross- Cultural: Eichheim, Cowell, and Japan), and contributors to the anthology Locating East Asia in Western Art Music (2004). In Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San (2001), Jan Van Rij provides a history of Japonisme and the influence of Japanese art and music on modern Western culture in general. Many articles and essays also address Japanese influence in Western music; such articles include Robert F. Waters’ 6

For my own conceptualization of Japanese musical modernism, I have mainly drawn from the writings of four scholars whose conceptions of the origins and manifestations of Japanese modernism are transposable across artistic mediums: they include Suzuki Sadami, Roy Starrs, William J. Tyler, and William O. Gardner. Not surprisingly, almost all these scholars began their study of Japanese modernism in literature; it was in the fields of literary criticism and history, at least in Western scholarship, that the debate about Japanese modernism began during the 1970s and 1980s, and literary studies still predominate. But most of these authors have included Japanese culture at large in their conceptions of modernism: Gardner, via language, film, and mass culture; Starrs, via cultural history; and Suzuki, via cultural studies and aesthetics. Since Tyler’s passing in 2009, his broad theory of modanizumu in interwar Japanese literature has since been adopted by other cultural historians who apply his work more broadly to Japanese interwar culture. Definitions of Japanese modernism by the four authors I listed have much in common, although they differ in important details. To the scholarship of Suzuki, Tyler, Starrs, and Gardner, I add a discussion of modernism according to David Harvey. His understanding of the movement as a set of aesthetic responses to a specific locus of activity speaks directly to my examination of modernism in Japanese ygaku and to studies of Japanese modernism more generally. Since the publication of his book Modan toshi no hygen (Expressions of the Modern City, 1992) Suzuki Sadami has built upon his understanding of Japanese cultural modernism as a phenomenon that evolved since the late nineteenth century by adapting Western modernism through what he calls “receptors” derived from Japanese traditional thought and ways of life. Such receptors could be ideas, styles, people, or places believed to be particular to Japanese culture: examples include a historic artist; a commonly used style from a previous era; or a

“Emulation and Influence: Japonisme and Western Music in Fin de siècle Paris” (1994); Reinhard Wiesend’s “Zum Stellenwert des Exotischen in den Japanischen Liedern von Igor Strawinsky” (2000); Jann Pasler’s “Political Anxieties and Musical Reception: Japonisme and the Problem of Assimilation” (2008); and Michael Fend’s “L’influence sur Debussy des procédés de composition non européen” (2013). Studies of Japanese influences in Western modernism outside of music include Julia Meech and Gabriel P. Weisberg, Japonisme comes to America : the Japanese Impact on the Graphic Arts, 1876-1925 (1990); Elisa Evett, The Critical Reception of Japanese Art in Late Nineteenth Century Europe (1982); Klaus Berger, Japonisme in Western painting from Whistler to Matisse (1992); Jan Hokenson, Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000 (2004); and Rupert Richard Arrowsmith, “The Transcultural Roots of Modernism: Imagist Poetry, Japanese Visual Culture, and the Western Museum System” (2011). 7 particular Japanese aesthetic, such as kankaku no hygen (expression of sensations).16 Imported ideas were thus adapted to change or redefine the conditions of Japanese life.17 According to Suzuki, depending upon how one views modernism—either as multiple practices subsumed within a particular artistic movement or “ism,” or as a widespread cultural condition characteristic of capitalist nation-states—Japanese modernism either covers the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, or only manifested during the 1920s and early 1930s. The shorter time period emphasizes a popular view of artistic modernism as the constructionism of material form, the preoccupation with methodologies and the “stuff” of artistic creation. He also emphasizes the importance of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) as a catalyst for the growth of a new middle class in Japan: “independently minded businessmen, free-lance professionals, middle level administrative types in white collar jobs, [and] teachers and government officials stood in contrast to the old middle class of village headmen and traditional manufacturers and merchants.” The growth of this new middle class encouraged the infusion and spread of modernist trends in Japanese society.18 In multiple publications, Suzuki detects global simultaneity of modernism during the 1910s and 1920s: artists explored new avenues of expression in Japan, the results of which were strikingly similar to those reached by their contemporaries in Europe and the United States, even though they were based upon different experiences. Such artists rejected the ideas and styles of the imposing Japanese artistic establishments that had been in place since the late nineteenth century, most of which emphasized a strict imitation of Western works. Suzuki also notes that broad cultural movements in Japan have always been accompanied by reformulations of traditional elements, which was reflected in modernist art from the 1910s onward. This last point

16 In music, a popular receptor was the “Japanese style,” a reasonably concise set of musical parameters that were or could be sonically identified as “Japanese” codified during the first two decades of the twentieth century. This style incorporated traditional East Asian musics as well as Japonisme-inspired elements—in short, it was a newly-created “traditional” source. As David Pacun explains, this “sound” eventually became a conscious music style, somewhat akin to a Classic period topic: the “learned style,” “expressive style,” and then the “Japanese style.” For more information on the Japanese style, see David Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” Asian Music 43, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2012): 3-46. 17 Raquel Abi-Samara, “How would you Define Japanese Modernism? Interview with Suzuki Sadami” ed. William Tyler (May, 2008), published on Suzuki Sadami’s homepage (in English): http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/~sadami/2008/ int-final.pdf; re-published in Portuguese as “Entrevista com Suzuki Sadami,” in Dialogia 7, No. 1 (2008): 15-30.27. In this interview, Suzuki states that his approach to modernism in Japanese literature of the early twentieth century had been developing since the late 1980s, and that he had only recently (2007) clarified the framework of his idea. Some of Suzuki’s most extensive studies of literary modernism have been published in English as well as Japanese, including the monograph Nihon no “bungaku” gainen (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 1998), which was translated by Royall Tyler and published as The Concept of “Literature” in Japan (Kyoto: Nichibunken, 2006). 18 Abi-Samara, 3. 8 clarifies the “receptors” he claims serve as the interface between Western and Japanese modernisms. A favorite receptor that Suzuki references is the reevaluation of the poet Matsuo Bash (1644-94). Matsuo Bash is the most famous haikai poet of the Edo period (1603-1867). Haikai (the full name of this genre is haikai no renga, “comic linked verse”) is a Japanese form of collaborative verse that distinguished itself early on through word play in a comical or humorous manner. When Kanbara Ariake (1876-1952) used Bash’s poetry as an example of European Symbolism in his introduction of Shunchshū (Collection of Spring Birds, 1905), he effected a change in the evaluation of Bash’s haikai, including a shift from a comical to a mystic quality.19 For Kanbara, Bash’s verses reflected a deep and mystical spirit: When Bash emerged…he succeeded in creating a certain spirit by endowing sekku (short verses) with the Zen philosophy of Genchi and interweaving with it the ordinary. This is the closest to symbolism in our literature.20

Nine years later, this reading of Bash was codified by the poet Noguchi Yonejir (1875-1947) in a series of lectures he gave in London. Noguchi introduced Bash’s haikai to foreign audiences as poetry possessed of a deep spirit expressed in relatively simple language. This interpretation of Bash’s works appealed to a number of young Western modernist poets, including William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).21

19 The secular spirit of haikai, an element of the genre that Bash emphasized, was refigured in the mid-1700s by poets who wanted to elevate haikai to a genre of literature that merited refined aesthetic appreciation, thus combatting the cheapening effects of popularization that haikai had (in their view) suffered since Bash. Revival poets were mostly commoners and low-ranking samurai who sought to raise their own status by elevating their art. One of the most prominent poets of the Bash Revival was Yosa Buson (1716-83), who contributed to the understanding of Basho’s haikai as an elite poetical form on the level of the classical waka and renga genres. The early-twentieth-century reevaluation of haikai was thus not the first time that Bash’s poetry had been adapted to suit the contemporary needs of Japanese poets. For more information on the mid-seventeenth-century Bash Revival, see Cheryl Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular: Tentori haikai and the Bash Revival,” Japan Studies Review (Summer 2005): 3-12. 20 Kanbara Ariake, Shunchshū (Collection of Spring Birds, 1905), reprinted in Meiji bungaku zenshū (The Complete Collection of Meiji Literature), ed. Yano Hjin, 58: 286. Quoted and translated by Suzuki Sadami in “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 53. More than one Buddhist priest known as “Genchi” exists in Japanese history, including Genchi Daito (dates unknown) who was a chief priest of Kakuonji, a Shingon sect Buddhist temple in Kamakura, prior to 1332. Another was the priest Genchi (1183–1238) who was a disciple of Hnen (1133-1212), the latter being the founder of the Pure Land sect of Japanese Buddhism. Suzuki does not provide clarification regarding which Genchi Kanbara is referencing in the quote; in fact, Suzuki provides conflicting notes regarding Genchi in multiple publications of his essay, “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism.” In the essay published in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, Suzuki wrote that “Genchi’s teachings explored the secret source of the world in intellectual Taoism” (53n36). However, in the same essay as it was published in Pacific Rim Modernisms (2009), Suzuki claimed that “genchi [italicized in original] means to reach to the secret source of the world in intelligent Taoism” (94n.38), indicating that “genchi” should be treated as an idea or doctrine, rather than as a person’s name. 21 Abi-Samara, 16-17. 9

The reevaluation of Bash’s poetry by Kanbara, Noguchi, and other Japanese writers of the early twentieth century illustrates Suzuki’s concept of Japanese modernism. Through their study of European Symbolism, these writers found a literary figure from Japanese history whose aesthetic could be mapped onto the emergent international discourse of modern poetry, thus providing Japanese poetry with an entrée into that same discourse. In so doing, they transformed the historical position not only of Bash’s haikai but of European Symbolism as well. Avant- garde poet Hagiwara Sakutar (1886-1942) wrote in his article “Shch no honshitsu” (The Essence of Symbols, 1926) that contemporary European modernism was finally coming to understand its own essence through the exploration of Eastern symbolism, represented by Bash.22 The cultural transmission of symbolism during the interwar era, from West to East and East to West, illuminates Suzuki’s understanding of global simultaneity. Interwar modernist composers who set Bash’s poetry did so in a musical style that reflected the symbolist aesthetic described by Suzuki. For example, Mitsukuri Shūkichi's Dix Haikai de Bash (1930-31) settings for voice and piano emulate the abstract simplicity and emotional restraint of Bash’s poetry, supported by Mitsukuri’s use of the recently codified “Japanese style” in the songs’ forms and harmonies. He also uses tone clusters in the piano part that are common to the Japanese sh and koto in gagaku ensemble works; use of such tone clusters was actually recommended in the creation of new music by the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei (Emerging Composers Federation), of which Mitsukuri was a founding member. Judith Ann Herd has made the connection between Mitsukuri’s use of traditional musical elements in this piece and their ability to intensify the “mystical qualities” of Bash’s poetry.23 Central to Suzuki’s simultaneity in modernism is his formulation of “Taish vitalism” (Taish seimeishugi) as the primary wellspring of Japanese modernist aesthetics. Suzuki defines Taish vitalism as an amalgam of philosophical thought and artistic methodology from Europe and East Asia that flourished in Japan between 1900 and 1940. In his essay “What is Bungaku? The Reformulation of the Concept of ‘Literature’ in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” Suzuki links the Japanese concept of seimeishugi to the early-twentieth-century European vitalistic

22 Hagiwara Sakutar, “Shch no honshitsu” (The Essence of Symbols, 1926), reprinted in vol. 8 of Hagiwara Sakutar zenshū (The Complete Works of Hagiwara Sakutaro; Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1976), 26. Quoted and translated by Suzuki in “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 55. 23 Judith Ann Herd, "Western-influenced 'Classical' Music in Japan,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, ed. Alison Tokita and David W. Hughes (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 367-68. I discuss the Emerging Composers Federation more in Chapter Two. 10 movement represented by Henri Bergson’s philosophy of élan vital (vital impetus), as described in his Évolution Créatrice (1907).24 This was combined in Taisho vitalism with European life- centrism25 and traditional principles of Taoism, Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism, Shint, and Christian thought. In his 1920 essay “Bi no honshitsu” (Essence of Beauty), the philosopher Nishida Kitar claimed Bergson’s élan vital as the root of artistic creation and used French post- impressionist paintings as examples to define art as a form that represents the “life” resulting from the unification of subjectivity and objectivity.26 Suzuki believes that almost all thinkers, artists, poets, and novelists who started their careers in the decade between the turn of the twentieth century and the 1910s reveal this trend in their works.27 According to Suzuki, nearly all vanguard art movements of the early twentieth century had their roots in the theory of vitalism; on this point, he goes beyond a purely Japanese or Western impetus to stress the simultaneity of vitalist thought around the globe. But in Japan, specifically, this trend emerged from what Suzuki calls the “crisis of everyday living” exacerbated by the Russo-Japanese War, and the rapid development of mechanist civilization and modern urbanization.28 Some vitalist thinkers embraced the mechanistic development of the modern city. Others deplored the development of the machine and willed themselves to return to nature, a trend rooted in the Romanticism of nineteenth-century Europe. Furthermore, there were Japanese artists who simultaneously adopted and rejected modern civilization, for example the avant-garde artist Kanbara Tai (1898-1997), who was one of the major propagators of futurism in Japan but who also borrowed from Bergsonism.29 Suzuki calls attention to the close relationship between Taish vitalism and Japan’s hyper-nationalism prior to and during World War II, as well as the idealism of “overcoming the modern,” represented first and foremost by an ideological revolt against

24 Suzuki Sadami, “What is Bungaku? The Reformulation of the Concept of ‘Literature’ in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” in Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, ed. Michael F. Marra (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 187. The élan vital is Bergson’s idea that there is a philosophical principle or force that drives the self-organization and “emergence” (to borrow a term from Gilles Deleuze) of complex behavior from simple independent entities. 25 Suzuki is here referring to the European life-centrist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inspired by such works as Tolstoy’s On Life (1887), German biologist Ernst Haechel’s “Theory on All Things Possessing Life” in Die Lebenswunder (1904), and Bergson’s Évolution Créatrice (1907). 26 Nishida Kitar, “Bi no honshitsu,” in Vol. 3 of Nishida Kitar zenshū (Complete Works of Nishida Kitar; Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1965), 270; quoted and translated by Suzuki in “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism,” 58. Nishida Kitar (1870-1945) was one of the most prominent philosophers of the early twentieth century and the founder of the Kyoto School of philosophy. 27 Abi-Samara, 13. 28 Ibid., 13. 29 Suzuki, 187. 11

Westernization. The co-habitation of such opposing viewpoints is yet another facet of Japanese modernism. Both Suzuki’s understanding of simultaneity and his theory of Taish vitalism reappear in William J. Tyler’s Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938 (2008), which has also become one of the most influential sources for studies of Japanese modernism among Western scholars.30 Tyler framed his study as one example of global modernism, challenging the idea that modernism is inherently and exclusively tied to a single culture or historical moment and therefore unable to be transmitted. Rather than supporting the Western-centric view of modernism as dominator of foreign cultural spaces and creator of “provincial dramas of assimilation and resistance,” Tyler argued for djisei (simultaneousness), which is similar to Unno’s “contemporaneousness.” According to Tyler, modernism unfolded contemporaneously in nations or social sectors sharing analogous levels of economic, technological, and cultural development.31 As it applies to literature, Tyler combines djisei with internationalism and sees modernism as a combination of both fission and fusion: the fission of independent creativity and the fusion of cross-cultural interaction.32 While acknowledging that a comparative approach to the study of Japanese modernism can be dangerous, Tyler claimed that it is still a shortcoming to treat this topic so cautiously. The modanizumu literary movement was crucial to the development of modern Japanese literature. It encompassed the works of high modernists (such as Kawabata Yasunari and Tanizaki Jun’ichir) as well as vernacular modernists, including authors of detective fiction and science fiction, whose works were mainly published in serial format in popular magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Many works of vernacular modernism received their first English translations in Tyler’s book. In his recent essay “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered” Roy Starrs presents a formidable argument for understanding Japanese modernism on its own terms, within its own cultural and historical context. Like Suzuki and Tyler, Starrs emphasizes the simultaneousness of modernist aesthetics and the major contributions of Japanese art and aesthetics to international modernism. Starrs goes so far as to state that what we now call European modernism began with the “Japanization of European art.” But his main argument lies in the defense of Japanese

30 Tyler’s work on Japanese modernist literature has been cited by Suzuki, Starrs, Gardner, and many others. His publications are cited quite often in the essays of Rethinking Japanese Modernism. 31 William J. Tyler, Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 16. 32 Ibid., 17. 12 modernism’s “authenticity,” a loaded term that he explores at length. Responding to the claims of inauthenticity expressed by Japan scholars before the 1980s, he writes, No one ever seemed to ask: how can this “inauthenticity” of Japanese modernism be demonstrated? What are its aesthetic markers? For instance, how can it be demonstrated that a cubist painting such as Yorozu Tetsugor’s Leaning Person (1917) is less authentic than a Picasso or Braque of the same period? … This is not to claim, of course, that Japanese modernist experiments are always successful—any more than one would claim that of their Western counterparts. It is only to say that the aesthetic success of Japanese modernist works must be judged by the same standards as any other such works … the argument for the “inauthenticity” of Japanese modernism can only be based on traditional cultural-nationalist assumptions.33

Starrs emphasizes that the credo at the heart of modernism was overlooked or willfully suppressed for many years by postwar historians of Japanese art and literature. But this credo is vital to Starrs’s understanding of modernism in any context: it is the belief that “a whole new art could be and needed to be created that was ‘liberated’ both from the nation and from tradition, an art that, in response to the conditions and demands of modernity, was both cosmopolitan and radically new or ‘uprooted’.” The best argument for authenticity in Japanese modernism, Starrs clarifies, derives not from its rootedness in Japanese tradition but from its “organic” relation to the actual historical situation of early-twentieth-century Japan.34 Whether in its Eastern or Western varieties, Starrs insists, modernism is best seen from such a historicist perspective because it is “time-bound, with its emphasis on the always-new.”35

33 Starrs, 13. 34 Starrs added that “it seems almost perverse to claim that any form of modernism is ‘inauthentic’ on the grounds that it is ‘rootless.’ On the contrary, one could argue that the more rootless any particular artwork was, the more authentically modernist it would be” (Starrs, 21). I have identified similarities between Starrs’s argument concerning authenticity in Japanese modernism and discussions of authenticity in scholarship on Western modernism. In Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic (2009), Elizabeth Outka defines the “commodified authentic” as the manifestations of high modernism co-opted by mass culture. Tracing the beginnings of this commodification in the late nineteenth century, Outka conceptualizes the commodified authentic as a model for “understanding some of the contradictions of modernism as inherent to modernism” (156). Modernism, Outka states, is all about the vacillations among its various contradictions. She also frames authenticity as a subjective construction. In “Disorienting Modernism: National Boundaries and the Cosmopolis” (2010), Celena E. Kusch discusses the relationship between authenticity of “the Other” in modernism and the modernist performance of “Otherness” in early-twentieth-century European literature and art. Carol A. Hess’s 2013 article “Copland in Argentina: Pan Americanist Politics, Folklore, and the Crisis in Modern Music” examines the role of authenticity in U.S. views of Latin American musical culture, and vice versa, during the “Good Neighbor” period in U.S. foreign policy (1933-45). Hess’s scholarship is particularly enlightening in her use of Latin American period sources to revise Copland’s image as a Pan American musical ambassador. In this respect I can directly relate to the revisionist approach Hess employs in her article. 35 Starrs, 21-22. 13

William O. Gardner’s construction of Japanese modernism is narrower in scope. Like Starrs, Gardner emphasizes the constant search by Japanese modernists for new and innovative content, techniques, and theories. Crucial to his concept of modernism is conscious innovation, the sense of being on the leading edge in cultural activity. Such consciousness, he affirms, reaches its ultimate point in the rhetoric of the avant-garde.36 He also addresses the comparative nature of earlier scholarship on Japanese modernism, arguing against the assumption that modernist literature from Japan is “fundamentally imitative”; he is especially critical of Dennis Keene’s scholarship in literature. Gardner focuses on the thematic preoccupations of avant-garde artists and how these themes serve as specific responses to Japanese modern life of a narrower time period than Starrs, Tyler, or Suzuki—namely, the 1920s and early 1930s. Such preoccupations, he notes, include a fixation on modern technology, an atmosphere of social and political repression, the practice of state censorship, and subversive subjects (violence, grotesquerie, and illicit sexual practices). When these themes migrated to popular cinema and magazines during the 1920s, they were codified using ubiquitous phrases such as ero-guro- nansensu, marking the arrival of a broader, vernacular modernism in Japan.37 In Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s Gardner encourages his readers to look at the ways in which Japanese modernist works respond not to European modernism but to their situation within the contemporary Japanese artistic spheres and, in broader terms, to their own cultural, technological, and historical moment. The works of interwar Japanese artists embody many of the characteristics found in Euro-American modernism of the early twentieth century, but such characteristics were active responses to developments within Japanese modernity rather than imitations of Western movements.38 Gardner rejects Astradur Eysteinsson’s definition of modernism as “a major revolt against the prevalent literary and aesthetic traditions of the Western world” in order to stress this point: how could modernism arise in Japan, if the meaning of modernism is tied to the traditions and anti- traditions of the Western world? Thus for Gardner, Japanese modernism did not develop as a strictly nationalist revolt against prevalent Western traditions; nor was it mere imitation of Western modernism. Instead, it developed and attained meaning in relation to domestic practices

36 William O. Gardner, Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 35. 37 William O. Gardner, “New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke's Films and Japanese Modernism,” Cinema Journal 43, No. 3 (Spring 2004): 64. 38 Gardner, Advertising Tower, 17. 14 and institutions that, although also partly appropriated from the West, had already established their own shape and trajectory in Japan. This appropriation and transformation of Western ideas by Japanese writers and artists is reminiscent of Suzuki’s theory of traditional “receptors” as an interface through which international ideas became assimilated and applied at the local level. Japan scholar Rebecca Suter has observed that the combination of internationalization and localization is one of the defining characteristics of Japanese modernism.39 Gardner specifically addresses the localization of international modernism in his 2004 article “New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke's Films and Japanese Modernism.”40 Using two of Kinugasa’s independent silent films as examples, Gardner explores the “global and local intertexts” of the films and their provocative link between the everyday experience of modernity in a rapidly transforming nation and the themes and techniques of modernism in Japan. The latter is represented in Gardner’s article by literary criticism of the shinkankakuha writers. Shinkankakuha (usually translated as New Perception School or New Sensationalist School) was made up of a group of young writers who broke away from the high-circulation literary magazine Bungei shunju (Literary Seasons) in 1924 to found another, Bungeijidai (The Literary Age, 1924-27). Led by Yokomitsu Riichi (1898-1947), the shinkankakuha writers expressed impatience with the realist styles of prose fiction that had been the standard fare of the Japanese literary establishment since the late nineteenth century. They sought to apply formal experimentation pioneered in Japanese poetry and visual art to the more conservative genre of prose fiction. Gardner writes that the members’ theoretical writings disavowed objective description in favor of a radical subjectivism that would be expressed paradoxically through more intensive engagement with the material world.41 Such radical subjectivism is reminiscent of French Symbolist and Impressionist aesthetics of several decades earlier—which is not

39 Rebecca Suter, “Cosmopolitanism and Anxiety of Influence in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Kirishitan mono,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 150. 40 Kinugasa Teinosuke (1896-1982) was a director and screenplay developer whose filmic output largely consists of commercial movies (mainly period dramas). But during the 1920s he directed three independent experimental films: Nichirin (The Sun, 1925), A Page of Madness (1926), and Jujiro (Crossways), the last two of which are covered in Gardner’s article. A Page of Madness is the most radical of the trio, featuring heavy use of montage in its haphazardly-patchwork format (the plot features numerous flashbacks and subplots) and its bizarre, absurd and oftentimes startling images of residents in an asylum. The Sun was based on a novel by Yokomitsu Riichi, and Crossways was screened in Europe in 1928, making it the first Japanese work to be presented to Western audiences as an “art film.” 41 Yokomitsu Riichi expressed in his writings “a fascination with direct, subjective sensory experiences and a countervailing anxiety about the effects of such experiences on both individual psychology and social institutions”; Gardner, “New Perceptions”: 60. 15 surprising given the two-way transmission of symbolist aesthetics between Japan and Europe that Suzuki mentions in “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism,” discussed previously in this chapter. Although Kinugasa’s films were independently produced, Gardner sees them as important links between mass culture and modernism as a distinctly Japanese aesthetic tool that simultaneously reflects and disavows modernity’s traumatic effects. Both Kinugasa's films and shinkankakuha literary works address and modify the qualities, phenomena, and general exhibitionism that define both modernity and international modernism for Japanese artists, intellectuals, and laypeople. Regarding the centrality of sensory perception in the earlier of the two films, the hyperactive montage Kurutta ippēji (A Page of Madness, 1926), Gardner writes, Regardless of their application to Kinugasa's film, the words speed, tempo, and rhythm were repeated as mantras in the critical writings of members of the shinkankakuha and by others associated with Japanese modernism. … elevation of these terms to paramount aesthetic values marks a major point of convergence between the vocabulary of film criticism—under the influence of French impressionism—and that of modernist literary theory.”42

He observes that film, especially in its use of modern technology, and literature, in its appearance, form, and content during the 1920s, reflect themselves as both modern and modernist. Kinugasa’s films mark a powerful instance of how the modern Japanese condition could be simultaneously mirrored and disavowed in film: the visual markers and fast pace of modern life not only serve as diegetic content, but, when hyperextended (as they are in the film), these modern markers become part of a modernist methodology responding to the experience of such phenomena at the most basic somatic level.43 According to Suzuki, Tyler, Starrs, and Gardner, Japanese modernism revolves around the simultaneous acceptance of a multiplicity of impulses within one particular environment. The understanding of Japanese modernism that emerges embraces coteries, publications, methodologies, and artistic products that share a preoccupation with the “new” (in art, ideas, or way of life) and with the “stuff” of artistic creation (physical materials, methods or stylistic elements). This understanding highlights the use of imported and then indigenized Western concepts, which Japanese modernists used in conjunction with, or transformed through, Japanese concepts to change, redefine, or respond to the conditions of modern life. Such an understanding

42 Gardner, “New Perceptions”: 67. 43 Ibid., 73. 16 is not limited to modernism in Japan. Many sources on modernism in Europe and the United States express similar observations regarding aesthetics and modernity. A final study by human geographer and cultural theorist David Harvey provides a broader view of this connection. In The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Harvey discusses the roots of postmodernism as a historical condition rather than as a set of ideas or aesthetics. He examines the political-economic background and the experience of space and time as vital links between the drive of capitalism’s historical-geographical development and complex processes of cultural production and ideological transformation. Harvey explains postmodernity in relation to its prehistory in early-twentieth-century modernism. Modernism, he claims, is a fluctuating aesthetic response to the conditions of modernity produced by a particular process of modernization. During the interwar era especially, modernism developed globally in conjunction with the worldwide recognition that representation was impossible within the confines of a single, dominant language. Understanding had to be constructed through the exploration of multiple perspectives. Hence modernism adopted relativism as its epistemology for revealing what it still took to be a unified, albeit complex, underlying reality.44 The relation of space to modernity is central to Harvey’s explanation of cultural change. The nineteenth-century Western notion of universal rationality and its subsequent disintegration largely depended upon the massive transformation of Europeans’ sense of space. Harvey argues that during the “modernism” period, the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, the world’s spaces were “deterritorialized, stripped of their preceding significations, and then reterritorialized according to the convenience of colonial and imperial administration.”45 As a Marxist social theorist, Harvey is more interested in the growing abstraction of space caused by the resistance to imperial expansion and capitalism, rather than the expansion itself. But the tensions between expanding “space” represented by rationalism and imperialism and localized “place” represented by particularism, nationalism, and exceptionalism were, according to Harvey, driving forces for modernists to create new modes of representation and expression. Such tensions characterize Japanese culture during this same time period. The relationship between nationalism and imperialism in Japan especially augments the complex identity adopted by many Japanese

44 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 99, 30. 45 Ibid., 264. 17 interwar writers, artists, and composers. I will return to the topics of imperialism and nationalism at various points in next chapter. My view of Japanese modernism integrates the concept of synchronicity between Japan and the West as it has been discussed by Starrs, Suzuki, and Tyler. It also incorporates Gardner’s localization of international modernism through a focus on Japan-specific aspects of modernity to which Japanese modernists responded. I view Harvey’s conception of modernism as a connection between these two ideas. The tension between Japanese perceptions of space and place, and the ambiguity it often produced, characterized Japanese interwar musical modernism and Japanese modernism more generally. For the purposes of my study, I define Japanese modernism broadly as a cultural movement of the early-to-middle twentieth century, the roots of which lay in the importation of modern Western aesthetics and ideas by Japanese artists and intellectuals during the Meiji era (1868-1912). Japanese traditional concepts were used in conjunction with borrowed and adapted Western ideas to change, redefine, or respond to the conditions of modern Japanese life. In this case the idea of “traditional concepts” incorporates both longstanding notions and values in Japanese culture, and what Suzuki calls the “invention of tradition” that was widespread among Japanese intellectuals during the Meiji era. For Japanese modernists, responses to modernity included a constant search for the “new” and a break with the traditions of the recent past. Concerning interwar ygaku specifically, modernist composers adopted an international outlook while at the same time using their music to form a modern Japanese identity. Japanese musical modernism is also characterized by the fragmentation of multiple indigenous musical traditions and their amalgamation with Western musical forms and styles to create what postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha calls the “third space,” the hybridity that displaces the separate histories that constitute it.46 While music reflects many of the same modernist values as other Japanese contemporary arts, it also presents differences that will complicate current views of Japanese modernism. I explore the careers and works of Japanese composers who were active during the interwar era in order to find out what was distinctive about Japanese ygaku in relation to Western contemporary art music and in relation to “Japanese modernism” as a concept. Ultimately, I argue that interwar ygaku is a fruitful avenue for the study of Japanese modernism, alongside

46 For more information on this topic, see Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994) and Jonathan Rutherford, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 207-21. 18 the expanding body of scholarship on Japanese modernism within literary, visual art, film, dance, and architectural history. It provides a foundation and context for the innovative postwar art music that has been the focus of much research on Japanese music in the twentieth century. The study of interwar ygaku is essential to our understanding of contemporary Japanese musical aesthetics and the socio-cultural context for Japanese and international arts in the twentieth century.

Japanese Modernism at a Glance

“Modernism,” as a historical era or aesthetic movement in Japan, is a complex concept that involves a cluster of original Japanese and borrowed non-Japanese ideas. Outside of Japan, there is general agreement regarding the general period of modernism’s appearance and characteristics of modernist thought between 1890 and 1940.47 During this same period, artists in Japan were reacting to the rapid modernization of their country begun by the Meiji Restoration, and they were coping with many of the same issues as their Western counterparts. Qualities such as fragmentation, innovation, and reactions to nineteenth-century Victorianism and the technology of industrialization are recurring themes in discussions of Western modernism. The interwar decades in Japan, which for the purposes of this study serve as a focused sample of the longer historical epoch mentioned above, can be called “modernist” because similar modernist themes abound in Japanese arts and in commentary on technology, urbanism, capitalism, mass culture, individualism, and subjectivity. Many of these artists organized themselves into groups and published journals as they redefined their work and their place in a modern, international society. Yet Japan’s historical context and the experiences of modern Japanese artists complicate any understanding of “modernism” within Japanese artistic fields at this time. The first four decades of the twentieth century encompass three Japanese historical eras, the boundary dates of which are based upon imperial rule: the Meiji era began with the revolutionary “Meiji Restoration” in 1868, when Japan opened to international trade and initiated the wholesale importation of goods and ideas from the West. The following Taish era, begun in 1912, was marked by a significant governmental shift, as the imperial oligarchy transferred its power to the Diet of Japan and democratically elected officials. This short-lived “Taish

47 Raymond Williams, “When was Modernism?” in Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists, edited and introduced by Tony Pinkney (New York: Verso, 1989), 32. 19 democracy” dissolved during the late 1920s in conjunction with a rise in militarism during the early Shwa period.48 Regarding the history of modern arts in Japan, however, the 1900s, and especially after the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, saw the cultivation of a multitude of movements that continued through the 1910s and into the 1920s. Similarly, the late 1920s do not display a significant break from Taish. However, while the creative and internationally-minded fervor of the Taish era continued through the mid-1930s, ideological and methodological debates about the nature of “Japanese” art and influences from Europe and the United States significantly increased among Japanese artists during the 1930s until 1937, after which militaristic nationalism suppressed most artistic endeavors that were in any way connected to the West. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to adopt Sharon Minichiello’s concept of the “Greater Taish Era” to discuss the first three decades of twentieth-century Japanese history in Chapter Two. I keep the early-to-mid 1930s separate in order to draw attention to the political climate of the last years of the interwar era. Most Japanese interwar modernists worked and lived in Tokyo, a city that experienced rapid growth and significant topographical change during the early twentieth century.49 After the Great Kant earthquake of 1923 destroyed all of its downtown area, Tokyo was rebuilt to resemble modern cities in Europe and the United States, complete with skyscrapers, mass transit, and buildings designed using contemporary international styles. The people of Tokyo also looked different than they had only a few decades earlier, thanks to their dressing in modern European and American fashions. The modan gâru (modern girl) craze, a cultural obsession with the ideas associated with the young, liberated woman, was promulgated in print media, via literature and news editorials, and graphic arts such as paintings and magazine advertisements. But two decades prior to the Great Kant Earthquake, Western fashions, customs, and ideas had already been equated with “modern,” and Japanese organizations, journals, exhibits, and

48 The Shwa period began in 1926 and ended in 1989. 49 Tokyo was not the only hub of innovative artistic practice, however. Japan scholars have also identified a “Hanshinkan Modernism,” which denotes the arts, culture and lifestyle of the urban corridor “between Osaka and Kobe” in the Kansai region of southwest Honshū (the main island of Japan). This is the literal meaning of the term “阪神間” (Hanshinkan); the first two kanji are taken from Osaka (大阪) and Kobe (神戸), while “間” indicates a status “between.” The modernism of Hanshinkan presents an alternative narrative to the modernism of Tokyo, whose urban development was temporarily suspended after the Great Kant Earthquake. The urban development of cities such as Osaka and Kobe, on the other hand, continued without major interruption between 1900 and the late 1930s, and many artists, architects, and musicians lived in the Hanshinkan during this time. Concerning concert music’s development in this region during the interwar era, see Alison Tokita’s essay “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region, 1914-1942,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 408-27. 20 ensembles reacted to the influx of Western arts and publications. The Japanese intelligentsia carved out an international identity as their artistic and cultural movements became as innovative as those they emulated in the Western world. Thomas Havens concludes that during the 1920s “Japan’s most daring artists pursued the global values of modernism without yielding their positionality between Europe and Asia.”50 I would argue that such pursuits began already soon after the turn of the twentieth century. Japanese modernists and critics used a number of key terms to describe their works. The most pervasive term is modan, which first entered popular vocabulary in the early 1920s as a transliteration of the English word “modern.”51 Modan could describe anything; its use acknowledged a post-traditional world informed by the dynamism of capitalism.52 Kindai, which derived from a semantic translation of “modern,” also widely appeared in print in the Taish period. But modan enjoyed greater currency, due in part to its connection to modan gāru, evidenced by Kitazawa Shūichi’s 1924 essay “Modan gāru no shutsugen” (The Appearance of Modern Girls).53 But modan, and by extension modanizumu (modernism), were also negatively associated with Americanization. ya Sichi argued in his 1930 article “Modān-s to modān-s” (“Modern Stratum and Modern Aspects,” 1930) that Japanese intellectuals were concerned that America’s world hegemony operated in nearly all aspects of everyday life, manifesting itself in technology, jazz, capitalism, and journalism.54 Modān raifu (modern life) and modanizumu became signifiers of superficial, ephemeral, and often immoral materialist culture. But modanizumu could also refer to the broad social and cultural changes of the period, and to the writers and movements actively engaged in various forms of experimentalism, as Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke argues in his 1930 article “Modanizumu no shakaiteki konkyo” (The Social Basis of Modernism).55 Another example comes from a 1929 article in the progressive music journal Ongaku sekai titled “Modanizumu no ongaku: jazu!” (Music of Modernism: Jazz!), in which

50 Havens, 17. 51 During the interwar era, modan (モダン) was sometimes pronounced with an extra syllable as modān (モダーン); this led to the proliferation of both spellings in print during this time period. 52 Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: the Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 13. 53 Kyoko Omori, “Detecting Japanese Vernacular Modernism: Shinseinen Magazine and the Development of the Tantei Shsetsu Genre, 1920-1931” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2003), 17. 54 ya Sichi, “Modān-s to modān-s,” Shihon bunka no modanizumu: Bungaku jidai no shos, ed. Sekii Mitsuo (Tokyo: Yumani Shob, 1997) 106-108; cited in Omori, 17-18. Although pronunciation of the Japanese terms for “stratum” and “aspect” are identical, the kanji for each word is different (stratum in ya’s original text is 層, while aspects is 相). 55 Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke, “Modanizumu no shakaiteki konkyo,” Shinch (March 1930); cited in Omori, 15. 21 author Kamesuke Shioiri recognized jazz as representative of American hegemony yet praised jazz for its efficiency in instrumentation and its positive representation of the modern mechanized world.56 Zen’ei (a semantic translation of “avant-garde”) and the transliteration avangyardo do not appear in the literature nearly as often as modanizumu, modān, and kindai. This is perhaps because of their connection to the Japanese Communist Party, whose first publication was titled Avangyardo.57 Similarly, one of Japan’s early left-wing arts societies was Zen’ei Geijutsuka Domei (Union of Avant-Garde Artists). The adoption by left-wing organizations of terms signifying the avant-garde corresponds to the political avant-garde that Matei Calinescu describes in Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987). While political and artistic avant-gardes differ in their view of what the role of art should be, both groups share the desire to enact revolution. Calinescu writes: The main difference between the political and the artistic avant-gardes of the last one hundred years consists in the latter's insistence on the independently revolutionary potential of art, while the former tend to justify the opposite idea, namely, that art should submit itself to the requirements and needs of the political revolutionists. But both start from the same premise: life should be radically changed. And the goal of both is the same utopian anarchy (even Marx was an anarchist at heart).58

Terms such as “avant-garde” have most often been applied to interwar Japanese art retroactively, as most participants in these groups used other descriptors during the early twentieth century, such as zokei (“creating form”) and shink (“newly arising/emerging”).59 The latter term was used in the name of the Emerging Composers' League, Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei, which was created in 1930 and became the Japanese branch of the ISCM in 1935. The complex cultural associations of the terms discussed above were reflected in many artistic fields of the interwar era, including prose writing, poetry, painting, and photography. Artists in these fields transformed Western ideas that they selectively gleaned from Europe and the United States, including terminology associated with “modernism” and “avant-garde,’ in

56 E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 298, n.33. 57 Luciana Galliano, Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, translated by Martin Mayes (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 88 n.37. 58 Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), 104. 59 John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 233. 22 order to apply them to the given realities of what Roy Starrs calls the Japanese “modern condition” of the early twentieth century.60 Many interwar Japanese modernist groups and individuals claimed analogous Western movements as their major influences; as a result, it is tempting to view them as “Japanese versions” of these movements. However, the artists within these movements desired to change fundamentally the direction of their nation’s creative activities, not in a Western direction but in a new Japanese one.61 This desire is especially exemplified by developments in Japanese literary arts during the 1920s and early 1930s. New directions in Japanese poetry and the modern novel reveal a distinct break with tradition. In prose writing, authors such as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, and Hayashi Fumiko rejected both the confessional “I- novel” (watakushi shsetsu) format popular during the late Meiji era, as well as genbun itchi, the standardized language of the modern novel at the turn of the twentieth century.62 Their rejection is important, because it positions these authors against the major tenets of the literary establishment as they had been codified during the modernizing Meiji era. In Hayashi Fumiko’s work especially, constant “cuts” between different genres of writing, and between different diegetic temporalities (representation of the passage of time), are closely related to the montage techniques of experimental modernist filmmakers of this same period, such as Teinosuke Kinugasa. As the monolithic Japanese literary establishment fragmented, Japanese poetic practices splintered into a variety of movements, including l'esprit nouveau, the Japan Proletarian Literary Association, and the anarchist writers and their journal, Aka to Kuro (Red and Black).

60 Roy Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 5. 61Of music, Luciana Galliano states: “Historically, Japanese artists had never been interested in innovation for its own sake in art. It was therefore natural that they should feel more inclined to seek out a musical language that would take them beyond the surface of Western technique to a new way of composing that was consistent with their sense of being Japanese”; Galliano, 39. Although I disagree with Galliano’s initial statement here—in the literary arts especially, Japanese writers seemed quite interested in innovation for its own sake, at least for a time—artists attempted early on in the twentieth century to find a balance between Western and Japanese aesthetics. 62 Seiji M. Lippit, Topographies of Japanese Modernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 17. The I- novel (Shishsetsu) was one of the first genres to feature extensive use of colloquial written Japanese; casual language fit the relaxed, first-person narrative style of these introspective and oftentimes autobiographical novels. This genre emerged during the Japanese reception of Naturalism in the late nineteenth century. Many authors believed that the form of the I-novel reflected greater individuality and a less constrained method of writing; however, it was also the genre that formalized the conventions of genbun itchi, the form of written Japanese held up by the literary establishment as a harmonious combination of written and spoken languages. Genbun itchi (the “unification of speech and writing”) had been established as the standard language of the modern novel by the turn of the century; it is often regarded as the culmination of the debates on national language and script reform that began in the Meiji period. 23

Experimentation and the desire to astonish audiences became common practices among Japanese writers. Of special importance was Mavo, an experimental arts association established in 1923. Their manifesto stated, “We are standing at the cutting edge. And will forever stand at the cutting edge. We are unrestrained. We are radical. We will revolutionize. We will advance.”63 The group’s journal was designed to shock readers through its experimental approach to material, printing, and layout, which combined poetry, paintings, and photographs in unconventional ways.64 One prominent poet from this group was Hagiwara Kyjir, who published his first collection in 1925. Titled Shikei Senkoku (Death Sentence), it captured the attention of Japanese avant-garde artists with its innovative placement of text and graphics; it quickly sold out its two printings. The poems in Shikei Senkoku were closely integrated with the linocut prints created by various Mavo artists, showing the close collaboration between practitioners in different artistic fields that was a hallmark of the group. Most Mavo artists also bridged multiple arts circles. Mavo’s director Murayama Tomoyoshi exhibited some of his earliest abstract paintings in Berlin, where he lived for eleven months in 1922. Murayama also took part in performance art, modern dance, and expressionist theater in Germany as well as in Japan. Use of modernist subjects and techniques abounded in interwar Japanese visual arts. Japanese avant-garde visual artists of the 1910s and 1920s made their initial creations in the realist Western-style painting that had been established during the Meiji era. Thanks to imported journals and contact between artists at home and those studying abroad, the emergence of an avant-garde movement in Japan occurred very soon after its birth in France.65 One of the earliest and most remarkable of the avant-garde painters was Yorozu Tetsugor (1885-1927). Yorozu made his debut with Nude Beauty in 1912, recognized today as the first Fauvist painting in Japan. A second artistic phase culminated in the Cubist Motarete tatsu hito (Leaning Woman) of 1917, reproduced in Figure 1.1. 66 Other notable avant-garde painters include the surrealist Koga Harue (1895-1933), whose oil paintings, with their conspicuous contemporary subject matter

63 Yusuke Komata, Zen'eishi no Jidai [The age of avant-garde poetry]; quoted in Toshiko Ellis, “The Japanese Avant-Garde of the 1920s: the Poetic Struggle with the Dilemma of the Modern,” Poetics Today 20, No. 4 (Winter 1999): 727. 64 Ellis, 727. 65 Hugo Munsterberg, The Art of Modern Japan: from the Meiji Restoration to the Meiji Centennial, 1868-1968 (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1978), 60. 66 According to U.S. and Japanese copyright law, because the copyright on photographic reproductions of this paintng has expired, such reproductions are now in the public domain. 24 including skyscrapers, modān gāru, and modern transit, reflect Japan’s modernity. Sea (1929) is one of his paintings that includes such content.67

Figure 1.1. Yorozu Tetsugor, Motarete tatsu hito (1917).

Japanese modernists also made a name for themselves in the field of photography. In this field, artists borrowed innovative photographic techniques from contemporary Western practices and also documented current events and social issues. International artist Nakayama Iwata (1895-1949) served as an important interwar intermediary between Japanese and Western photography. After graduating from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1918, Nakayama moved to the United States, where he established a photography studio in New York in 1921. He then moved to Paris to work for the magazine Femina. Upon his return to Japan a few years later, Nakayama introduced techniques of photography that he had adopted from Western modernism including experimentation with perspective, light, and shadow. Horino Masao (1907-2000), a member of the New Photography Research Society, was a pioneer of photographic montage and

67 A reproduction of Koga Harue’s Sea is provided in Edan Corkill’s article “Koga Harue: A Retrospective,” which can be viewed at the following web address: http://www.dnp.co.jp/artscape/eng/focus/1011_01.html (accessed 4 April 2014). 25 an essayist who documented the modern technology and social problems—most especially urban homelessness—of pre-World War II Japan.

Modernism and Japanese Ygaku

Although not nearly as well documented, the activities and writings of modern Japanese composers and musicians during the 1920s and 1930s exhibited some of the same trends and concerns that fueled the progressive styles of modernist writers, painters, and photographers in Japan. Yet in their methods and means of artistic expression Japanese composers and musicians were distinct from their contemporaries in the other arts. During the Meiji era composers had been strongly encouraged to create music that wholly embraced the Romantic style of Western art music exemplified by German composers, completely subjugating musical elements of hgaku (Japanese traditional music) genres.68 But during the 1900s music scholars turned their attention to the issue of composing in a new, “Japanese” style while participating in an international environment of modern musical production. Evidence of these interests can be seen even in the titles of progressive music journals, including Ongakukai (The Musical World, 1908- 1923) and Ongaku shinch (New Music Directions, 1924-41), and Ongaku sekai (Music World, 1929-1941).69 Composers began to synthesize Western and Japanese musical styles very soon after the turn of the twentieth century, which heralded the musical modernism of such composers as Takemitsu Tru after World War II. This is not to say that interwar ygaku should be seen as some sort of immature or transitional stage between the Western-dominated works of the Meiji era and the successful synthesis achieved by Takemitsu and his contemporaries. This is one viewpoint that is espoused in multiple English language studies; I look beyond this perspective. Yamada Ksaku (1886-1965) is one composer whose historical role I aim to expand.70 Writing music during the Meiji, Taish, and Shwa periods, Yamada was a pioneer in developing a personal musical language that combined nineteenth-century Western Romanticism with a more modern musical vocabulary, and in synthesizing Western and traditional Japanese styles. He also routinely avoided the formal structural relationships of Western harmony in order

68 I discuss the influence of German composers in Japan in Chapter Two. 69 Havens, 20. I discuss these and other Japanese music journals in Chapter Two. 70 Yamada Ksaku’s name is also sometimes listed as “Kósçak Yamada.” This transliteration was adopted by the composer while he was studying in Berlin (1910-13); as a result, “Kósçak Yamada” appears most often in Western scholarship about Yamada, as well as on the scores that he had published outside of Japan. For the sake of uniformity, only the composer’s original name in its Japanese ordering (Yamada Ksaku) will be used in this study. 26 to create a music that was closely aligned with Japanese melodic ideas; he used harmony more coloristically than structurally in many of his mature works.71 Through his career as an internationally recognized composer, conductor, and collaborative arts advocate, Yamada provides one example of Japanese musical modernism. His interests extended beyond music: he played a major role in the introduction of cubist and expressionist painting when he helped to organize the visual art exhibit Expressionisten, Kubisten, Futuristen, first shown in the fall of 1913 in Berlin, in Tokyo in early 1914. Yamada’s curiosity regarding modern dance even led him to take lessons at Jacques-Dalcroze’s school in Dresden during the 1910s. He later became the leading advocate of modern dance in Japan. Integrating Japanese n and kabuki music, acting, and dancing, and Western musical styles, Yamada created a new composite genre, the choreographic poem (buyshi). With such varied interests, Yamada presents a compelling case as one of Japan’s earliest musical modernists. Clearly an international artist, he sought to build bridges of artistic diplomacy between Japan and the countries he visited. However, despite having received much attention recently in English-language scholarship, Yamada has not yet been treated as a modernist or studied within the framework of that aesthetic movement. Yamada was not alone; other interwar Japanese composers created ygaku along the same creative lines as Yamada, yet each exhibited unique aesthetic goals and explored different techniques and musical genres. Composers including Sugahara Meir (1897-1988), Yasuji Kiyose (1900-81), It Noboru (1903-93), Hashimoto Kunihiko (1904-49), Fukai Shir (1907- 59), Matsudaira Yoritsune (1907-2001), Yoshida Takako (1910-56), and Akira Ifukube (1914- 2006), each present a distinct perspective on interwar modernist Japanese music. Many of these composers changed styles dramatically during the course of their respective careers. They also studied in dissimilar parts of the world, and they branched out into diverse mediums (including theatre, dance, film, and opera). The music of the composers listed above encompasses a variety of styles and mediums. For example, while Akira Ifukube composed art music during the 1930s and cited Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla as major influences, he went on to become best known for his movie soundtracks, including that of the 1954 classic monster movie Godzilla. Yasuji Kiyose was a self-styled nationalist who helped to organize the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei and later taught Takemitsu Tru. He composed works during the 1930s that combined an interest in

71 Galliano, 50. 27 regional folk musics with a pared-down late-Romantic style to create a musical common ground between East Asia and the West. Matsudaira’s mixture of French Impressionism and gagaku (ancient court music of Japan) garnered him international fame as a modernist after World War II. Yamada and Hashimoto were both graduates of the Tokyo School of Music, the curriculum of which was dominated by the German Classic-Romantic canon between the 1880s and the mid- twentieth century. But Yamada’s oeuvre includes dozens of genres and styles; his personal aesthetic was one of constant innovation and amalgamation that was not bound to any one musical tradition. Hashimoto, like Sugahara and many other modernist composers of the interwar era, depended largely upon his independent study of ygaku as a primary source of inspiration. He also sought out teachers in Europe and the United States for instruction in contemporary idioms; during his international travels between 1934 and 1937, he took lessons in composition with Egon Wellesz and Ernst Krenek in Vienna, and with Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles. In his art songs of the late 1920s and 1930s, Hashimoto pushed the boundaries of Western tonality, ushering in a new phase in the history of ygaku in Japan.72 Sugahara Meir’s neoclassical compositions stand out in their hybrid mix of contemporary French, German and Italian Baroque, and classical Japanese elements, and his students—It, Fukai, and Yoshida—each pursued individual styles that reflect myriad Western and Asian elements. In their endeavors, each ygaku composer presents a personal perspective on music of the interwar era; however, as modernists, they also provide variations on a similar narrative. They responded to Japanese modernity through a pursuit of “new music,” which was defined in different ways depending upon the composer. For the purposes of my study, I have chosen three of the composers mentioned above for my case studies: Yamada Ksaku, Sugahara Meir, and Yoshida Takako. I believe that the careers, music, and writings of these three composers provide a telling cross-section of Japanese musical modernism, while also offering three very distinct points of view. While the concept of “Japanese modernism” as it is currently expounded by scholars involves Westernization and reactions to elements of modernization originating in the West, Japanese modern art of the interwar decades is also about artistic innovation by individuals in

72 Musicologist Kojima Tomiko writes that Hashimoto’s interwar songs ushered in a new phase in the history of Western-style music in Japan and “clearly opened the way to modernism.” Kojima Tomiko, liner notes for Hashimoto Kunihiko kakyokushū (Collected Vocal Works of Hashimoto Kunihiko, CD; Tokyo: Troika TRK-110, 1999), 5. 28 groups and associations, and through multi-media endeavors and interdisciplinary exploration. Although Japan did not share the cultural history of the Europe that helped to form European modernist movements during the late nineteenth century, its artists reacted to their own cultural crisis during the first four decades of the twentieth century, a response to the rapid modernization and transformation of a nation that had just recently emerged from almost three centuries of isolation. In their varied projects, Japanese artists reevaluated their place in a modern Japan and in relation to the rest of the world.

Review of Literature

Only within the last two decades have Western scholars begun to describe interwar Japanese modernism as such, and to discuss its place within the global narrative and a growing network of “modernisms.” Interwar Japanese ygaku has not received the same attention as the literary and visual arts; far from it, in fact. As this literature review will show, this is a lacuna in the developing picture of interwar Japanese modernism that deserves much more scholarly consideration for what it can tell us about music in this fascinating cultural milieu. Literature for this project falls into two basic categories and nine subcategories. Primary sources include music scores; archival materials; collections of essays and autobiographical material by composers and critics; and contemporary periodicals with articles in English as well as in Japanese.73 Secondary sources include studies of Japanese music, 1868-1945; sources on Japanese modernism; Japanese modern history; general sources on modernism; and post-colonial studies including works focusing on globalization and modernization theories. Many of my secondary sources provide useful theoretical frameworks within which I can situate my findings regarding Japanese musical modernism; I discuss these frameworks as they appear below.

73 This is not to say that sources on Japanese music and modernity in Western languages other than English do not exist. Rolf Elberfeld’s “Multimodernitat: Globalisierung und die Freiheit der Künste” (2005) provides a brief overview of the development of multiple modernities in the course of art and music globalization. He discusses India, China, and Japan in this context and provides a few examples of contemporary composers who represent what Elberfeld calls “commuters” between various musical modernities; such composers provide evidence of the emergence of a “multi-modern musical landscape.” However, in his section on Japan Elberfeld only includes post- World War II Japanese composers such as Takemitsu. Regarding scholars who have written about pre-war Japanese composers, German musicologist Hermann Gottschewski has published articles and essays about ygaku during the Meiji, Taish and early Shwa eras in German, English and Japanese sources. Similarly, Luciana Galliano’s Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century was originally published in Italian as Ygaku: percorsi de a musica giapponese nel Novecento (1998). 29

Primary Sources: Scores and Recordings

The music scores and recordings for interwar ygaku comprise one of the most important groups of primary sources for this project. However, the lack of widely available recordings and scores for interwar ygaku makes a project such as mine difficult. With the exception of the music of Yamada Ksaku,74 published scores for pre-World War II Japanese works are few. Photocopies of manuscript scores held at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan (housed at Meiji Gakuin University in Minato, Tokyo), photocopies gifted to me by family members and other estate managers for individual composers, and scores that were only released as part of certain issues of interwar music journals, have supplemented the published scores of interwar ygaku compositions that I have used for this project. Like published scores, more recordings of Yamada Ksaku’s compositions are available internationally than those by any other interwar Japanese composer; yet even in Yamada’s case, most of his recorded works have only been released in Japan.75 Recordings of Sugahara Meir’s music were even rarer, although I was able to listen to some CDs at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan, and CDs and LPs in the Kunitachi College of Music Library collection located in Tachikawa, Tokyo. While there, I was fortunate to locate an independent commercial recording of Sugahara’s symphonic work Nainen kikan (Internal Combustion Engine) through the domestic live recordings produced by the Bianca Fiori mandolin orchestra.76 I discuss this work at length in Chapter Four. Mandolin orchestras are still popular in Japan; the online resources, historical archives, and recordings by these contemporary ensembles offer a valuable resource for the study of Sugahara’s mandolin orchestra music. Regarding Yoshida Takako’s music, I located two recordings, both available only in Japan: the first is a collection of songs by five female Japanese composers of the early-to-middle twentieth

74 Yamada Ksaku’s compositions are available in the eighteen-volume collection Yamada Ksaku sakuhin zenshū (Yamada Ksaku: the Complete Works), Vol. I-XVIII, edited by Nobuko Goto (Tokyo: Shunjūsha Edition, 1989 – 2011), as well as a large number of published individual works and smaller compilations (mostly songs and instrumental chamber music). Additionally, the Yamada Ksaku sakuhin shiryo mokuroku, published by Toyama Music Library (1984), an extensive descriptive catalogue of musical manuscripts, printed music, and sound recordings of Yamada’s music, provides a useful guide for locating Yamada’s music at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan. 75 Some recordings of Yamada’s music, especially his best-known songs (including Karatachi no hana, Akatonbo, and Kono michi) have been widely marketed in the U.S. However, recordings of Yamada’s lesser-known works, such as his string quartets, operas, and early piano music, are more difficult to acquire. I used two Japanese recordings of Yamada’s piano music for my analysis of the choreographic poems in Chapter Three: Irina Nikitina, piano, Yamada Ksaku piano sakuhin zenshū (Yamada Ksaku: Complete Piano Works), CD (COCO-73226,7; Nihon Koronbia, 2010); and Yamada Ksaku buyshi (Yamada Ksaku: Choreographic Poem), CD (GES-12985- CP; Columbia Music Entertainment, 2004). 76 Ensemble Mandolinistica Bianca Fiori: 19 Concerto Regulare, CD (NACD-1828; NAVI, 2010). 30 century, which in itself is a rarity.77 I have only been able to find Yoshida’s instrumental music on one CD, which accompanies the 2011 biography of Yoshida by Tsuji Hiromi; this is a live recording produced at the time of Yoshida’s centennial concert celebration in 2010.78

Primary Sources: Period Writings

Fortunately, acquiring the written works of interwar composers has proven to be slightly easier than scores or recordings. My starting point for archival materials was the writings of Yamada, Sugahara, and Yoshida—such works include collections of essays, autobiographies, and individual journal articles not reprinted in collections or anthologies. The most recent edition of Yamada Ksaku’s complete writings is the 2001, three-volume Yamada Ksaku chosaku zenshū, edited by Got Nobuko, Dan Ikuma, and Tyama Kazuhira, excerpts from which I quote in Chapter Three. Yamada’s autobiography akaki hi no kyshikyoku (Rhapsody of Younger Days, 1951) is another source for my translated excerpts of Yamada’s writings.79 The most important source for Sugahara’s writings is Maesutoro no shz: Sugahara Meir hyronshū (Portrait of a Maestro: Co ected Criticism of Sugahara Meir, 1998), edited by Matsushita Hitoshi; it contains 83 reprinted essays, a catalogue of his works and publications, and a two-part biographical essay by Matsushita.80 For Yoshida, my main source was the 1993 collection of reprinted articles and secondary criticism published by Ongaku no sekaisha; this source also includes a detailed biographical timeline of Yoshida’s life and compositions.81 Reprinted articles and essays were additionally invaluable to my research. Translating pre-World War II Japanese is a more involved process than translating contemporary Japanese because of the use of archaic kanji, okurigana (Japanese kana syllables following kanji stems that show the grammatical function of a word), and sentence structures present in pre-World War II Japanese writing. The editors of reprinted editions often update these aspects of the original text in order to increase

77 Yumi Nara, soprano and Monique Bouvet, piano, In the Land of the Rising Sun: Songs by Japanese Women Composers, CD (ALCD-7134; Alm Records, 2000). 78 Yoshida Takako Centenary Concert, CD (Recorded 5 December 2010 at Kyūdkai Hall, Tokyo); in Tsuji Hiromi, Sakkyokuka Yoshida Takako: kaite, koishite, kapposhite (Tokyo: Kyikushiryo shuppankai, 2012). 79 Yamada Ksaku, akaki hi no kyshikyoku: jiden (Tokyo: Dainihon Yūbenkai Kdansha, 1951). 80 Sugahara Meir, Maesutoro no shz: Sugahara Meir hyronshū, ed. Hitoshi Matsushita (Tachikawa: Kunitachi ongaku daigaku fuzoku toshokan, 1998). 81 Yoshida Takako, Yoshida Takako, ed. Kritikku; Vol. 2 of series Gendai Nihon no sakkyokuka (Tokyo: Ongaku no sekaisha, 199). 31 accessibility,82 but all three of the composers I focus on were very active contributors to the discourse on music during the 1920s and 1930s, and many of their writings still exist only in their original formats, including articles in interwar journals. I located many of these articles during my research at the Nihon Kindai Ongakukan, which has an extensive collection of pre- World War II periodicals, including complete or nearly complete collections of Ongakukai (The Musical World, 1904-23), Ongaku sekai (The World of Music, 1929-41), Gekkan gakufu (Monthly Music Score, 1912-41), and Ongaku hyron (Music Criticism, 1933-41). A number of my own translated excerpts from these journals appear in my case studies. Within these journals, interwar musicians, critics and composers wrote articles on a wide variety of topics, including music theory and analysis, concert and record reviews, aesthetics (as they relate to all of the arts), biographical sketches on foreign and domestic musicians, and personal reflections on their own music and careers. I discuss these journal articles in greater detail in later chapters. Editorials and reviews about Yamada, Sugahara, and Yoshida from the interwar era constitute another primary source material for my dissertation; many of these articles also come from the periodicals previously named. In the case of Yamada, such writings exist in English as well as Japanese; a number of American newspapers reported on his first visit to the United States in 1918 and subsequent publications of his music in the U.S. These articles will be discussed as they are covered in later chapters.

Secondary Sources: Ygaku

As I mentioned previously, scholarship on interwar ygaku has been limited in English- language research. Galliano’s Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century frames early- twentieth-century Japanese musical culture as one of imitation, while Atkins’s Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan obviously focuses on jazz. Galliano claims that the sensibility of post-war Japanese culture was decidedly more creative and led inevitably to a new and more interesting approach to composition drawing on both traditional and contemporary culture. My dissertation will argue that such creativity and hybridity occurred during the interwar years, as well. Another source that I previously discussed is Bonnie C. Wade’s Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (2014), which provides limited coverage of interwar Japanese music. Using

82 Matsushita discusses the process of updating the text of Sugahara’s writings in the introduction to Maesutoro no shz, 3. 32 the notion of affordance as articulated by perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson in 1979 Wade tracks developments in modern Japanese music since the Meiji era and argues that, though past Japanese composers were artists in search of their own voice, they also sought to serve the greater good of Japanese society through their art.83 While a valuable source for general developments of Japanese music in the twentieth century, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity is mainly about the postwar era.84 Other sources in English include journal articles and book chapters, some of which support Galliano’s and Wade’s views of pre-World War II ygaku. William P. Malm’s “A Century of Proletarian Music in Japan” (1986) and Judith Ann Herd’s “The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese Contemporary Music” (1989) focus on the practical and political uses of pre-World War II ygaku. David Pacun’s 2006 article “‘Thus We Cultivate Our Own World, and Thus We Share It with Others’”: Kósçak Yamada's Visit to the United States in 1918-1919” is one example of focused research that shows the possibilities for identifying modernism in interwar ygaku. Although his goal in the article is not to reveal modernism per se, Pacun uses his analyses of Yamada’s own writings and select compositions to stress the importance of innovation and hybridity in Yamada’s early-twentieth-century music. In the aforementioned article “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” Pacun expands upon the historical place of ygaku within Japanese modern music history. His emphasis on evaluating interwar ygaku within the context of its own time and place is one that I have adopted for my own research. Some articles and essays on pre-World War II ygaku suggest contradictory evaluations of the same composer. For example two 1998 articles, one by Matsudaira Yori-Aki and the other by Rysuke Shiina (“Matsudaira Yoritsune's Path from Neoclassical to Aleatory Music” and “Contradictions of Modernism: Reading Matsudaira Yoritsune's Articles,” respectively) dismiss Matsudaira Yoritsune’s pre-World War II works as imitative. On the other hand, Hiramoto Keiko’s 2004 article “1930-nendai ni okeru Matsudaira Yoritsune no pianokyoku ni mirareru ssaku rinen to sakkyokuka toshite no ichi” (Yoritsune Matsudaira's Creative Concepts Observed in His Piano Music in the 1930s and his Position as a Composer), focuses on Matsudaira’s piano

83 According to Gibson (via Wade), an “affordance” is a quality of an environment that offers an individual an opportunity to perform an action, dependent on his or her competency. Wade, 13. 84 As Wade herself states, “Two marking moments emerged as particularly meaningful in the history of music in Japan in the twentieth century—the immediate postwar era, and from 1970 on.” Wade, 213. 33 works from the 1930s as examples of pre-war musical creativity and individualism. Similarly, different applications of “modernism” in a musical context sometimes occur between essays that appear in the same volume. To return to Johnson’s “A Modernist Traditionalist: Miyagi Michio, Transculturalism, and the Making of a Music Tradition” and Tokita’s “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region 1914-1942” (both included in the 2012 anthology Rethinking Japanese Modernism), Johnson portrays Michio as a modernist, while Tokita appears not to consider the possibility of Japanese musical modernism in Japan prior to World War II.85 A final resource that contains English-language scholarship on ygaku is the December 2013 issue of Nineteenth-Century Music Review, which includes essays that discuss the introduction and dissemination of Western music in Japan during the late-nineteenth century Meiji era. Although these articles and essays do not address the interwar era, their authors contribute to the growing body of literature about Meiji-era artistic innovation in the midst of rapid modernization and cultural change.86 In “Western Art Music in Japan: A Success Story?” Margaret Mehl states that the articles in this issue emphasize the profound political, social, and economic changes of traditional musical genres during the Meiji era. Mehl implies that these articles provide a much-needed counterpoint to previous research that purposefully separated Western from traditional Japanese music in Japan.87 Hermann Gottschewski’s and Yasuko Tsukahara’s articles examine newly-composed gagaku works in the late nineteenth century and frame them as examples of creative and innovative musical hybrids.88 In her article on the shakuhachi and Meiji government policy, Kiku Day shows how quickly a musical tradition can be renewed and modified when the conditions for its existence are removed or altered, and how the Meiji process of modernization led to widespread alienation from traditional music.

85 Alison Tokita, “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region 1914-1942,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 411-12. 86 An early essay in English-language studies on the relationship of Westernization to traditional Japanese music in the Meiji era is William P. Malm’s “The Modern Music of Meiji Japan,” which was included in the anthology Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 257-304. Malm has been researching and writing about traditional Japanese musical genres for over fifty years, and his extensive list of publications is testament to his dedication to this field. However, his tone when discussing Western classical music in Japan during the Meiji era is mostly reproachful. 87 Margaret Mehl, “Western Art Music in Japan: A Success Story?” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 10, No. 2 (December 2013): 219. 88 Hermann Gottschewski, “Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs as a Subject of Musical Analysis: An Early Example of Musical Creativity in Modern Japan” and Yasuko Tsukahara, “State Ceremony and Music in Meiji-era Japan,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 10, No. 2 (December 2013): 239-64 and 223-38, respectively. 34

Japanese scholarship on interwar ygaku provides much more information concerning modernism through historical and biographical studies, biographical dictionaries, journal articles, and dissertations. Even though Ishida Kazushi’s Modanizumu henskyoku: Higashi Ajia no kin- gendai ongakushi (Modernism Variations: History of East Asian Modern and Contemporary Music, 2005) only partially focuses upon Japanese music history—and because of this, most of the composers he mentions only receive minimal discussion—his book is still one of the most important sources for introductory scholarship on Japanese interwar modernist music. The edited collections Nihon no sakkyoku nijusseiki (Japanese Compositions in the Twentieth Century, 1999) and Nihon no sakkyokuka: kin-gendai ongaku jinmei jiten (Composers of Japan: Modern- Contemporary Music Biographical Encyclopedia, 2008), provide relatively general biographical information on most Japanese composers from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first century; the latter also includes brief bibliographies for each composer and an extensive index sorted by music organization or ensemble.89 Some pre-World War II composers have had biographies published: monographs such as Nihon Gakugeki Kykai’s Kono michi: Yamada Ksaku denki (This Road: Biography of Yamada Ksaku, 1982), Ongakuka no tanj (Ifukube Akira: Birth of a Musician, 1997) by Kibe Yohani, and Sakkyokuka Yoshida Takako: kaite, koishite, kapposhite (Composer Yoshida Takako: Writing, Loving, Swaggering, 2011) by Tsuji Hiromi provide valuable details on the interwar careers of these composers.90 In addition to books, many journal articles from the past half century address individual composers and Western music in Japan more generally. Once again, most Japanese-language sources are only available in Japan, although I was mailed photocopies of many of the articles by the National Diet Library in Tokyo.91 Additional sources of information about ygaku composers that I found at archives and libraries in Tokyo include concert programs, independently published liner notes, and collections of essays privately released in conjunction with important concert events; one example of the last is the sizeable, unpublished booklet created in celebration of Sugahara Meir’s centennial concerts, Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai (1997).92

89 Hosokawa Shūhei and Katayama Morihide editors, Nihon no sakkyokuka: kin-gendai ongaku jinmei jiten (Tokyo: Nichigai Asoshi tsu: Hatsubaimoto Kinokuniya Shoten, 2008). 90 Nihon Gakugeki Kykai, Kono michi: Yamada Ksaku denki (Tokyo: Keigad Shuppan, 1982); Tsuji Hiromi, Sakkyokuka Yoshida Takako: kaite, koishite, kapposhite (Tokyo: Kyikushiry shuppankai, 2011). 91 A patron of the National Diet Library (Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan) must register in person before being able to receive any photocopies by mail. See http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/information/guide.html for more details. 92 Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai, essays and programs printed in commemoration of Sugahara Meir’s centennial concerts (produced by Matsushita Hitoshi in cooperation with Tokyo Concerts Inc.); Japanese 35

Secondary Sources: Japanese Modernism

In order to grasp the current state of scholarship on pre-World War II Japanese modernism and modernity, one must first understand how such scholarship has developed over the past forty years. The historiography of Japanese modernism is fascinating because of the overall change in perspective during the last thirty-five years. It is now commonplace for scholars on Japanese modernism to lament the cultural-nationalist viewpoint of the 1970s and early 1980s, citing the works of literary critics and translators Donald Keene and Dennis Keene, and art historians Kawakita Michiaki and Joan Stanley-Baker. As pioneers in their respective fields, all four authors built a foundation of exceptional translations and critical studies. Dennis Keene’s 1980 book Yokomitsu Riichi, Modernist was one of the earliest English-language monographs to discuss Japanese interwar literature as “modernist.” But Keene’s book is also a telling model of studies that discount Japanese experimental artworks of this period as purely imitative of Western styles. Similar critiques of Kawakita’s 1974 Modern Currents in Japanese Art and Stanley-Baker’s 1984 Japanese Art focus upon these scholars’ dismissive views of Japanese modernist art. Both Kawakita and Stanley-Baker made arguments for an absence of “authentic” or “genuine” Japaneseness in avant-garde painting and sculpture between the 1920s and the early postwar era, and both made similar claims that Japanese versions of Western modernist movements were the result of passing fashion and thus lack roots in long-standing national traditions.93 Roy Starrs notes that the prevalence of exactly such cultural nationalism as the default position of both Japanese and Western scholars led to a generally negative attitude towards Japanese modernism until the late 1980s.94 Since then, however, such perspectives have largely been discredited, thanks to Japanese and Western scholars who turned the discussion toward a deeper understanding of Japanese modernism’s historical and cultural context. The rise of post-colonial scholarship on globalization and cultural hybridity supports a reimagining of modernism at the global level, rather than as an exclusively Western phenomenon. Art historian and urbanologist Unno

Symphony Works Exhibition 5 (Unpublished booklet, 1997; Catalogue No. C62-265, Kunitachi College of Music). This booklet is 120 pages long and includes the centennial concert programs and program notes, critical essays, essays by Sugahara and his students, a detailed biographical timeline of Sugahara’s life, music score excerpts, and many photos of Sugahara. 93 Kawakita Michiaki, Modern Currents in Japanese Art (New York: Weatherhill, 1974); Joan Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984). 94 Roy Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Global Oriental, 2012), 12. 36

Hiroshi’s Modan toshi Tokyo: Nihon no 1920 nendai (Modern City Tokyo: The 1920s in Japan, 1988) first foregrounded the relationship between art and cultural phenomena distinct to a specific time and place—that is, Japanese urban centers of artistic production during the interwar era. Regarding Japanese modern art, Unno emphasized djidaisei (contemporaneousness), the parallel development of modernity in Europe and Japan. This theme has since been championed and expanded upon by many other Japanese and English scholars.95 Although Dennis Keene’s 1980 Yokomitsu Riichi, Modernist has become a target of much criticism in the field due to its overtly cultural-nationalist view of Japanese modernism, Keene raises an issue that is central to my research, and that is the negative effects of imposing characteristics of one culture upon another that does not share its history. Dennis Washburn also addresses this issue in his 1995 book The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction. He strictly avoids the term “Japanese modernism” and instead uses modernism only as it refers to Western aesthetics. Washburn believes that scholars should focus on how Japan’s interaction with the West resulted in new expressions of self-identity rather than how Japan conformed to a model of Western modernization. In her 2003 dissertation, “Detecting Japanese Vernacular Modernism: Shinseinen Magazine and the Development of the Tantei Shsetsu Genre, 1920-1931,” Kyoko Omori presents three perspectives on pre-World War II Japanese modernism that are often adopted by literary historians, although as broad categories they can be applied to many artistic fields, including music: 1. Japanese modernism as two categories, using the terms modanizumu (to refer to the hedonistic urbanism and the excesses of so-called modan life) and kindai (to denote the products of “high art”);96 2. Japanese modernism as avant-garde and “art-for-art’s-sake” movements that emerged between 1924 and 1931 as the dominant force among a range of other experimentalist groups from the period;97 and finally,

95 I have largely depended upon Kyoko Omori’s translations of Unno Hiroshi’s text. Kyoko Omori, “Detecting Japanese Vernacular Modernism: Shinseinen Magazine and the Development of the Tantei Shsetsu Genre, 1920- 1931” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2003), 34. 96 Omori cites the interwar writings of Chiba Kameo and his contemporaries for this perspective; using the terms modanizumu and kindai to mean two very different things was mainly a pre-World War II phenomenon (Omori, 18). 97 According to Omori, this perspective emerged after 1945 through the writings of literary theorist Hirano Ken. For Hirano, modernism (as “modanizumu”) arose out of artists' desires to employ innovative methodologies for portraying the life of the middle-class and “speaking to the common man” in the rapidly modernized cityscape of Tokyo after the devastation of the Great Kant Earthquake of 1923 (Omori, 19-20). 37

3. Japanese modernism as a blanket designation for all experimentalist and art-for-art’s- sake movements from the early twentieth century.

Omori does not favor any one of these perspectives over the others, but she is critical of the third because authors who have used it tend toward a metaphysics of cultural authenticity. She cites Donald Keene’s 1984 Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era as an example. Scholarship on Japanese interwar modernism in general is steadily growing and now includes a number of monographs in the fields of architecture, cultural history, film, literature, theater, and visual art; however, studies on Japanese music during this time period are conspicuous by their absence. Two of the most important of these texts cover multiple fields: William O. Gardner’s 2006 book Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s, and David Robert Pellegrini’s 2001 dissertation Avant-Garde East and West: a Comparison of Prewar German and Japanese Avant-Garde Art and Performance. As I previously discussed, Gardner’s publications on Japanese modernism touch upon broad connections between Japanese and Western conceptions of modernism, while highlighting aspects of Japanese modernism that are culturally unique. David Robert Pellegrini’s dissertation is an interdisciplinary comparison of early-twentieth-century avant-garde performances in Germany and Japan. Pellegrini is wide-reaching in his coverage of avant-garde Japanese arts during the Taish and early Shwa eras, discussing many artists and publications associated with literature, theatre, and visual art. He devotes little time, however, to the role of Japanese composers or their music in this bourgeoning modernist environment. This is typical in literature on Japanese pre-World War II modernism—either music as a topic is avoided or it is mentioned and then disregarded as derivative. The result is a reading of the 1920s and 1930s as a period of mere imitation for Japanese composers. This reading surfaces in other English-language, multi- disciplinary sources, including the edited collections Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s (2000) and Inexorable Modernity: Japan's Grappling with Modernity in the Arts (2007). Sources on Japanese modernism are dominated by studies in the fields of literature and visual arts, and many of these sources touch upon major issues that are pertinent to interwar Japanese composers and their music, including cultural transposition, discontinuity, and subjectivity. One of the most influential English-language texts is Seiji M. Lippit’s Topographies of Japanese Modernism (2002), in which cultural transposition related to discontinuity,

38 ambiguity, and multiplicity all figure significantly. Lippit delineates key aspects of interwar modernist fiction such as experimentation with form and a rejection of the linguistic and narrative foundations of the Meiji-era modern novel. English-language texts on Japanese modernist literature that combine translated primary sources with secondary analysis provide models for my own study. In Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938 (2008), William J. Tyler offers new translations of twenty-five novellas representative of Japanese modernist prose. The translations are notable for representing not only high-art modernists, most of whom have received lengthy monograph studies in Japanese and English, but also “vernacular modernists,” authors of detective and science fiction whose works were published in serial format in popular magazines. Similarly, Japanese composers of the Taish and early Shwa eras who branched out into a number of very different styles and genres might all be considered “modernist.” Thomas LaMarre’s Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Junichiro on Cinema and “Orienta ” Aesthetics (2005) combines translations of Tanizaki’s essays with a detailed analysis of how each work reflects his modernist outlook. Other recent literary studies show how Japanese works combined Western-influenced styles with innovative and culturally specific reactions to Japan’s rapid modernization, as well as to the transformation of Japanese traditional arts, and to particular events in early-twentieth- century Japanese history. Focused studies on individual authors include Roy Starrs’s Soundings in Time: the Fictive Art of Kawabata Yasunari (1998) and Rachel DiNitto’s Uchida Hyakken: a Critique of Modernity and Militarism in Prewar Japan (2008). Studies that discuss multiple authors include Miryam Sas’s Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism (1999), Toshiko Ellis’s dissertation “The Modernist Dilemma in Japanese Poetry” (2002), and Leith Morton’s Modernism in Practice: An Introduction to Postwar Japanese Poetry (2004). The focus upon combining Western-influenced styles with culturally specific reactions to Japanese modernity is also apparent in studies of the visual arts. Most notably, Gennifer S. Weisenfeld’s Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-garde, 1905-1931 (2002) and Alicia Volk’s In Pursuit of Universa ism: Yorozu Tetsugor and Japanese Modern Art (2010) provide ground- breaking research regarding Tokyo’s interwar avant-gardists, as well as the international connections these artists created as they attempted to insert themselves into a global arts scene. Many museum and gallery guides also include in-depth descriptions and analyses of modernist artists in relation to their local and global environment, for example, Alfred Stieglitz and Yasuzo

39

Nojima (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1997) and The Brittle Decade: Visualizing Japan in the 1930s (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2012).98 Three aspects of Japanese musical modernism that I emphasize in my own study— internationalism, simultaneity, and hybridity—feature prominently in recent studies of Japanese film and architecture, including Joanne Bernardi’s Writing in Light: the Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (2001); Aaron Andrew Gerow’s A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan (2008); Jonathan M. Reynolds’s Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture (2001); and Ken Tadashi shima’s International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku (2009). Jordan Sand’s House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930 (2003) discusses Japanese architecture in conjunction with interior design. Sand describes the early-twentieth-century quest of the Japanese urban middle class to inhabit the proper, “family- centered” dwelling while displaying an appropriately cosmopolitan way of life. Sand’s text focuses upon vernacular modernism, especially as it was presented in mass publications and marketed to every sector of the populace. The anthology Rethinking Japanese Modernism (2012), edited by Roy Starrs, is a source that is rich in its descriptions, definitions, and historical overviews of Japanese modernism across a wide variety of disciplines.99 Its 26 contributors address a range of topics including religion and politics, visual and performing arts, sports, and mass culture. It includes scholars from Australia and New Zealand, the U.S., Europe, and Japan, who discuss and build upon much of the scholarship that I have mentioned above (and many sources in Japanese that I have not been able to access). My study has benefitted greatly from the wealth of knowledge provided in this recent anthology, and I cite many of its essays in my later chapters.

98 Alfred Stieglitz and Yasuzo Nojima (Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art and Asahi Shimbun, 1997); The Brittle Decade: Visualizing Japan in the 1930s (Boston: MFA Publications, 2012). The essays in Alfred Stieglitz and Yasuzo Nojima appear in English as well as Japanese. Although the principal focus of these sources is the collected visual works included in the exhibitions, the short essays provided in both books highlight many of the same topics and key characteristics of Japanese modernism as other secondary sources I mention. For example, Rei Masuda in his essay calls attention to the many similarities between Steiglitz (1864-1946) and Nojima (1889-1964) and the roles they played in their respective countries between 1900 and the early 1930s: both were “patrons of contemporary photographers and artists who were in search of new expressions” (Alfred Stieglitz and Yasuzo Nojima, 119). 99 Most chapters of Rethinking Japanese Modernism were originally presented as papers at the Otago conference on Japanese Modernism hosted by Roy Starrs at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, in August 2009. 40

Most of the English-language sources on Japanese modernism mentioned above have similar goals and use similar methods: first, each aims to place Japanese modernism within its own cultural context, using Western modernism mainly as an introduction and point of departure. Also, most of these authors cite period writings, showing how each Japanese author or artist viewed his or her field and culture. A majority of the source material for these monographs comes from period sources, which reflects my own approach in this dissertation. Similar to Rethinking Japanese Modernism in English scholarship, there have been many Japanese sources recently whose authors and editors approach Japanese modernism as revisionist historians. Beginning in 1995 with the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography’s exhibition Mono, kao, han monogatari: modanizumu saik (Objects, Faces and Anti-narratives: Rethinking Modernism), literary theorists, art critics, historians, and economists have contributed books and articles to this topic over the past twenty years. Among them are works such as Nirakus to tani Tankentai: modanizumu saik (Nirakus and tani Tankentai: Rethinking Modernism, 2003), Modanizumu jidai saik (Rethinking the Era of Modernism, 2007), and Kansai modanizumu saik (Rethinking Kansai Modernism, 2008), and articles such as Kagawa Mayumi’s “‘Saredo seiy bijutsu-shi’ kara no modanizumu saik” (Rethinking Modernism as “Still Western Art History,” 2004). The recent proliferation of sources that “reconsider” modernism in Japan show not only that Japanese modernism as a topic is still popular in international scholarship, but also that the definitions and boundaries of Japanese modernism are contested. The overwhelming use of the term “modanizumu,” rather than “kindaishugi,” in recent Japanese scholarship also indicates the current popularity of this term in reference to a Japanese artistic and aesthetic movement as well as to Japanese modernism’s broader cultural associations. This may be connected to the work of Japanese scholars who have revealed the ubiquity of the term modanizumu and the related adjective modan in Japanese literature during the interwar period, as Chiba Sen’ichi does in Modanizumu no hikakubungakuteki kenkyū (A Comparative Study of Modernism, 1998). Sources for modern Japanese history that were particularly useful to my study include Carol Gluck’s Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideo ogy in the Late Meiji Period (1985) and New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, edited by Helen Hardacre and Adam L. Kern (1997). Harry Harootunian’s book Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (2000) has been influential in many recent studies of Japanese interwar art and

41 culture. Harootunian states that modernism is not a limited aesthetic marker but a broad signifier that includes literature and the performing arts, philosophy, religion, and social and political thought. For him, “Japanese modernism” includes modifications of Western modernism that marked the distinct temporal site where a regional past co-existed with industrialization. He also calls attention to the use of Japanese neoclassicism in art music as a form of restoration, of “overcoming” the hegemony of Western music while not rejecting it wholesale.100 I will discuss neoclassicism as it relates to composer Sugahara Meir in Chapter Four. Another study of interwar history from which I have drawn is Miriam Silverberg’s Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: the Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (2006). Miriam Silverberg discusses Western “modernism” in the 1920s and 1930s in its connections to similar Japanese terms including seikatsu (everyday modern), kindai (recent times/modernity), modan (modern), which “presumes a post-traditional world” informed by “the open-endedness and dynamism of capitalism,” and modanizumu (modernism) in both its rationalist, technocratic aspect, and that characterized by Western liberalism absorbed through cultural artifacts, most especially film.101 According to Silverberg, it is this last aspect of modernism that informs Japanese modern culture most powerfully. “Modern” is the correct term here; Silverberg makes it clear that her study concerns Japanese “modernity,” rather than “modernism.”102 Japanese scholarship on interwar history that is relevant to my project includes the 1982 collection of essays titled Nihon Modanizumu no Kenkyū: Shis, Seikatsu, Bunka (Research of Japanese Modernism: Ideas, Lifestyle, Culture). Barbara Hamill Sato’s essay “Nihon modanizumu no shis: Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke o chūshin to shite” (Japanese Modernist Thought: Hirabayashi Hatsunoske as Transitional and Revolutionary) and Sat Takeshi’s “Modanizumu to Amerika-ka: 1920-nendai to chūshin to shite” (Modernism and Americanization, c.1920) are particularly relevant because of their focus upon the 1920s. These

100 Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 76. 101 Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: the Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (2006), 13. 102 Silverberg clarifies that she is not concerned so much with Western aesthetic or cultural modernism, but with what “modern” meant in the mass culture of the era, which was itself concerned with material culture. This is despite the fact that she spends a lengthy portion of her introduction identifying aspects of Japanese “modernism,” including Japanese avant-garde movements (futurism, surrealism, and Dadaism) whose artists connected with “antibourgeois” artists in Europe or were “emotional kin” to artists Raymond Williams dubbed modernist “émigrés.” Moreover, the Japanese popular press adopted the fractured aesthetic of modernism, exemplified by the montage. Modernist poetry of the 1920s and illustrated articles about modern family life in the press emerged from within the same intellectual moment, featuring the same discourse about new practices and unprecedented social relationships (Silverberg, 19). Silverberg appears to say more in defense of Japanese modernism than not. 42 authors, like Chiba Sen’ichi and Miriam Silverberg, understand that terminology must be clarified in any study of “Japanese modernism” (Nihon modanizumu). This is one reason why I have chosen to title my dissertation using the term “modanizumu” first: it emphasizes a Japanese context for my project, and it is a way for me to connect to recent scholarship that prominently uses this term to refer to art and aesthetics during the interwar era.

Secondary Sources: Western Modernism

The multitude of books on modernism published over the last century shows, more than anything else, the extent to which historians have essentialized previous historical eras in the West. Even now, more than a hundred years after the first texts on Western modernism appeared, the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries and their associated artistic movements and aesthetics continue to complicate the contents and approach of scholarly monographs as well as journal articles, textbooks, and class lectures. Including a definition of modernism at all might seem futile, yet, as William Everdell wrote in 1997, “we had better define Modernism soon or we will lose the use of the term.”103 Definitions of modernism tend to become more controversial and problematic the more narrowly they are conceived.104 Broad contextual studies of Western modernism that have informed my research include Matei Calinescu’s Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987); and Raymond Williams’s The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (1989). The scholarship of both Calinescu and Williams supports my definition of Japanese modernism as a response to or critique of modernity. In Five Faces of Modernity, Calinescu identifies two conflicting and interdependent modernities—one that is socially progressive and technological, the other that is critical of the first from a cultural standpoint. Using Charles Baudelaire and his “poetics of modernity” of the early 1860s as the starting point for the split, Calinescu summarizes where, how, and why Western modernism began, explaining modernism as the product of tension between these two modernities. A classic text for the relationship between political modernity and aesthetic modernism, Calinescu’s interdisciplinary approach also emphasizes conscious innovation as the crux of Western modernism. He positions

103 William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 6. 104 This is one reason why I have gravitated toward general definitions (another being that general definitions are more flexible and easier to transcribe from one context to another). 43 avant-garde movements as the radical front within a broader modernist undertaking, with the avant-garde “dramatizing” elements of the nature of modernity and making them into a revolutionary ethos.105 Miriam Silverberg argues in Erotic Grotesque Nonsyamadaense that Japanese modernity corresponds to Calinescu’s first, “bourgeois” modernity (industrial revolution, sweeping economic and social changes), but that Calinescu’s “cultural” modernity is much less relevant, because the capitalist order in Japan was imposed largely from above and without. The newly rich Japanese bourgeoisie, open to new modes of living, stands in contrast to the European bourgeoisie, whose privatized domestic sphere was rejected by the avant-garde. I would counter that in this the Japanese experience was closer to that of the United States than that of Western Europe. This may have made it easier for modernist aesthetics to gain a popular foothold in many fields in Japan. Coming from a Marxist theoretical standpoint, Raymond Williams’s writings on modernist and postmodern cultural production, literature and criticism, mass media and politics form a complex but definable framework for modernism as it has manifested itself in different fields. The Politics of Modernism, a collection of his writings on this topic includes the essay “When was Modernism?” Williams determines the process that fixed the “moment” of modernism by identifying the machinery of selective tradition.106 Williams focuses on the formation of the Western modernist canon of novelists and poets, filmmakers, painters, and dramatists. He concedes that the canon is not without its justifications: “there is unquestionably,” he states, “a series of breaks in all arts in the late nineteenth century: breaks…with forms and with power.”107 These breaks are direct or indirect consequences of revolutionary changes in the media of cultural production during the late nineteenth century: photography, cinema, radio, television, reproduction, and recording all make decisive advances during this time, and it was in response to these changes that the first “defensive cultural groupings” formed. According to Williams the 1890s, as the first decade of the “Modernist period,” saw the creation of its earliest artifacts in the form of the manifesto, the “badge of self-conscious and self-advertising schools,” published in the new mass-produced print media, specifically the magazine. Another delimiting factor is the formation of metropolitan areas, the centers of what Williams calls the “new

105 Calinescu, 95. 106 Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (New York: Verso, 1989), 32. 107 Ibid., 33. 44 imperialism,” which offered themselves as transnational capitals of an art without frontiers at the same time that they provided the nexus point for global interaction between the colonizer and the colonized, the cosmopolitan bourgeois citizen and the Modernist opponent of bourgeois capitalism. Williams identifies Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, and New York as the main sites of Modernist production; these are the homes of constant border-crossing and formation of international coteries, which also served as the most appropriate locales for narratives of unsettlement, homelessness, solitude, and impoverished independence.108 More specific markers of modernism include a connection to the research of Sigmund Freud via the primacy of the subconscious and the radical questioning of the processes of representation; the experience of visual and linguistic strangeness (the thesis of the non-natural status of language, for example); the broken or montage-like narrative; and a specifically anti-bourgeois attitude whose representatives chose to value art as a sacred realm above money and commerce or as the liberating vanguard of popular consciousness.109 All these factors, Williams concludes, have served to “strand” the dominant version of modernism between 1890 and 1940. Despite certain limitations, studies of Western modernist music can contribute to our understanding of Japanese modernism in ygaku.110 Although Carol A. Oja’s Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (2000) focuses on music in New York, Oja stresses the importance of internationalism and the formation of an interdependent, interwar modernist community. In Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts (2000), Daniel Albright treats modernist music in conjunction with modernism in other fields, examining the possibilities of a more “vertical” treatment of modernism. He locates the height of Western modernism during the interwar era but accepts that multiple modernist periods exist, each with different terminal dates.111

108 Williams, 34. 109 Ibid., 34. 110 Such limitations include cultural specificity, which is characteristic of definitions of musical modernism that circulate widely among English readers. For examples, see Paul Griffiths, “Modernism,” The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford University Press; accessed April 5, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e4473); and Leon Botstein, “Modernism,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press; accessed April 5, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/40625). 111 Another useful source from Albright is his Modernism and Music: an Anthology of Sources (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), a collection of almost one hundred original and translated essays by composers, poets, novelists and philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In his introduction to the anthology, Albright discusses the perennial modernity of music throughout Western history; music is “the most temporally immediate of 45

Although music plays only a small part in his biographical treatment of the isolated “geniuses” of early European and American Modernism, William R. Everdell’s The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought includes a chapter on Arnold Schoenberg.112 In contrast, the anthology 1915, the Cultural Moment: The New Politics, the New Woman, the New Psychology, the New Art and the New Theatre in America edited by Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick emphasizes unity and community among modernists.113 Heller and Rudnick are more inclusive of vernacular, or mass culture, modernism, opting for a more sociological perspective of common ideologies as opposed to Everdell’s focus on interdisciplinary aesthetic similarities. 1915, the Cultural Moment also includes better coverage of women and artistic collaboration in American modernism, two facets of Japanese interwar modernism that are essential to my own research. Ambiguity in music and writing is another facet that Japanese modernists have in common with their American contemporaries; this aspect is explained eloquently by Roger Shattuck in The Banquet Years in connection with avant-garde artists in fin-de-siècle France.114

Secondary Sources: Global Modernism and Postcolonial Studies

Postcolonial studies, including sources on global modernism, inform the theoretical framework for my project. The concept of global modernism only goes back to the 1970s, when Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane included Austrian, German, and Russian movements alongside Anglo, French, and Italian movements modernist traditions in their 1976 book Modernism. But Bradbury’s and McFarlane’s text was still bound to the concept of modernism as “Western,” a movement solely attached to Europe and North America. Astradur Eysteinsson acknowledges in The Concept of Modernism (1990) that “Anglo-centrism” remains central to many modernist studies. But “global modernism,” like modernism and Japanese modernism, is not a monolithic concept; it is also often exclusive, despite the implied universality of its terminology. In Doyle and Winkiel’s edited anthology Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, the arts, the medium most sensitive to the Now. And it is not surprising that, at the dawn of the twentieth century, music became the vanguard medium of the Modernist aesthetic” (Albright, 1). 112 William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 113 Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, editors, 1915, the Cultural Moment: The New Politics, the New Woman, the New Psychology, the New Art and the New Theatre in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991). 114 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: the Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, reprint of revised edition (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1972). 46

Modernity (2005), for example, Japan was completely excluded. But the contributors to Geomodernisms aim to rethink key structures of history, including periodization, genealogies, and affiliations, in a locational approach to modernisms’ engagement with cultural and political discourses of global modernity. According to the editors, this revision reveals unsuspected modernist experiments in marginal texts and correlation between those texts and others that appear either more conventional or more postmodern. The works identified as modernist in Geomodernisms all share a self-consciousness about positionality, wherein “positionality is onto- social as well as geographical.”115 The theory of this anthology is sound; I lament only its limited content and scope. The critical scholarship of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha has had a tremendous influence upon postcolonial studies during the last three decades, and their work has inspired me to look at my own in different ways. For example, the concept of “imagined geography,” a type of social constructionism that evolved out of Said’s late-1970s critique of Orientalism, applies to my own view of the social construction that was Japanese “modernity” during the early twentieth century. Like Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community”—the idea of a nation as a fiction created to forge a new sense of identity—the modernity to which Japanese modernists reacted was a construction of the Meiji era.116 It was also the unifying goal of the Meiji statesmen in their plan for rapid modernization, one of the main purposes of which was to avoid colonization by Western nations and become colonizers themselves. The study of interwar Japanese music benefits from aspects of poststructuralist theory. Perceiving the identity of each ygaku composer as it is constructed by various discourses and ideologies simultaneously helps to account for many of the complexities within Japanese modernism. According to Homi Bhabha, subjects who do not inhabit unified or stable positions or categories occupy a hybrid position. Hybridity is inherently deconstructive, as it breaks down any possibility of a binary opposition.117 As he argues in The Location of Culture (1994), nations and cultures must be understood as “narrative” constructions that arise from the hybrid

115 Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel, editors, Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 3. 116 Edward Said’s concept of “imagined geography” was introduced in Orientalism (1978); Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community” was the central focus of Imagined Communities (1983). 117 Morris-Suzuki cites Bhabha’s hybridity in his essay “Becoming Japanese,” which describes the polar forces of assimilation and difference in Karafuto, a northern Japanese island that was not made part of Japan proper until 1943. See Morris-Suzuki, 167. 47 interaction of contending national and cultural constituencies.118 This connects to Bhabha’s theory of the “third space.”119 Using the poststructuralist terminology of Foucault, Bhabha states, If … the act of cultural translation (both as representation and as reproduction) denies the essentialism of a prior given original or originary culture, then we see that all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity. But for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the “third space” which enables other positions to emerge.120

Such a space is opened up through acts of cultural and linguistic imitation and translation. Bhabha’s hybridity and Said’s imagined geography are both based upon an external critique of the colonialist power structure. Postcolonial thought is obviously directly applicable to studies of Japanese history, particularly given the period of hypercolonialist expansion before and during World War II. But postcolonialist thought also has a less obvious but no less interesting application in the study of the Meiji era’s self-conscious adoption of ideas from Western imperialist powers. The tension created between the hegemonic, “dominant” ideas of the West and the “subversive” ideas of an imagined pre-Westernization national identity (itself a product of Meiji-era nationalism) helped to form the third space in which Japanese modernists thrived.121 Bhabha’s theory of the third space is valuable to my project in a general way, because hybridity in ygaku is a vital part of my study. Also vital is the need to study Japanese ygaku on its own terms rather than as an imitative art or degenerate variant of Western music. Considering post- Meiji Restoration Japan as its own cultural center, with its own periphery, is important to this view; so, too, is the view of cultural interaction between Japan and the rest of the world as a continuous two-way flow. One of the basic functions of post-colonial thought is to decenter discourse away from Western civilization.

Overview of Chapters

In Chapter Two I review the history of Japan between 1868 and the late 1930s as it relates to ygaku in order to provide detailed historial context for the case studies that follow.

118 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 2. 119 I see Thomas LaMarre’s account of Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s film-related works “inhabiting the rupture” between Japan and the West as an application of this “third space” theory. See LaMarre, 19. 120 Jonathan Rutherford, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 210. 121 The tone of many Western writers seems to invert this order and treat Japanese culture as one that was “colonized” by the West, forgetting that the Japanese experience of Western culture was largely self-selected rather than enforced by an external power. 48

Each of my three case studies (Chapters Three, Four, and Five) focuses on one composer whose aesthetic stance and/or practical application of modernist thought reflected broader trends in Japanese modernism of the interwar era. Each of the three composers—Yamada Ksaku, Sugahara Meir, and Yoshida Takako—represents a different background and perspective. Yamada’s long list of musical “firsts” as a Japanese composer has continued to garner him much acclaim as an artistic ambassador of the early twentieth century; he also represents an early generation of graduates from the Tokyo Music School and the shared practices of those graduates studying abroad in Germany. Sugahara’s biography is quite different from Yamada’s; a self-taught composer, Sugahara did not travel to Europe for the first time until well after the end of World War II. He also championed modern French and Italian music, and identified himself first and foremost as a “performer-composer,” a persona most associated with composers of hgaku.122 Both Yamada and Sugahara endorsed Japanese nationalism during the late 1930s, albeit in very different ways. Yamada supported the war effort as musical ambassador to Japan's East Asian colonies during the early 1940s, and he composed military songs and music for propagandistic films during the Pacific War. During the latter half of the 1930s Sugahara’s music took a definite nationalistic turn; however, his intentions are not as unambiguous as Yamada’s. Sugahara had been working intimately with Japanese traditional musical materials since the 1920s, and he composed ygaku works featuring Japanese instruments, such as the koto and shakuhachi, in some of his compositions from the early 1930s. Although Sugahara denounced Western music in print late in the 1930s, this alone cannot necessarily be construed as outright support for the Japanese war effort. My third and final case study focuses on Yoshida Takako, who as a female composer offers a completely different perspective on interwar ygaku. Not only was Yoshida a staunch pacifist and social activist who endured multiple prison sentences for her beliefs, she was also a woman who identified with a global progressive female movement. As a member of the Proletarian Music League, Yoshida politicized her music differently from Yamada and Sugahara and sought musical “realism” as a method of reflecting the international and intercultural nature of modern Japanese life. Yet as a student of Sugahara’s and, like Sugahara, a member of the Emerging Composers League, Yoshida was connected to one of the

122 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 2. 49 strongest networks of Japanese modernist musical creation during the interwar era.123 Most ygaku composers of the 1920s and 1930s worked together at some point, either formally, within academic or non-academic organizations, or informally through independent student-teacher relationships or collaboration. Although a primary goal of the case studies is to introduce three Japanese composers who have received little or no treatment in Western scholarship on Japanese modernism, I also highlight the interconnectedness of their respective careers; this interconnectedness is an important aspect of the Japanese compositional world of the interwar years.

123 This is not to discredit the independent relationships with modernists (musical or otherwise) that Yoshida built on her own, some of which were already in place before she began composition study with Sugahara. 50

CHAPTER TWO

HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR JAPANESE MUSICAL MODERNISM

As the Introduction demonstrated, the definitions and movements related to Japanese modernism are as diverse and contested as those of Western modernism and global modernism. The historical outline I provide in this chapter describes modernism in Japan as it was created and disseminated by Japanese artists during the interwar era, with special attention paid to interwar musical modernism within the broader context of Japanese interwar arts and culture. Although Japanese state policy and government intervention in the arts are not central to my dissertation project, they are facets of Japanese modern history that must not be ignored. Because this chapter focuses on a broad historical overview, I have kept discussions of theoretical terms and historiography to a minimum, except when a more detailed explanation is necessary (defining the “modern” of the later Meiji era, for example). For this chapter, I have relied upon mainly English-language sources on art and music, as well as sources that cover the interwar time period in Japan more generally, especially for information on government policy, philosophy, aesthetics, and social activism. Many of these English-language sources provide translations of Japanese books and articles; I have checked these translations against my own study of the available original sources, whenever that has been possible.

Building a Foundation for Japanese Modernism: The Meiji Era

Any discussion of Japanese modernism must be grounded in an understanding of the government policies and cultural practices of the Meiji era (1868-1912). Numerous sources provide thorough examinations of the Meiji era, so this chapter provides an overview below that only touches upon the events most important to the developments of art and music in Japan. In 1867-68, a coup known as the Meiji Restoration was staged by nationalist samurai to unseat the Tokugawa shogunate.1 In the process, these samurai almost certainly assassinated Emperor Kmei (who favored retention of the shogunate) and installed the fifteen-year-old Mutsuhito in

1 The Tokugawa shogunate (also known as the Tokugawa bakufu) was the Japanese military government that effectively ruled Japan between 1600 and 1868; although the emperor was the legitimate ruler of Japan during the years of the shogunate, the Meiji Restoration is so named for “restoring” imperial rule (at least superficially, given the power of the Meiji oligarchy) in order to strengthen Japan against the threat represented by the colonial powers. For more information on the Meiji Restoration and the transitional period preceding it, see Marius B. Jansen, editor, The Emergence of Meiji Japan, revised edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 51 his place, they themselves becoming oligarchs.2 This coup occurred less than fifteen years after Commodore Perry’s famous arrival in Uraga Harbor (July 1853) with his five “black ships” and the subsequent signing of the Kanagawa Treaty (1854). The new emperor proclaimed the Charter Oath in 1868, which included the abandoning of “evil customs of the past” and the “seeking of knowledge throughout the world in order to strengthen the nation.” Almost immediately, the country saw sweeping changes, as the Meiji government began its fast-paced, intense drive to modernize. For example, during the 1870s the samurai—the very class from which the oligarchs of Japan had come—were disestablished and replaced by a conscript army.3 The Tokugawa slogan of sonn ji (revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians) was replaced by wakon ysai (Japanese spirit, Western learning). This prompted missions overseas to collect such knowledge, and vast numbers of Western specialists in a range of fields (including banking, military, mining, and infrastructure construction) were brought back to aid in the creation of a modernized Japan.4 The best-known of these missions is the Iwakura Embassy, a two-year worldwide trek headed by statesman Iwakura Tomomi (1825-1883). Iwakura and his retinue of 48 administrators and 60 students—some of whom were left in Western countries to complete their education—visited the United States and several countries in Europe to renegotiate unequal treaties forced on Japan during the previous decades.5 The Embassy also endeavored to gather information useful to the modernization of Japan. Upon his return to Japan in 1873, Iwakura applied what he had learned overseas and advocated for a written constitution and a limited form of parliamentary democracy. In 1889, the Dainippon Teikoku Kenp (Constitution of the Empire of Japan) was promulgated to support Japan’s new form of constitutional monarchy, which included a Prime Minister, a cabinet, and the representative assembly of the Imperial Diet.6

2 During his lifetime, Emperor Meiji was known by his personal name, Mutsuhito. Upon the death of a Japanese emperor, his personal name is not used in Japan in any official context. As the reigning emperor is referred to as the Emperor, all deceased emperors are referred to by their given reign name. I use Emperor Meiji’s personal name here not only because I am referring to him during his lifetime, but also to emphasize his youth at the time that he was installed as emperor. 3 Ken Henshall, “The Modern in Meiji Japan—and Elsewhere in Time and Place” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Global Oriental, 2012), 78. 4 Ibid., 77. 5 Two examples of these unequal treaties include the Kanagawa Treaty (U.S.-Japan; enacted when Commodore Matthew Perry reached Japan in 1854), and the Harris Treaty of 1858, negotiated by U.S. envoy Townsend Harris. The first encounter established a foundation for Americans to maintain a permanent consul in Shimoda and triggered the end of Japan's 200-year policy of seclusion. The second opened the ports of Kanagawa and four other Japanese cities to trade and granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, with many trading stipulations. 6 The Meiji Constitution established limits on the power of the executive branch and the Emperor, creating an independent judiciary, and guaranteeing civil rights and liberties (though these were subject to limitation by law). 52

The following decade saw many other major developments in the course of Japan’s modernization. The Kyiku Chokugo (Imperial Rescript on Education, 1890) articulated government policy on the guiding principles of education. The Rescript was read aloud at all important school events, and students were required to study and memorize the text. Its aims were twofold: to terminate the moral uncertainty brought about by the swift transition from feudal principles to Western modernization, and to foster moral solidarity by linking Confucian principles (such as loyalty and filial piety) with patriotic duty to the Emperor. Moral education as it was reflected by practices in Europe and the United States was central to the Meiji restorationists’ goals for bringing Japan into the modern era. It Hirobumi, the first Prime Minister of Japan, and Mori Arinori, Minister of Education from 1885 to 1889, believed that education should foster a modern form of patriotism that would develop national strength. Mori in particular believed it necessary to create a new Japanese individual, a “citizen” (rather than an imperial “subject”) who could accept personal responsibility for the fate of the country.7 Such personal responsibility played out in Japan’s first major international military campaigns of the modern era, the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Internationally the Japanese victory in both of these conflicts signaled the emergence of Japan as a world power, while at home artists and writers celebrated (or condemned) the wars in popular new forms of literature, visual art, and music.8 The writing of the Meiji Civil Code (1898) legally defined gender and family roles by giving the male head of a family absolute authority over his

However, the constitution was ambiguous in wording and often self-contradictory. Interpreting the Meiji Constitution (as it is now informally called) became one of the major struggles for the nation’s leaders for the next five decades, as some parties used its ambiguities to justify authoritarian rule, while others saw it as support for liberal-democratic rule. For general information on Meiji public policy, see Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 2 (1600-2000), compiled by Wm. Theodore de Bary in collaboration with William Bodiford, Carol Gluck, Arthur E. Tiedemann, Andrew Barshay, et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). For more detailed information on the politics of Meiji modernization (at home and abroad), a number of essays in New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, ed. Helen Hardacre and Adam L. Kern (Brill, 1997) provide compelling studies, including “Picturing the State: A Semiotic Analysis of the Meiji Slogan” by Charles Shiro Inouye; “Japan and the World” by Marius B. Jansen; “Revision of the Unequal Treaties and Abolition of Extraterritoriality” by Louis G. Perez; “Political Ideologies of the Early Meiji Parties” by Kyu Hyun Kim; and “Local Citizens or Loyal Subjects? Enlightenment Discourse and Educational Reform” by Mark E. Lincicome. 7 Masako Gavin, “Abe Isoo and Baseball,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 455. 8 For example, the many military songs (gunka) inspired by the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War were tremendously popular with the general public. David Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” Asian Music 43, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2012): 20. 53 family members. Although the Meiji statesmen wanted to present their country to the rest of the modernized world as progressive, the tenets of the Civil Code were mostly reactionary.9 As the Iwakura mission went abroad, the government abolished state recognition of Japanese art and music guilds. The oligarchy also abolished legislation that had protected the guilds through a series of privileges and monopolies, which threw the finely-tuned system of awarding ranks for artistic progress, created over centuries, into disarray.10 From then on an artist’s survival largely depended on his or her ability as a free agent, and on negotiating a new structure of arts education: a system patterned on Western secondary schools and universities.11 Bonnie Wade has noted that in Japan, as in many other places across the globe, one of the first steps in the modernization process was to address the education of the populace with the purpose of strengthening nationhood.12 For the first time in Japanese history; universal education was established by imperial decree as a tool in the modernizing process. The 1872 Gakusei (Fundamental Code of Education) and its successor of 1880, the Kaisei Kyikurei (Revised Education Order), outlined a comprehensive national education system.13 I will discuss painting

9 The power over family members as prescribed by the Civil Code extended to control over property, where family members were to live, approval of marriages and divorces, inheritance and family assets, and control over children when a female member of the family divorced. One provision stated that “Crippled and disabled persons and wives cannot undertake any legal action.” To say nothing of imperial subjects with disabilities, the Civil Code was only one of several laws enacted during Meiji that aimed at restricting the freedom of women. In 1889, the Constitution and the Law of Election denied voting rights to females, while the Law on Assembly and Political Association of denied women the right to join political parties, attend political gatherings, or even take political courses. These laws were in part a response to the actions of female members of the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement (Jiyū minken und), Japan’s “first wave” feminists, who became vocal about social reform for women in the 1880s. 10 This was a system that depended on officially recognized titles and permitted artists to ascend to higher ranks in the teaching system. When the Meiji administration abolished the Tokugawa geographical domains and took fiscal control of the newly created prefectures, the networks that had supported the iemoto system (the system of familial generations or lineages in traditional Japanese arts) eroded, and those who had held hereditary posts as domainal masters in their field lost their positions and salaries. The td guild system was completely abolished in 1871, which meant that blind musicians, who had largely depended upon the welfare of the state since the fourteenth century, no longer had a monopoly on profits from performance and teaching of heikyoku (music of the semi- classical bardic tradition) genres, such as biwa-accompanied recitation, koto music, and shamisen music. As a result, the number of performers of heikyoku declined dramatically. 11 This is not to say that traditional arts were no longer supported in private; in music, especially, traditional genres maintained a large following, even though these musicians lost their social status and function. These changes affected primarily those forms of music-making that were fashionable and those that, like n theatre, were protected by the government. Because of its association with the emperor, court music regained importance, and kabuki was freed from the restrictions and censorship to which it had been subjected under the Tokugawa regime. The Meiji government also abolished the Fuke monastic order, which allowed instruments such as the shakuhachi to become accessible in secular genres. Luciana Galliano, Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, Transl. Martin Mayes (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 16-17. 12 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 15. 13 Wade makes the observation that, in this case, "imperial decree" actually means that it was done at the behest of the oligarchy who had reinstated the emperor to a position of symbolic leadership not exercised for six hundred 54 and music education here to demonstrate government involvement in arts education (and support of Western styles in particular) during the Meiji era. Western classical visual art appealed to Meiji policy makers because of its representation; they held accurate depiction to be essential for Japan to develop a modern military and economy. The following decades of government subsidies for Western oil painting supported Meiji leaders’ belief in a utilitarian concept of art, first put into practice in the Meiji era as part of the Kbusho (Ministry of Public Works).14 In 1871 this ministry—to which was assigned the building of railways, mining, iron foundries, lighthouses, telegraphs, and shipbuilding—acquired an educational institution in the form of the Kbu Daigakk (Imperial College of Engineering). In 1876 a Technical Art School was added with divisions in Western painting and sculpture. All instruction at the Imperial College was conducted in English, and the College employed 47 foreign teachers (a significant fraction of the government’s total employment of Westerners between 1873 and 1885, which was slightly over 500). But the Art School’s closure and the subsequent dissolution of the Ministry of Public Works in 1885 bear witness to increased nationalism in visual art, as well as to fiscal concerns (Western instructors were relatively expensive) and the increasing privatization of pilot projects begun by the government.15 In 1886 control of the Imperial College of Engineering was transferred to the more conservative Ministry of Education, after which it became the Faculty of Engineering of the Imperial University. Marius B. Jansen observed that the decline in favor of Western-style oil painting happened concurrently with the rise in popularity of natural-pigment painting nihonga, what he calls a “neotraditional” genre employing traditional mediums and formats along with certain Western techniques, such as chiaroscuro.16 Yet the term “nihonga” literally means “Japanese-style painting”; this term was coined during the late nineteenth century in order to distinguish paintings made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques, and materials from yga, Western-style paintings. Beginning in the 1890s nihonga and yga years. Most of the early, sweeping changes to the country were made by the oligarchy in the name of the emperor. Wade, 15. 14 I use the Meiji-era qualifier here because of the presence of this type of utilitarian viewpoint within educational establishments prior to 1868. In the last decades of Tokugawa rule the shogunate’s Institute for Western Studies (Bansho Shirabesho, or Bansho Shirabe Dokoro) included oil painting as a utilitarian discipline, treating it as a field of study akin to mapmaking and descriptive drawing. Marius B. Jansen, “Cultural Change in Nineteenth-Century Japan” in Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, ed. Ellen P. Conant (Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2006), 46. 15 Jansen, 46-48. 16 Ibid., 48 55 developed simultaneously in Japan, and after 1900 both styles were taught at the Tky Bijutsu Gakk (Tokyo School of Fine Arts) and in official exhibitions. In 1898 nihonga achieved its own separate academic institution when artists Okakura Tenshin, Yokoyama Taikan, and several others founded the Nihon Bijutsuin (Japan Art Institute).17 Both nihonga and yga were affected by modernist styles from Europe, as well as innovations at home during the early twentieth century.18 Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924), who studied in Paris from 1884 until 1893, championed modern French movements such as Realism and Impressionism in painting. In 1896 Kuroda was appointed to the first yga chair at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and in 1910 he was named an imperial court painter, the first Western-style painter so honored. While some scholarship has described Kuroda as representative of the Meiji artistic status quo (they call him a Japanese “modern” painter as opposed to “modernist”), others have claimed that Kuroda’s deliberate appropriation of Western principles of art challenged the seemingly centralized Western authority of fine arts, thus bringing Japanese art into an international dialogue on modernism.19 A student of Kuroda’s, Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929) represented a later generation of Japanese artists whose theories on painting sought to combine Western and Japanese aesthetics into something completely new. After 1910 Kuroda’s personal style took on aspects of European fauvism, cubism, and expressionism variously; he later adopted a more realistic style modeled upon the Northern Renaissance painters, such as Rembrandt and Dürer, and even created works that fit conventional nihonga genres. Matthew Larking has written that Kuroda’s exploration of all of these styles is testament to the Japanese modernist artist’s freedom to follow aesthetic preference during the interwar era.20 This exploration of various styles arguably culminated in Kuroda’s Shajitsuron (Theory of Realism), which he claimed was a new, realistic painting style intended to unveil a concept of inner beauty and the mystery of life.21

17 It is interesting to note that the Nihon Bijutsuin added its own section for yga in 1920, which reflects the pluralism of the Japanese art world during the early twentieth century. 18 Thomas R.H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts: the Avant-Garde Rejection of Modernism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 22. 19 For scholars supporting the first position, see Charles Shir Inouye, “Modernism and Modernity” and Matthew Larking, “Reorienting Painting,” both in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Global Oriental, 2012), 62-72 and 323-38, respectively. For the latter position, see Jeehyun Lee, “Resisting Boundaries: Japonisme and Western- Style Art in Meiji Japan,” PhD Dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 2011). 20 Matthew Larking, “Reorienting Painting,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 329-30. 21 Doris Croissant discusses Kishida’s Theory of Realism in her essay “In Quest of the Real: Portrayal and Photography in Japanese Painting Theory,” in Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth- Century Japanese Art, 167-68. Croissant points out the similarities between Kishida’s aesthetic basis for “neo- realism” and those of classical Japanese painting styles, as well as those of the French Impressionists. 56

Whereas nihonga and yga developed simultaneously during the Meiji era and even borrowed various methods from one another, the dichotomy in education between Western music (ygaku) and Japanese traditional music (hgaku) was much sharper. Japanese public schools taught Western classical music, ignoring traditional music and dance for most of the pre- World War II era.22 Early on, adult Japanese musicians were educated in Western music in one of two ways: in the military bands of the army or navy, or through courses offered at the Tokyo Ongaku Gakk (Tokyo Music School). In both cases, students first received musical instruction from foreign teachers. English bandmaster John William Fenton (1828-90), who had initially come to Japan in 1868 as part of a regiment sent to protect foreign nationals living in Yokohama during the Restoration, instructed the Navy band (as well as the band of the imperial court) until 1877. The Army band hired Gustave Charles Desire Dagron from France as its leader, and his successor, Charles Edouard Gabriel Leroux (1851-1926), would end up teaching many of the earliest Japanese ygaku composers and bandmasters.23 Within a decade, however, both military bands were replacing their foreign instructors with Japanese musicians who had been sent to study abroad, most either in Germany or France. By the late 1880s, such students were beginning to return to Japan, by which point the number of foreign music teachers in the military bands had decreased considerably.24 Musicians trained in Japan’s military bands had a far-reaching impact upon the dissemination and creation of ygaku, as these musicians went on to teach bands at junior high and high schools in and around Japan’s major urban centers of Tokyo and Osaka. Military bands in Japan provided the earliest opportunity for Japanese musicians to hear and perform French music.25

22 Havens, 22. Hgaku was not always excluded from public music education, as seen in some of the earliest song melodies and instrumental courses (which included instruction on the koto) taught at the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari. Galliano, 30. 23 Leroux taught the Army’s Fourth Division military band leader, Kobatake Kenpachiro, who was one of modernist composer Sugahara Meir’s earliest teachers; Kobatake’s instruction provided Sugahara with some of his earliest experiences with French musical styles. 24 Japan’s nationalist penchant for bringing in foreign instructors and then quickly replacing them was typical of most artistic fields during the Meiji era. See David G. Hebert, “Chapter 2: Where are These Bands From?” in Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools (Springer, 2011), 11-73 and Marius B. Jansen, “Cultural Change in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in Challenging Past and Present, 31-55. 25 In his biographical sketch of Sugahara Meir’s early years, Matsushita Hitoshi makes a related comment in regards to Sugahara’s own musical training. Although Sugahara would later be known as one of the composers who “introduced” the Japanese ygaku world to French music, he had unconsciously assimilated French music early on through his studies with military band leaders, such as Kobatake Kenpachir. Maesutoro no shz: Sugahara Meir hyronshū, ed. Hitoshi Matsushita (Tachikawa: Kunitachi ongaku daigaku fuzoku toshokan, 1998), 6. 57

Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War reinforced the country’s military pride, and as a result the musical repertoire of Japanese music ensembles (most of which were formed from military band graduates) continued to be dominated by Western-style marches and patriotic music. All of this had a significant influence on popular music, and its effect was also felt on school music, as Western music influenced the formation of the music curriculum in primary schools and, later, secondary schools.26 Formal music education in Japan began with the creation of the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari (Music Investigation Committee) in 1879.27 This organization and teaching institution was headed by Izawa Shūji (1851-1917), an educator sent to the U.S. during the 1870s to study American educational practices. The Committee had three fundamental objectives: the creation of a new corpus of music using both Western and Eastern elements; the training of musicians in preparation for developments to come; and the introduction of music into the national school curriculum. The adoption of Western ideas in the field of education was guided by Confucian criteria, which held that education encouraged mental harmony. As a result, given the program of the modernization of society, the music used could only have been Western.28 The Committee was ostensibly cultivating aspects of both Western and Japanese musical styles. However, the language used by Izawa when he first submitted his statement of options to the Ministry of Education at the time of the Committee’s founding embodies a self-orientalizing positioning of traditional Japanese music and invokes a theory of cultural evolution.29 The Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari first offered lessons in singing, a few instruments, and music theory. They were also tasked with the daunting enterprise of creating a repertoire of songs suitable for primary schools. Pedagogical works for traditional music genres were deemed inappropriate, so Izawa looked abroad for a model. This resulted in Luther Whiting Mason’s coming to Tokyo in 1880 and living there for two years, during which time he and Izawa worked together to produce the first Japanese book of school songs.30 In order to better understand the

26 Galliano, 29. 27 The Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari (Music Investigation Committee) began as the Ongaku Denshūsho (Centre for Musical Education), the result of an October, 1879 circular from the Ministry of Education, although it was almost immediately renamed the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari. 28 Galliano, 30. 29 Wade, 18. 30 Galliano, 29-30. Luther Whiting Mason (1818-1896) was the music education inspector for Boston and an acquaintance of Izawa’s from his time in the U.S. Galliano reports that, of the songs in this collection, 90 percent used Western melodies to which a Japanese text had been added. In the second collection this imbalance was slightly redressed, as only 80 percent of the songs were Western in origin, while the remainder used Japanese scales 58 basics of European music, the Committee also contacted English musicologist Alexander John Ellis, trading knowledge of the Japanese tonal system with Ellis in return for an explanation of the more advanced aspects of the Western tonal system.31 Senzaburo Kzu (1852-1927), who had been in the United States with Izawa, prepared and published translations of basic American and European music theory textbooks for the Committee. These early developments laid the groundwork for the introduction of Western music into Japanese culture in general, as primary school children learned to read Western notation and sing in a choir.32 As children benefited from the extensive work of the Music Investigation Committee, the Committee itself underwent significant changes. In 1887, the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari became the Tokyo Ongaku Gakk (Tokyo Music School); as Japan’s first conservatory-style educational facility in music, it was most responsible for the diffusion of European music in Japan over the next half a century. The Tokyo Music School established its first exchanges for serious academic musical studies with Germany. Besides the presence of German teachers in Japan and Japanese students’ studying abroad in Germany, the Japanese musical world also became organized according to German standards.33 Important composers who came to work in Japan included Franz Eckert (1852-1916) in 1883, followed by Rudolf Dittrich (1861-1921), August Junker (1870-1944), Heinrich Werckmeister (1883-1936), Karl Vogt (1884-1960), Josef Laska (1886-1964), Ernst Putscher (1896-1962), Klaus Pringsheim (1883-1972), and Manfred Gurlitt (1890-1972). The music that these composers produced in Japan showed no signs of acculturation and remained firmly rooted in the German Romantic tradition.34 Wade has observed that a similar characteristic holds true for the music of most Japanese composers who went to Germany to study. Despite the assumption that many of those students must have been aware of such composers as Arnold Schoenberg, widespread interest in contemporary German art music came

and melodies. As tastes and ideas changed, the work of Izawa was heavily criticized and the emphasis shifted in favor of a return to traditional Japanese music. However, this primary phase laid the groundwork for the introduction of Western music into Japanese culture in general. 31 Alexander John Ellis (1814-1890) is now recognized as a pioneer of comparative musicology. He is known for his comparative writings on musical pitch and scales of various European musical traditions; he also conducted extensive fieldwork in England and Scotland on linguistic dialects. 32 Galliano, 30. 33 By the 1920s, this influence could be found in the running of new symphony orchestras, newly established seasons of public concerts open to the public, and the organization and publication of music magazines. Luciana Galliano calls the period between 1870 and 1945 a time when “everything to do with German musical history and culture was very much revered,” although in her evaluation of Galliano’s statement, Bonnie Wade qualifies “German musical history and culture” as only pertaining to the Classical and Romantic periods. 34 Galliano, 41. 59 only after World War II.35 Exceptions include Yamada Ksaku, who admired and emulated the music of Richard Strauss (1864-1949) early on, especially Strauss’s opera Salomé (1905); and It Noboru (1903-93), who incorporated German Expressionism in his own music of the 1920s and 1930s. Among the first students to study abroad was Kda Nobu (1870-1946), one of the first three female graduates of the Tokyo Music School.36 Kda received a grant from the Ministry for Education to study for a year at the New England School of Music in Boston and then in Vienna for four years. On her return to Japan in 1895, she taught at the Music School and enjoyed an exceptional career as a violinist, although she is now remembered principally as a teacher.37 One of her pupils, Taki Rentar (1879-1903), is now regarded as the first significant Japanese ygaku composer. Upon graduating from the School of Music in 1898, he studied in Leipzig for almost two years. The physicist, music theorist, and inventor Tanaka Shhei (1862-1945) was one of the first students sent to Germany on an imperial scholarship. He ended up remaining in Europe for about a decade, part of which he spent studying acoustics with Hermann von Helmholtz. Tanaka was also responsible for the publication of a series of piano music entitled Gesammelte Werke der Weltmusik (the title was printed in both German and Japanese), which included works by Mussorgsky, Debussy, Scriabin, Schoenberg, Ravel, Bartók, and Prokofiev. This collection was published in Japan in 1931 and was edited by the musicologist Tanabe Hisao (1883-1984). Students such as Kda, Taki, and Tanaka set the pattern for most academic ygaku musicians in Japan; a degree from the Tokyo School of Music, followed by study abroad in either Germany,

35 Wade, 61. 36 Interestingly, female musicians of ygaku did not—at least early on—suffer the discrimination in their education and profession that many other Japanese women experienced. Even though most of the female graduates of the Tokyo Music School went on to careers in teaching or unpaid performance (or left music altogether), the early decades of Meiji found many female musicians entering the academic music world, as the cultural status associated with ygaku education was still very nebulous. Two articles by Sondra Wieland Howe discuss the important roles that women played in the introduction and instruction of Western music in Japan: “Women Music Educators in Japan during the Meiji Period,” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education No. 119 (Winter, 1993/1994): 101-9; and “The Role of Women in the Introduction of Western Music in Japan,” The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education 16, No. 2 (January, 1995): 81-97. 37 Another notable pupil of Kda Nobu was Yamada Ksaku (the focus of Chapter Three); Kda is also given credit for discovering Suzuki Shin’ichi, who was then actually taught by Kda Nobu’s younger sister, violinist And K (née Kda, 1878-1963). Suzuki Shin’ichi (1898-1998) invented the world famous “Suzuki Method” of music education. 60

Austria, or another center focused on German artistic traditions, quickly became the standard expected of all “serious” musicians and composers in Japan.38 Although Marius B. Jansen identifies increasing conservatism in the Ministry of Education’s music policies by the last decade of the nineteenth century, the state did not in turn support hgaku to the extent that they supported nihonga in the visual arts. From its inception, the Music Investigation Committee desired a harmonious mixture of the best aspects of Japanese and Western music, at least in theory; but in music, academic conservatism mainly appeared in the form of more Japanese texts for songs, while the melodies and accompaniment remained mostly European.39 This exposes one of the most intractable contradictions inherent in Meiji-era music education: educators pushed for the integration of Japanese and foreign styles, but this integration was rarely exercised in practice. Hgaku was learned outside of school, and this practice has continued to the present day.40

The Legacy of Meiji: Slogans and Japanese “Modernity”

During the Meiji era the ideals of the restorationists who supported rapid modernization often appeared as slogans (hygo) transmitted by propaganda or by military-political doctrines. These include phrases like Fukoku kyhei (enrich the country, strengthen the military), a national slogan that embodied the Meiji government’s national modernizing objectives during the early 1870s and their awareness of the rapacious nature of international politics at the time. Another such slogan was Haibutsu kishaku (throw away Buddha and abolish Sākyamuni), a rallying cry used in the persecution of Buddhist priests and the destruction of their property triggered by the official policy of separation of Shint and Buddhism after 1868.41 Four slogans are especially

38 More information on the music education of Meiji Japan is presented in the following sources: Ury Eppstein, "Musical Instruction in Meiji Education: A Study of Adaptation and Assimilation," Monumenta Nipponica 40.1 (Spring 1985): 1-37; and David G. Hebert, Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools (New York: Springer, 2011). 39 Jansen, 48. 40 Even though some recent Japanese educational reforms require some learning of traditional music, any form of serious study would have to be undertaken outside the state schooling system. Henry Johnson, “A Modernist Traditionalist: Miyagi Michio, Transculturalism, and the Making of a Music Tradition,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 257. 41 During the preceding Edo period, Japan’s ruling shoguns had largely adopted Buddhism as the de facto state religion; also, the lines between Buddhism and (the practices now associated with) Shint had been blurred for many centuries. But after the Restoration, Shint and Buddhist practices were officially separated (shinbutsu bunri). When the Meiji restorationists molded Shint into a national religion and placed it at the root of Japanese nationhood, they felt compelled to launch a sustained critique of Buddhism as non-Japanese. Although this was not the first time in 61 germane to my study. These slogans are a significant part of the legacy of Meiji Japan; as such, they have been referenced by almost every source on Japanese modernization and Japanese history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet as Charles Shir Inouye has argued, such slogans represent the dominant narrative of Meiji political history, as opposed to the narratives of literature, poetry, and fiction that were limited in their circulation. Scholars who allow the slogans to guide their inquiry ignore opposing narratives in poetry and fiction will continue to be limited, Inouye writes, by the hegemonic impulse to deny the variety of political expression that existed throughout the period.42 I will address a few of them as a method of dialoguing with other sources on Japanese history, and I will include opposing voices, contradictions, or difficulties that presented themselves as a result of the practical application of these slogans. akon ysai (Japanese spirit, Western techniques), a prevalent phrase of the Meiji drive to modernize, was coined by Sakuma Shzan (1811-64). Sakuma, a Neo-Confucian scholar, was one of the first to confront the problems posed by Japan’s emergence from its long period of isolation during the Bakumatsu period, just prior to the Meiji Restoration.43 The slogan was a variation of the older wakon kansai (Japanese spirit, Chinese knowledge), to which all of the Neo-Confucian schools of the late Tokugawa period adhered.44 But the decision to modernize Japan brought with it a multitude of problems, not the least of which was how to master Western art forms without fully espousing their essential philosophical aesthetics. This problem sparked debates throughout the interwar era and often resulted in the development of innovative theories of art that melded Western and Japanese aesthetic ideals. But while Japanese artists were supposed to eschew fundamental foreign philosophies in favor of some sort of “Japanese spirit” as their aesthetic guide, such a spirit was subjective and amorphous at best, and at worst it was the product of state-constructed “traditions” during the late nineteenth century. Even with some supposedly Japanese elements included, newness on the scale experienced in Meiji Japan caused disorientation; the Meiji oligarchs tried to neutralize the resulting disorientation by inventing

Japan’s history that Buddhism had been subject to such discrimination, the wave of persecution from 1868 to 1873, during which the number of temples was reduced from over 450,000 to approximately 70,000 and the number of Buddhist priests from 75,000 to under 20,000, was the most severe. James Mark Shields, “Awakening between Science, Art and Ethics: Variations of Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890-1945,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 108. 42 Charles Shiro Inouye, "Picturing the State: A Semiotic Analysis of the Meiji Slogan," in New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, ed. Helen Hardacre and Adam Lewis Kern (Brill, 1997), 276. 43 Bakumatsu refers to the last fifteen years of the Edo period, as the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate ended and Japan terminated its isolationist foreign policy. 44 Galliano, 21n.8. 62 native traditions that could provide cultural referents and make new ideas more palatable. Such invented traditions included the Shint wedding ceremony (and to a large extent “Shint” itself), and even the power and centrality of the emperor.45 But political dissidence reared its head early on in print and protest and found musical expression through the songs of enkashi (balladeers), who sold printed lyric sheets and sang songs as a way of promoting sales. The word enka (“performed speech-song”) originated in the 1880s to describe antigovernment protest songs sung in the streets as an expression of the Jiyū Minken Und (Freedom and Popular Rights Movement) of the 1870s and 1880s. At the time, intellectual leaders of the movement sought the support of the general public through song.46 Another widely disseminated slogan, rysai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) derived from an idealized traditional role for women. Rysai kenbo was coined by educator and translator Nakamura Masanao in 1875 and represented the model for womanhood in the new, modern Japan. The slogan promoted the primary role of women in the socialization of children and as passive supporters of fukoku kyhei (enrich the country, strengthen the military). Rysai kenbo was central to an ideology of familialism whereby the family formed a crucial link in the chain of loyalty from subject to emperor, another central tenet of post-Restoration Japan. Yet the late nineteenth century also saw the dissemination of liberal ideas, which made possible the first theorization of feminism. While some middle-class women engaged in philanthropic activities that did not challenge feminine stereotypes, several prominent activists were nurtured in the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement. There were also contradictions engendered by women performing waged labor, which became more and more prevalent by the turn of the twentieth century. Despite the limits placed upon women’s political participation by the Constitution (1889), the Law on Assembly and Political Association (1889), and the Meiji Civil Code (1898), such contradictions were addressed by socialist women’s groups, and many women moved into labor activism.47 Female modernist Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) used her anti-war poem Kimi shi ni tamou koto nakare (Thou Shalt Not Die), which was addressed to her younger brother during the height of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), as a form of protest. Writers such as Yosano were the forbears of proactive Japanese women who participated in modernist art and literature

45 Henshall, 80-81. 46 Christine R. Yano, “Defining the Modern Nation in Japanese Popular Song, 1914-1932,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities, 249. 47 Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 3, 6. 63 during the interwar era, sometimes in support of radical social or political change. Although women would not gain the right to attend political meetings until 1922 (and would not be able to vote until after 1945), feminist and socialist groups of the late nineteenth century paved the way for interwar Japanese women to fight for their civil rights. Yoshida Takako (1910-56), the focus of Chapter Five, exemplifies the socially-conscious and politically-active female modernist who worked both for musical innovation and for the future of female composers. The final slogan I will consider here is bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment), a powerful locution taken from the 1868 Charter Oath, which dominated the dialogue on Westernization and modernization during the 1870s. Under its banner, the Meiji oligarchs introduced Western institutions and technologies, which made it possible for Japan to construct a modern nation-state and develop capitalism.48 Even the reign name “Meiji” (which literally means “Enlightened Rule”) played its part in this development. The “enlightenment” of bunmei kaika invoked Enlightenment thought from Europe, whereas “civilization” was meant to invoke purpose and goal, self-sacrifice and nationalism.49 With the increased intrusion of the West into Japan beginning in the 1850s, the development of national identity became an urgent practical issue; the threat from external nation-states thus played a large role in destroying more local and regional allegiances in Japan. Nationalism was far from an established orthodoxy in Japan immediately after the Restoration, and membership in the “nation” was certainly not taken for granted. For most people, local allegiances were more pressing than national ones, and knowledge of the emperor was sketchy at best. Nationalism had to be created and propagated among the people.50 But bunmei kaika, like wakon ysai, caused much confusion and cultural unrest during the Meiji era, and interwar writers wrote scathing commentary on Meiji’s Enlightenment and Civilization agenda. Philosopher and cultural historian Watsuji Tetsujir (1889-1960) blamed bunmei kaika for introducing excessive abstraction into everyday life by setting aside the Japanese past. H.D. Harootunian, quoting Watuji’s Zoku Nihon seishinshi kenkyū (Research on the Attributes of Japanese Intellectual History, 1941), states that “the abstract character of

48 Mariko Asano Tamanoi, “The City and the Countryside: Competing Taish ‘Modernities’ on Gender,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities, 99. 49 H.D. Harootunian, “A Sense of an Ending and the Problem of Taisho,” in Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taish Democracy, ed. Bernard S. Silberman and H.D. Harootunian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 15. 50 Sandra Wilson, “Rethinking Nation and Nationalism in Japan,” in Nation and Nationalism in Japan, ed. Sandra Wilson (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 4. 64

Enlightenment not only lacks a consideration of history, it captures only one occasion of concreteness,” by which Watsuji meant (according to Harootunian) its presentness.51 Even earlier, ethnologist, linguist and poet Orikuchi Shinobu (1887–1953) constructed a critique of the Meiji bureaucratic state that sought to explain how imagination was forfeited in the commitment to Enlightenment. In the article “Higakuni e, tokoyo e” (To the Mother Country, To the Far-off Land, 1921), he complained that the “light of Enlightenment” had transformed “our hearts” into a “wretched, dry beech.” What troubled Orikuchi was the sacrifice of imagination and a tradition of beliefs for the utility of rational agency. Like many Japanese modernists, Orikuchi sought a foundation (which he formulated as higakuni, or “motherland”) for post-Meiji Japanese literature.52 Other modernists expressed uncertainty about bunmei kaika: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s historical fiction short story “Enlightenment Husband” (Kaika no otto, 1919) describes the allure of early Meiji-era Tokyo, while also registering Akutagawa’s ambivalent posture towards this period of history.53 In music, the question of neglected Japanese imagination was still an issue as recently as 1994, as Kazumi Negishi discusses in his essay “European Music in Japan: Was Imagination also Imported?” Referring to his own life in relation to the history of Japanese experience with Western music, he wrote, I have only rarely been satisfied with Japanese music [because] I had no experiences that could be equal to those I can get when I listen to music, for example, of Beethoven and Schubert. In this sense I might say that I'm not a Japanese in musical receptability … how can I appreciate Japanese music?54

Slogans such as the ones discussed above highlight the deep and abiding ambiguity at the heart of the Meiji Restoration: that between the capacity of an indigenous culture to withstand change and the claims of new knowledge demanding transformation.55 Japan’s leaders drove to modernize in this way because they saw it as the fastest route to catch up with the West and thus avoid colonization. Mass Westernization and the nationalization of indigenous tradition (whether

51 H.D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 220. 52 Harootunian, 331. 53 Seiji M. Lippit, “A Modernist Nostalgia: the Colonial Landscape of Enlightenment Tokyo in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Edogawa Rampo,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 129. 54 Kazumi Negishi, “European Music in Japan: Was Imagination also Imported?” in Music Cultures in Interaction; Cases between Asia and Europe, ed. Usabur Mabuchi and Osamu Yamaguti (Tokyo: Academia Music, 1994), 237- 38. 55 Shields, 108. 65 established or newly conceived) constituted an acceptable modernity for the Meiji restorationists. But what did this modernity actually entail? Like the various terms used to describe Japanese modernism discussed in the Introduction, modernity has been applied in different ways by scholars of Japanese history. Some have used it interchangeably with “modernism,” while others have separated it from modernism in order to elucidate cultural reactions to modernity. Some have argued that many dates between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries are suitable markers of the beginning of Japanese modernity; however, most scholars on “Japanese modernism” agree that the rapid industrialization, centralization, urbanization, and Westernization of the Meiji era established a monolithic sense of “modern” during the late nineteenth century; this was the modernity to which Japanese modernist artists later responded.56 In his essay “Modernism and Modernity,” Charles Shir Inouye enumerates three trends for identifying the modern consciousness in Japanese culture: first, the trend towards sound- oriented signs, or phonocentrism; second, the trend towards homogenization of signs, or realism; and third, the use of signs to accomplish a symbolic framing of reality, or perspectivalism. What they all share is a suppression of “figurality” (the expressive potential of the grapheme, or the visible, material aspect of a sign).57 Although Inouye inscribes a larger pattern of anti-figurality in Japanese history between 1590 and 1970, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a rapid proliferation of signs with low figurality, including the prosaic and colloquial novel, maps, realistic images, newspapers, and military and school uniforms. Such signs, Inouye claims, are capable of masking differences of subjective understanding, thereby promoting a shared, fictive understanding. The explosion of Meiji propaganda texts (coupled with extensive government censorship of all publications), including the era’s many slogans, are typical of signs with low figurality—as a type of symbol, these texts carefully controlled and limited, and they standardized figurality and masked differences of personal understanding.58 Inouye writes, For this reason, modernity has taken an essentially prosaic approach to reality. Its need for deception favors fiction over poetry, realism over fantasy, and symbolism or ideological clarity over the chaos of “art for art's sake.” … Now, if achieving this kind of massive distortion was one of the principle goals of modernity, exposing this distortion as distortion has been one of the enduring goals of modernism. ... the modernist impulse

56 See for example Ken Henshall, “The Modern in Meiji Japan—and Elsewhere in Time and Place,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 73-82. 57 Charles Shir Inouye, “Modernism and Modernity,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 64. 58 Ibid., 66. 66

actually takes us towards a restoration of the figurality that modern trueness to the figure consistently suppresses.59

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Japanese modernists would contribute to exposing the distortions generated by the modernity constructed during the Meiji era.

“Greater Taish” Era and the Beginnings of Japanese Modernism

In his essay “A Sense of an Ending and the Problem of Taish,” H.D. Harootunian describes Meiji as a heroic era characterized by a military sense of determination and achievement, its spirit one of civilization (bunmei).60 The leaders of Meiji were men who committed themselves to “discipline, practical education and self-sacrificing service.”61 But Harootunian sees these characteristics in stark contrast to the culture (bunka) of the following Taish era.62 Whereas the Meiji era’s sweeping political and military movements, as well as the paradigm-shifting artistic innovations, were largely outward-facing in their goals (displaying to the rest of the world the power of a modernized Japan), the generations of Taish turned inward, away from international politics and nationalism and towards individualism and culturalism.63 While Harootunian’s summation of the Taisho inward turn seems reductive—Japan’s leaders did not abandon international politics during the 1910s and 1920s—there was a definite shift towards domestic matters after the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Although Japanese artists were already responding critically to the changes in their country, this shift at the beginning of the twentieth century helped to foster modernist movements in Japan. The period from 1900 to 1930 is sometimes referred to as “Greater Taish” for a series of related events and similar trends that collectively anchor its periodicity.64 These three decades

59 Inouye, 68. 60 Harootunian, 7. 61 Ibid., 15. 62 Harootunian is certainly not alone in drawing this ideological dichotomy between Meiji and Taisho; see Karatani Kjin’s essay “The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,” trans. Seiji M. Lippit, in Boundary 2 18, No. 3, Japan in the World (Autumn 1991): 191-219. 63 Harootunian, 15. 64 A variety of alternate periodizations for early-twentieth-century Japanese history exist. Separation of eras by imperial reign between Meiji and Taisho does have its merits, as H.D. Harootunian points out in “A Sense of an Ending and the Problem of Taisho”; Harootunian sees the death of the Meiji Emperor and the accompanying ritual suicide of his general, Count Nogi Maresuke, as marking the end of the “heroic” era begun by the Meiji Restoration (Harootunian, 5). The years 1918-1930 are also commonly referred to as the Taish Democracy (Taish demokurashii), given the maturation of Japan’s two-party political system after World War I and the election in 1918 of the first commoner to serve as Japan’s prime minister (Hara Takashi: 1856-1921). Another name for the period from 1924 to 1932 was kensei no jd, or “constitutional government as the normal way of running the state” 67 represent a generation of Japanese experience during which Japan rose in the international community as a world power and experimented with new political philosophies, technologies, imperial possibilities, economic systems, art, and cultural forms; this era is simultaneously marked by Japan’s growing disenchantment with the West as a whole.65 By focusing first on the years 1900-1930, I split the interwar era (1905-1937) in two; I do this, however, so that I may later emphasize certain movements that came to prominence after 1930. While most of these movements have their roots in earlier decades, Japanese art—and especially ygaku—splits into a wide variety of substreams during the early 1930s and exhibits an astounding plurality that contrasts sharply with the constriction of artistic creativity after 1937. As the starting point for Greater Taish, Sharon Minichiello has suggested the alignment of the oligarchy with the political party system. When oligarch It Hirobumi (1841-1909) formed the Rikken Seiyūkai (Friends of Constitutional Government) in 1900, he created what would become one of the most powerful and influential political parties of the interwar era. Rikken Seiyūkai promoted big government and large-scale public spending at a time when Japan was rife with social and economic problems, including serious pollution resulting from Meiji industrial policies and economic slumps during three separate postwar eras: the years immediately after the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I. This concurrence of social problems with establishment politics underscored the dilemma of balancing the greater polity with the individual in effecting a harmonious and productive society. The question of how to resolve individual freedom and human rights with the social order—how to totalize without depersonalizing—became an overarching concern for government leaders during the Greater Taish era.66 It is interesting to note that, only one year after It formed the Rikken Seiyūkai, the Shakaiminshut (Social Democratic Party) was established. The product of an organized socialist movement during the late 1890s, the Social Democratic Party was among the first of many anti-government leftist organizations established just prior to and during the interwar era.

(Minichiello, 1984, 7). As Rachel DiNitto remarks, most summations of the Taish era portray it as either a quiet time of relative peace and prosperity, or as a time of peaceful insignificance, delusion, and self-complacency; it is almost always sharply contrasted (in a positive or negative way) with its previous and following eras, which are usually described as being much more proactive. Rachel DiNitto, “From the Autobiographical to the Surreal: The Early Fiction and Zuihitsu of Uchida Hyakken,” PhD diss. (University of Washington, 2000), 22. 65 Sharon A. Minichiello, “Introduction,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities: Issues in Cu ture and Democracy 1900-1930, ed. Sharon A. Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 2-3. 66 Minichiello, 2-3. 68

According to Sharon Minichiello, the London Naval Conference of 1930 and the subsequent assassination attempt on Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi (1870-1931) brought the Greater Taish era to a close. Hamaguchi, who had agreed at the Conference to limitations on Japanese naval construction, was shot in Tokyo station seven months later by a member of the Aikokusha ultranationalist society. This rendered Hamaguchi incapacitated and finally resulted in his death in August 1931; a month later, rogue Japanese military personnel staged what is now known as the Manchurian Incident as a pretext for the Japanese invasion of northeastern China.67 The period between 1900 and 1930 saw tremendous economic growth. The nation’s population almost doubled in size, and military expeditions stimulated industry. At the same time, a growing mass consciousness concerning social inequities, coaxed by the ever-expanding press, responded to the militaristic and repressive actions of the Japanese government; an increasing number of protests and riots, some of which occurred on a national scale (such as the Rice Riots of 1918), dot the chronology from beginning to end. While identifying a “Greater Taish” era is beneficial for discussing the time period during which Japanese modernism began and later flourished, certain continuities between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries must not be discounted. One very important factor is the continuation and intensification of the Meiji censorship system, which targeted political journalism as well as (presumably) apolitical fiction and poetry.68 Jay Rubin has explored the ways this system closely monitored and censored literature after the Russo-Japanese War, cracking down on individualism and socially- progressive texts.69 The Russo-Japanese War was a major watershed in Japanese history; historian Karatani Kjin sees the end of war in 1905 as the real end of Meiji, based upon the fact that it ushered in widespread individualism and the state's recognition and provisional tolerance of this individualism as part of an era of limited pluralism.70 Japan’s victory in the war also did much to encourage Japan’s imperialist agenda, yet another trend that continued well into the twentieth century. In the pages that follow I discuss this war as one possible date for the beginning of Japanese modernism.

67 The Manchurian Incident was the first of Japan’s many skirmishes with China between 1931 and 1937, which ultimately led to the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. 68 The censorship system created in Meiji remained in operation through the World War II. 69 Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 59. 70 DiNitto, 52. 69

Just as “Japanese modernity” and “Japanese modernism” have been variously defined, the starting date for Japanese modernism varies among scholars. Most sources resist assigning a single year or event as the beginning of modernism but opt instead to suggest a broad time period during which modernist styles and aesthetics flourished in Japan; the 1920s and 1930s have been the most cited. Other scholars have preferred to separate Japanese modernism into phases; as early as 1939, Amar Lahiri made a distinction between Meiji, Taish, and Shwa modernism, and some scholars identify differences between pre-World War II and postwar modernism.71 While I am loathe to select one event as the beginning of such a multifaceted and intricate phase of Japanese art history, there are arguments to be made for doing so. The 1900s and 1910s provide many possibilities for Japanese modernism’s origin. One option is the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912, which formally closed Japan’s age of “Civilization and Enlightenment.”72 The reign of Taish began with a political crisis: in response to growing social unrest during the winter of 1912-13, the cabinet changed twice in two months. Lack of faith in the government to deliver upon the promises of the Meiji era concerning the welfare of the country and its citizens sparked rioting throughout Tokyo; mobs demonstrated in conjunction with the Kensei Ygo Und (Movement to Protect Constitutional Government) in February, and the press fueled the uprising by covering the movement’s debates and riots in print.73 All this happened near the beginning of Japan’s first entertainment industry boom, as film and popular music experienced exponential growth.74 Also in 1912, Yamada Ksaku received his composition diploma from the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin with his symphony Kachidoki to heiwa (Victory and Peace), the first symphony by a Japanese composer. If attaching the start of Japanese modernism to a regime change appears to be too facile, the Great Kant Earthquake may provide a stronger argument. The earthquake struck on 1 September 1923; it was one of the most destructive, deadly, and dislocating natural disasters of the twentieth century. The earthquake and subsequent fires destroyed over 45 percent of structures in Tokyo and 90 percent of structures in Yokohama. Its human and economic costs

71 Amar Lahiri, Japanese Modernism (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1939), Contents. 72 Henshall, 78. 73 DiNitto, 39. 74 To provide one example of this boom from film, Onoe Matsunosuke (1875–1926), now considered Japan’s first “superstar” actor, made no fewer than 160 films between 1909 and 1912; his total films would exceed 1,000 by 1925. Galliano, 108. 70 were likewise staggering: more than 110,000 killed, 2.5 million people rendered homeless, and monetary damage equaling almost four times Japan's national budget at the time.75 In multiple sources on the Great Kant Earthquake, J. Charles Schencking describes how a broad cross section of political elites and social commentators from divergent class and professional backgrounds pronounced the calamity an act of heavenly warning or punishment. They believed that Tokyo’s citizens had become too materialistic and hedonistic, and had turned away from the sincerity of those who had worked diligently and had sacrificed much to build the modern Japanese nation. Such commentators employed divine-punishment arguments to legitimate calls for societal reform; fukk (“reconstruction” or “revival”) became a key term in post-earthquake rhetoric, and it was liberally applied to the names of new journals, art movements, and popular songs. The calamity soon dominated national consciousness and discourse through published survivor accounts, photos and printed materials, music, art, and cinema. It forced many to reflect on the state of society and the manifold relationships among people, the state, and the natural and built environments. The earthquake became a defining cultural moment that was pregnant with meaning and thus ready for interpretive use and manipulation.76 Even outside of the Tokyo metropolitan area, the earthquake was used in print to promote a new ideal of modern rural “culture” (bunka).77 Elite Japanese society believed that a golden opportunity existed to construct a new Tokyo that would not only reflect but also reinforce new values and enable the state to better manage its people on a daily basis. Drawing on progressive and high modernist social policy and urban planning practices, bureaucrats devised intricate plans for a new capital, which they hoped would also illustrate their country's burgeoning stature as a regional imperial power.78 But while the physical appearance of Tokyo radically transformed after the quake, Schencking claims that the overall spiritual or moral trajectory of Japan did not. The social commentators’ and bureaucratic elites’ dreams for reconstruction became mired in contentious political, economic, and ideological debates that defined the contours of the rest of Japan's interwar political landscape.

75 J. Charles Schencking, “The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 34, No. 2 (Summer 2008): 296. 76 Schencking, 328. 77 Tamanoi, 101. “Culture” was repeatedly mentioned in village newspapers after the earthquake. Such culture was to be simultaneously “rural” (nson bunka), “regional” (chih bunka), “genuine” (makoto no bunka), and “modern” (kindaiteki bunka). 78 Schencking, 329. 71

One might regard 1923 as a late date for the beginning of modernism as we usually conceive of it, but this is so only if one transposes modern Japanese history onto a European timeline. In fact, many authors have embraced the earthquake as the single most important catalyst for Japanese modernism, because of the almost total devastation of Tokyo, the widespread contestation over reconstruction and renewal, and the intense social and artistic responses to the catastrophe.79 In Modanizumu no hikaku bungakuteki kenkyū (Historical Dynamics of Modernism, 1998), Chiba Sen’ichi describes the tremendous impact of the quake upon Japanese literature. Because most publishers resided in Tokyo, most papers, journals and magazines either had to suspend printing, or shut down completely. Of the sixteen Tokyo newspapers at the time, the building of only one, the Tokyo nichinichi shimbun (the present Mainichi shimbun) escaped destruction. Journals fared about the same; even publishers who were spared their printing presses (such as Shinchsha) and were able to issue an October 1923 installment of their journals were ordered to suspend publication because of controversy surrounding the press’s coverage of social unrest during the months immediately following the quake.80 With public utilities not functioning, communication severely compromised, and the government in chaos, a newly formed cabinet established martial law. Rumors proliferated that Koreans and communists were setting fires and sabotaging water supplies, so rampaging civilian vigilantes murdered thousands of Koreans, Chinese, and suspected or proven communists. Even artists thought to be involved in socialist activity were identified as seditious and were questioned, beaten, and incarcerated by the police.81 Former members of the coterie of the socialist literary magazine Tanemaku hito (The Sower, 1921-23) published Tanemaku zakki (Sower Miscellaneous Notes) in January 1924, describing the slaughter of leftist sympathizers. Other journals tried to publish similar stories, bringing to light civilian violence and police oppression; the issues containing such reports were quickly confiscated or destroyed.

79 Miriam Silverberg’s s study of modernism and mass culture in interwar Japan begins with the earthquake as one of the major catalysts for the ero guro nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) aesthetic that spanned the mid-to-late 1920s and early 1930s See Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: the Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). And Kyoko Omori claims that the popularization of the term modan coincided with the years immediately after the earthquake; see Kyoko Omori, “Detecting Japanese Vernacular Modernism: Shinseinen Magazine and the Development of the Tantei Shsetsu Genre, 1920-1931,” PhD diss. (Ohio State University, 2003), 15. 80 Chiba, Sen'ichi, Modanizumu no hikaku bungakuteki kenkyū (Tokyo: fū, 1998), 12. 81 Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 78. 72

Chiba describes the Great Kant Earthquake as a social revolution, one in which “Meiji culture was reduced to ash.” The quake inspired true anarchism and nihilism; rather than appearing a transient fashion, such beliefs ran deep among progressive writers. As a result, the earthquake brought Japanese authors into global synchronicity with the post-WWI West, fostering a climate of new literature that allowed for what Chiba calls an “authentic avant- garde.”82 Much of this new literature would emerge from a resurgence of the proletarian literary movement and the Shinkankakuha (New Sensationalist School), which got its start in 1924. But this post-earthquake aesthetic revolution did not occur only in literature. The self-proclaimed avant-garde group Mavo, whose members at the time of the quake had only recently begun their creative “attacks” on the Tokyo visual art establishment, took advantage of the city’s disarray to launch some of their most ambitious street exhibitions. With the rallying cry “atorie kara gairo e” (from the atelier to the streets), Mavo artists displayed their works at surviving or rebuilt cafes for crowds of homeless refugees; they also participated in decorating the temporary structures known as “barracks” erected in the wake of the disaster.83 For Mavo, the barracks project became both a symbol and a site for the generation of a new art intrinsically linked to daily life; as art decorated daily life, daily life would “revivify” the arts (geijutsu fukk).84 Such artistic reconstruction was also taken up by modernist Japanese architects: some of the major monuments constructed after 1923 were designed by founding members of the Bunriha Kenchikukai (Secessionist Architectural Society) in expressionist modes as a way of putting into practice their theories on the role, social and aesthetic, of the modern architect.85

82 Chiba, 13-14. I have relied upon my own translation of Chiba’s text for this citation. 83 The “Atorie kara gairo e” slogan was reported on in the following newspaper article: “Atorie kara gairo e,” Miyako shinbun, 9 October 1923, A.M. ed.; cited in Gennifer Weisenfeld, Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Cu ture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 205. Mavo was not the only group to participate in decorating barracks (called barakku in Japanese). Other groups who were very active in this project included the Barrack Decoration Company (Barakku Sshokusha), led by Waseda University architecture professor and father of “modernology” Kon Wajir (1887-1973), and artists from Akushon (Action), a splinter group of the well-established modernist association Nika-kai. 84 Weisenfeld, 80. 85 Peter McNeil, "Myths of Modernism: Japanese Architecture, Interior Design and the West, c. 1920-1940," Journal of Design History 5, No. 4 (1992): 283. In the essay “The Bunriha and the Problem of ‘Tradition’ for Modernist Architecture in Japan, 1920-1928,” Jonathan M. Reynolds writes that the Vienna Secession “undoubtedly” inspired the choice of the name “Bunriha” (Secessionist group), but that the Japanese group did not perceive itself merely as an offshoot of the Viennese movement. Reynolds adds that one of the Bunriha members, Yamada Mamoru (1894-1966), insisted that the Bunriha name should be understood more generally as an expression of the group’s intention to secede from certain practices current in the architectural profession at that time (Reynolds, in Minichiello, 229). 73

Although it was a transformative event on a massive scale, modernist movements already existed in Japan well before the Great Kant Earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo and Yokohama. As Roy Starrs has pointed out, the earthquake might have provided a further stimulus to Japanese modernism, but it was “by no means the single decisive event that ‘triggered’ it.”86 My research inclines me to agree with Starrs. In music as in many other creative fields Japanese artists were exploring and cultivating modernism well before 1923. It is for this reason that a third option for the beginning of Japanese modernism, one that goes back almost twenty years to the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), should be considered. Similar to impact of World War I on artistic movements in the West, the Russo-Japanese War proved to be a powerful stimulus to modernist sentiment and aesthetics.87 Peter Duus has argued that the Russo-Japanese War was a true “takeoff point” for Japanese imperialism.88 The war stimulated industry connected with the military effort; increased imports, inflation, and foreign loans supported expansion, as did government expenditures for its troops and those for the nationalization of the railroad lines.89 But civil unrest erupted after the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on 5 September 1905 to formally end the War. The military conflict had originally been the result of incompatible spheres of interest, and the Treaty granted neither the territory (the northern Pacific island of Sakhalin) nor the monetary indemnity that the Japanese people had been expecting after their astounding win over such a major world power as Russia. On the same day that the Treaty was signed in Portsmouth, Maine, the riot now known as the Hibiya yakiuchi jiken (Hibiya Incendiary Incident) erupted in Tokyo. The mob consisted of a diverse assortment of activist groups who called for a rally at Hibiya Park in central Tokyo to protest what they saw as the humiliating terms of the Treaty, especially regarding Japan’s territorial gains in the Liaodong Peninsula and the northern half of Sakhalin, which were to be returned to Russia. The riot lasted for two days, destroying or damaging more than 350 buildings, including the residence of the Home Minister. Seventeen people died in the violence, while over 500 were injured, and hundreds were arrested. News of the Tokyo riot sparked similar events in

86 Roy Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 11. 87 Rachel DiNitto, quoting Oka Yoshitake’s “Generational Conflict after the Russo-Japanese War,” provides a lengthy list of characteristics that define the postwar mindset during the 1900s and 1910s, all of which can be attributed to what Oka calls a “new consciousness of the individual.” Oka, “Generational Conflict after the Russo- Japanese War,” Shis (February/March, 1967): 197; quoted in DiNitto, 42. 88 Peter Duus, “The Takeoff Point of Japanese Imperialism,” in Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History, ed. Harry Wray and Hilary Conroy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1983), 154. 89 Minichiello, 4-5. 74

Kobe and Yokohama, and hundreds of nonviolent rallies, speeches, and meetings throughout Japan for the next several months. This unrest directly contributed to the collapse of Prime Minister Katsura Tar's (1848-1913) cabinet on 7 January 1906.The Incident marked the beginning of a thirteen-year period that historians call the Minshū sj ki (Era of Popular Violence), in which Japan experienced a series of violent protests culminating in the Rice Riots of 1918.90 But popular violence was not the only reaction to the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Roman Rosenbaum has identified the rise of a “satirical mode” in Japanese literature during the immediate postwar period, particularly in the content of the manga magazine Tokyo Pakku (Tokyo Puck). It was founded in 1905 by “the father of modern manga” Kitazawa Rakuten (1876-1955) as an offshoot of its American cousin Puck from the late nineteenth century. Tokyo Puck was published in four separate installments between the late Meiji and early Shwa eras. Early issues included satirical depictions of the political impact of the Russo-Japanese War on Japan’s emerging modern capitalist society.91 As Rosenbaum explains, the magazine became a transcultural conduit for specific aspects of American and European models of modernism. Tokyo Puck offered its readers specific linguistic and visual examples of Western cultural aestheticism and in the process transplanted it from an exotic other place to the local geography through satirical presentation of current events and Japanese places and people. Rosenbaum calls attention to this transplantation as an example of post-colonialist scholar Homi Bhabha’s “third space.” The iconic images of a Japanese-specific modernism in Japan were part of a process that enabled Japanese society around the beginning of the twentieth century, in Rosenbaum’s words,

90 Andrew Gordon, “The Crowd and Politics in Imperial Japan: Tokyo 1905–1918,” Past and Present 121 (1988): 141–70. This era is also often called the Toshi minshū sj ki (Era of Urban Popular Violence) because many of the incidents occurred in large urban areas (nine took place in Tokyo). But the 1918 Rice Riots mainly occurred in rural areas, where rice was the main dietary staple. The violence lasted for three months (July-September 1918); it was unparalleled in modern Japanese history in terms of scope. Approximately 25,000 were arrested, of whom 8200 were convicted of various crimes. Like the Hibiya Incident, the Rice Riots also led to the collapse of the current administration (in the latter’s case, Prime Minister Terauchi and his cabinet). For more information, see W.J. MacPherson, The Economic Development of Japan 1868–1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 91 Rosenbaum connects the satirical content of Tokyo Puck to the content of similar magazines published at the end of the Bakumatsu seclusion and those published after World War I. He cites the scholarship of Shimizu Isao, Japan’s leading researcher into graphic satire, who has explored the phenomenon of the satirical mode boom in Japan after major wars. Shimizu Isao postulated that the reason for these booms was that postwar depressions give rise to many satirical vantage points in modern societies. See Shimizu Isao, Manga zasshi hakubutsukan: Tokyo Pakku— Taishki, vol. 7, p.2, cited in Roman Rosenbaum, “Japanese Mythological Modernism: The Story of Puck and the Appearance of kindaijin,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 393. 75 to “hybridize and thereby transcend the superimposed superiority of the West.”92 Japanese modernism portrayed through the satirical mode is thus the “offspring” of war, a “graphic literary reaction against the confines of national hegemonic discourse that enabled a critique of the sociopolitical transition from Meiji to Taish Japan and beyond.”93 Depictions of the Russo-Japanese War made their way into music and theater, as well, coinciding with the beginnings of Japanese opera and operetta. The first successful Japanese experiment with opera was Kitamura Sueharu’s (1872-1931) Roei no yume (Camp Dream), the story of which was based on events in the Russo-Japanese War. It was staged as an interlude in a performance of kabuki at the Kabukiza Theatre in Tokyo in 1905 with some success, and subsequently ran for a month and a half. The next year saw the creation of the Gakuenka Association by Yamada Gen’ichir, a Tokyo Music School graduate, and Komatsu Ksuke (1884-1966), a student at the Music School. Their first production was the one-act opera Hagoromo (Cloak of Feathers), which was based on a n drama and featured original ygaku composed by Komatsu. Around the same time, writers began to discuss the merits of Japanese opera; in 1904 the famous poet and playwright Tsubouchi Shy (1859-1935) wrote the first theoretical work on this subject, Shingakugekiron (Theory of the New Music Drama), and put his theory into practice in the opera Tokoyami (Eternal Darkness).94 Tgi Tetteki (1869-1925) wrote the music, which incorporated various elements of gagaku. It was performed in 1906 at the Kabukiza; the production involved almost 200 performers. The next few years saw an increase in the staging of single acts or abridged versions of European light operas, until in 1909 Yamada Ksaku collaborated with playwright Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928) to produce Chikai no hoshi (Star of Promise), featuring an original Japanese libretto with music by Yamada. The Japanese penchant for shorter musical theater works gave rise to the popularization of the Japanese operetta and musical revue, both staples of the interwar era, whose creators often expounded modernist themes and aesthetics. These early-twentieth-century quasi-operatic productions marked the beginning of original creations and productions in hybridized musical styles.95 While the staging of Western opera adaptations continued through performances at Tokyo’s Teikoku Gekij (Imperial Theater,

92 Rosenbaum, 388. 93 Ibid., 393. 94 Tsubouchi, along with Osanai Kaoru, were the pioneers of Shingeki (New Theatre) in Japan. 95 Galliano, 102. 76 which opened in 1911), original and translated operetta flourished in the new local theatre traditions of the Asakusa Opera Company (1917-23), located in the working-class district of Asakusa, Tokyo, and the Takarazuka Girls’ Opera (now the Takarazuka Revue) and Music School (1914-present) in the coastal resort town of Takarazuka. While ostensibly an opera company, the Asakusa Opera performed operettas right from the start; the company invented their own way of freely interpreting Western styles of singing, and the Opera’s productions were tremendously successful until the theater’s destruction in the Great Kant earthquake.96 The Takarazuka Revue, on the other hand, is notable for being one of the few musical theaters of the 1910s-20s that was not severely affected by the earthquake. This was a result of Takarazuka’s location near Osaka, almost 300 miles to the southwest of Tokyo.97 Productions by the all-female Takarazuka Revue troupes exhibited a synthesis of revue/operetta/musical theater that offered audiences what Alison Tokita calls “easily assimilable hybrid musical experiences.”98 I argue that the localization of international musical theater by the Asakusa Opera Company and the Takarazuka Revue, and even Kitamura Sueharu’s and Komatsu Ksuke’s early operas, is comparable to the localization of Western aesthetics in Tokyo Puck.99 I am not alone in finding the beginning of Japanese modernism closer to the turn of the twentieth century. In “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism,” Sadami Suzuki states that authors who understand modernism as a time period beginning in the mid-1920s overlook the important shift in representation that had been taking place in Japan since the turn of the century. He also cites Unno Hiroshi’s 1983 book Modan toshi Tky: Nihon no 1920-nendai (Modern City Tokyo: Japan of the 1920s) as the first major refutation (in Japanese or otherwise) of the Great Kant earthquake as the first historical shifting point for Japanese modernism.

96 Galliano, 104. One member of the Asakusa Opera Company, the tenor Fujiwara Yoshie (1898-1976), broke away and set up his own company, Kagekidan, which succeeded economically by mixing light opera with serious opera during the 1930s. Fujiwara’s opera company remained active well into the post-World War II era. 97 Alison Tokita stresses the importance of Takarazuka’s geographical location, implying its artistic freedom from the Tokyo art music scene of the interwar era. Alison Tokita, “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region 1914-1942,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 425. 98 Ibid., 425. 99 “During the next fifteen years, this book was followed by other books and by art exhibits that all adopted an earlier start date. See Suzuki, “Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 41. 77

New Schools (of Thought), Journals, Radio and Recording

The years 1900-30 saw a tremendous increase in general artistic synchronicity between Japan and the West. This was helped along in large part by increased study abroad by Japanese artists, and increased importation and translations of foreign, books, journals and recordings. The advent of the Nihon miraiha (Japanese Futurism) movement is only one of many examples of this synchronicity. Chiba Sen’ichi writes at length about how quickly Futurism was introduced in Japan and was subsequently adapted by Japanese artists: Mori gai publish a Japanese translation of Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto” only two months after it appeared in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dell'Emilia in February 1909, and the movement continued to receive critical attention in Japanese art journals for the next fifteen years.100 Although the earliest artists to declare for a “Japanese Futurist Movement” would not publish their own manifesto until 1921, Japanese painters were already drawing inspiration from futurism in the mid-1910s.101 While synchronicity was not as apparent in art music as it was in literature and the visual arts, Japanese musicians were writing about many of the same theoretical issues as their Western counterparts. Yamada Ksaku’s essays and journals from his early career show profound understanding of Western contemporary trends, as well as poignant commentary on Western modernism.102 An intricate art music network began to form in Tokyo during the 1910s. A variety of public and private schools for music opened their doors to students, non-academic coteries formed around prominent writers and musicians who championed the latest international movements in a variety of new music journals, and amateur ensembles began to give regular public performances. By the mid-1920s, the Tokyo School of Music no longer monopolized the teaching of ygaku, and the major universities (Keio, Waseda, Meiji, Kt Shinan, and Kt Kgy) set up music departments. The Imperial School (after 1947 Tokyo University) also opened a music program during this time. Although ygaku composers would have to wait until the early 1930s to see the first university composition department open in Tokyo, independent translation and study of Western composition manuals and instructional journal articles became

100 Chiba, 14. 101 This was due in no small part to Tokyo’s Hibiya Art Museum Der Sturm woodcut exhibition in 1914, which included prints and drawings of German Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism from Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. Interestingly, Yamada Ksaku played an important role in organizing this exhibit—see Chapter Three for more details. 102 This is discussed more in Chapter Three. 78 common after the turn of the twentieth century. Such independent study contributed to the rise of a group of composers who championed French contemporary music over the German Classic- Romantic canon taught at the Tokyo School of Music and disseminated by its graduates. Galliano explains: The instrumental colors that were typical of Debussy and Ravel, and to a certain extent Fauré, were perhaps more easily appreciated by the Japanese as they conjured up a world that appeared to be closer to Japanese aesthetics, with its sensitivity to the power of sound itself. It might also be that French music was more appealing because the first contacts with French music had not occurred through academic channels but through direct contact between musicians, such as Sugawara [sic] Meir; the new French music became the stimulus for “avant-garde” ideas because it was quite separate from the French academic world.103

Galliano also makes the observation that Japanese ygaku composers did not widely use pentatonic scales in their own music until after they had discovered their use in modern French works. The works of contemporary Russian and Eastern European composers including Scriabin, Bartók, Stravinsky, Mosolov, and Shostakovich were also avidly studied and performed (or conducted) by Japanese composers during the interwar era.104 While composers outside the Tokyo academic circles (such as Sugahara, Fukai, Matsudaira and Kiyose) embraced contemporary French music and its potential for avant-garde application, contemporary German music was, for the most part, treated with indifference as a source for new styles and compositional methods. This is despite the journal articles on Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and Hindemith that began to appear in Japanese publications in the 1910s.105 It is probable that, in looking to Europe, Japanese musicians saw German music as the repository of revered tradition and strong artistic values, the roots of Western art music, which may explain why most composers decided that the musical style that needed to be seriously studied was the German Classic and Romantic repertoires.106

103 Galliano, 34. 104 Yamada Ksaku’s fascination with Scriabin’s piano pieces shows in some of his early works and essays; he also conducted the premieres of Mosolov’s Iron Foundry and Shostakovich’s First Symphony in Japan. Sugahara and his students were also interested in these composers: Yoshida’s ensemble Kreo Muziko performed some of Bartok’s compositions during the mid-1930s, while Sugahara and Ito both studied the works of Stravinsky (Sugahara arranged at least one of Stravinsky’s compositions for mandolin orchestra). 105 A few articles on Schoenberg, as well as scores of Schoenberg’s music, appeared in the issues of Ongaku to bungaku (Music and Literature, 1916-19); the group of musicians and writers responsible for Ongaku to bungaku included taguro Mot (one of the founders of serious music criticism in Japan) and Sugahara Meir. 106 Galliano, 34. 79

Early in the greater Taish era, composers came together to form music journals in which they discussed Western music theory, aesthetics, the relationship between music and other arts, and their own compositions. This is not to say that music journals did not exist in Japan prior to 1900.107 But journals that published articles on music during the 1880s and 1890s served as the official organs of educational societies and the government (which were sometimes one and the same). By 1904, composers were establishing independent journals in order to publish on specific topics in which they had personal interests. Two years before writing music for the one- act opera Hagoromo, Komatsu Ksuke was the driving force behind Ongaku shinp (New Reports on Music). Although still a student at the Tokyo School of Music, as the editor of Ongaku shinp Komatsu produced special editions on the poetics of music and music’s relationship with prose literature and poetry, as well as monographs on classical music and contemporary aesthetics.108 Ongaku shinp eventually merged with another music magazine to create Ongakukai (Music World), the first issue of which appeared in January 1908 and featured Komatsu as its director. Ongakukai’s editors promoted new music and campaigned against “all music that is weak, unworthy, reactionary, or out of date.”109 However, their founding principles also included the vow not to be biased towards Western or Japanese music, nor to consider them as independent of each other, but to regard them impartially, and to draw on both equally as the materials from which to create new music. By adhering to these principles Ongakukai was able to build the largest readership of any music magazine during its fifteen-year run.110 Music instrument stores and larger publishing companies also participated in founding music journals. Two in particular helped to circulate information about Western music to the general public: Ongaku sekai (Music World; not to be confused with the later Ongaku sekai that began in 1929), which had the Latin subtitle “Mundus Musicae.” This magazine was published by the music division of a Kyoto company, Jūjiya Tanaka Shten, and it ran for nine years. The

107 Music journals in Japan got their start with Ongaku zasshi (subtitled The Musical Magazine in English), which began publication in September 1890. This is not to say that music was ignored by the Japanese press before the advent of Ongaku zasshi. The two foremost scholarly journals of the Meiji era published articles in this field during the 1880s: Toyo gakugei zasshi (The Eastern Journal of Learning and the Arts), established in 1881, and the Dainippon kyoikukai zasshi (Educational Society of Japan Journal), established in 1883. Setsuko Mori, “A Historical Survey of Music Periodicals in Japan: 1881—1920,” Fontis Artis Musicae 36, No. 1 (January-March 1989): 44. 108 For example, the June 1905 issue of Ongaku Shinp, subtitled “Uminone” (The Sound of the Sea), was a collection of European symbolist poetry and music on the theme of the sea; the cover was a reproduction of the painting Sunset, by Carl Marr, which had been published by the British art magazine The Studio in February of that year (unfortunately, the issue was censored by Japanese authorities). Galliano, 96. 109 Tsutsumi Masao and Komatsu Ksuke, untitled editorial in Ongakukai (1908); quoted in Galliano, 97. 110 Mori, 49. 80 other magazine was Gekkan gakufu (Monthly Scores), published by a musical instrument company, Yamano Gakki, which ran from 1912 to 1941. It was meant for the amateur music lover, and its articles tended towards musical criticism rather than technical questions. One third of each issue was devoted to folk songs and lyrical songs from Europe, Russia, the United States, and other countries.111 Notable later music periodicals include Ongaku kenkyū (Musical Research, 1923-), Ongaku shinch (New Musical Directions, 1924-41), Ongaku sekai (Music World, 1929-41), and Ongaku hyron (Music Criticism, 1933-41). These five periodicals carried music criticism, musicological research and analyses, articles on the poetics of music and aesthetics, as well as news about Western composers and translations from Western books and periodicals. Although no one journal was necessarily more progressive than the others, certain composers tended to gravitate towards one journal or another; Matsudaira Yoritsune, for example, mainly published in Ongaku shinch beginning in 1929.112 All of the modernist ygaku composers discussed in this study contributed to one or more of these five journals during the interwar era. Some composers also collaborated with writers representing other creative fields to produce interdisciplinary journals: these include Ongaku to bungaku (Music and Literature, 1916-19), and Shi to ongaku (Poetry and Music, 1922-23).113 The latter was one of many publications discontinued after the destruction of the Great Kant Earthquake. As I have previously discussed, the Great Kant Earthquake has been framed by Japanese and Western authors alike as a major turning point in the history of Japanese modernism. The turmoil brought about by the quake’s destruction and the responses to this natural catastrophe both discouraged and inspired Japanese modernist artists. But it did not deter the urban migration of Japanese artists to Tokyo; if anything, it drew more people through its transformational agency. Musicians in particular were drawn to post-earthquake Tokyo: Sugahara Meir, for example, became conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonia Takei (OST) in Tokyo in 1924, a job for

111 Mori, 49-50. The main writer for this magazine was composer Yamamoto Masao. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any biographical information on Yamamoto. 112 Shiina Rysuke, "Contradictions of Modernism: Reading Matsudaira Yoritsune's Articles," Contemporary Music Review 17, No. 4 (1998): 18. Rysuke marks the beginning of Matsudaira’s “Modanisumu” period at the time when Matsudaira began to write for Ongaku shinch: “he wrote numerous articles for [Ongaku shinch], which are written almost without exception in a ‘"odernistic’ tone, that is, using the modernism imported from Europe at the beginning of the Shwa Period (after 1926).” 113 Ongaku to bungaku and Sugahara Meir’s involvement with it are discussed in Chapter Four. Shi to ongaku was started by Yamada Ksaku and the poet Kitahara Hakushū (1885-1942); I discuss this journal in Chapter Three. 81 which he moved 300 miles from Nara, his home during the previous seven years.114 Hashimoto Kunihiko began his studies at the Tokyo School of Music in 1923. Soon after the quake, Yamada Ksaku organized the Nihon kkygaku kykai (Nippon Symphony Association) in Tokyo. 115 After the majority of the Association formed the Shink kygakudan (New Symphony Orchestra) in 1926 under the direction of Hidemaro Konoe (1898-1973), the ensemble drew many of the more progressive ygaku musicians into its ranks, including the futurist It Noboru.116 The New Symphony was one of the first permanent symphony orchestras in Japan; it staged the debut performance of many works by Yamada, Sugahara, and other Japanese modernist composers, as well as the works of their European contemporaries. The New Symphony Orchestra and its associated composers were some of the first musicians to be featured in Japanese recordings and radio broadcasts. In 1925 three licenses were granted to organizations that included newspaper publishers and companies producing radiophonic material; subsequently, three radio stations were opened in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. But one year later the government decreed that these stations should be amalgamated as Nihon Hs Kykai (NHK, Japanese Radiophonic Company), and over the next few years stations were erected across the county, from Hiroshima to Sapporo. Broadcasts were originally limited to “classical” music (Western and Japanese).117 Also during the 1920s, the Japanese record industry began its activities with the creation of Japan Columbia (1928), Japan Victory (1927), Nippon Polydor (1929), King Records (1930), Teichiku Records (1934), and Taihei Records (1934).118 By 1930, Japan had changed dramatically from what it had been only three decades earlier. Tokyo was in the process of a complete topographical and organizational overhaul, and as of 25 December 1926, the Showa Emperor had begun his reign. Japan was now one of the

114 Although Sugahara officially became the conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Takei in 1926, he was first introduced as the OST’s conductor at their 17th concert (May 21, 1924); Sugahara and his experience with the OST are discussed more in Chapter Four. 115 The Nippon Symphony Association reformed under the direction of Hidemaro Konoe as the Shink kygakudan (New Symphony Orchestra) in 1926; this ensemble became the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1951. 116 Katayama Morihide identifies Ito as “a composer in whose works the modernist culture of the early Shwa era was unmistakably embodied.” See Katayama, “Gi-sha to modanisuto to aruchizan: Sugahara Meir to It Noboru to Fukai Shir no koto” (Anchoret, Modernist and Artisan: Sugahara Meir, It Noboru and Fukai Shir), essay accompanying liner notes for Sugahara Meir to sono shūhen (Sugahara Meir and His Surroundings, CD, Alquimista 0007, 2004), 5. 117 Two of the first composers whose music was featured on Japanese radio were Yamada Ksaku and Miyagi Michio. In order to keep out potentially dissident political messages, the NHK did not broadcast popular songs during the interwar era, although popular music was becoming a huge industry in itself by the mid-1920s. 118 Galliano, 107. 82 great world powers: it boasted the ninth-largest economy in the world (after Italy), it had the third-largest naval force, and it held a coveted position as one of the four permanent members of the council of the League of Nations. However, while some segments of the population enjoyed more freedoms, others had come under increasing government scrutiny. The bill for universal male suffrage for all men over the age of twenty-five passed in 1925; in the same year, the Peace Preservation Law (Chian iji h) of 1925 was enacted. This law effectively gave the government complete authority to outlaw any form of dissent. As the first of these laws diminished in power during the militarism of the next decade, the second grew in power and reach. Individuality and hybridity in Japanese creative spheres continued through the regime change and into the 1930s. They were joined by new, politically-conscious artistic ideologies that reflected a rise in popular political involvement, the theories for which were put into practice by socialist, communist, and feminist literary circles.

Political and Social Activism: Proletarian and Feminist Movements

Because the attitudes of many modernists to the ideas of modernity were ambiguous, the politics of modernism was just as ambiguous. Multiple authors on Japanese modernism have taken interwar literary movements as an example. The so-called neo-sensory school (shinkankakuha) tended to be aesthetically experimental while politically conservative; the Marxist-influenced proletarian literature (puroretaria bungaku) movement was the reverse. Thus, although members of both groups believed that the conditions of modernity called for radical change, politically they were at odds with each other. Since the same situation obtained in many parts of the world in the 1920s and 1930s, it is tempting to accept this left/right political divide as a universal pattern. But that would be an over-simplification: some artists on the left were formally or aesthetically daring or revolutionary; and, on the other hand, some on the right were as reactionary artistically as they were politically. Although modernism possessed a political dimension, it cannot be said to have assumed any single political stance; as Roy Starrs has written, the “politics of modernism” were as variegated and ambiguous as “modernist aesthetics.”119 To return to the previous example, though modernist and proletarian writers are often characterized as opposing one another in the history of modern Japanese literature, they shared concerns and interests as emerging groups of young writers that challenged the

119 Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” 8-9. 83 conventions and institutions of literature. The two movements also overlapped not only in their challenges to the establishment but also in their exploration of new styles and choices of subject matter.120 In music as well as other creative fields, Japanese modernism of the interwar era was created by artists on both the political left and right. The Japanese proletarian movement, which flourished during the 1920s and early 1930s, was a vibrant alliance of talented artists and political activists, of publishers, critics, and laymen. Tanemaku hito (The Sower) was the first important Japanese socialist literary magazine and a significant center of literature and criticism in the Taish era; it was forced by the government to cease publication in 1923. The work of Tanemaku hito was carried on by the magazine Bungei sensen (Literary Front, 1924); on 6 December 1925, over one hundred literary figures associated with Bungei sensen joined together to found the Japanese Proletarian Literary Arts League (Nihon Puroretaria Bungei Renmei). The Nihon Puroretaria Bungei Renmei aimed to stimulate an awakening of the working classes and to question the social involvement of art in the proletarian emancipation movement. The proletarian literary movement existed somewhere between bourgeois aesthetics, working-class culture, and different varieties of Marxist political thought, and in its broadest application it took on a breathtakingly expansive range of forms and ideologies. It was associated with the development of high art and popular literature. The heterogeneously left-wing proletarian critics themselves—especially those later affiliated with the Communist Party—often spent just as much time debating issues with each other as with the apologists for, and escapists from, capitalist modernity. Part of what proletarian literature shared with its critics was that the vast majority of its aesthetic theory was more reflexive than agitational. As a body of criticism, it was almost single-handedly responsible for establishing a specialized, scientific discourse through which an autonomous aesthetics in Japan became possible.121 In the beginning, the Nihon Puroretaria Bungei Renmei dealt principally with literature, though theater and the visual arts were also included. In 1926 it was reorganized and renamed Nihon Puroretaria Geijutsu Renmei (the name is usually shortened to ProRen); it adopted an

120 Mariko Shigeta Schimmel, “Estranged Twins of Revolution: an Examination of Japanese Modernist and Proletarian Literature,” PhD diss. (Yale University, 2006), 7. 121 Samuel Emerson Perry, “Aesthetics for Justice: Proletarian Literature in Japan and Colonial Korea, Volume One,” PhD diss. (University of Chicago, 2007), 3-4. 84 explicitly Marxist position, and a section dedicated to music was also added.122 When ProRen joined the Zen’ei Geijutsuka Dmei (Union of Avant-Garde Artists) in 1928 to form the Zen- nihon Musansha Geijutsu Renmei (Japanese League for Proletarian Arts), the music sections of both groups fused, as well; the following year, this combined music section became autonomous and was renamed Puroretaria Ongaku Dmei (Proletarian Music League, often abbreviated in Japanese sources to PM). Those who joined the PM included composers Hara Tar (1904-88), Tsuyuki Tsugiyo (1902-92), Ishii Gor (1903-78), and Yoshida Takako (1910-56), and the critics Yamane Ginji (1906-82) and Sonobe Sabur (1906-80).123 By the early 1930s, after several proletarian institutions were reorganized by the underground Japanese Communist Party, the proletarian movement included artists, writers, actors, musicians, and countless readers of proletarian newspapers such as the underground Communist Party organ Sekki (Red Flag) and smaller monthlies, Hataraku fujin (Working Women) and Taishū no tomo (Friends of the Masses). Even highbrow journals such as Chū kron (Central Review) and Kaiz (Reconstruction), in some cases owned or edited by people sympathetic to revolutionary politics, enthusiastically published works of art written by proletarian writers.124 In music, the journals Ongaku sekai (Music World) and Gekkan gakufu (Music Score Monthly) published many writings on the proletarian movement and socialist realism by Japanese composers. Interestingly, it is also in these two journals that some of the most intriguing and progressive writings on art music and aesthetics were published during the early 1930s. Given the scores of women who joined the various groups of the Japanese proletarian movement during the 1920s and 1930s, it is not surprising that some of the earliest self-styled Japanese socialists were also outspoken feminists.125 The adoption of the Meiji Civil Code in 1898, which served as the basis of Japanese law until the end of World War II, did not provide equality for women; it denied them the right to vote and any autonomy from the patriarchal family structure.126 During the Meiji era, the ideology of “Good Wife, Wise Mother” (rysai

122 Galliano, 117-18. 123 Hara Tar and Ishii Gor were also members of the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei. Ishii also worked with It Noboru in Shinongakuba (New Music Group), which It organized in 1934. About this group, Galliano writes that the group encountered great difficulties because its music was too avant-garde (although she does not describe any of the group's music). She adds that they were only able to promote one concert of chamber music. Galliano, 78. 124 Perry, 2-3. 125 Both Dina Lowy and Vera Mackie highlight this connection; see Dina Lowy, The Japanese “New oman”: Images of Gender and Modernity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007) and Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 126 Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, 24-25. 85 kenbo) predominated, and beginning in the 1890s, training the “good wife, wise mother” became the main thrust of women’s education.127 Furthermore, Article 5 of the 1900 Public Peace Police Law (Chian keisatsu h) prohibited women from joining political parties and even from listening to political speeches.128 Yet women found outlets for political activity in a variety of venues, including women’s literary magazines and women’s divisions of left-wing political parties, which all had separate women’s divisions or affiliated women’s leagues by the end of the 1920s. Until recently, most accounts of women’s political activity in early twentieth-century Japan concentrated on the Seitsha (the Bluestocking Society) and their journal Seit (Bluestocking) which appeared from 1911 to 1916.129 The “Bluestockings”—most especially, the prominent feminist authors Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) and Hiratsuka Raich (1886-1971)— focused on issues surrounding love, sexuality, and personal fulfillment. Several former members of the Bluestocking Society went on to engage in feminist activism and labor activism, most especially Hiratsuka Raich. In 1918-1919 she was a major participant in the “motherhood- protection” debate, which raged heatedly in the press; the debate centered on State support for single and widowed mothers, which linked reproduction with political structures. In 1919, Raich joined forces with Ichikawa Fusae, the person who would become most associated with women’s suffrage in Japan. Together they founded the Shinfujin Kykai (New Woman’s Association) to promote women’s political rights. Apart from stimulating the women’s suffrage movement in Japan, the New Woman’s Association was instrumental in the 1922 repeal of

127 As I mentioned in Chapter Two, “Good Wife, Wise Mother” (rysai kenbo) represented the ideal for womanhood in the late 1880s and early 1900s. This ideal has persisted in different forms and variations to the present day. Aspiring to this ideal, women were expected to master domestic skills and develop the moral and intellectual ability to raise strong, intelligent children for the sake of the nation. 128 Angela Coutts, “Imagining Radical Women in Interwar Japan: Leftist and Feminist Perspectives,” Signs 37, No. 2 (Winter 2012): 325-26.Thanks to the campaigning of the New Women’s Association, Article 5 was overturned in 1922; however, women would still have to wait until after World War II to gain suffrage and officially join political parties. 129Vera Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 15-16. Seit was named for late eighteenth-century literary groups of educated women in England known as “bluestockings.” The members of Seitsha expounded socialist beliefs, but it was not the first women’s group in Japan to do so. The first Japanese socialist groups were established in the late 1890s; their members would go on to become leaders in the socialist, anarchist, and labor movements. Women were active in such groups as the Heiminsha (Commoners’ Society) from its inception in 1903. There were at least three socialist women’s journals before the appearance of Seit: Nijuseiki no Fujin (Twentieth-Century Woman, 1904), Suiito Hmu (Sweet Home, 1904), and Sekai Fujin. Sekai Fujin only lasted for two years before succumbing to government suppression. Other Japanese women’s socialist groups included the Sekirankai (Red Wave Society, 1921-23) and Ykakai (Eighth Day Society). 86

Article 5 of the Public Peace Police Law, which meant that women could then attend political meetings.130 Although the New Woman’s Association splintered into multiple organizations in 1922, their momentum was picked up by several emerging women’s organizations, including the Women’s Suffrage League (Fusen Kakutoku Domei, 1924), headed by Ichikawa Fusae, who had resigned from the New Women’s Association in July 1921 and had spent two and a half years in the United States traveling and studying the American women’s movement. The law granting universal male suffrage was ratified in Japan in 1925, which increasingly inspired feminist groups to push for women’s right to vote. But just as women seemed to be on the verge of attaining suffrage, the political atmosphere changed as a result of increased Japanese militarism following the 1931 Manchurian Incident. The Women’s Suffrage League continued to hold national conventions throughout most of the 1930s but increasingly tempered its demands for suffrage and finally disbanded under pressure from the government in 1940. The failed campaign for suffrage was not the only action aimed at improving women’s lives during the interwar era. Women’s involvement in labor unions and proletarian organizations after the 1922 repeal of Article 5 were indications of the politicized nature of the 1920s. These women took on issues of class as well as gender as they fought for an equal and democratic society.131 By the mid-1920s, social changes had exerted a significant impact on women’s lives. Mass migration to urban areas, educational access for women, and a whole new range of jobs for female workers inevitably meant that women left the traditional feminine sphere of the home and began to appear in the outside world in larger numbers.132 Women’s publications proliferated, offering a wealth of written material by self-styled feminists debating issues such as female suffrage, health concerns for working women, birth control, and international feminist movements. It was mainly from the ranks of such organized feminists that Japanese female modernists emerged, including poetess and flautist Sumako Fukao (1888-1974), whom I will discuss more in Chapter Four in relation to Sugahara’s setting of her poem Fuefuki me (Flute- playing Woman). Some Japanese female modernists worked outside of organized feminist groups; author Hayashi Fumiko (1903/04-51) produced innovative literature, including the semi-

130 Dina Lowy, 127-28. 131 Ibid., 128. 132 Angela Coutts, “Imagining Radical Women in Interwar Japan,” 326-27. 87 autobiographical Hrki (Diary of a Vagabond, 1927), independent of such organizations, even though her work touches upon many feminist themes.133 By the early 1930s, feminists had joined together with larger socialist groups to enact social change; many of these women actively connected themselves to a global feminist movement, one that was as much socially progressive as it was artistic. As a proletarian composer who wrote in favor of gender equality, Yoshida Takako (1910-56) was the embodiment of the socially conscious and globally minded female modernist, especially in her emulation of the modan garu (Modern Girl).134

Shin Nihon Ongaku and Modernist-Traditionalism

One musical movement that had gained momentum by 1930 was Shin nihon ongaku (New Japanese Music); it was supported by a small core of traditional “performer-composers” who worked to find ways of adapting elements of Western music to music for Japanese instruments.135 The Shin nihon ongaku movement began in 1920 with a joint concert of compositions by hgaku musicians including master koto player Miyagi Michio (1894-1956), composer of Western-style children’s songs Motri Nagayo (1885-1945), and Kinko-ryū shakuhachi musician Yoshida Seifū (1891-1950).136 Yoshida called this Shin nihon ongaku dai- enskai (a great concert of new Japanese music), which gave the movement its name. Although scored for traditional instruments, the new works created by these musicians did not fit neatly into any hgaku genres. Yet the movement gained traction during the 1920s and early 1930s, and it included Yamada-ryū koto musician Hisamoto Genchi (1903-76), koto musician and composer Nakashima Utashito (1896-1979), shakuhachi pedagogue and founder of the Tozan-ryū, Nakao Tozan (1876-1956), and musicologists Tanabe Hisao (1883-1984) and Machida Kash (1888-

133 Because Hayashi Fumiko’s birth year is contested, I have included both dates commonly assigned to her. 134 This topic is discussed at length in Chapter Five. 135 The term “performer-composer” is most often applied in English-language studies to Japanese composers of traditional music who identify first and foremost and performers. Bonnie Wade has identified an ongoing tradition of performer-composers that has branched out in Japan to include musicians primarily trained in Western classical music, such as pianist Yuji Takahashi (1938-). See Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity, 2. 136 The Kinko-ryū shakuhachi lineage is the best documented of the Fuke-sect honkyoku (a variety of traditional shakuhachi music) lineages, as well as being the largest school of shakuhachi honkyoku in Japan. The Japanese word “ryū” (流) indicates a specific style, method, or school of thought, and is used to indicate the lineages (or schools) of traditional Japanese musicians. For more information on the different lineages of shakuhachi in Japan and their history, see James H. Sanford,” Shakuhachi Zen: The Fukeshū and Komus,” Monumenta Nipponica 32, No. 4 (Winter 1977): 411-40; and The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music. 88

1981).137 Miyagi, who had grown up in the international port of Kobe and had heard Western music on a regular basis during his childhood, sometimes drew on Western functional harmony in his works for traditional instrument ensembles; he also invented a wide range of new Japanese instruments.138 Nakao Tozan, on the other hand, came from a much stricter traditional music background, mainly that of Edo-period jiuta (songs accompanied by shamisen) and skyoku (popular koto music, either solo or as vocal accompaniment). Like Miyagi, Tozan sought to modernize traditional instrumental genres, but, as Tsukitani Tsuneko has pointed out, his innovations were grounded more in an expansion of classical Japanese forms than in the increasing application of specifically Western elements.139 Both Miyagi and Tozan experimented with new stylistic elements in their music early in their careers, the 1900s for Tozan, and the 1910s for Miyagi; and although the works of both composers initially caused some disturbance within their respective circles by breaking the strict hgaku-genre compositional procedures, the public appeal of their works soon encouraged other hgaku musicians to expand their horizons.140 Performer-composers such as Tozan and Miyagi also worked together closely with ygaku composers trained primarily in Western musical styles; for example, in the early 1930s Miyagi Michio and Sugahara Meir collaborated on multiple works combining Western and Japanese traditional instruments.141 And in 1930, when Miyagi was appointed to the faculty of the Tokyo Music School, the act constituted an official emplacement of traditional music in the

137 Tsukitani Tsuneko, “The Shakuhachi and its Music,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, 162. 138 Instruments that Miyagi invented during the interwar era include the jūshichigen (“seventeen-string” koto, 1921), the tangoto (“short koto”; 1920s or 1930s), the hachijūgen (“eighty-string” koto; pre-1929) and the dai-kokyū (“large” kokyū, a type of bowed fiddle, 1926). Miyagi created some of these instruments in collaboration with Japanese instrument makers and musicologists, displaying his progressive thinking in terms of developing new instruments that were relevant at the time. Henry Johnson, “A Modernist Traditionalist: Miyagi Michio, Transculturalism, and the Making of a Music Tradition,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 252. 139 Tsukitani calls attention to Tozan's frequent “organum-like parallel homophony,” which she states was still largely within Japanese pentatonic modes, “as if he sought a specifically Japanese harmony.” Tsukitani, 160. 140 Miyagi Michio became widely famous early in his career: in 1919, he successfully presented a public recital of his own works in Tokyo, a bold move for a hgaku musician. His music, which by that point was already melding Japanese and Western elements, was so well-received that in 1925 he was heard on the first test radio broadcast in Japan; after that, his radio activities continued annually with New Year appearances among numerous other broadcasts with lectures and performances. Johnson, 249. 141 See Chapter Four for more information on Miyagi and Sugahara’s collaborations. Aoyama Yuka has pointed out that Yamada Ksaku also collaborated with Miyagi; see Aoyama Yuka, “Kindai nihonjin sakkyokka ni yoru shoki no furūto ongaku” (Early Flute Music by Modern Japanese Composers), in Kagawadaigaku kyiku gakubu kenkyū hkoku (Kagawa University Faculty of Education Report), Part I, 126 (2006): 28. 89 infrastructure of musical culture.142 The opportunities afforded Miyagi by his faculty position at the Tokyo Music School led to many innovative compositions in stylistic hybrids, including homophonic, bel-canto vocal works accompanied by koto, and works that featured the koto in large ensembles and with chorus. In 1951 a more traditional, hierarchical school formed around Miyagi beyond the academy; this is known as the Miyagi-kai, a branch of the Ikuta-ryū and now one of the largest ryūha (traditional schools) in the koto music world.143 Wade stresses Miyagi’s pre-war success in establishing a means by which the two spheres of Japanese art music might profitably intersect.144 Compositions created by participants in the New Japanese Music movement can be viewed as examples of “traditionalist modernism.” As Roy Starrs broadly defines it, traditionalist modernism is a hybrid variety of Japanese modernism, whose practitioners moved to modernize traditional, native art forms as an alternative to the wholesale adoption of Western art practices initiated by what Starrs calls the “Meiji modernizers” of the late nineteenth century. In this way, Japanese writers and artists attempted to evade the anxiety of Western influence, while their art still maintained international appeal as “uniquely Japanese” art forms.145 This, in Starrs’s view, was distinct from what might be called the Western-style high modernism of Japanese cubists, Mavoists (those who belonged to the Japanese inter-arts group Mavo), Dadaists, and surrealists; in music, the label “high modernism” might apply to It Noboru, one of the few interwar ygaku composers who incorporated serialism and atonality into music from the late 1920s and 1930s. In traditionalist modernism, artists broke significant creative barriers that had been in place since the early Meiji era, and they thus overcame the resistance that had existed up to the mid-1920s to mix traditional Japanese with modern Western forms. Starrs calls attention to such modernist works in many different media, including Kawabata Yasunari’s haiku novels, the modern n plays of Mishima Yukio, zenei shod (avant-garde calligraphy), the works of modernist tanka poet Maekawa Samio (1903-90), as well as Miyagi Michio’s modernist koto music.146

142 This appointment also brought performer-composers into what Bonnie Wade calls the “shared cultural space” created by Western music in Japan as creative agents in musical modernity. Wade, 106. 143 For more information on the Miyagi-kai as an innovative development in the instruction of Japanese traditional music, see Liv Lande, “Innovating Musical Tradition in Japan: Negotiating Transmission, Identity, and Creativity in the Sawai Koto School,” PhD diss. (University of California Los Angeles, 2007), 205-13. 144 Wade, 106. 145 Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” 30-31. 146 Ibid., 31. 90

As Chapter Four will show, Japanese interwar neoclassicism is related in many ways to traditionalist modernism. Neoclassicism in Japanese art also provides a fruitful link between Japanese and Western interwar modernism; whereas European neoclassicism is often viewed as a manifestation of artists’ reactions to the widespread destruction and confusion of World War I, Japanese neoclassicism was more a response to Meiji-era Westernization and Japan-specific modernization since the Meiji Restoration.

The 1930s: Nationalism, Nihonteki Narumono, and Socialist Realism

Artistic styles associated with Japanese traditionalist modernism and neoclassicism attracted more layers of signification during the years leading up to Japan’s entry into World War II via the Second Sino-Japanese War.147 The latter was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily, while went back to the first Sino-Japanese War at the end of the nineteenth century. A series of incidents between 1931 and 1937, including the Manchurian Incident, the Shanghai Incident, and the Battle of Rehe, led up to the war proper and culminated in the Japanese capture of the Chinese capital, Nanking, at the end of 1937.148 The Japanese system of party government had already collapsed by the middle of 1932, after members of the military assassinated Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi (1855-1932), which set the stage for the eventual military takeover of the Japanese government. In these years, Japanese patriotism reached fever pitch. Nationalism in Japan had existed in various guises throughout the interwar era. As Nomura Kichi, David Pacun, Bonnie Wade and others have pointed out, music and politics had shared an intimate relationship since the 1870s, when the importation of Western music was meant to play a vital role in the “civilization” half of bunmei kaika. Yet escalating militarism in the 1930s was accompanied by a fanatical dogmatism and a spike in the growth of extreme right-wing movements. The activities of many

147 In the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1941), China sought to fend off Japanese military encroachment with economic help from other world powers (including the Soviet Union and the United States). After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged into the greater conflict of World War II. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the twentieth century, comprising over half of the casualties in the Pacific War (the theatre of World War II that was fought in the Pacific and East Asia.). 148 The Manchurian Incident was the September 1931 invasion of Manchuria by Japanese military forces that resulted in the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo. The Shanghai Incident (28 January-3 March, 1932) was a series of battles that resulted in the Chinese demilitarization of Shanghai, a city where Japan, along with the various Western powers, had extraterritorial concessions. In the Battle of Rehe (February 21 to March 1, 1933), Japan successfully captured the Inner Mongolian province of Rehe and annexed it to the new state of Manchukuo. This was part of Japan’s campaign to expand its buffer zone in Inner Mongolia. 91

Japanese artists took a decidedly doctrinaire turn, as they sought to connect their artwork to social and political ideologies. Socialist organizations of the 1920s underwent significant transformations during the early 1930s, as groups such as the Proletarian Music League rapidly expanded and then collapsed underneath pressure from the government. By 1937, most of the organizations formed by avant-garde and left-wing artists were forcibly regulated or shut down by the state, regardless of whether they were politically radical or not. While some Japanese preferred to remain creatively silent during this time, including the progressive composer Matsudaira Yoritsune, others found ways to support the Empire of Japan while continuing innovative artistic practices. Japanese nationalism in music of the 1930s has received much scholarly attention in the past thirty years; in fact, this is one of the few topics concerning interwar ygaku that has already received modest coverage in English-language sources on Japanese modern music.149 As some scholars have pointed out, the works of Japanese “nationalist” composers during the 1930s should not necessarily be viewed as being artistically deficient in some way; neither should the goals of their creators necessarily be framed as the blind or single-minded support of Japan’s imperialist policies. The crisis of artistic identity that Japanese composers had been negotiating since the late nineteenth century hit a high point, especially with increasing pressure from the government to write music in a Japanese style and to reject Western trends (the latter being blamed for the evils of modern society). Like their contemporaries in other fields, each composer had to clarify his or her identity as a modern Japanese cultural creator, and what that entailed in a practical sense. The exact nature of new Japanese music became subject to much critique and debate in the 1930s. An often-cited source for how composers sought to define “Japanese” music is the manifesto for the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei (Emerging Composers Federation), which was formed on 30 April 1930 by sixteen composers, including Mitsukuri Shūkichi, It Noboru, Hashimoto Kunihiko, Matsudaira Yoritsune, Kiyose Yasuji, and Sugahara Meir.150 The

149 Sources on Japanese nationalism and interwar music include Luciana Galliano, “Nationalism and Music” in Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, 113-23; David Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” Asian Music 43, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2012): 3-46; and Judith Ann Herd, “The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese Contemporary Music,” Perspectives of New Music 27, No. 2 (Summer 1989): 118-63.and “The Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music: Nostalgia, Nationalism, and Identity in the Interwar Years,” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, 40-56. 150Shink sakkyokuka renmei changed its name in 1935 to Nihon Gendai Sakkyokuka Renmei (Association of Contemporary Japanese Composers), under which name it became the Japanese section of the International Society 92 founding members of the Federation were dedicated to the development of a new compositional style; Galliano points out that almost all the members of this association were self-taught composers who did not actively champion the prevailing academic “German style.”151 Guidelines for new compositions included the following: 1. A wide range of possibilities for melody and harmony, by using combinations of scales and modes found in traditional music, particularly the minor and pentatonic to emphasize Japanese qualities; 2. The development of Japanese tonal systems suitable for primary pentatonic and modal melodies, structured after the type of quartal harmonies derived from the vertical tone clusters of the sh [mouth organ] in gagaku; 3. The use of linear, quasi-polyphonic textures similar to sankyoku and jiuta [chamber] ensemble music; and 4. A creative use of instrumental color.152

Regarding these guidelines, Judith Ann Herd emphasizes the members’ preoccupation with methodology rather than ideology. David Pacun calls attention to the reactionary aspects of the group’s manifesto, claiming that it formalized and delimited modern Japanese musical styles that had already been in place for years.153 “Japanese style,” Pacun writes, arose during the 1910s as a reasonably concise set of musical parameters that were or could be sonically identified as “Japanese”; by 1930 this set of guidelines had produced a conscious music style.154 The Nihonteki narumono (literally “things of Japanese-ness”) debate was one byproduct of nationalism and the search for a distinctly Japanese style.155 The debate began in the May 1934 issue of the philosophy and aesthetics journal Shis; Sunaga Katsumi’s article titled “Ongaku ni okeru Nihonteki narumono” (The Nature of Japanese-ness Expressed through Music) discussed composition. In the article, Sunaga enumerated the fundamental characteristics of Japanese traditional music and how such qualities should be understood; he also explained that a European-oriented interpretation of the aesthetic significance of traditional music was highly restrictive. Sunaga’s statements about a Western point of view were immediately misinterpreted: in the following issue of Shis, Tsuji Shūichi railed against what he thought was for Contemporary Music (ISCM). Nihon Gendai Sakkyokuka Renmei began participating in ISCM international festivals in 1937. Yoshida Takako joined the Association in 1935. 151 Galliano, 82. 152 Translated by Judith Ann Herd in “The Cultural Politics of Japan’s Modern Music,” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, 44-45. 153 Pacun 2012, 23. 154 Ibid., 10-11. 155 Debates on Nihonteki narumono were not confined to music; see Sadami, 56, for a discussion of Nihonteki narumono in regard to Japanese literature during the 1930s. 93

Sunaga’s belittling of traditional Japanese music in comparison with European music. These articles excited a half decade’s worth of responses that dealt with the transposition of Japanese aesthetics into the context of a musical language based on European models.156 Although a few composers active in the debate supported the absolute elimination of Western elements, others cautioned that this was not feasible for progressive modern music.157 Around the same time that Sunaga and Tsuji were arguing over aesthetics, another debate raged among composers regarding what might provide a suitable harmonic basis for Japanese music written in a Western idiom. This argument began in 1934, when Mitsukuri Shūkichi (1895-1971) published a treatise proposing the basis for a new Japanese harmonic practice that used one of his own works and works by Yamada Ksaku and Nobutoki Kiyoshi as his examples of “true” Japanese composition.158 This drew an emphatic response from Klaus Pringsheim, who was principal conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo at the time; he implied that Mitsukuri’s scholarship debased Western harmonic practice. Pringsheim then offered his own Konzert für Orchester in C-Dur (1935) as a superior integration of Japanese aesthetics and Western practice. Mitsukuri rejected Pringsheim’s Konzert as a didactic model for Japanese composers, likening its Japanese content to the Spanish content in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol (1887); he also argued that Pringsheim, being a foreigner, had no right to intervene critically in Japanese composition.159 Over the next several years, other composers joined the fray, their arguments ranging from supportive of Western harmony, to mildly critical of Western harmony, to outright hostility toward Western music more generally.160 In the debate Pacun sees a progression from the theoretical tone of Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei in 1930 to the strongly

156 Galliano, 98. 157 By the later 1930s, composers such as ki Masao and Sugahara Meir advocated for the former, whereas others, including Hara Tar and Moroi Sabur, wrote in support of the latter position. For more information on this debate, see Galliano, 98-99. 158 Mitsukuri Shuukichi, “Nihon wasei nit suite” (On Japanese Harmony); the treatise was published in both German and French in Ongaku hyron (January, 1934): 1-15. Working with ascending and descending cycles of perfect fifths, Mitsukuri fashioned two traditional Japanese scales; characterizing thirds as dissonances, he then used the two scales to create contrasting chord progressions (termed “positive” and “negative”) built upon open fifths. Mitsukuri focused on the possibilities for modulation offered by the interaction between the negative scale and the positive scale (Pacun 2012, 23; Galliano 2002, 67). 159 My overview of Mitsukuri and Pringsheim’s debate comes from Galliano, 42 and 67, and Pacun, 23-24. 160 Other composers who contributed to this debate and to the Nihonteki narumono discussion in general include Kiyose Yasuji, Tanaka Shhei, Yoshida Takako, Moroi Sabur, and Fukai Shir. 94 ideological tone adopted by many Japanese artists towards the end of the 1930s; this was an ideology “tainted with overtones of ethnic and racial superiority, difference, and uniqueness.”161 Not all Japanese composers subscribed to the nationalist ideology that Pacun describes. In multiple journal articles from the later 1930s, Fukai Shir reproached Japanese nationalist composers who rejected European music and accused them of producing music worthy only of a “souvenir shop.” He advocated that all Japanese composers should immerse themselves completely and unreservedly in the European tradition.162 Yoshida Takako similarly rejected Nihonteki narumono and advocated for Western and Japanese traditional music alike as appropriate stylistic sources for new Japanese compositions.163 But Nihonteki narumono was not simply a topic for debate among artists; it was also an official ideology used by government authorities in support of the nation’s imperial and militarist agendas.164 During the late 1930s, Japan’s Ministry of the Interior used Nihonteki narumono to describe expressions of a “Japanese spirit” that would work to maintain high social morale. By 1937, government control of arts associations was nearly absolute through the creation of the Central Union for Japanese Culture (Nihon Bunka Chū Renmei), which helped to enforce control over creative activity. In 1940, the Association for Japanese Musical Culture (part of the Taisei Yokusankai, the Association for the Advancement of the Imperial Way) replaced all other associations for Japanese composers, which had been disbanded by the police. Socialist realism in Japan, on the other hand, was a topic of debate that originated within publications of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and writers committed to socialist revolution. The relation of art and literature to society, or of worldview to literary creation, however, was of great concern to non-proletarian writers, as well. It was particularly relevant to those humanist and modernist writers who, discontent with the dissociation of art from society in the decadent literature and autobiographical I-novels then dominant, were trying to make art once again vitally relevant to social reality and the modern human condition.165 While debates on

161 Pacun, 24. 162 Galliano, 79. A student of Sugahara Meir, Fukai (1907-59) was interested in music that did not rely on texts or evocative symbols, and he rejected the lyricism of many of his contemporaries during the later 1930s; in 1937 he started the group Prometeo, for which several atonal works were written. But it was in 1933 that he wrote what remains his best-known work, Four Parodies, an orchestral collection of four satirical pieces in the styles of De Falla, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Roussel, respectively (Galliano, 78-79). 163 I will return to Yoshida’s views on Nihonteki narumono in Chapter Six. 164 Galliano, 114-15. 165 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “The Dispute over Socialist Realism in Japan,” Journal of South Asian Literature 27, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 1992): 67. See footnote 24 of the Introduction for more information on the I-novel (Shishsetsu). 95 realism in the 1930s were not entirely new, the relation of art and literature to politics became central to Japanese writers at this time as a result of the chaotic political climate.166 Proletarian and non-proletarian writers alike who published on art and literature after 1930 were subject to increased censorship and repression. By 1933, the ideological choices afforded authors who chose to stay in Japan were limited, essentially, to tenk, the forced conversion of ideology, and the public denouncement of leftist beliefs that usually accompanied it; collaboration with the government in the war effort; or complete silence until the war was over. These choices extended to visual artists and composers, as well. The type of realism discussed in Japanese journals of the 1930s grew out of the work of communist author and literary critic Kurahara Korehito (1902-99). In his theory of “proletarian realism,” he distinguished realism from both the naturalistic recording of life and anarchistic or subjective protest literature.167 For Kurahara, proletarian realism combined existing literary realism with class perspective; it was a creative method appropriate for describing the complexity and plurality of contemporary people and their environment. By focusing upon the evaluation and criticism of literary realism, Kurahara emphasized methodology rather than any one political ideology.168 Kurahara’s emphasis on proletarian realism as methodology became central to debates on realism in the 1930s. The dispute started around 1933 and followed the quarrel over artistic value and the relationship between politics and literature. Yet the dispute took place during the dissolution of the Japanese proletarian literary movement as most of its writers succumbed to tenk after two of the top leaders of the JCP, Sano Manabu and Nabeyama Sadachika, made a statement to their fellow prisoners advocating conversion.169 Much of the significance of the debate, then, lay in the writers' search for a method to continue to write proletarian literature after tenk and to justify their dissociation from leftist political groups by dissociating literature from politics.170

166 The question of literary realism had been a major subject of debate from the time of Tsubouchi Shy's book Shsetsu Shinzui (The Essence of the Novel) in 1885. Lippit, 67. 167 Kurahara developed his theory of proletarian realism between 1928 and 1934, beginning in “Puroretariarizumu e no michi” (A Path to Proletarian Realism, published in Senki, 1928). 168 Lippit, 70. 169Sano Manabu (1892-1953) and Nabeyama Sadachika’s (1901-79) collective tenk is one of the best-known and most consequential instances of this conversion. After their announcement in June 1933 and their simultaneous appeal to other members of the JCP to convert, more than 30 percent of imprisoned communists publicly converted by the end of July 1933, and about 90 percent had converted by the beginning of 1935. Lippit, 72. 170 Lippit, 72. 96

Despite the numerous articles written on proletarian and socialist realism, however, these never became deeply rooted in the Japanese literary world, likely because of the almost complete destruction of Japanese Proletarian associations and the JCP by 1935. Relatively few works of socialist realism were actually produced in Japan; among those that did appear, Miyamoto Yuriko's short stories and Kubo Sakae's play Kazanbaichi (Land of Volcanic Ash, 1937-38) stand among the best examples of literary socialist realism. But Japanese writers and artists were less concerned with the examination and evaluation of the theory itself, especially as it was expounded in the original Soviet discussions, than with its usefulness for their own works. Since literary creation was considered among proletarian writers to be a revolutionary activity, any theory of literature had to be primarily a theory of creation.171 While Soviet socialist realism was anti-modernism, Japanese modernist authors such as Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke (1892-1932), who was also a Marxist critic, could make statements that melded proletarian and futurist language without running into an ideological quandary. As Hirabayashi wrote in 1929, The matrix of modernism is the machine. It is the machine that overturns tradition and subverts values … For this reason, I believe that there is a progressive aspect to modernism. The development of machines and the resulting acceleration of everyday life are a legacy that should be handed over from bourgeois to proletarian society. The aestheticization of speed is in no way a characteristic specifically of consumer culture but, rather, represents a revolution of aesthetics according to the machine. 172

The coexistence of realism and modernism in the writings of Japanese literary theorists and critics helps to explain the dozens of articles on realism written by composers during the same time period.173 While a number of these composers were members of socialist organizations (Morita Masayoshi and Yoshida Takako, for example, were members of the Proletarian Music League), others who discussed realism in print were not (including Sugahara Meir and Fukai Shir). Like their literary counterparts, these composers also treated realism as

171 Lippit, 78. 172 Hirabayashi Katsunosuke, “Gendai no bungaku wa doko e yuku” (The Direction of Contemporary Literature), reprinted in Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke bungei hyron zenshū, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Bunsend shoten, 1975), 248, 251; quoted in and translated by Seiji M. Lippit, Topographies of Japanese Modernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 124. A little later in the same article, Hirabayashi added that it was more important for writers to grasp the reality of contemporary life in its totality than to “memorize the formulas of Marxism.” 173 During the early stages of this project, when I began to gather and translate the writings of interwar Japanese composers, one of the more confusing aspects I encountered was the numerous references these composers made to proletarian and socialist realism in articles and essays from the 1930s. Coming from my own understanding of Soviet socialist realism as a reactionary backlash against the perceived “decadence” of Western modernism, this discovery seemed to be one contradiction that modernism (as a global movement) could not support within itself. But even the history of Western modernism is rife with contradictions. 97 a methodology, one of many to be put into the service of creating new and innovative music.174 But the use of realism was not limited to ygaku composers. Philip Flavin has used Carl Dahlhaus’s criteria for understanding realism in Western music to describe select skyoku-jiuta by koto performer-composer Tateyama Noboru (1876-1926). Skyoku-jiuta is a collection of different musical genres for koto and shamisen transmitted by a specific group of musicians from the early Edo period (1600-1867) to the present day.175 In their use of reformed melodic structures of skyoku-jiuta and multi-note koto sonorities that reflected an awareness of Western harmony, as well as their reliance upon contemporary cultural references, Tateyama’s works not only referenced the reality of their time and place; they also “posed an aesthetic challenge…to the artistic establishment,” which as Dahlhaus claimed was a crucial indicator of realism in music.176

Conclusion

Music, like any form of art, can never be completely separated from the cultural context of the time period in which it was created; and regarding Japanese ygaku of the interwar era, I believe that it must not be separated from that context. From the Meiji Restoration until the end of World War II, official government policy and perceived national ideology placed significant limitations on individualism in Japanese modern art. Japanese modernism of the interwar era is thus defined, in part, by artists’ negotiations between serving the Empire of Japan and participating in global artistic and ideological movements. Japanese artists were acutely aware of the effect that their own history had had on Western modernists; in fact, many Japanese artists greeted Japonisme as a validation of their own traditional culture, which encouraged cultural hybridity in Japanese modernism in both the high-art and popular spheres.177 David Pacun has

174 Yoshida Takako’s writings on music and realism are discussed in Chapter Five. 175 Philip Flavin, “Skyoku-jiuta: Edo-Period Chamber Music,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, 169. 176 Philip Flavin, “Tateyama Noboru: Osaka, Modernity and Bourgeois Musical Realism for the Koto,” in Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka and Beyond, ed. Hugh de Ferranti and Alison Tokita (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2013), 140. At the beginning of his essay, Flavin quotes the following from Mary Whittall’s translation of Carl Dahlhaus’s Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985): “In the history of art, in music no less than in literature and painting, realism is defined less by the reality it refers to than by the aesthetic challenge it poses to the artistic establishment” (281). In his discussion of musical realism, Flavin repeatedly refers to Dahlhaus’s text, and most especially to Dahlhaus’s idea of realism as a challenge to the accepted aesthetic norm. 177 Consider, for example, the influence of haiku on Ezra Pound's imagism, Max Jacob's short poetry movement, and even Sergei Eisenstein's method of film montage. See Suzuki Sadami, "Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese 98 postulated that the symbiosis between the educational, the popular, the aesthetic, and the national was a defining component of interwar Japan, as even the most prominent avant-garde artists worked as much in tandem with mass culture as they did against it. In fact, many progressive artists from this period became active supporters of the military regime by the end of the 1930s.178 The following three chapters are case studies that touch upon many of the topics discussed in this chapter’s historical overview of Japanese modernism.

Modernism" in Rethinking Japanese Modernism for more information on the reciprocity between Japanese and Western modernists. 178 David Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar Ygaku: A Reappraisal,” Asian Music 43, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2012): 21. 99

CHAPTER THREE

YAMADA KSAKU: MUSICAL AMBASSADOR, MODERNIST CULTIVATOR

In this chapter I position Yamada Ksaku as a Japanese interwar modernist in light of his international activities, his interest in creating music that mixed Japanese and Western elements, and his desire to cultivate modernism in Japan, in music as well as in other arts. I consider Yamada’s modernism from multiple angles, using not only the words of his critics and biographers but also excerpts from Yamada’s own extensive writings and music.1 I also discuss Yamada’s career within the context of modernism as practiced by his colleagues in other disciplines. I have established that Japanese writers used many terms, sometimes with overlapping meanings, to describe interwar Japanese modernism. In this chapter I will focus on a few of those terms and how Yamada and his critics used them to describe both his music and the music of his contemporaries. The terms modan, modanizumu, and kindai all appear in writings about, and by, Yamada Ksaku. As a composer who synthesized Western and Japanese styles across a variety of musical (and non-musical) genres during the interwar era, Yamada becomes an exemplar of Japanese musical modernism. An internationally trained composer, conductor and collaborative arts advocate, Yamada was a modernist whose music, writings and career provide examples of the variety of responses by Japanese artists to Japan’s rapidly changing role on the world stage.

Yamada’s Life and Interwar Career

Yamada Ksaku was born in 1886 in the Hongo district of Tokyo during the turbulent Meiji era, a time of rapid modernization and proliferation of Western culture. Japanese artists and musicians negotiated a variety of imported ideas and styles, as well as a spectrum of interpretations of foreign models, and combinations of indigenous and Western ideas that were sometimes quite contradictory. Yamada experienced the complex cultural setting of late nineteenth and early twentieth- century Japan. The son of a doctor-turned-Protestant-missionary, he grew up in a Christian home,

1 I was unable to secure permission to include examples of Yamada's music in my published dissertation; however, I am grateful to Yamada's daughter for her efforts on my behalf. I apologize to my readers that they will not be able to consult the score. I will nonetheless refer to specific measures describing musical behavior in the hope that interested readers will be able to locate copies of the music. 100 singing English hymns and often traveling to the port of Yokosuka to hear the navy band perform Western marches. Yamada’s father died in 1895, forcing nine-year-old Yamada (the eldest son) to help provide for the family by taking employment at a printing press. In 1901 he was taken in by his older sister and her husband, Edward Gauntlett, in Okayama.2 Gauntlett taught Yamada English and gave him lessons on piano and organ. It was also Gauntlett who sent Yamada to a prestigious secondary school in Kobe, where young Yamada officially began his career as a composer with My True Heart, op. 1 (1901), a four-part choral piece. In 1904, after moving to Tokyo to live with a cousin, Yamada sat for the entrance exam to the Tokyo Music School, receiving marks high enough to earn free tuition. Here he studied with August Junker and Miura Tamaki.3 He graduated with a vocal diploma in 1908, although he continued after that to study theory, composition, and cello performance at the Tokyo Music School. His compositions from this time period include mainly songs to German and English lyrics. After teaching for a year at his alma mater, in January 1910 Yamada was introduced by Professor Heinrich Werckmeister of the Tokyo Music School to Baron Iwasaki Koyata, who offered Yamada economic assistance for studying abroad.4 Yamada accepted the offer; after a brief trip to London for the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition he spent the next two years studying composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin with Max Bruch and Karl Wolf. In l9l2 he earned his composition diploma with his symphony Kachidoki to heiwa (Victory and Peace), the first symphony written by a Japanese composer. The 1910s were a whirlwind of activity for Yamada. He remained abroad until the end of 1913, taking classes at Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s school of eurhythmics in Dresden, attending opera performances conducted by Richard Strauss (including at least one performance of Strauss’s Salome), getting to know the German expressionist artist Herwarth Walden in Berlin, and experiencing, according to Yamada’s autobiography, profound musical inspiration upon

2 George Edward Luckman Gauntlett (1868-1956) was an English teacher from Great Britain who moved to Japan in the early 1890s—interestingly, as a missionary for a Christian church in Canada. 3 August Junker (1868-1944) was a German musician who served as the first violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 1891 and 1897, after which he spent almost a year traveling through North Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Junker accepted a teaching position at the Tokyo Music School in 1899. He stayed in Tokyo for thirteen years, during which time he taught string lessons and conducted the choir at the Tokyo Music School. Miura Tamaki (1884-1946) was an opera singer famous for her portrayal of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. She taught at the Tokyo Music School during the 1900s and officially began her opera career in Tokyo in 1911 (although later that year she left to study in Europe). She was first cast as Cio-Cio-San by Vladimir Rosing in 1915 at the London Opera House. 4 Baron Iwasaki Koyata (1879-1945) was the fourth president of the Mitsubishi business conglomerate. 101 hearing the works of Scriabin in Moscow.5 While in Berlin, he composed two Strauss-inspired symphonic poems, Mandara no hana (Hawthorn Flower) and Kurai to (The Dark Gate), as well as Preludio for orchestra, Herbstfeier for chorus and orchestra to a text by Eduard Mórike, Ochitaru tennyo (The Fallen Celestial Maiden), a kabuki-based opera with a libretto by Tsubouchi Shy, and the piano quintet Hochzeitsklänge (Sound of Marriage). It was also in 1913 that Yamada changed his Latin signature from “Kosaku Yamada” to “Kósçak Yamada.”6 After he returned to Tokyo, he joined Rofu Miki’s Miraisha futurist coterie, and he founded the “Yamada Abend” concert series as a venue in which to premiere his own piano pieces and chamber music. He translated some of Wassily Kandinsky’s poetry and published a number of his own books on musical harmony and style.7 He helped to form a new theater with actor and playwright Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928) and founded the Tokyo Philharmonic Society Orchestra under the patronage of Baron Iwasaki. Yamada conducted its first concert, the first performance by a Japanese professional orchestra, in May 1915. He presented his orchestral works along with those of other composers in monthly subscription concerts.8 Yamada also participated in Japan's modern dance movement. Progressive in outlook, this movement drew upon Dalcroze’s eurhythmics and images of the Ballet Russes that found their way to Japan via books and prints. Between 1916 and 1922, Yamada and dancer Ishii Baku (1886-1962) produced a series of experimental dance works for which Yamada developed a new genre, the choreographic poem (buyshi).9 In these and the larger-scale “Choreographic Symphonies,” Yamada integrated the styles of Japanese N and Kabuki theater, dance based on the eurhythmics of Dalcroze, and Western musical styles. During his first visit to the U.S. (1917- 19), Yamada presented a number of these poems in collaboration with his close friend Ito Michio.

5 En route from Berlin to Tokyo in 1914, Yamada visited Moscow for six days. There he first heard the music of Scriabin, which inspired him to compose a set of two piano pieces, Les poèmes à Scriabin (1917). According to Kimiko Ito, Yamada was also inspired by Scriabin to compose programmatic works that expressed his personal emotions and to write articles for music journals about his passion for music. Kimiko Ito, “The Character Pieces for Solo Piano by Kosaku Yamada (1886-1965),” (DMA diss., University of Georgia, 2004). 6 Yamada changed the Romanized spelling of his given name several times. In Japan he spelled it “Ksaku.” In Berlin, he changed it to “Koscak”or “Kósçak” to make it sound closer to a German name. For a time he used the spellings interchangeably, but later in his life he settled upon “Ksaku.” 7 According to Yamada’s biographers, these translations were published in a few installments in the newspaper Jijishinp in 1914. Although I have not found any more specific information regarding these poems, I assume that they were taken from Kandinsky’s Klänge, a book of woodcuts and poems published in Munich in 1912. Yamada would have been able to acquire a copy of Klänge while he was studying in Germany. 8 Ito, 7. Due to lack of funds, this orchestra was disbanded after only six concerts. 9 David Pacun, “‘Thus We Cultivate Our Own World, and Thus We Share It with Others’: Kósçak Yamada's Visit to the United States in 1918-1919.” American Music 24, No. 1 (Spring 2006): 70. 102

These included a setting for William Butler Yeats's play “At the Hawk's Well,” which was performed in Greenwich Village.10 Yamada’s first trip to the United States has been recognized by multiple scholars as a turning point in his career.11 He conducted and performed at concerts in San Francisco and New York, including two at Carnegie Hall (one of which featured entirely his own music). Yamada lectured at prestigious venues such as the MacDowell Club in New York, met well-known composers and musicians including Charles Griffes, Sergei Prokofiev, and Leo Ornstein, and published piano miniatures, arrangements and lieder with Carl Fischer, G. Schirmer, and the Composers' Music Corporation.12 After his U.S. sojourn, Yamada’s activities increased. He toured abroad throughout the 1920s and 1930s; he even returned to the U.S. once in the fall of 1921, where he finally got to meet one of his early idols, Richard Strauss, in New York.13 In September 1920 Yamada organized the Nihon Gakugeki Kyokai (Japanese Association for Music Drama), which facilitated his presentation that year of the third act of Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Debussy’s L’Enfant prodigue in Tokyo and Osaka. In 1929 his first opera, The Fallen Celestial Maiden, was staged at the Kabukiza in Tokyo. Two years later Yamada was invited to Paris to write a new opera for the Théâtre Pigalle.14 While in France he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur and an honorary member of the Saint-Saëns and Debussy societies. He returned to Japan through Russia where he conducted several concerts of his own works and met Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1933 he again went to Russia as a composer and conductor, appearing in various cities.15

10 It Michio, who became a close associate of Ezra Pound, Edmund Dulac, and Alvin Langdon Coburn, may have been initially inspired to pursue modern dance by Yamada. It was at Yamada’s suggestion that Ito entered the Dalcroze School in 1913; he later moved to London and met Pound, Coburn, Dulac and others, and began to make a name for himself based upon his mixture of Japanese dance and the techniques of Dalcroze. 11 See Pacun, 1-2; Ito, 9; and Takeishi Midori, “Yamada Ksaku no America ryok (1918/1919 nen)” (Yamada Ksaku’s Visit to the United States in 1918/1919), Ongakugaku 41, No. 1 (2000). 12 Pacun, 67-68. 13“Ryaku nenpu” (Abbreviated Biography), in Yamada Ksaku sakuhin shiryo mokuroku (Tokyo: Tyama Ongaku Zaidan Fuzoku Toshokan, 1984), 17. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any other details regarding Yamada’s 1921 trip to the United States. 14 Yamada’s 1931 opera Ayamé, with a libretto by Percy Noel, was the fruit of this commission; however, the opera was not performed due to musicians’ strikes and financial issues in Paris. Composed for the progressive directors Michel Benois and Fyodar Komissarzhevsky, Ayamé included arrangements of two Japanese folksongs (“Hakone Hachiriwa” and “O-edo Nihonbashi”), and included a kabuki ensemble in the finale’s double love-suicide. David Pacun, “Style and Politics in Ksaku Yamada’s Folksong Arrangements, 1917-1950,” in Music of Japan Today, ed. Edwin Michael Richards and Kazuko Tanosaki (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008). 45-46. 15 Ito, 9-10. 103

Between his trips abroad Yamada engaged in a variety of activities. He taught modern dance at the Bunka Gakuin, a small but progressive school for women in Tokyo’s Kanda Ward in 1921 and 1922.16 Also during the 1920s Yamada concentrated on writing Japanese art songs. He composed more than 700 songs during the 1920s, including settings of contemporary poets Kitahara Hakushū (1885-1942), Miki Rofū (1889-1964), and female poets Fukao Sumako (1888- 1974) and Yosano Akiko (1878-1942). He set both Fukao’s and Yosano’s “Song of the New Woman,” anthems that were taken up by the Japanese feminist movement in support of women’s suffrage.17 In September 1922 Yamada and Kitahara started a journal, Shi to ongaku (Poetry and Music), with the aim of finding an ideal union between the two arts.18 In March 1925, Yamada participated in the initial tests of the Tokyo Broadcasting System (the call sign for which was J.O.A.K.). Four months later, on the first day of regular radio broadcasts, they played Yamada’s “J.O.A.K. March.” Yamada’s domestic fame reached a high point in 1930 with a concert series that celebrated the composer’s past 25 years in music; Shunjūsha began to publish the first edition of Yamada’s complete works, and prominent music journals Ongaku sekai (Music World) and Gekkan gakufu (Music Monthly) ran special features on Yamada’s life and career.19 Like many Japanese intellectuals, Yamada supported the government’s military regime during the 1930s and 1940s, and his list of nationalistic activities is substantial. He composed military songs (gunka) and music for a number of propagandistic films, and he played leading roles in music federations allied to the government.20 He even functioned as a “musical ambassador” to Japan's East Asian colonies during the early 1940s, conducting the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra in 1942 and the New Philippines Symphony Orchestra in 1943.21 Kurofune (The Black Ships), perhaps Yamada’s most famous opera, was also used by its

16 Hirasawa Nobuyasu, “Dance Education in the Bunka Gakuin of the 1920s: the Buyou-Shi (Dance Poem) under the guidance of Yamada Kousaku,” Academic Bulletin, Kanoyataiikudaigaku 34 (March 2006), 9. About this school’s first director, Hirasawa writes: “Nishimura Isaku (1884-1963), who styled himself a “free thinker,” provided the funding for the school’s founding … His mind was globally oriented and non-conservative. The basic personality and liberal thinking of Nishimura had a direct or indirect influence on the school’s organization, the style of schoolhouse, the pupils’ dress and demeanor, and the content of the education that was offered.” 17 Yosano and Fukao each wrote a poem called “Song of the New Woman.” 18 Ito, 10. 19 Shunjūsha’s first series of Yamada’s complete works was originally planned in fifteen volumes, but was left incomplete after the ninth volume in 1931. Since then, two other attempts have been made to publish Yamada’s oeuvre in its entirety: the second, published by Daiichi Hoki between 1963 and 1966, was also left incomplete, while the third, the eighteen-volume Kósçak Yamada: The Complete Works, edited by Nobuko Got, was completed in 1994 and published by Shunjūsha. 20 Pacun, “Style and Politics,” 47. 21 Manuscript parts for Yamada’s choreographic symphony Maria Magdalena include signatures and dates from members of these orchestras who, presumably, performed this work in 1942 and 1943. 104 composer as a tool for promoting nationalist statement. In Kurofune, Yamada adapted the legend of Okichi, a tea-house girl who served as Townsend Harris’s mistress during his negotiations for the first Treaty of Commerce between the U.S. and Japan (1854-56). In remarks that Yamada published just prior to Kurofune's 1940 premiere, he vented his "long-standing dissatisfaction and even anger” over Orientalist works such as Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, stating that “at last I came to believe it my duty to write myself an opera on a Japanese theme in which the errors in these works would be corrected.” In fact, Kurofune was part of a conscious effort to portray the heroine Okichi as a symbol of sacrifice for the nation.22 Although Yamada’s nationalistic music and outspoken support for Japan’s militarism should not dominate the picture of him as a modernist, it is important to remember that this was also a significant part of his life and work. Yamada received numerous honors later in life including the Asahi Cultural Prize (1942), the NHK Broadcasting Cultural Prize (1950), the Medal of Honor with Blue Ribbons (1954), and the Japanese Order of Culture (1956).23 Until his death he served as president of the Nihon Gakugeki Kyokai (Japan Music Drama Society) and the Nihon Shikisha Kyokai (Association of Japanese Conductors). In 1947 Yamada suffered a cerebral hemorrhage leaving him partially paralyzed. He became gradually less active as a composer and public figure after this; he died from a stroke in 1965.Yet Yamada toured extensively for most of his life, conducting his own works and those of composers he met outside of Japan. He was a prolific composer; his biographers estimate Yamada’s output at approximately 1600 works, including operas, orchestral pieces, string quartets, a piano quintet and many solo piano works, dozens of large-scale choral compositions and school songs, Japanese lieder, and the choreographic and symphonic poems.

Critical Reception during the Interwar Era

Yamada received much attention in Japanese music journals during the interwar era. In 1919, Ongaku and Ongakukai ran articles about his activities in the United States and covered the release of his publications, and journals throughout the 1920s published many of Yamada’s own articles. By 1930, Yamada’s status was reflected in various journal articles about his life

22 Pacun, “Style and Politics,” 46. 23 Japan’s Order of Culture (Bunka kunsh) should not to be confused with the Japanese “Cultural Contributor” Award (Bunka krousha), which in 1954 was also awarded to Yamada. 105 and works. He was revered as a teacher, respected as an authority on the international music scene, and admired and carefully critiqued as a master of Western musical forms and styles.24 In one of five Gekkan gakufu articles on Yamada from October 1930, critic Horiuchi Keiz discussed Yamada’s compositions chronologically, charting their progression from studies at the Tokyo Music School up to 1930.25 He found characteristics of “mysterious softness” in the early works, which he attributed to Yamada’s experiences with American religious music in his childhood. He praised the quick progress Yamada had made after only two years in Germany, the time during which Yamada wrote an opera and a symphony. Horiuchi highlighted a “glorious craftsmanship” in the works from his time in Germany, and his works’ emulation of those of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and Strauss, the last of which showed up especially in the tone poem diptych The Dark Gate /Madara no Hana (1913). Distinct in their personal color, these orchestral works reminded Horiuchi of the late novels of Japanese author Natsume Sseki (1867-1916); however, Horiuchi also found that they felt too naïve and lacked impact. According to Horiuchi, after returning home from Germany Yamada wrote artful, well- polished modern (kindai) songs that retained Yamada’s characteristic softness. But this era was dominated by dramatic music and choreographic poems, of which Horiuchi writes, In his choreographic poems, I feel that there was an erotic and grotesque (ero to guro) characteristic that was not featured in his other works. Or maybe it was the performances of [dancer] Ishii Baku? After that, there were people who acknowledged traces of Scriabin in the choreographic poems of that era. However, those pieces in which we recognized Scriabin were the small piano works [which feature] elegant simplicity. But all things considered, his craftsmanship [in these works] was the most ornate.26

24 See, for example, Mitsukuri Shūkichi’s interview with Yamada from the December 1931 issue of Ongaku sekai, conducted soon after Yamada’s return from a trip to France, as well as all the articles in Ongaku sekai and Gekkan gakufu from October 1930 celebrating Yamada’s career of 25 years. The Gekkan gakufu articles are almost all heartfelt pieces on Yamada’s family, his career, or his goodness and generosity as a person and mentor. In “Mr. Yamada Ksaku as a Person” (“Hito toshite Yamada Ksaku-shi”), critic Ushiyama Mitsuru, who had written about Yamada since the 1910s, praises the humanity and caring nature of Yamada, even going so far as to compare him to Jesus Christ toward the end of his article. Although Yamada had received many mixed reviews, according to Ushiyama, Yamada took care of his “followers” very well. In “Sketch of Mr. Yamada Ksaku” (“Yamada Ksaku- shi no esukiizu”), Nakane Hiroshi covers the eras of Yamada’s career chronologically, highlighting, among other events, Yamada’s transition in the Japanese press from performer to composer after his return from studying in Germany, the starting of the “Yamada Abend” concert series (under the auspices of the Mirai-ha futurist group), and his collaborations with dancer Ishii Baku. 25 Horiuchi Keiz (1897-1983) was a critic, composer, lyricist, and translator. In 1916, along with the group consisting of Sugahara Meir, Kobayashi Yoshio, taguro Mot, and Nomura Koichi, he launched Ongaku to bungaku (Literature and Music), the first Japanese music criticism journal from Iwanami Shoten Publishers. During the winter of 1918, he visited Yamada Ksaku in New York. 26 Horiuchi Keiz, “Yamada Ksaku no sakuhin zakkan,” Gekkan gakufu (October 1930): 15. 106

It is no coincidence that Horiuchi uses the terms ero and guro to describe Yamada’s choreographic poems, as these works were among the most avant-garde of their time in Japan. Ero guro is an abbreviation for “erotic-grotesque-nonsense,” a phrase that was coined during the interwar era to describe a Japanese literary and artistic movement whose artists and writers explored eroticism, decadence, social deviance, and the ridiculous. This movement has recently been connected in English-language scholarship to Japanese modernism by Miriam Silverberg.27 Continuing his chronological review of Yamada’s compositions, Horiuchi discussed Yamada’s 1918 visit to America. According to Horiuchi, the pieces that Yamada wrote in the U.S. are either extensions of his style in the previous period or are indications that Yamada was in a compositional “slump”; but Horiuchi says that this is less important than Yamada’s recognition as a conductor abroad at this time. The America trip also marked a turning point in Yamada’s songs, which, after his return to Japan, Horiuchi believes show more depth while retaining what he calls the “ornate craftsmanship” (hanayaka gik) of Yamada’s early works.28 Horiuchi mentions the songs “Karatachi no hana” (1924) and “Posutomani” (1924) as having amazed him. He claims they show Yamada’s transition into compositional maturity during the mid-1920s from external craftsmanship to internal finesse. Comparing the career of Yamada to that of Verdi, he states that “Karatachi no hana” and “Posutomani” are equivalent compositions to Verdi’s Otello (1887) in their refinement and technical restraint. While he claimed that Yamada was already an accomplished composer, Horiuchi ends the article by forecasting even more progress in Yamada’s personal compositional style in the near future.29 Although some of the reactions and reviews printed in various American magazines and newspapers during and after Yamada’s first visit to the U.S. are as hopeful for Yamada’s future as Horiuchi’s, most American critics, while praising his skills as a conductor, were skeptical of the Japanese composer’s musical promise in a Western idiom. Some saw him as an imitator, an outsider parroting the works of Western composers, or simply without skill.30 Others focused solely on Yamada’s ability to interpret properly the “East” for Western audiences in his folk-

27 Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: the Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 28 Horiuchi, 15. 29 Ibid., 21. 30 Such reviews include an anonymous 1927 review of Yamada’s American publications in the “New Music” section of The Musical Times (November 1, 1927); Katharine Wright’s “Music in 1918-1919” (The Lotus Magazine, May 1919); and Norman Peterkin’s article “The Influence of Occidental music on the Orient” (The Musical Times, September 1, 1920). 107 song adaptations, attempting to find in Yamada’s original works some authentic “Oriental” sound or style, even if none was intended.31 Yet there were American critics who championed Yamada as a composer. Among them was Frederick H. Martens, a translator of opera libretti and an advocate of modern music. In Martens’s 1918 interview with Yamada in The Musical Observer, he also devoted considerable attention to Yamada's more progressive scores and to Western composition within Japan itself. Apart from a short introduction by Martens, what we read are Yamada's own words in extended quotation.32 Carlo Edwards, a music critic writing for Pearson’s Magazine, was overwhelmingly supportive of Yamada as an innovative and original artist.33 In his November 1918 article “A Japanese Composer,” Edwards provided a summary of Japan’s music scene and the “Western impulse” then affecting it. After this, he discussed Yamada as a revolutionary, the creator of Japanese opera and a composer who had made a name for himself during his studies in Berlin.34 Like Martens, Edwards paraphrased Yamada’s explanations regarding his musical training and his desire to study composition at a time when this was practically impossible to do in Japan. He also explained that Yamada performed some of his compositions for Edwards, and although he mentioned none by name (save for the Coronation Prelude, which “is built around the national anthem of Japan, and is a Europeanization of Japanese melodic form”), he offered his overall impressions: The music shows evidence of solid foundations of theory. … he is in the full current of classical European music. His major works show little of Japanese idiosyncrasy; they are simply splendid, sound music, smacking a good deal of German inspiration and here and there showing the influence of Strauss. … you would not positively know that Yamada is a Japanese until you heard his songs and smaller piano pieces, which are amalgamated with Japanese melodies. Here you feel not the outsider toying with something strange to him; but a man with his foot on his native soil. Masterpieces of their kind they are, with

31 Reviews such as “The Musical Awakening of Japan: The First Japanese Composer to Write in the Occidental Forms Interprets Nippon’s Music to the West” (Current Opinion, October 1918) and “Kôsçak Yamada’s Songs” (The New York Times, 8 June 1919) fall into this category. 32 Kósçak Yamada," The Musical Observer 17, no. 12 (December 1918). In his article “Thus We Cultivate Our Own World, and Thus We Share It with Others,” David Pacun speculates that Martens probably knew Yamada personally. Pacun, 80. 33 Pearson’s Magazine (1899-1925) was a spinoff of the British magazine of the same name, whose contributors wrote about current literature, politics, and the arts. From 1916 to 1922 Frank Harris edited the U.S. Pearson's, combining short story fiction with often socialist-tinted features on contemporary news topics. Carlo Edwards contributed to Pearson’s between February 1917 and December 1918, writing about movie music, opera, orchestras, composers, musicians, and conductors; he seems to have championed the new and innovative, especially in American music. He was also drawn to composers and performers of Asian and Pacific musics, although Stravinsky, Strauss, Debussy, and Schoenberg make repeat appearances in his articles. 34Carlo Edwards, “A Japanese Composer,” Pearson’s Magazine (November, 1918): 40. 108

their original Asiatic color beautifully worked out and enriched with the fullest resources of Western musical scholarship.35

Although Edwards’s article was probably intended to promote Yamada’s upcoming concerts, this is a very positive appraisal of a Japanese ygaku composer in the West in 1918. And while it seems that Edwards views Yamada mainly as a composer of “European” (Western) music he concluded his article with the following endorsement: “It is possible that Yamada is destined to be one of the great composers, assuredly he will be remembered as an outstanding figure, the first figure perhaps, in the new Japanese music.”36 The article is Eurocentric in its overall perspective—however, even Edwards was quick to acknowledge the hybridity of Yamada’s music and the potential that hybridity possessed.

Postwar Criticism

In multiple sources music critic Toyama Kazuyuki used the terms modanisuto and modanizumu to describe Yamada and his music. He credits Yamada with the creation of Japanese musical modernism and cites his extensive musical “firsts” as a Japanese composer. Yamada introduced many orchestral works to Japan, including Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Gershwin's An American in Paris, Mosolov's Iron Foundry, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1. He even helped to organize the first exhibition of German expressionist woodcuts in Japan, at the Hibiya Art Museum in March 1914. Herwarth Walden had entrusted several works to Yamada at the Berlin Der Sturm Gallery the previous year. Around the time of the Tokyo exhibit Yamada met Japanese modernist painter Tg Seiji and provided him with valuable information about recent trends in European art. Works shown at Togo’s first exhibition (1915) reflected this, especially his painting Kontorabasu o hiku (Playing the Contrabass).37 Yamada’s legacy includes dozens of books and essays, and his articles appeared regularly during the interwar era in a variety of arts journals. In one essay, Toyama wrote of Yamada’s experience as one of the chief editors for and contributors to Shi to ongaku: Yamada was aware of his own artistic abilities; although casting aside the simply “newfangled” manners of a modernist, it should be mentioned that [his founding of the journal Shi to ongaku] at this time was fortunate. He announced Shi to ongaku to be the

35 Edwards, 41. 36 Ibid., 41. 37 Günter Berghaus, International Futurism in Arts and Literature (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 261-62. 109

essence of creative work; he got the space in which to talk about music and his own artistic views.38

Toyama grouped Yamada with such Western modernists as Scriabin, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, even though Yamada is best known in Japan today for his folk music settings and children’s songs. In another essay, Toyama wrote, Yamada is known, in most cases, as the composer of simple nursery rhyme songs, such as “Aka tombo” and “Kono michi.” Although there is no doubt that he has demonstrated talent in this area … he is found to be a strong presence that does not fit into that area of work (nursery rhyme-style songs). Yamada composed multiple operas. He also wrote tremendous pieces of instrumental music … One could even say those were distinguished works from the perspectives of composer circles in Japan of those days. … Yamada's modernism, born from these activities after returning home [from Berlin], became a leading form of modernist art in Japan … [Regarding Yamada], the phrase “creation of modernism” is not an exaggeration at all.39

In his article focused on Yamada’s work as an instructor at the Bunka Gakuin school, Hirasawa Nobuyasu portrayed Yamada as a modernist in his creation of a modern dance curriculum there. Although Hirasawa cited the immense sway that “Euro-American modernism” held at Bunka Gakuin, he characterized this outside influence as something that merely spurred on the school’s instructors, many of whom were among Japan’s best-known modern artists and scholars, to develop an educational system that focused on artistic expression and experimentation. Yamada’s dance pedagogy, Hirasawa claims, flourished in the educational world of Japan, regardless of ephemeral European trends.40

Yamada on Modernism

Yamada used the terms kindai, modanizumu, and even the English terms “modern,” “modernism,” and “ultra-modern” to describe music and musicians of his era. He also provided insight into his own opinions about modernism and his personal experiences with the creation of new forms and genres. In his autobiography, Yamada recounted a lecture he received from Leopold Karl Wolf, his major instructor at the Berlin Hochschule, during his second year of study. After more than a year focused solely upon copying Wolf’s compositions, he became

38 Toyama Kazuyuki, “Ongaku to Taish riberarizumu,” in Taish no hikari to kage (Tokyo: Kyūzansha, 1993), 52. 39 Toyama Kuzuyuki, “Yamada Ksaku to modanizumu,” in Yamada Ksaku Chosaku Zenshū, vol. 2 (Iwanami Shoten, 2001), 2. 40 Hirasawa, 22. 110 frustrated, and asked Professor Wolf if he could write works based upon other composers—in particular, his new favorite, Richard Strauss. To which Wolf replied (as quoted by Yamada), “Strauss! He is splendid! But how should you go about that? There is a little more to do; you need to explore the Mozart and the Bach! Do not merely imitate new trends. Modernism (modanizumu) is a dazzling costume. But even that which is dazzling, borrowed, and imitated can soon be stripped away. If such colors are not refined by oneself, the product cannot be called a genuine article. … this is a path you follow without rushing, taking it step by step on your own.”41

Soon after this, Yamada began to explore the wider world of creative and performing arts: “I dashed around gleefully through an alpine meadow of art, theater, and dance…. Touching new trends and soon feeling their origins … I was able to begin developing my own novelty.”42 During Yamada’s first trip to the U.S., he became acquainted with many Western musicians. His 1923 essay on American modernist Leo Ornstein details the close bond that formed between these two men during the course of a few weeks in late 1918, at concerts, dinner parties, and in Yamada’s lodgings. He described Ornstein as “a wildman,” full of energy and spirit; the difference between the music and the man himself appeared to Yamada to be minimal. The two of them became so close that they dropped the formalities of honorifics, and Yamada referred to him as “Leo” throughout most of the essay. Although the “novelty” of Ornstein’s music seemed to bother Yamada, he found deeper value in it upon hearing Ornstein and Hans Kindler perform Ornstein’s first cello sonata in Philadelphia. Yamada wrote, I have never observed tensions as strong, intense and beautiful as those between [Leo and Hans] in their performance. Of course, this sonata, unlike for example those of Saint- Saëns’, has a power like seething hot water. As the music continued, I heard a relaxing, beautiful inspiration that is impossible to describe … I felt keenly that Leo is not merely bound by novelty, and is not completely immersed in the creation of the ultra-modern 43 (urutora-modān).

Because Yamada regarded the “ultra-modern” as something shallow, he seemed pleased that Ornstein’s music went beyond simply being “novel.” Also in 1923, Yamada wrote about meeting Sergei Prokofiev in New York (January, 1919). Yamada recalled a heated debate between the two of them. “We could not possibly find a point of agreement,” he wrote. He also mentioned Prokofiev’s disdain for the Japanese audiences

41 Yamada Ksaku, akaki hi no kyshikyoku, 168-69. 42 Ibid., 169. 43 Yamada Ksaku, “Leo Ornstein” (1923), reprinted in Yamada Ksaku chosaku zenshū, Volume 2, edited by Nobuko Got, Ikuma Dan, and Kazuyuki Tyama (Tky: Iwanami Shoten, 2001), 25. 111 he encountered during his two months in Japan in the summer of 1918 (“Prokofiev very bluntly asserted that the Japanese do not understand music,” wrote Yamada). But Yamada stood up to Prokofiev, just after the Russian composer finished insulting some of the best-known composers of Western music. In response to Prokofiev’s statement that “music must be broken down, and expression made free,” Yamada replied, Break down form and free expression: although that truly sounds modern (kindai), it seems far from being a very special claim. When I look at Mr. Prokofiev’s position in comparison to my own position on this point I feel rather sorry … For myself—being Japanese—anything of Western music can be considered equally, rather than only that which is conventional to Mr. Prokofiev. We live without being troubled by any such tradition … [the Japanese] are capable of feeling and contemplating works from all eras, ranging from Bach to Scriabin, at the same time without any preconceptions. … I then stated my opinion about the term “modernism” (modanizumu): “Being new is just another step toward being old. Something that is said to be up-to-date artistically cannot have any value by itself. Truly, what an artist must respect is what is pure (naïve), not what is new. What is naïve, living in timelessness, has the novelty of ‘not being accompanied by yesterday’; can this not also be valued and prized?”44

In a 1931 interview with Mitsukuri Shūkichi Yamada reiterated this position. Although in the interview he did not specifically mention modernism, he harped upon the “gimmicks” of European music, especially those of orchestral pieces. Because the “music of the future,” he stated, would in many cases be understood or communicated via microphone (alluding to the music of movies, radio, and gramophone recordings—all mediums with which Yamada was quite familiar by this time), concise organization and sensitivity to orchestration were vital. Yamada mentioned his opera Ayamé (1931) as an example of such sensitivity and clarity.45 Evidence of how Yamada regarded his own work is also provided in an essay he wrote as a preface to a text on Isadora Duncan and modern (kindai) dance. He published it while teaching dance at the Bunka Gakuin; the essay is dedicated to choreographer and playwright Osanai Kaoru, a modernist in his own right. The essay focuses on Yamada’s buyshi or “choreographic poems,” a genre he claimed to have created in 1913. Yamada’s buyshi include works for solo dancer and piano; works for multiple dancers, vocalist, and piano; and even large-scale works incorporating a Western orchestra. Some of these works were presented in Japan in 1916, but they were not very well received. When Yamada and It Michio presented the choreographic poems in the U.S. in 1918, the music for thirteen of them was picked up by American publishers.

44 Yamada Ksaku, “Sergei Prokofiev” (1923), reprinted in Yamada Ksaku chosaku zenshū, vol. 2, 52-53. 45 Mitsukuri Shūkichi, “Yamada Ksaku-shi to kataru,” Ongaku sekai (December 1930): 42. 112

But due to financial troubles back home, and only temporary interest abroad, the works did not gain much traction. Yamada wrote, After I came back from the U.S., I had wanted to be a genuine musician; yet despite my desire, I [was] instinctively attached to the performing arts. And each time I was asked to compose a dramatic musical work, I started to think that, rather than music for a play, a choreographic poem, which is the harmony of music and dance, would be the highest summit of art of the future. Therefore, although I was aware that it was not possible to immediately perform my choreographic poem on the Japanese stage (which was challenging even in Europe and the U.S.), I deeply believed in the artistic value of the [genre] itself.46

Towards the end of the essay quoted above, Yamada stated, “The recent fashion of dance in [Japan] will not stay without eye-popping wonders. … I cannot help but have the sinking feeling that I have been betrayed. Loving dance so much that I cannot bear to look at the errors of that true spirit … I now announce the end of my years of research.”47 Despite his disappointment and apparent resignation, Yamada went on to create more buyshi; his enthusiasm for the genre and belief in its artistic value, as well as the possibilities for modern dance’s future, are indicative of his desire to take music and collaborative arts in new directions.

Yamada’s Choreographic Poems (Buyshi)

The “choreographic poem” as a specific performance genre combining music and dance became popular in Western Europe during the early twentieth century. This was in part thanks to the success of such works as Claude Debussy’s Pré ude à ‘L'Après-midi d'un faune’ (1894), which was choreographed and danced by Vaslav Nijinsky for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris in 1912; and Maurice Ravel’s La Valse (1920), which was described in its score as a “poème choréographique.” In her entry on this genre for The Oxford Companion to Music, Jane Bellingham defines a choreographic poem as a piece of music “originally designed as a ballet, but which can also stand as an orchestral work in its own right.”48 Defined thusly the label “choreographic poem” can be applied to another famous composition of musical modernism, Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (1913), which is often performed as an orchestral piece

46 Yamada Ksaku, “Iyū Osanai Kaoru-kun ni sasagu” (1922), reprinted in Yamada Ksaku chosaku zenshū, vol. 2, 8. 47 Ibid., 8. 48 Jane Bellingham, “Choreographic poem,” The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 24 May 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e1378. 113 independent of its orginal choreography. Later examples of choreographic poems include William Schuman’s Judith (1949) and Maxwell Davies’ The Beltane Fire (1995). Yamada’s buyshi, then, fit squarely within the early years of this genre as it developed in the West. Written between 1914 and the mid-1930s, the choreographic poems include some of Yamada’s earliest original piano music, which is among his most intriguing and innovative. In this section I present three of these works as examples of Japanese modernism.49 Compared to many of his works in other genres during the interwar era, Yamada was freer in his treatment of tonality and dissonance in the poems. Key signatures are often not included in the scores, while the music frequently employs fourths, tritones, a variety of augmented sixth chords, and melodic lines and harmonies derived from whole-tone and octatonic pitch collections. The harmony of these pieces frequently blurs the distinction between modality and tonality, including fragments of Japanese scales that are woven into a particular work’s overall harmonic frame. In the case of Frühlingstraum, Yamada’s last choreographic poem, tonal harmony is completely absent. Yamada’s idea of the choreographic poem solidified as a clear genre during the early 1910s. Some of the poems were initially conceived and composed as music for the stage, like Die blaue Flamme, while others, like the earliest-composed movements from Sie und Er, were adapted as such afterward.50

Sie und Er (Kare to kanojo: nanatsu no poemu, 1914)51

The piano suite Sie und Er (1914) was to be Yamada’s first buyshi. Yamada’s dramatic recollection of composing these pieces indicates how important they were in his early output: It was March of that year [1914]. I saw the light coming through the air when I was suffering from the pain of giving birth to my new composition. I believe it was the twelfth day of March. I had composed seven pieces within such a short period. It was the programmatic suite, Sie und Er. I don’t know how to express such a joy I received when I finished the piece. Until now, no matter how hard I tried, I had never been able to reflect “myself” in my compositions. The works written before this suite were something I borrowed from somebody else. They were not mine. However, in these seven poèmes, I

49 In his 1986 article “Yamada Ksaku no buyshi: Taish modanizumu no yume to zasetsu” (Choreographic Poems of Yamada Ksaku: Dreams and Setbacks of Taish Modernism), Funayama Takashi also discusses Yamada’s buyshi as examples of interwar Japanese modernism. Ongaku geijutsu 44, No. 2 (February 1986): 32-39. 50 Ito, 13-14. 51 The seven movements of Sie und Er (She and He) were labeled in Yamada’s manuscripts as 彼彼女, Kare to kanojo (He and She), and designated as “Poèmes pour Piano” (Yamada MS 478 and 479a-c, 1914). It was not until 1916 that Yamada began to use the title Sie und Er. In volume 4 of Yamada’s most recent complete works, the piece is titled 彼彼女: 七ポエム / Kare to Kanojo: nanatsu no poemu (He and She: Seven Poems). 114

can see “myself” living there. I even experienced a new compositional technique, taiih (counterpoint), through this work.52

The taiih, or counterpoint, to which Yamada refers here is stylistic, in which Western and Japanese elements, early and late Romantic characteristics, tonal and atonal harmonies, or monophonic and polyphonic textures are juxtaposed in the same composition. This is different from the more traditional interpretation of the term “counterpoint,” which indicates a relationship between voices that are interdependent harmonically but independent in rhythm and contour.53 Yamada’s conceptualization of taiih mainly refers to the horizontal juxtaposition of contrasting elements; such elements can be harmonic, but they can also be melodic or textural. David Pacun has written that Yamada treated style idiosyncratically as a compositional device. Through taiih, Yamada “deliberately contrasted styles within the same piece,” producing musical hybridity. Pacun translates taiih as “stylistic counterpoint.”54 Yamada provided the following description in the program notes distributed at the premiere. There are seven sections, each of which corresponds to one movement of music.

This is the dance of a male and female couple.

(No. 1: Andantino) There was a man. He seemed confused but soon realized that he was still alive. He then saw the woman was standing nearby. The moment the two looked at each other, they were suddenly torn apart. With fear, joy, and happiness mixed together, they tried to nestle up to each other, but no matter how many times they tried, they were forced to separate. The two finally drew close and embraced each other. Now full of hope, their eyes were shining like candle light.

(No. 2: Allegro vivace) Now filled with hope, the two were dancing insanely. However, they were always chased by an invisible force. They were finally exhausted by dancing and collapsed on the ground. Again, they were separated.

(No. 3: Lento piangendo) The two were so tired and regretful. However, they had to find a way to be close to each other. Incense was burning between them, and the couple was cleansed from their sin by the smoke from the incense. When their suffering from pain and fear reached its highest

52 Got Nobuko, notes, Yamada Ksaku sakuhin zenshū (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1991), appendix 3. Translated by Kimiko Ito. 53 Ito, 49. 54 Pacun, 68-69. 115

point, they heard the bell of the temple from a distance. They stood up and started to weep.

(No. 4: Allegro marciale) The outside world rejected the two for what they had done. The couple tried to rejoin the world. However, as they tried, they realized they did not belong to the rest of the world. They knew the way they moved their bodies was too beautiful and too different from other people. They knew that it was sinful to receive pleasure through their own movement.

(No. 5: Lento misteriosamente) However, they had to find a place of their own. They sought. They struggled. Then, they dreamed of a world filled with beauty.

(No. 6: Andantino) The two finally came to a beautiful, peaceful, and quiet place.

(No. 7: Andante) Again they saw the shadow which had threatened them. The place they had thought most peaceful was not the place they were seeking. The two had to start a journey to find another place. They were extremely exhausted. They dragged their feet as they walked. Now the two became old. On the way, as they helped each other, they again remembered that “we are still alive.” It was a feeling they had lost for a long time. They then found their spirits burning again. They finally worked out their own salvation and hoped to find the spiritually elevated place which was located in their hearts.55

The piece alternates slow and fast (or moderate) movements. The forms are simple binary or ternary, except for No. 5, which is through-composed. Most of the movements include a brief introduction, coda, or both. There are no direct thematic links between the pieces, save for the restatement of the opening section of No. 1 at the very end of No. 7, and the frequency of melodies and harmonies based upon a whole-tone scale throughout the multi-movement work. Yamada’s stylistic counterpoint adds contrast from section to section in the movements of Sie und Er. In the first movement (Andantino), the ABA’ form features harmonically unstable outer sections and a stable middle section; the B section’s climax includes the only dominant-to- tonic progression in the movement. The A and B sections also contrast texturally and melodically. The main motivic components of the opening A section (mm. 1-7) are short, descending 32nd-note runs that alternate with sustained chords. Although some of the chords in the A section are conventional major triads (such as the E-flat major chord at the beginning of m. 5), much of this section’s harmony is derived from whole-tone scales: for example, the 32nd-note

55 Ito, 3. Translated by Kimiko Ito. 116 descending motive in the middle of m. 4 and at the end of m.5, as well as the first chord in mm.1, 4 and 6, are all composed of whole-tone pitch sets. In contrast, the B section features a two-part texture with a legato melody over arpeggios; its melody is stated twice, and the section’s climax in mm. 11-12 includes a iv-I progression in B major that is the clearest instance of a conventional harmonic progression in the movement. The Andantino ends with a strong affirmation of the tonic, with B major triads beginning on beat 3 in m. 25. Thus the hybridity of Yamada’s “stylistic counterpoint” is created in the first movement through the juxtaposition of contrasting stylistic elements such as homophonic and polyphonic textures, sections of relative unstable- and stable-sounding harmonies, and chordal and arpeggiated accompaniment. The final movement of Sie und Er (Andante) features stylistic juxtaposition on multiple levels among its five sections (introduction, A, B, C, coda). The melody of the eight-measure atonal introduction is stated twice in four-measure phrases; it includes long, sweeping gestures that cover more than three octaves, and quiet quintuplet motives, the ranges of which span a tritone. Both phrases end in fermatas on an augmented sixth. Section A begins at m. 9; it is marked kraftlos, matt und hinkend (“weak, dull, and limping”) and features a lilting, two-part melody over a C-sharp – G-sharp interval in the bass. The droning C-sharp – G-sharp interval provides this section with a harmonic home base despite the absence of a traditional tonal center. The melodic character of section B (mm.21-24) is reminiscent of the introduction in its use of arpeggios and long 32nd-note runs. However, it sounds much more stable than the movement’s introduction because of the tension-and-release provided by the alternation of D-flat augmented arpeggios with D-flat major arpeggios on the first beat of each measure. This relative harmonic stability contrasts sharply with section C, which begins at m. 25 with a dissonant arpeggiated chord on G-flat, followed by a chromatic 32nd-note run; in performance, the half step movement at the end of the run to the sforzando E in m. 26 is emphasized from below and above almost simultaneously because of the F acciaccatura in the right hand. The 32nd-note run is then restated one octave lower on the last beat of m. 26. Section C (mm. 25-35) is harmonically unstable throughout; a succession of modulating chords begins on the last beat of m. 27 and continues through m. 31. At the pick-up to measure

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32 the piano plays the first movement’s (Andantino) opening run and its subsequent chord, although in No. 7 the run and chord are both spelled enharmonically. The run and chord are stated twice in section C of No. 7. After its second and final statement the chord resolves to an E-flat major chord in m. 35, and E-flat major chords predominate in the coda (mm. 36-40), providing another example of harmonic contrast between the sections of No. 7. The fifth movement, Lento misteriosamente, also features contrasting stylistic elements from section to section, and even contrasts within each section. The fifth movement is through- composed, and its music emphasizes F as its tonic, largely through consistent re-statement of F major and minor chords, rather than through common practice tonal progression. The movement’s short introduction (pickup to m. 1- m. 3) and codetta (pickup to m. 26- m. 29) are based upon the same motivic idea, which begins with an ascending run in F Phrygian that is doubled at the octave. In the introduction, however, the ascending run is answered by a descending run that utilizes a portion of a gapped scale, the melodic intervals of which are different from those used in the ascending run. In performance the descending runs in measures 1 and 3 sound “bluesy,” mainly because of the semitone drop from C to B (the latter of which could be interpreted as a flatted fifth scale degree in the key of F), and the three-semitone drop from G-sharp to F at the end of the run. The differences between the ascending and descending runs’ melodic intervals thus provide a striking contrast in the harmonic implications inherent in the melody of the introduction. The descending runs of the introduction do not appear in the codetta of No. 5. However, the fortissimo dominant-to-tonic progression in mm. 28-29 is a sudden change from the gradual dynamic swells of the ascending Phrygian runs in octaves in mm. 26 and 27. Although this is a sparsely scored progression, in performance the C (doubled in octaves) at the very end of m. 28 sounds like a dominant progressing to the tonic in F minor (suggested by the Fs and A-flat in m. 29). A conspicuous contrast in No. 5 is the change in melodic phrasing, harmony, and texture that occurs at the end of m. 16. Fluctuating dynamics and brief, repeated motives doubled in octaves give way to a longer, homophonic phrase in F major. Although occasional borrowed simultaneities, such as the flat VI chords on the last beats of mm. 18 and 19, provide added touches of harmonic color to the section at m. 16, the emphasis on F major-minor is audible.

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One more interesting aspect of No. 5 is the variety of “Debussyian” effects that Yamada included in this movement. The portion of a descending gapped scale in mm. 1 and 3, and VI chords in mm. 18 and 19, are coloristic effects that are reminiscent of Debussy’s piano music, specifically pieces from his first book of Préludes (1910) such as No. 4, Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir, and No. 10, La cathédrale engloutie. Also reminiscent of Debussy are the added-tone chords found throughout No. 5. The chord on the first beat of m. 5 includes the tones of an F-minor triad with an added major sixth. In mm. 24 and 25, the same chord is repeatedly spelled out melodically. In m. 25, the added sixth to the first beat chord evokes the extended chords of Debussy’s music, with the D in the right hand functioning as a thirteenth (the sixth up an octave). The generation of Japanese composers that followed Yamada often portrayed his music as a continuation of German Romanticism; Yamada’s use of Debussyian and even jazz-inspired coloristic effects is an aspect of his early piano music that was overlooked by his Japanese contemporaries.56 Yamada also borrowed elements from Japanese contemporary music in Sie und Er. Yonanuki onkai are used or implied in multiple movements of the piece. The yonanuki onkai (literally “scales without four and seven”) were products of Western music education in Japan during the late nineteenth century. Alison Tokita writes that “In the modern period, new scales developed in Japanese popular music, when the influence of Western music forced traditional pentatonic scales to change from nuclear tones to pentatonic major and minor.”57 David Pacun explains that the structure of the resulting pentatonic scales developed out of the scholarship of some of the first Western music instructors in Japan, including Rudolf Dittrich (1861-1921), who taught at the Tokyo Music School beginning in 1889. In his 1894 Nippon Gakufu Dittrich refashioned a traditional Japanese miyakobushi onkai, which in Western notation is a Phrygian scale lacking degrees 3 and 7, so that the melody tonic of the miyakobushi became scale degree 5 in the Western minor mode; this facilitated the harmonization of Japanese melodies that utilized

56 This aspect of Yamada’s early works was not, however, overlooked by American critics. In his overview of Yamada’s 1918-19 visit to the U.S., David Pacun quotes a review in the Evening Post after Yamada’s first concert at Carnegie Hall in which the reviewer wrote that “Koscak [sic] Yamada can write French of the Debussy dialect, and thunder Wagner and cry out with the many voices of Strauss” (Pacun, 79). 57 Alison Tokita, “Mode, Scale, Modulation and Tuning in Shamisen Music,” 16. Nuclear tones (kakuon) are pitches separated by a fourth that serve as goals of melodic movement in traditional Japanese music genres; according to most contemporary theorists of traditional Japanese music, there is no single “tonic” in Japanese modes, unlike in Western major and minor modes. This model was devised by ethnomusicologist Koizumi Fumio; he first discussed the concept of nuclear tones in “Musical Scales in Japanese Music,” in Asian Musics in an Asian Perspective (Tokyo: Heibon-ha, 1977), 73-79. 119 the miyakobushi onkai.58 Dittrich thus transformed the miyakobushi into what is now known as a yonanuki minor scale. Pacun demonstrates this transformation by showing a miyakobushi scale that begins on C (the “melody tonic” of the scale in this case), and below it the same miyakobushi scale treated as an f natural minor scale (in which the melody tonic C becomes scale degree 5 in the Western minor mode). Both of these scales are shown in Example 3.1 below. Pacun provides brackets around scale degrees 3 and 7 in the top example and around scale degrees 4 and 7 in the bottom example to indicate the tones that are typically excluded in the application of each of these pentatonic scales. Pacun also provides lines between the first two notes of the top scale and between the fifth and sixth notes of the bottom scale to indicate the initial half-step motion of the miyakobushi and the movement of this half-step to the fifth and sixth scale degrees in a natural minor scale layout.

Example 3.1. C-miyakobushi scale (top) and C-miyakobushi treated as F natural minor scale (bottom).59

During the early twentieth century, yonanuki scales were prevalent in new folk songs, school songs, and popular music (especially enka), all genres in which a flavor of traditional- sounding pentatonicism was desired.60 Yonanuki scales depend upon Western tonal harmony for their structure; in other words, the two modes of yonanuki, major and minor, are directly based on diatonic major and minor scales that lack scale degrees 4 and 7. Both the major and minor mode (in C) are shown in Example 3.2.

58 Pacun, “Nationalism and Musical Style,” 11-12. 59 Ibid., 12. 60 Shigeo Kishibe, et al. "Japan." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 21, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/43335pg1. 120

Example 3.2. Yonanuki scales in C major and C minor.

The melody of the third movement of Yamada’s Sie und Er, Lento piangendo, is largely based upon a yonanuki scale. This movement is in an AA’ form and features a sparsely- supported melody that emphasizes the notes A, B, C, E and F of the yonanuki minor scale in A. Whether the scale and simple texture are meant to evoke the “traditional” images mentioned in the program notes of No. 3—the smoke of incense and a temple bell—is speculation. The incense and the bell could even be Western in their context. This contextual ambiguity is matched by the occasional addition of non-yonanuki tones, such as the sharp fourth and sharp seventh scale degrees at the end of melodic phrases in measures 2 and 4. In performance, however, such tones sound like afterthoughts; while they provide momentary tension, they do not sound like they are a part of the melody proper. Similarly, non-yonanuki tones in the ornaments and 32nd-note runs later in the movement do not detract from the melody’s overall pentatonic sound, instead functioning as embellishments. The mostly-pentatonic melody of the A section interacts with melodic and harmonic tritones to produce intricate musical hybridity. In traditional harmonic thinking the tritone forms a part of both the diminished and the dominant seventh; it is therefore important in the first instance for weakening the tonality of a passage, and in the second for affirming the tonality, particularly at cadences.61 But tritones can also play an important stabilizing role in atonal music, given the lack of a reference for harmonic consonance and dissonance in atonal compositions. In the case of Sie und Er No. 3, the tritones provide relative stability because of how often they are heard in the piece. The character of each of the faster movements of Sie und Er is more stylistically uniform. In No. 2, Allegro vivace, the opening and closing sections are in C minor, with classical four-bar phrasing and fast, driving rhythms in the accompaniment. The modulating B section of No. 2, which features longer, sustained tones, is more asymmetrical and varies in its thematic material across three subsections. No. 4, Allegro marciale, is largely based on tonal harmony; its AA’ form, preceded by a four-bar introduction and followed by a four-bar coda, features two key

61 Arnold Whittall, “Tritone,” The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed April 25, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e6939. 121 centers, A and D flat, as well as regular four-bar phrasing and simple melodies with broken- chord accompaniment. Thus Yamada’s use of multiple harmonic languages and pianistic styles, what Pacun refers to as stylistic counterpoint, manifests itself in Sie und Er in various ways. One way is through the alternation of different textures and harmonies between consecutive movements: for example, the sparsely-supported pentatonic melody of No. 3 is followed by No. 4’s simple tonal melody supported by broken chords, which in turn is followed by No. 5’s melody doubled in octaves and colored with effects reminiscent of Debussy. Another manifestation of stylistic juxtaposition is the alternation of movements that are uniform in their texture and/or harmony with movements that include internal contrasts and juxtaposition of both (such as Nos. 1, 5, and 7), the latter group presenting yet another level of stylistic hybridity.

Die blaue Flamme (Aoi honō, 1916)62

The music of Die blaue Flamme (The Blue Flame) accompanies an original modern dance, the choreography of which was created by Yamada and based upon a scenario written by Yamada. The piano version was premiered on November of 1916 by the composer and dedicated to Baron Iwasaki, Yamada’s early patron. Yamada also orchestrated the piece in 1921, and it was performed under the direction of Osanai Kaoru in 1922.63 In his manuscripts Yamada was very specific in the performance directions for Die blaue Flamme; he included not only directions for the choreography but also sketches of the stage design and props. The program is modern and symbolic, as the two dancers are portrayed on their way to achieving spiritual ecstasy. Yamada himself claimed that “Die blaue Flamme is a symbolic poem expressing the sensual [aspect] of a human being.”64 In December 1918, The Musical Observer published an article on Yamada that included a translated program of Die blaue Flamme:

62 Die blaue Flamme (青い焰) is often called “The Blue Flame” (in English) in Yamada’s various manuscript copies, as well as in the American publication, Oto no nagare (Stream of tone): ten short poems for piano by Ksçak Yamada (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1922). 63 Ito, 22. Yamada’s manuscripts of Die blaue Flamme reveal that he orchestrated this work twice: once in the early 1920s, and again in 1926 (see Yamada, Ms. 1109 and Ms. 1107). These two orchestrations are different in their instrumentation: the version from Ms. 1107 is for a larger orchestra and includes parts for a second flute, English horn, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, two bassoons, four horns, 3 trombones, tuba, and harp, while eliminating the organ part included in the earlier, Ms. 1109 version. 64 Nippon Gakugeki Kyokai, editors, Konomichi: Yamada Ksaku Denki (This Road: A Biography of Yamada Ksaku; Tokyo: Keigado, 1982), 241. Translated by Kimiko Ito. 122

The Blue Flame ... is a symphonic poem for orchestra with a dance version which I hope to have developed by my friend Ito [Michio] ... . In its music there are no Japanese themes, nor is the subject a Japanese subject. I have tried to paint in the fluid and changing colors of tone a mystic picture of man's struggle with the inexorable element of the sensual with which his spiritual nature is fettered from birth. The idea came to me one sleepless night, and my scenic picture shows a hall in a fantastic feudal castle—no, not a Samurai castle of old Japan—but one of not [a specific] time or period, in whose centre stands a short marble pillar, its fluting reddened as with flowing blood, a blue flame hovering above it. At either end of the room are braziers from which the smoke of incense ascends in a straight line—a symbol of Eternity. From the wings two figures, those of a man and woman in light, flowing draperies, enter the hall. The right wrist of the man is wound with a rope—emblematic of the material fetters that bind him—as is the left wrist of the woman. They meet in their symmetrical approach and, with the pillar between them, gaze at each other with unseeing eyes until each seizes the other's trailing end of the rope. The blue flame leaps with quickened brilliancy and fire and, terrified, they sink to the ground in adoration. It may all seem very fanciful to you, but it makes the music more understandable to know the underlying idea: Man is helpless in the grasp of elemental instinct; yet if life begets the urge of the senses, death in turn stills them.65

The original Japanese program of Die blaue Flamme is more effective in its portrayal of the grotesque and erotic nature of the choreographic poem.66 The half-naked dancers are depicted as “haggard,” and with “ultra-thin bodies” and mussed hair. And after their collapse toward the end of the piece, the program indicates that both dancers “vomit blood.” In the end, the trailing ropes wind, snake-like, across both of the dancers’ bodies.67 Die blaue Flamme is more complex than any one movement of Sie und Er. It is marked Grave and is in ABA’ form with transitional passages framing the B section. The two contrasting sections, A and B, are differentiated by their harmonic language; the A sections are dominated by tritones and chromatic passages, while the inner B section is undergirded by major triads. The juxtaposition of harmonic stability and instability is an important marker of Yamada’s stylistic counterpoint in Die blaue Flamme, just as it was in Sie und Er. However, because the harmony throughout Die blaue Flamme is not functional, stability and instability are relative. The B section (mm. 43-49) sounds stable in performance because of the recurring G-flat major triads and the relatively conventional harmonic progression (IV-I) of mm. 47-48.

65 "Kósçak Yamada," The Musical Observer 17, No. 12 (December, 1918): 14. 66 Yamada included a full program of Die blaue Flamme in at least two of its performances in Japan, the first at its premiere in 1916 (piano piece alone) and the second, seven years later, before its first performance in Japan with the choreography. These two programs were reprinted in Yamada Ksaku chosaku zenshū, Vol. 1. 67 Yamada Kosaku, “Buyshi ‘Aoi hon,’” program notes (Marunouchi Hall, 11November 1916); reprinted in Yamada Ksaku chosaku zenshū Vol. 1, 588. 123

The prominent tritone movement from the pickup to m. 1 to the following downbeat and the chromatic flourishes make the outer A sections seem less stable than the B section; the A sections are largely atonal. Changes in dynamics and texture create tension, while disjunct melodies and repeated motives thwart a strong sense of direction in the A sections. The mood indicators in the score may refer to the choreography of Die blaue Flamme as well as to the music; many of the terms aptly describe the mood that Yamada seemed to be aiming for, given what he wrote about the choreography in the multiple programs of the piece. The opening five measures set the musical and emotional scene: the furioso expression in m. 1 implies an emotional state (perhaps that of the dancers onstage), as well as directions for playing the B major chord in m. 1. The misterioso expression in m. 3 suggests the mood onstage as well as directions for how to play the 32nd-note passage, the first of many chromatic ascents. One of the most prominent passages in the piece is a disjunct melody starting on B, the intervals of which include tritones, perfect fifths, and minor seconds. Taken together with the lower voices in the left hand part, this passage contains both melodic and harmonic tritones as well as an ascending chromatic line. The passage is stated twice in succession when it appears in the A and A’ sections of the piece, while the right hand accompanies the melody with octave tremolos. The first statement of this idea is in mm. 10-12. The melody and chromatic ascending line return in the transition before the B section (mm. 30-42) with both melodic and rhythmic embellishments. In this iteration, the melody is played in the right hand, while the chromatic line is moved to the left hand; the tremolos that accompanied this melody in the A section are now absent. Also, the melody is stated four times in the transition, in descending octave iterations. The first two statements include accelerandos, while all four statements feature the “hairpin” dynamic swells of the melody’s initial appearance in the A section. The third statement of the melody includes the expression con desiderio (“with desire/longing”), another instruction that could apply to both music and choreography. As Yamada explained in the English translation of the program, Die blaue Flamme depicts man’s struggle with “the inexorable element of the sensual with which his spiritual nature is fettered from birth.”68 As the dancers express their conflicting desires for the sensual and for freedom from their senses, the repetition of the disjunct melody and its accompanying chromatic line adds tension to the dancers’ emotional conflict; the deferred resolution of this passage draws attention to the life-long nature of that struggle.

68 “Kósçak Yamada,” 14. 124

Yamada indicated that death marks the end of his “mystic picture” of man’s struggle; this is depicted in the choreography when the dancers sink to the ground and are instructed to “vomit blood” at the end. But in the music, this death occurs peacefully. When the disjunct melody returns in the A’ section only ten measures from the end of the piece, it is marked tranquillo (“tranquil”), and it lacks the changes in tempo and relatively quick dynamic swells of its previous iterations. Its last statement is followed by the indication ritenuto un poco (“hold back a little”). Then, like the final movement of Sie und Er, Die blaue Flamme concludes with a major triad, in this case two measures of B major. The fermata at the very end of the piece includes the expression morendo (“dying”), indicating that the music is to fade away slowly, as the dancers pantomime their own death onstage. Sie und Er and Die blaue Flamme exhibit many traits that can be ascribed to modernism, including harmonic ambiguity, stylistic juxtaposition, and the allegorical quality of each work’s content. In the case of Die blaue Flamme, the erotic and grotesque facets of Japanese modernism are also represented. The buyshi genre itself is also characteristic of the modernist creation of new forms and genres: Yamada’s conception of the choreographic poem was the result of his desire to combine two performing arts that reflected the modernity of his era and that paved the way for musical developments of the future. Buyshi were also experiments that resulted from Yamada’s personal connection to modern music and dance. But like many modernists, Yamada had difficulties finding audiences who appreciated his experimental creations. As he noted in his 1922 essay on buyshi (quoted earlier in this chapter), modern dance in Japan was a “recent fashion” and an ephemeral one that would not remain without “eye-popping wonders.” Although this essay announced Yamada’s move away from buyshi, he created a few more works in this genre after 1922, including Frühlingstraum (Spring Dream).

Frühlingstraum (Shunmu, 1934)

By the early 1920s, Yamada had moved from composing choreographic poems for piano to larger orchestral works and, most especially during the 1920s, to songs. As buyshi Frühlingstraum seems out of place in his works from the 1930s, and there is no evidence that Frühlingstraum was ever performed during Yamada’s lifetime.69 But Yamada’s writing for piano in this piece reflects a more polished and mature style than is present in his earlier choreographic

69 Got Nobuko, Yamada Ksaku sakuhin zenshū vol. 4, appendix page 21. 125 poems, while still retaining the rich expression and harmonic ambiguity of pieces such as Sie und Er and Die blaue Flamme. Although no lengthy program accompanies this piece to elucidate the choreography, instructions for the dancer were included in the manuscript piano score (Ms. 443) of Frühlingstraum. According to the manuscript, the setting is a spring field, where the dancer – a young man – is in a state of longing. He is searching for something or someone. Yet for most of the work, the young man is sulking and in a state of dejection. The notes call for a cherry tree and scattered petals on the stage. The cherry tree would seem to indicate that Yamada envisioned a Japanese setting for this choreographic poem; so, too, would the notes’ mention of a kosode, a basic type of Japanese robe.70 The tree and kosode indicate a difference in Yamada’s vision for this poem from his earlier works in this genre, such as Sie und Er and Die blaue Flamme, in which he avoided visual references to traditional Japanese culture.71 The music, however, provides no overt markers of traditional, or traditional-sounding Japanese elements, save for the often sparse texture of the piece. Frühlingstraum is also tonally ambiguous from beginning to end, without even the suggestion of Western harmonic stability that Yamada included in some of his earlier choreographic poems, such as Sie und Er. The form of Frühlingstraum is intricate: although the opening eight measures return almost halfway through the piece, so much new material is introduced after the restatement of the opening section that to outline the form as merely ABA’ would be a gross simplification. Instead, the first half of the piece can be divided into four sections: the monophonic first four measures in changing meter; mm. 5-12, which are in 3/4 meter and feature thick simultaneities on the downbeat of almost every measure and a disjunct melodic line in the right hand; mm. 13- 25 in 2/4, in which the first four measures serve as an introduction to the repeated portion at mm. 17-25; and finally, after one measure of rest, a five-measure repeated section (mm. 27-31) featuring a mostly conjunct melody in the right hand and an ostinato in perfect fifths in the left hand. The second half of Frühlingstraum includes a restatement of the work’s opening eight measures followed by two sections of new material and a coda.

70 The choreography notes from the manuscript copy of Frühlingstraum (Ms. 443) have been transcribed; they are included in Yamada Ksaku sakuhin zenshū volume 4, appendix page 21. 71 Despite his flat denial of any use of a Japanese setting, or of Japanese themes, in his notes for Die blaue Flamme (from the December 1918 Musical Observer article mentioned above), Yamada was not against the use of Japanese references within his early piano pieces. The suite Légende de “Genji” is based on the Japanese literary work Genji Monogatari, written in the eighth century by Murasaki Shikibu. Each movement of the suite is associated with a specific character or scene from the story. 126

Frühlingstraum is a post-tonal work in which simultaneities serve to support the melody and provide color, rather than fill out functional harmonies. Although Yamada used harmony as color and effect in some of his earliest choreographic poems, in Frühlingstraum these techniques are more ingrained in the structure of the work as a whole. Some sections in Frühlingstraum, such as the opening four measures, are thoroughly monophonic, while others, such as mm. 49-52, include melodies doubled at the octave, which thickens the sound beyond a single pitch. In the fourth section of Frühlingstraum (mm. 27-31) which is marked Langsam (“slowly”), the perfect fifths in the bass ostinato function seemingly independently of the treble melody. The beginning of the fourth section is preceded by a long fermata during which, according to the manuscript, the dancer runs toward a voice calling to him from afar. Once the ostinato begins the dancer is instructed to throw petals and dance upon them. The ostinato, combined with the melody’s aimlessness, make this melody sound incomplete. Parallel movement is more prominent in Frühlingstraum than it is in either Sie und Er or Die blaue Flamme. Besides the many phrases that include octave doublings and besides the ostinato in perfect fifths in the fourth section, the right hand part also occasionally features motives comprised of two or more voices that move in parallel motion. In the final section of the piece prior to the coda the right hand plays an ascending series of augmented chords while the left hand plays an independent and largely-descending chromatic line beneath it. This is a noteworthy moment in the context of the entire section (mm. 53-63): while the melody and harmony of the first four and last four measures of this section are derived from a whole-tone pitch collection, the chromatic motion in the middle three measures as well as the piano figuration (mm. 57-59) provides significant contrast. The generous presence of melodic or harmonic tritones throughout this passage provides a modicum of unity to the entire section. Much of the music in Frühlingstraum is playful, dreamy, and evokes a sense of timelessness; it features such devices as the aforementioned ostinato in mm. 27-31, melodies and harmonies derived from whole-tone pitch collections (such as those in mm. 53-56 and mm. 60- 62), and capricious ornaments. Another noteworthy feature of this piece is the expansion and contraction of the musical materials which, in a non-tonal work such as this, provide a sense of momentum traditionally provided by harmony. Expansion and contraction first appear in the opening four measures of the piece in the additive line that builds from E alone, to E-G, and finally to E-G-A. As the melody expands to include more notes, the meter expands with it,

127 changing from 3/4, to 4/4, and then to 6/4. The dynamic swell in m. 3 adds to the expanding feeling of the passage, as does the poco rallentando in m. 4. The piece closes with expansion as well, but of a different kind. In the final four measures of the coda, the harmonic range expands from a minor ninth in m. 69, to a perfect twelfth in m. 70, and finally to an interval of five octaves in mm. 71 and 72. Also notable in this passage is that the perfect twelfth in m. 70 includes a perfect fourth over a perfect fifth, which recalls the simultaneous sounding of these intervals at the end of section 4 (mm. 27-31). The “hollow” sound of the perfect intervals in mm. 70-72 adds to the ambiguous nature of the ending. As Yamada’s last choreographic poem, Frühlingstraum shares many characteristics with his early works in the genre, including general harmonic ambiguity, motives based on the whole- tone scale, and plentiful appearances of tritones, that most ambiguous of Western intervals. Yet the earlier pattern of employing harmonically unstable outer sections to frame a more stable inner section is absent in Frühlingstraum; not one of the later work’s inner sections has a strong tonal center, direction, or resolution. And unlike Sie und Er and Die Blaue Flamme, Frühlingstraum does not end with a stable triadic harmony, opting instead for a more ambiguous open fifth on C sharp. Yamada’s balance of what Pacun calls “stylistic counterpoint” in the choreographic poems is better developed in Frühlingstraum, which features a more subtle interplay between harmonic stability and instability, and between motivic symmetry and asymmetry. If the original manuscript notes are any indication, Yamada’s prior aversion to a Japanese setting (such as that mentioned in the notes to Die blaue Flamme) is gone in Frühlingstraum. Japanese scales—heard in movements of Sie und Er, as well as in other choreographic poems from the 1910s—are also absent. The hybridity that Yamada achieved in the music of Frühlingstraum is thus more subtle than that of his earlier poems, yet also more prevalent in the work as a whole through the inclusion of a Japanese setting and through the ambiguity that colors the music from beginning to end.

Conclusion

Yamada’s choreographic poems possess a significant place in his oeuvre and are specifically important as instances of his modernism; however, they are only a fraction of his entire output. His pre-World War II compositions for orchestra and for choir, his operas, piano pieces and hundreds of songs, as well as his chamber works—all these groups deserve more

128 study in light of Yamada’s use of modernist musical elements, which include harmonic ambiguity and stylistic juxtaposition.72 Yamada presents an exemplary case as one of Japan’s earliest musical modernists. Judith Ann Herd has written that Yamada's experiments with form and harmony during an era when others religiously adhered to tradition (“East or West,” she adds), encouraged others to progress beyond the accepted boundaries of Western classical music as it was taught in Japan.73 As an international presence, he sought to build bridges of artistic diplomacy between Japan and the countries he visited. He was at the forefront in synthesizing Western and Japanese styles. His creation of new genres, his intermedial collaborations, and his own words about modernism and the testimony of his critics show that Yamada was a modanisuto, composing in and for the kindai era, who acknowledged the “modernism” that he mentioned in his autobiography and journal articles as one aspect of many in the creation of progressive international art music.74

72 Works that I believe are ripe for attention as examples of interwar Japanese musical modernism include Yamada’s symphonic poems The Dark Gate and Mandara no Hana; his opera Ayamé; many of his songs from the 1920s, including Posutomani and the songs to texts by female contemporary authors Fukao Sumako and Yosano Akiko; and his Nagauta Symphony Tsurukame, for orchestra, voices, and Japanese instrumental ensemble, which employs a Western symphony orchestra as counterpoint to classical nagauta (music that accompanies kabuki performances). 73 Judith Ann Herd, "Western-influenced 'Classical' Music in Japan,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, 367. 74 This is not to imply that Western modernism is by any means a unified, monolithic concept; I use the term “modernism” here in English and in quotations to refer to a term that Yamada occasionally used in his writings (in other words, he sometimes used the term “modernism” in English in his otherwise-Japanese writings). 129

CHAPTER FOUR

SUGAHARA MEIR AND JAPANESE NEOCLASSICISM

Sano Kji has written that Yamada Ksaku had no direct successor during the interwar era.1 Yamada pioneered Japanese musical modernism during the 1910s, and his studies and travels abroad provided him a well-rounded view of international music trends. But the next generation of Japanese composers included a number of individuals who pursued different avenues of modernist expression. In Modanizumu henskyoku: Higashi Ajia no kin-gendai ongakushi (Modernism Variations: History of East Asian Modern and Contemporary Music), Ishida Kazushi discusses a number of internationally-minded composers active during the interwar era who emerged in the late 1920s and 1930s as leaders in the formation of new perspectives on music and art.2 One of the most prolific of this generation was Sugahara Meir (1897-1988), who composed more than 350 pieces, including operas, symphonies, Catholic Masses, songs, band music, film music, assorted chamber works, and many pieces for mandolin ensemble. He was an even more prolific author, with almost 600 works, including books on instrumentation and on individual composers, such as Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Domenico Scarlatti, and hundreds of journal articles on topics as diverse as literature, painting, music theory, music criticism, music education, Buddhist and Catholic art, and film. Unlike Yamada, Sugahara was largely self-taught; he also moved in creative circles outside of the Tokyo School of Music, which dominated Japanese art music trends until World War II. Sugahara did not even make his first trip to Europe until the 1960s; his oeuvre and biography thus give us a dramatically different picture of Japanese modernism than Yamada’s. Sugahara also went against the grain by championing French and Italian styles in the midst of a German-dominated Japanese music world. Katayama Morihide calls him a “French sympathizer” and a pioneer of integrating French impressionist and neoclassical styles. Characteristics of this “Japanese neoclassical” style were championed after World War II by such innovative composers as Takemitsu Tru (1930-

1 Sano Kji, Introduction to Nihon sengo ongaku-shi (Japanese Music History after World War II; Heibonsha, 2007), 15. I have relied upon my own translations of all of the Japanese sources cited in this chapter, unless otherwise noted. 2 Ishida Kazushi, Modanizumu henskyoku: Higashi Ajia no kin-gendai ongakushi (Tokyo: Sakuhokusha, 2005), 84. Ishida also emphasizes the great impact of these composers as pedagogues; the list of Sugahara’s students that Ishida provides includes many successful composers of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. 130

96).3 As a musician who studied, lived, and worked solely in Japan during the interwar era, Sugahara’s neoclassical compositions of that period provide a creative mixture of European and Japanese elements. In this chapter, I shall discuss neoclassicism as a facet of Japanese musical modernism in the context of Sugahara’s life and works.

Japanese Neoclassicism as Modernism

In his 1939 essay “Shinkotenshugi no Hko” (The Course of Neo-Classicism), the Japanese modernist tanka poet Maekawa Samio (1903-90) explained how his version of shinkotenshugi, “neo-classicism,” was not equivalent to the Western neoclassical movement. He wrote that it was also not directly related to the new realism of Japanese leftist artists, nor to what he called the “old-fashioned romantic poets who had dominated the world of tanka.”4 He references the postscript to his acclaimed poetry volume Shokubutsusai (Botanical revels, 1930), a manifesto on modern tanka, and cites his indebtedness to Western modernist movements to broaden the scope of his poetry. The postscript to Shokubutsusai, Maekawa observed in “Shinkotenshugi no Hko,” was written under the influence of the “esprit moderne”: “For example,” he states, “I passed through Cubism, Dada and Surrealism. I believe that unless you make your way through these [movements] then you cannot be a modern tanka poet in the true sense of the word.”5 This was an expansion of his earlier statements in the postscript to Shokubutsusai regarding how Japanese artists could not become Western, yet they had to attempt Westernization in order to expand Japanese art forms: “if we reject from the beginning the attempt to be Western … our tanka will end up narrow in scope. In the same vein, to start with classical style tanka is a little dangerous.” Yet the study of both Western modern styles and Japanese classical styles contributed to Maekawa’s method of “correctly” creating revolutionary

3Katayama Morihide, liner notes for Bridges to Japan (CD; BIS, 2000), 6. Katayama is a music critic and historian who teaches at Kei University. 4 Tanka (literally “short poem”) is a Japanese poetic form consisting of five lines, the first and third of which have five syllables and the others seven, making 31 syllables in all that create a complete picture of an event or mood. A tanka revival in Japan began towards the end of the nineteenth century, as part of an effort to modernize the classical short-form waka genre; this revival was led by poet Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902). Although tanka had originally been a sub-genre of waka, the two labels became synonymous by the end of the twelfth century, with waka becoming the dominant term for this type of short poem up to the revival of the term “tanka” in modern Japanese poetry during the first decade of the twentieth century. 5 Leith Morton, “Modernism in Prewar Japanese Poetry,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Brill, 2011), 237. Translation by Leith Morton. 131 new art forms.6 His was a hybridity that aptly demonstrated the ambiguity of Japanese modernism. Maekawa’s neoclassical style was thus an extreme expansion of Japanese classical forms that somehow “passed through” Western modernism, resulting in what Roy Starrs calls “traditionalist modernism.” Starrs defines traditionalist modernism as a hybrid type of Japanese modernism, as opposed to what might be called the “pure” Western-style high modernism of Japanese cubists, “Mavoists,” Dadaists, and surrealists. In traditionalist modernism, artists broke significant creative taboos that had been in place since the early Meiji era, overcoming the resistance that had existed up to the mid-1920s to mixing traditional (Japanese) with modern (Western) forms.7 Starrs calls attention to such modernist works in many different media, including Kawabata Yasunari’s haiku novels, the modern n plays of Mishima Yukio, zenei shod or avant-garde calligraphy, and Miyagi Michio’s modernist koto music. Miyagi (1894- 1956), a proponent of the New Japanese Music movement during the interwar era, worked closely with composers and musicians from both traditional and ygaku backgrounds to adapt elements of Western music for Japanese instruments.8 Among the composers with whom he worked was Sugahara Meir. A composer who does not fit completely either into Western-style high modernism or into Roy Starrs’s “traditionalist modernism,” Sugahara’s neoclassicism constitutes its own subset of Japanese modernist music. Similar to Maekawa Samio, Sugahara expanded the boundaries of his creative field through the creation of musical hybridity resulting from his early experiences with Western modern music (especially that of French composers), as well as his independent study of Japanese traditional music and his collaborations with hgaku musicians. In view of his affinity for the impressionist and neoclassical works of French composers, the term “neoclassical” as a descriptor of his style gains another dimension, especially given the shared characteristics of classical Japanese and early-twentieth-century French styles. Sugahara was fully aware of such commonalities, as were other composers (such as Miyagi Michio) who looked to French music to take hgaku in new directions.9 In this chapter I will provide an overview of Sugahara’s biography up to the beginning of World War II that

6 Morton, 233. Translation by Leith Morton. 7 Roy Starrs, “Japanese Modernism Reconsidered,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 31. 8 Luciana Galliano, Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, Transl. Martin Mayes (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 53. 9Katayama Morihide, “Gi-sha to modanisuto to aruchizan ― Sugahara Meir to It Noboru to Fukai Shir” (Anchoret, modernist and artisan: Sugahara Meir, It Noboru and Fukai Shir), essay accompanying liner notes for Sugahara Meir to sono shūhen (Sugahara Meir and his surroundings, CD. Alquimista 0007, 2004), 4. 132 highlights his experiences with, and championing of, contemporary French and traditional Japanese music. After this I will present descriptions of two of Sugahara’s works from the interwar era that illustrate Japanese neoclassicism.

Overview of the Life and Works of Sugahara Meir

Sugahara Meir was born in Akashi on 21 March 1897, eighteen years after Taki Rentar and eleven years after Yamada Ksaku.10 Both Taki and Yamada were trained in the German music-dominated academism of the Tokyo Music School, before each of them left to study abroad, Taki in Leipzig and Yamada in Berlin. Unlike Taki and Yamada, Sugahara learned composition, arrangement, and instrumentation almost entirely on his own.11 Also unlike these two composers, Sugahara was more inclined toward French music than German, an affinity instilled early on through a variety of educational experiences and relationships. The earliest of these experiences was the result of his transferring to a junior high school near Kyoto, which, unusually for a junior high school at this time, had a brass band. Sugahara joined the band, in which he played cornet, horn, and other instruments. The band’s leader, Kobatake Kenpachir of the Army’s Fourth Division military band in saka, taught Meir solfege, instrumental methods, and harmony. Kobatake was himself a student of the French military band instructor C. Leroux, who had come to Japan to teach at the Osaka Army military college in 1883. The next few years would prove to be life-changing for Sugahara. In 1913 he dropped out of junior high school and moved to Tokyo to enroll in the Kawabata painting school, where he studied Western painting with Fujishima Takeji, who had just returned from France the previous year. Why he chose to study painting is not mentioned anywhere, yet by this time it was clear that Sugahara desired to know more about French art.12 Also in 1913, composer and military bandsman numa Satoru (1889-1944) opened his private tutoring school in Tokyo; Nomura Kichi (1895-1988), one of numa’s first students and a friend of Sugahara’s from junior high

10 As I discussed in Chapter Two, Taki Rentar (1879-1903) is now regarded as the first significant Japanese composer of ygaku. 11 Matsushita Hitoshi, Introduction, in Maesutoro no shz: Sugahara Meir hyronshū (Tachikawa: Kunitachi ongaku daigaku fuzoku toshokan, 1998), i. 12 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1)” (Sugahara and that era I), in Maesutoro no shz, 6. 133 school, invited Sugahara to join.13 Sugahara studied at numa’s school for two and a half years, during which time he became close to a number of up-and-coming musicians, including Horiuchi Keiz (1897-1983), Futami Khei, and Iwai Sadamaro.14 Some of these same young men joined the coterie surrounding taguro Mot (1893-1979), a well-known author and translator famous for pioneering serious music criticism in Japan.15 taguro was also a pianist of considerable achievement; after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 forced taguro to return home from studying at the University of London, he held impromptu concerts at his upscale salon in ta-ku, Tokyo, where he would perform pieces by Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, and Scriabin, and other works of modern France and Russia.16 Later in 1914, Sugahara’s friend Nomura Kichi invited him to visit taguro, after which Sugahara became a member of taguro’s circle of young musicians. It was at taguro’s salon the next year that Sugahara presented his very first composition, Piano ongaku no yū (Evening piano music). Sugahara remained in Tokyo until 1919. While there, he studied counterpoint briefly with Setoguchi Tkichi (1868–1941).17 He also joined the Sinfonia Mandolini Orchestra, a mandolin orchestra headed by Takei Morishige that is now synonymous with the development and popularization of plectrum instrument ensembles in Japan under its later name, Orchestra Sinfonica Takei (commonly referred to as the OST). Sugahara’s relationship with the OST was a close one, and mutually beneficial: he not only performed with the group, but he also composed and arranged works for mandolin orchestra, many of which he led as conductor during the 1920s and early 1930s. Sugahara’s work with the OST and other mandolin ensembles, as well as his

13 Nomura went on to become an accomplished music critic, writing for the Mainichi Shimbun beginning in the 1940s (the Mainichi Shimbun is Japan’s oldest newspaper still in print; today, it is one of Japan's three largest newspapers in terms of circulation and number of employees). 14 Horiuchi Keiz was also acquainted with Yamada Ksaku, and met up with the older composer during his visit to New York in 1918; Horiuchi lived in the U.S. from 1917 to 1923, during which time he studied mechanical engineering and music at the University of Michigan and subsequently earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I have not been able to locate dates for either Futami Khei or Iwai Sadamaro, but each of them published multiple books during the interwar era, and Sadamaro taught piano lessons during the 1930s. 15taguro published dozens of original books and translations of Western texts between 1915 and 1970, including Bahha yori Shenberuhi (From Bach to Schoenberg; Tokyo: Yamano gakkiten, 1915) and Kageki daijiten (Opera encyclopedia; Tokyo: Ongaku no tomosha, 1962). 16 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1),” in Maesutoro no shz, 7. 17 Setoguchi Tkichi was an accomplished conductor and clarinetist, as well as a composer. In 1907 he led a successful concert tour through 16 European countries, after which he held teaching posts at various universities and conservatories in Japan. Known as “the Japanese Sousa,” Setoguchi wrote many marches (including the 1897 “Warship March,” the official march of the Japanese Navy) and led a major reform of Japanese military music during the interwar era. 134 general interest in instrumentation and arrangement, stimulated his numerous writings on plectrum instruments and his composing for mandolin ensembles. These articles were published in Mandorin to gitaa (Mandolin and Guitar), Mandorin Gitaa kenkyū (Mandolin Guitar Research), and Gekkan gakufu (Monthly Music) during the interwar era. Sugahara’s presence within the taguro circle provided him his first opportunity to write for an arts journal. In 1916, taguro used his own extensive monetary resources to launch Ongaku to bungaku (Music and Literature). Although the journal only lasted until 1919, Ongaku to bungaku was a fascinating amalgamation of long and short articles, translations, un-translated European and American quotations, poetry, and musical scores; it showed, more than anything, taguro’s personal artistic preferences at the time, as well as the freewheeling atmosphere of his willful young coterie, not one member of whom had formally attended a music school.18 It was an innovative and integrated magazine that introduced trends in literary theory and new music from Europe. Source material for this magazine most likely came from the British, American, and French music magazines to which taguro subscribed. The contents included articles about Arnold Schoenberg, Sergei Prokofiev, Wassily Kandinsky, Francis Grierson, Percy Grainger, Erik Satie, Leo Ornstein and Jascha Heifetz, Scriabin, and Debussy; the journal also advertised sheet music from such composers as MacDowell, Sibelius, Fauré, Debussy, and Ornstein, as well as Maurice S. Logan’s Musicology: a Text-book for Schools and for General Use (1909) and Lawrence Gilman’s Aspects of Modern Opera (1909) and Phases of Modern Music (1904). Ongaku to bungaku usually incorporated a quotation from a Western artist or musician somewhere within its front matter: one of the most striking of these is the epigraph from the front of the February 1918 issue, by Ferruccio Busoni: “Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny. It will become the most complete of all reflexes of Nature by reason of its untrammeled immateriality.”19 Given the multiple articles he included in Ongaku to bungaku that dealt with “tomorrow’s music,” it should come as no surprise that taguro included a statement from a prominent futurist.20 Although Sugahara contributed only minimally to this journal, Matsushita Hitoshi has written that, despite his youth and lack of academic training, even his concert

18 Nomura Kichi later called Ongaku to bungaku “The movement that fused internationalism and the French music mania that had emerged fiercely in our music world after World War I.” Quoted by Matsushita Hitoshi in “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1)” (Sugahara and that era I), in Maesutoro no shz, 8. 19 This quote was actually printed in English. It most likely came from the 1911 translation by Theodore Baker of Busoni’s A New Esthetic of Music that was published in New York by G. Schirmer. 20 For example, one of the very first articles in the very first issue of Ongaku to Bungaku (May, 1916), penned by taguro himself, is titled “Tomorrow’s Music.” 135 reviews from the first three issues display an acute sensitivity. And the music and writings of French composers and artists introduced by taguro and others—most especially writings pertaining to Debussy—had a significant impact on Sugahara’s early works.21 In January 1919, Sugahara made an extreme move in an effort to become a well-rounded scholar and artist. Spurred on by the advice of his friend and fellow taguro-group member Horiuchi Keiz, he left both the Ongaku to bungaku coterie and the Sinfonia Mandolini Orchestra to move to Japan’s ancient capital city, Nara, almost 300 miles southwest of Tokyo. Sugahara stayed in Nara for seven years, where he studied, thoroughly and intensely, the basic techniques of music, including instrument construction, elements of style such as timbre and dynamics, and performance methods. In addition to this independent study, he read Vincent d’Indy’s Cours de composition musicale (1903–05), and he translated Nicolai Rimsky- Korsakov’s Practical Manual of Harmony (1886).22 About Sugahara’s time in Nara, Katayama Morihide has written, Rather than measure success in life by studying abroad, [Sugahara] brought many volumes of sheet music and other writings with him in his youth to the ancient capital of Nara, where he stayed secluded for seven years. In such a manner of study, he aimed to become a comprehensive person of culture who knew about more than just music. 23

Sugahara did not, in fact, stay secluded while he lived in Nara. For one thing, the area in which he lived in Nara, Takabatake, was at the time a haven for writers and painters; notable modern artists, including Somiya Ichinen, Yamashita Shigetar, Adachi Gen'ichir, Mushanokji Saneatsu, Shiga Naoya, and Takii Ksaku made their home in Takabatake, prompting Matsushita Hitoshi to call it a “a quaint village of Taish culture.”24 Emphasizing Sugahara’s insatiable intellectual curiosity at this time, Matsushita writes that he enjoyed companionship with many artists during his years in Nara, including photographer Ogawa Seiy, and the painter, potter, and future abbot of Tdai-ji temple, Shimizu Ksh. 25 It is no wonder that Sugahara’s budding interest in Buddhist art was also able to flourish in Nara; his many visits to sites such as Tdai-ji and Yakushi-ji, two of Japan’s most famous ancient Buddhist temples, inspired no small number

21 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1),” in Maesutoro no shz, 8-9. 22 It is unclear from secondary sources whether Sugahara read Vincent d’Indy’s Cours de composition musicale in a Japanese translation or in the original French; it would, however, be safe to assume the latter, given Sugahara’s reputed familiarity with the French language. It is also unclear which edition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Manual Sugahara translated; the safest guess would be the 1912 edition, published by Joseph Vitol. 23 Katayama Morihide, “Gisha to modanisuto to aruchizan,” 3-4. 24 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1),” 9. 25 Ibid., 9-10. 136 of essays and musical compositions. For example his orchestral suite Saiten monogatari (Celebration Story, 1925-28) was written as an impression of a Buddhist celebration in Nara and used melodies of Buddhist music from the Kamakura period; the fourth movement in particular is stylistically reminiscent of music for the Omizutori, the sacred water-drawing festival at Tdai-ji’s Nigatsu-d (Hall of the Second Month). And “Suien,” the finale from one of Sugahara’s most famous piano pieces, Hakuh no uta (Song of the Hakuh Era, 1932), is a musical impression of Yakushi-ji’s East Pagoda. He discussed temple architecture at length in his 1924 article Hkiji sanjūnot to yakushiji tt to no hikaku (Comparison between the Yakushi-ji East Pagoda and the three-story pagoda at Hki-ji).26 Sugahara also began to conduct during his time in Nara. In 1922 he assumed leadership of the mandolin club at Dshisha University, and he participated in and led the club to a first- place finish in the “First All Japan Mandolin Ensemble Concorso” in January 1923, a competition sponsored by the Orchestra Sinfonica Takei (OST). Takei Morishige sensed Sugahara’s talent and subsequently invited him to Tokyo for every OST concert. Takei urged him to study plectrum instruments and their repertoire by providing him copies of the magazine Mandolin and Guitar and access to the convenience of using his vast personal library; he also commissioned arrangements and original works for the OST from Sugahara, and even made him conductor in 1926. Takei, probably more than any one person in Sugahara’s life, paved the way for him to become a professional musician.27 By the early 1930s Sugahara Meir was well-established in the Tokyo art music world. Not only was Sugahara composing for and conducting the OST, he was also publishing a variety of essays and articles about orchestration and music arrangement, style, and theory, including in-

26 Akiyama Kuniharu, “Sugahara Meiro: Kokde kibishī m hitotsu no Nihon sakkyoku-kai—seishin-shi (ue)” (Sugahara Meir: One more rigorous maverick of the Japanese composing industry – intellectual history, Part I), Ongaku Geijutsu (June, 1988): 105. Yakushi-ji’s East Pagoda has enjoyed much appreciation for its beautiful Hakuh-era (late seventh-early eighth centuries) architecture since well before Ernest Fenollosa (1846-1908), American historian of Japanese art who taught at Tokyo Imperial University, famously described it as “frozen music.” The three-story pagoda, which features a rhythmical progression of smaller double roofs that punctuate the pagoda’s upward flow, is the only original structure remaining to Yakushi-ji. But while Sugahara’s Hakuh no uta piano suite nominally represents his impressions of the Hakuh era and Buddhist art from that time, it is interesting to note that the term “Hakuh” to designate a period in Japanese art history was not conventionalized until the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition. 27 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1),” in Maesutoro no shz, 10. 137 depth technical analyses of works by J.C. Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart.28 His journalistic contributions were numerous and constant: from 1930 to 1934 alone he published on average more than five articles, essays, or record reviews a month, while still finding time to pen 34 musical compositions. In a 1930 article titled “Watashi no sakuhin to watashi no nichij seikatsu” (My Works and Daily Life), Sugahara describes his daily routine with his family, friends, and colleagues. Though he claims to have composed very slowly he does admit that he copied his own notation and orchestrated pieces very quickly.29 Sugahara also published three books in quick succession, the fruits of his scholarly labors in Nara: his translation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Practical Manual of Harmony was published in 1931, followed by Gakki zusetsu (Musical Instruments Illustrated) and Kangengaku (Orchestration, two volumes) in 1933. In its first edition, Gakki zusetsu was co-authored by New Symphony director Konoe Hidemaro (1898- 1973), but in 1950 the title was changed to Gakki zukan (Musical Instrument Illustrated Book) for a new edition, with Sugahara as sole author. This text became one of Sugahara’s greatest achievements in instrument research and performance methods; with endorsements from Horiuchi Keiz, who had become president of the Ongaku no Tomosha Publishing Corporation, and composer Moroi Sabur, inspector for the Ministry of Education (both of whom had been Sugahara’s friends since Ongaku to bungaku), it was purchased and read widely as an authority on Western instrumentation and performance methods.30 What is special about this book is its combination of Western and Japanese musical instruction; Sugahara was not merely copying a Western textbook but instead was providing Japanese musicians and composers a manual on Western instruments and how to play them, written from a Japanese perspective. The 1950 edition is extensive, with more than 100 pages of illustrations and photos showing construction details and ways of holding and playing over fifty different families of instruments, including pictures of mouthpieces, bows, ligatures, reeds, mallets, and instrument stands. Many of the

28 In-depth technical analysis of Western music by Japanese composers was a rarity in Japan during the Taish and early Shwa eras; Sugahara’s analyses set him apart from the ideological critiques written by earlier generations of Japanese musicians. Matsushita, Maesutoro no shz, i. 29 Sugahara Meir, “Watashi no sakuhin to watashi no nichij seikatsu” (My Works and Daily Life; Ongaku Sekai, June 1930); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 65-67. 30 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (2)” (Sugahara and that Era 2), in Maesutoro no shz, 171. Matsushita implies that Sugahara’s Gakki zusetsu and Gakki zukan were authoritative for quite some time, even after other books, such as Kurosawa Takatomo's Zusetsu sekai gakki daijiten (Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments; Tokyo: Yūzankaku Shuppan, 1977), were published. Kurosawa was well-versed in Asian instruments as an Eastern music scholar. According to Matsushita, however, Sugahara’s experience with Western instruments, and his specific knowledge concerning instrumentation that he learned during his Nara period, gave him an advantage. 138 illustrations show multiple brands for the same instrument. It was a ground-breaking text for its time and place. Sugahara branched out in the 1930s, becoming more involved in teaching and collaborative efforts. In 1930 he became a founding member of the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei (Emerging Composers Federation) along with Mitsukuri Shūkichi (1895-1971), Kiyose Yasuji (1900-81), Matsudaira Yoritsune (1907-2001), among others. Also in 1930, Sugahara became the chair of the Imperial School of Music’s composition department, the first of its kind in Japan.31 In addition to conducting the OST, he also conducted performances by the New Symphony Orchestra, which was also the first of its kind in Japan.32 Although his time in the Emerging Composers Association and as a professor at the Imperial School of Music was short—he left the Association in 1931 and the School in 1933—his career as a conductor only strengthened as the 1930s progressed. Sugahara conducted one or more ensembles every year until the early 1940s, including the New Symphony (under various monikers), the Osaka Symphonic Band, the Osaka Radio Orchestra, and the Shochiku Symphony Orchestra. Many of the performances he conducted featured his own compositions, European works not yet introduced in Japan, or works by contemporary Japanese composers.33 He led the New Symphony in a concert of contemporary Japanese music on November 3, 1930; the program

31 Although the Tokyo Music School in Ueno produced most of Japan’s best-known early-twentieth-century composers, it did not have a composition department until 1931. 32 The Shink kygakudan (New Symphony Orchestra) was a byproduct of Yamada Ksaku’s efforts in 1925 to found an orchestra association in Japan (Nihon kkygaku kykai, the Japan Symphonic Association). The New Symphony Orchestra was officially founded in 1926 after the central members of the Association left to follow one of Yamada’s former pupils, Konoe Hidemaro (1898-1973). The New Symphony changed names a few times in the course of the 1930s and 1940s; Sugahara conducted concerts of both the “New Symphony Orchestra” and the “Japan Radio Symphony Orchestra,” which were actually different names for the same organization. After receiving financial support from NHK, the orchestra adopted its current title, the NHK Symphony Orchestra. 33 Japanese composers benefitted in many ways from an incident in the early 1930s involving international copyright law, known as the “Whirlwind Plage.” It was named for German Wilhelm Plage, a representative of European royalty collecting societies who aggressively sought remuneration for live performances and broadcasted recordings of European music in Japan. Plage was able to prohibit the broadcast of European musical works and, initially, collect large remunerations for live performances; however, his serious and repeated breaches of Japanese business etiquette almost single-handedly caused the transformation of Japanese copyright law for the next seventy years. About the “Whirlwind Plage,” Matsushita Hitoshi writes, “At the same time that these things prompted the international standards of Japanese music copyright management, and ruined foreign music deals concerning concerts and broadcasts for the foreseeable future, they also encouraged the hiring of proactive Japanese musicians and the performance of works by Japanese [composers]. There were also an increasing number of opportunities for [Sugahara] Meir in the 1930s to have his own works performed in broadcasts of his own music and in opportunities for him to appear as a conductor.” Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (2)” in Maesutoro no shz, 169. For more information on the Whirlwind Plage incident, see Peter Ganea, Christopher Heath, and Saik Hiroshi, editors, Japanese Copyright Law: Writings in Honour of Gerhard Schricker (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2005), 7-8. 139 featured his own works Nainen kikan (Internal Combustion Engine, 1929) and Serenade (1928), as well as pieces by Yamada Ksaku and by one of Sugahara’s own students, It Noboru.34 In 1933 Sugahara conducted the NHK radio broadcast premieres of Poulenc’s Aubade (1930), Milhaud's Catalogue de fleurs (1922), Florent Schmitt’s Chant élégiaque (1903), and numa Akira’s Small Suite (date unknown); the next year, he conducted the NHK television premiere of Stravinsky’s Suite No. 2 for chamber orchestra (1921) and Satie’s Trois petites pièces montées (1919). One piece in particular that he championed was Arthur Honegger’s Le Roi David (1921), which he conducted on multiple occasions, including the NHK broadcast premiere in 1937. What is most interesting about these concert programs is the number of works by French composers, although the inclusion of works by Japanese composers reflects Sugahara’s support of modern Japanese art music. Collaboration with members of the New Japanese Music movement also reflected Sugahara’s support of modern Japanese music, albeit in a different way. As I discussed in Chapter Two, the Shin Nihon Ongaku (New Japanese Music) movement centered on hgaku musicians, including Miyagi Michio and Yoshida Seifū.35 While the New Japanese Music movement has been historically characterized as a group of trained hgaku musicians creating new music for traditional instruments—often incorporating Western musical elements—a lesser- known aspect of this group’s work was the creation or arrangement of such music by composers trained first and foremost in Western compositional methods, a development more often associated with post-1945 Japanese music. Between 1932 and 1934 Sugahara wrote ten compositions for koto and/or shakuhachi with Western ensembles of varying sizes and instrumentation. Some of these works were arrangements of previous hgaku compositions, and he worked closely with hgaku musicians to create them, but it is probable that Sugahara had a hand in writing at least some of the music for the koto and shakuhachi parts.36 Miyagi Michio, a

34 This performance of Nainen kikan was of the symphony orchestra version, rather than the work’s original mandolin orchestra version. 35 The Kinko-ryū shakuhachi lineage is the best documented of the Fuke-sect honkyoku (a variety of traditional shakuhachi music) lineages, as well as being the largest school of shakuhachi honkyoku in Japan. “ryū” (流) is a Japanese word that indicates a specific style, method, or school of thought, and is used to indicate the lineages (or schools) of traditional Japanese musicians. For more information on the different lineages of shakuhachi in Japan and their history, please consult the following sources: James H. Sanford,” Shakuhachi Zen: The Fukeshū and Komus,” Monumenta Nipponica 32, No. 4 (Winter, 1977): 411-40; and The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, edited by Alison Tokita and David W. Hughes (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2008). 36 I draw this conclusion from the fact that Sugahara and Miyagi Michio were close acquaintances during the 1930s who shared a love for French music; many of Miyagi’s own hgaku works featured elements of French musical 140 modernist in his own right, performed Sugahara’s works featuring koto throughout the 1930s.37 While Miyagi Michio, Hisamoto Genchi, and others were closer to being standard bearers of the New Japanese Music, Sugahara’s incorporation of traditional melodies and instruments expanded the movement, creating a fusion of Western and Japanese elements that, as Matsushita Hitoshi claims, became a milestone of Japanese modern music.38 In a later interview with Miyagi, Sugahara talked about early modern Japanese music, saying that, while he was fascinated with dramatic music involving singing, his interest in timbre and style was more for ancient court music, such as instrumental trios, rather than vocal music of the nineteenth century. Sugahara recognized that the sounds of ancient Japanese music and instruments were rare outside of Japan; he also felt that the performance style and instruments of traditional music in general had stagnated, and he desired to revive them through new performance methods.39 Unlike that of so many of his ygaku predecessors, Sugahara’s interest in instrumental music far outweighed that in vocal music, and this is reflected in the relatively small number of vocal works in his oeuvre.40 Yet even here Sugahara stressed the need for Japanese composers to study representational methods of the Japanese language in the traditional performing arts of Japan; he insisted that one must consider the phrasing of Japanese as it was sung by “Japanese voices.” He also had in mind a natural musical expression that was more appropriate than Western vocal styles for setting Japanese lyrics. In one of his collaborations with modernist author Nagai Kafū (1879-1959), the opera Katsushika jwa (Katsushika Love Story, 1938), Sugahara experimented with Japanese lyrics in Japanese singing styles.41 Although the music for Katushika jwa was destroyed during the Tokyo air raids of World War II, critics’ reviews and Nagai’s memoirs describe the work as a daring and brilliant opera, the story of which focused on aspects of life in contemporary society. In only two scenes—both of which styles, most especially in texture and instrumentation. Also, although some of the works for koto and orchestra are listed in Sugahara’s catalogue as collaborations with Miyagi, including the Shinsen Concerto for koto and chamber orchestra (1933), several others, such as Shiki no hatsuhana (voice, koto and orchestra; exact date unknown), are listed with Sugahara as the sole composer. 37 For more information on Miyagi Michio as a modernist, see Henry Johnson, “A Modernist Traditionalist: Miyagi Michio, Transculturalism, and the Making of a Music Tradition,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism, 246-69. 38 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (2)” (Sugahara and that Era 2), in Maesutoro no shz, 166. 39 Ibid., 166. 40 Sugahara composed fewer than twenty works that included singing, compared to his hundreds of instrumental works. To take only three major examples from among his predecessors for comparison, Taki Rentar, Yamada Ksaku, and Nobutoki Kiyoshi each wrote more vocal music than instrumental. In Yamada’s case, the ratio of vocal works to instrumental works is especially high, given that he composed more than 700 songs (excluding anthems for schools, municipalities and companies). 41 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (2),” 167. 141 occur in the Tokyo suburb of Katsushika—the plot is a love triangle between a male bus driver, a female train conductor, and a female employee at a tea house. Nagai used the attraction of celebrity as a movie star, and the emotional and financial turmoil of a family member’s imprisonment for political beliefs, as the two main plot points, situations that had never before been featured prominently in a Japanese musico-dramatic work. Katsushika jwa was performed at the Asakusa Opera an estimated forty times to packed houses; it was an unprecedented success for Sugahara, and he himself believed that the opera was effective. Sugahara had considered Katsushika jwa a test for Japanese audiences because of the work’s contemporary themes and its experimental songwriting, the latter imbued with what Mastushita Hitoshi called a “Japanese sensitivity” highlighting nuances of the Japanese language. After the positive response to Katsushika jwa, Sugahara considered writing a serious grand opera, but such a work never materialized.42 Other activities in which Sugahara engaged during the 1930s are many and varied. In 1935 he supported one of his students, Yoshida Takako, in founding the progressive ensemble Kreo Muziko. That same year, Sugahara began a series of evenings of music and poetry in Osaka, with readings by Higashiyama Chieko (1890-1980).43 He composed music for many of the poems, including those by J Samon (1904-76), Horiguchi Daigaku (1892-1981), and French symbolist Paul Verlaine (1844-96).44 In the later 1930s he began to compose music for films, including Yamamoto Kajir’s Tjūr no koi (Tjūr’s Love, 1938).45 In 1939 Sugahara composed and premiered what would become one of his best-known orchestral works, the “tableau symphonique” Akashi kaiky (Akashi Strait) for large orchestra.46 Akashi kaiky was one of nine pieces submitted in 1939 for a commission by the NHK that called for “national poetry pieces” using melodies from Japanese folk and popular song. This commission was typical of the increasing nationalism of late-1930s Japan, as artists from every creative field

42 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (2),” 175. 43 Higashiyama Chieko was a prominent actress associated with the Tsukiji Little Theater during the 1920s and 1930s. Today she is best known for postwar films such as Ozu Yasujir’s Tky monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953). 44 J Samon was the pen name of Japanese modernist writer Inanami Masayuki, who is now considered to be the pioneer of the Japanese “short-short story” genre. Horiguchi Daigaku was a poet and translator, who is now credited with introducing French surrealism to Japanese poetry. 45 Yamamoto Kajir’s (1902-74) filmography as director and screenwriter is extensive; now, however, he is best known for being the mentor of famous director Kurosawa Akira (1910-98). 46 In some Japanese publications, the title of this work is listed in French as Tab eau symphonique: Pas d’Akashi. In the catalogue of Sugahara’s works included in Maesutoro no shz, the work is listed first under the French title Tableau symphonique: pour Gde orchestre, providing the Japanese title (交響写景明石海峡) as an alternative. 142 became pressured to support the war effort by glorifying Nihonteki narumono and repudiate Western works. Akashi kaiky was praised for its obvious Japanese elements, which included a Bon odori melody from Akashi accompanied by the rhythms of traditional drums of the Akashi Iwaya shrine; the drums themselves were part of the orchestra.47 The piece also received high marks for how Sugahara used Western forms and textures—including a contrapuntal treatment of the Bon odori melody as one variation of the theme—subtly enough that the mixture of Western and Japanese elements did not sound forced. In one review of the piece, Hayasaka Fumio (1914- 55) dew attention to this aspect while also noting the work’s overwhelming gagaku-style sound, a characteristic “not intended” but which was “one virtue hidden within the essence of Mr. Sugahara.”48 Sugahara’s legacy from the interwar era survives not only in his music, writings and collaborations, but in the works of his students, as well. Many of his pupils went on to have successful and prolific careers as composers, and some of them were just as innovative and forward-thinking as their teacher. Three notable modernists who studied with Sugahara are It Noboru (1903-93), Fukai Shir (1907-59), and Yoshida Takako (1910-56), the last of whom is the focus of the next chapter. It in particular stands out as one of the most avant-garde interwar ygaku composers: beginning in the late 1920s, he began producing atonal and polytonal compositions, some of which used microtonal scales and elements of jazz. He was a composer who seems always to have been pushing boundaries, and Sugahara recognized his innovations and actively supported him and his music. Unfortunately, the audience for such music was very small, and it is almost impossible now to find recordings of his music, much less scores. In addition to his many other creative activities, Sugahara produced more than 100 musical works during the 1920s and 1930s; this productivity is rivaled only by the last twenty years of his life, after he traveled to Europe for the first time in 1967. Although it is not within the scope of this project, Sugahara’s career during and after World War II is just as remarkable as that of the interwar era: he served as a workshop trainer for education reform after World War

47Akiyama Kuniharu, “Sugahara Meiro: Kokde kibishī m hitotsu no Nihon sakkyoku-kai—seishin-shi (shita)” (Sugahara Meir: One more rigorous maverick of the Japanese composing industry – intellectual history, Part II), Ongaku Geijutsu (July 1988): 94. Bon is a Japanese Buddhist custom and summer festival in which families honor the spirits of their ancestors. Each Bon festival traditionally includes a dance, known as a Bon odori (“Bon Dance”). 48“Sugahara Meir nenpu” (Chronological Record of Sugahara Meir) in Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai, essays and programs printed in commemoration of Sugahara Meir’s centennial concerts (produced by Matsushita Hitoshi in cooperation with Tokyo Concerts Inc.); Japanese Symphony Works Exhibition 5 (Unpublished booklet, 1997; Kunitachi College of Music Catalogue No. C62-265), 28. 143

II, and he became a leader in the field of music education in Japan.49 He made multiple trips to Italy, a country whose musical past and present served as powerful inspiration for the Japanese composer until his death at the age of 91. His volume of sacred music, including cantatas, oratorios, Catholic Masses and one Requiem, dates from after World War II, as do most of his symphonies and concerti (the latter including works featuring accordion and harmonica), and a wealth of music for wind ensemble. For a more detailed look at Sugahara’s musical style during the interwar era, the following section provides historical overviews and analyses of two of his works from the late 1920s and early 1930s: Nainen kikan (Internal Combustion Engine, 1929) and Fuefuki me (Flute- playing Woman, 1931). Although both Nainen kikan and Fuefuki me are hybrids of European and Japanese elements, these two works display Japanese neoclassicism in very different ways.50

Nainen kikan (1929)

The earliest, and to my knowledge the only mention in Western scholarship to date of Sugahara’s work for mandolin orchestra, wind ensemble, and assorted percussion titled Nainen kikan (Internal Combustion Engine) was written by Luciana Galliano for her book Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century (1998).51 The remark is tantalizing at best; I quote it in its entirety: “Nainen Kikan (Internal combustion engine, 1929), in which [Sugahara] portrays the rhythms of a car engine, is clearly influenced by Honegger's Pacific 231.” 52 Her naming of Honegger is to be expected, given the work’s title, although the comparison to Pacific 231 is problematic; this is a point to which I shall return below. In her remark, Galliano does not provide the work’s instrumentation. Yet music for mandolin orchestra was a big part of Sugahara’s early career as a composer. Although he officially became the conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Takei upon moving back to Tokyo in 1926, he was first introduced as the OST’s conductor at their 17th concert (21 May 1924) for the premiere of his work Mahiru no

49 Introduction by Matsushita Hitoshi, Maesutoro no shz, i. 50 One of my hopes for future Sugahara research is the collection and analysis of materials concerning his orchestral works that feature hgaku instruments (koto, shakuhachi, etc.), as these compositions would serve very well to display Sugahara’s work as a Japanese neoclassicist; unfortunately, there is not enough source material available on these works at the present time. 51 The date given above for Galliano’s book reflects its original Italian release (Ygaku: Percorsi de a musica giapponese nel Novecento); the English translation was not published until 2002. 52 Luciana Galliano, Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, transl. Martin Mayes (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 76. 144 gyretsu (Midday Procession). He was the third conductor of the OST, following two of his former teachers, numa and Setoguchi. Sugahara conducted all performances of his own arrangements and original works at OST concerts until the organization’s 32nd concert (25 February 1932), after which he resigned the post. He composed and arranged dozens of works for mandolin ensembles and solo plectrum instruments. In order to understand the environment in which Sugahara was writing so much music for mandolin, one must know the peculiar history of the mandolin in Japan. The first known mandolin performance in Japan was given by Totsuji Shikama (1853-1928), a music teacher and a graduate of the Ongaku Torishirabe Kakari (which became the Tokyo Ongaku Gakk, Tokyo Music School, in 1887).53 Totsuji played the mandolin in a concert on 26 September 1894; the instrument had been given to him by an Englishman a few months previously.54 After the turn of the century, interest in the mandolin began to spread all over the country, triggered by the publication of Japan’s first instruction book by Hiruma Kenpachi (1886-1936), who had previously made several study trips to Europe, and Hiruma’s country-wide concert tours. Around the same time, Suzuki Masakichi (1859-1944) began production of Japan’s first mandolins in his rapidly expanding violin factories. The mandolin is very similar in some ways to the Japanese biwa, a short-necked fretted lute used in many genres of traditional Japanese music, which also may have aided the mandolin’s quick dissemination.55 The first Japanese mandolin ensemble was formed in the music section of the Tokyo Arts School under the guidance of Hiruma in 1906, and the first mandolin club was established at Keio University in 1910. During the next two decades, the mandolin flourished in Japan, thanks in large part to the patronage it received from the Japanese nobility and from influential artists and writers. Baron Takei Morishige (1890-1949), founder of the Orchestra Sinfonica Takei, visited Italy in 1911, where he became fascinated by the mandolin. After returning to Japan, he grew to be an influential figure in artistic life there, first as Chief Officer of the Board of Music and then as

53 This was the school established in Ueno, Tokyo that eventually became part of what is now the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku. 54 Paul Sparks, The Classical Mandolin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 133. 55 This is not to say that traditional Japanese music was a major draw for musicians looking to pick up the mandolin; quite the contrary. During the rapid Westernization of the Meiji and Taisho eras, Western music and instruments flourished, while traditional music and instruments experienced a period of relative stagnation, save for a few small pockets of influential performers (such as Miyagi Michio, discussed in Chapter Two). However, it is probably safe to assume that a Western instrument bearing great resemblance to a Japanese instrument may have had added appeal for Japanese musicians, especially if those musicians were also, or had ever been, biwa players. 145

Chief Officer of the Board of Ceremonies of the Imperial Household Agency. Adolfo Sarcoli (1867-1936) of Siena, a mandolinist and tenor who moved to Japan in 1911, became coach to the Kei University Mandolin Club in Tokyo. Sarcoli trained many of the second generation of indigenous performers. His pupils included film music composer and professional recording artist Suzuki Seiichi (1901-80), who founded the Tokyo Plectrum Society in 1921. Modernist poet Hagiwara Sakutar (1886-1942) not only played the mandolin in the cities of Maebashi and Takasaki, he also established a European-style music studio and mandolin ensemble in Maebashi, and identified himself as a mandolin professor.56 The art music world of the Taish era revolved around upper-class musicians, such as court performers, wealthy journalists, graduates of the Tokyo Music School, and military bandsmen; it was also a time when orchestral music was performed in conjunction with such individuals. Matsushita Hitoshi has written that plectrum ensembles (mandolins, guitars, etc.) developed in the background of this environment during the early decades of the twentieth century.57 These ensembles represented middle-class amateurs as well as professionals and provided an opportunity for the two groups to come together. The general population’s fondness for plectrum instruments grew rapidly. Among the 42 music ensembles in Japan in 1921, four were mandolin-related (the OST being one of them); the next ten years saw another mandolin ensemble founded almost every year. Among the interwar Japanese patrons of plectrum music Takei Morishige was one of the most influential. He composed a total of 114 works for mandolin, many of which he recorded with his own orchestra. Most of these pieces have Italian titles but their characteristic style is nonetheless unmistakably Japanese, adapted to fit Western scales and instruments. Takei was in contact with mandolinists in many European countries, and he compiled probably the world’s largest private library of mandolin music and journals; today complete runs of many European mandolin magazines can be found only in this collection.58 His own publications included two

56 Matsushita Hitoshi, “Sugahara Meir to sono jidai (1),” in Maesutoro no shz, 13. A free-verse poet inspired by the writings of Akiko Yosano, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche, Hagiwara incorporated in his poetry concepts from classical Japanese verse, Buddhism, nihilism, and existentialism; he is considered to be the “father of modern colloquial poetry” in Japan. 57 Ibid., 14. 58 Takei owned a huge collection of scores and several rare, nineteenth-century guitars that he had purchased from Philip Bone in England in 1922. Although much of this collection was destroyed by fire during the Great Kant Earthquake in 1923, Takei replenished his collection during the next few years with even more instruments and multiple collections of music and literature purchased from European collectors. 146 journals: Mandorin to gitaa (Mandolin and Guitar, Tokyo, 1916-23) and Mandorin gitaa kenkyū (Researches into the Mandolin and Guitar, Tokyo, 1924-41).59 In September 1929 he opened the Masakata Hall next to his estate, which served as both a performance hall and practice space. Sugahara almost certainly made use of Takei’s musical resources, especially given his affiliation with the OST and the active interest Takei took in Sugahara’s musical development during the 1920s. By 1929 Sugahara had written or arranged at least 15 works for mandolin ensemble, many of which were performed by the Orchestra Sinfonica Takei. At the 25th concert of the OST (30 May 1929), the ensemble premiered Nainen kikan, which, in its first incarnation, was titled Autobus.60 The piece is challenging to perform: it is scored for flute, bass clarinet, trombone, two mandolin sections (in similar fashion to two violin sections), alto mandolin section, tenor mandolin section, Liuto Moderno (ten-stringed mandocello) section, mandoloncello section, mandolon (bass mandolin) section, two guitar sections, double basses, piano, “typophone” (dulcitone), harmonium, and an assortment of percussion.61 In contemporary performance the piece lasts approximately seven minutes and it is, for the most part, upbeat. But the work’s title is misleading; while the evocation of an engine might lead listeners to expect constant, fast-paced motion, Nainen kikan contains moments of reflective tranquility and silence interspersed with hammering sections of layered ostinatos and heavy percussion. Nainen kikan is in five sections, the first and last functioning as introduction and coda, respectively. The piece fluctuates between E and A major, with occasional brief forays into related major and minor keys. Section 1 (mm. 1-26) begins with an ostinato in the guitars under held tones in the piano (this is shown in Example 4.1); it builds dramatically in texture and

59 Sparks, 153. 60 This piece is also listed in Sugahara’s catalogue with the alternate title of Nainen kikan: gasorin mtā (Internal combustion engine: gasoline motor). Although Nainen kikan was first performed as a work for mandolin orchestra and assorted winds and percussion, Sugahara actually wrote two versions of the piece in 1929. The second version is listed in Sugahara’s catalogue as Nainen kikan: Shiteki kkygaku (Internal Combustion Engine: Symphonic Poem), and it is scored for large symphony orchestra; the score for this version was lost in a fire during World War II. Yet a discrepancy exists regarding the premieres of the two versions: while both are listed in the works catalogue in Maesutoro no shz as having premiered at the OST concert on 30 May 1929, the programs and essays published for Sugahara’s centennial concerts (Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai, produced by Matsushita Hitoshi in cooperation with Tokyo Concerts Inc., 1997) list the premiere for the orchestra version as 3 November 1930 when it was performed by the New Symphony Orchestra. Because the version I am referencing in this chapter is the first version (for mandolin orchestra), I have chosen to use the earlier premiere date. 61 In the original score, the bottom-most bassline staff is labeled “Guitarons”; however in contemporary performance—the 2010 performance by Bianca Fiori for their album, Ensemble Mandolinistica Bianca Fiori: 19 Concerto Regulare, for example—this part is played by double basses. 147 volume throughout the section. The rest of the strings join in as the introduction progresses. Melodic motives in A major begin at m. 15 in the mandolin and flute and pass to the clarinet at m. 19; the first appearance of this motive in the mandolin I part is shown in Example 4.2.

Example 4.1. Nainen kikan, piano and guitar, mm. 1-2.62

Example 4.2. Nainen kikan, mandolin I, mm. 15-16.

The introduction climaxes on a tutti B major 7th chord. After a brief moment of silence at m. 26, section 2 of the work begins. It is another building section, with repeated Fs in the strings and piano until the Animé (animated) section at m. 37. Even though in performance the bass clarinet—the melody for which is shown in Example 4.3—is buried beneath the louder string sections and percussion, its melodic character becomes the core of the upcoming important melodic statement by the flute and mandolin I and II sections.63

62 All excerpts of Nainen kikan (with the exception of Example 4.6, top) have been transcribed from a photocopy of MS. A096 (according to the catalogue of Sugahara’s works supplied in Maesutoro no shz: Appendix, 13). Scans from the original have been included in Appendix C of this dissertation. All excerpts of Sugahara’s music have been reproduced with permission of the copyright holder; please see Appendix B for permission letter. 63 All references to contemporary performance of Nainen kikan are based upon the 2010 recording of this version of the work by the mandolin ensemble Bianca Fiori on their album, Ensemble Mandolinistica Bianca Fiori: 19 Concerto Regulare (CD. NAVI, NACD-1828; recorded live, 11 July 2010 at Dai-ichi Seimei Hall). 148

Example 4.3. Nainen kikan, bass clarinet, mm. 37-38.

The flute picks up the bass clarinet melody as the music continues to build in intensity and volume, adding layers of new ostinati and interjecting glissandi from the trombone, until the work’s first full melody begins at m.47 in the flute and mandolin parts. This melody in the flute part is shown in Example 4.4.

Example 4.4. Nainen kikan, flute, mm. 47-49.

The melody resembles the fragments previously played by the woodwinds. Here anhemitonic tetrachords create a mostly-pentatonic melody, a staple in modern Japanese folk songs since the Meiji era (1868-1912), as well as of biwa and shamisen (three-stringed lute) music of the Edo period. The thick texture of Section 2 thins out as it comes to an end, with a diminuendo and ritardando as the basses hold a dominant seventh chord on A. This chord then also thins out to a unison A for the beginning of Section 3 at m. 66, labeled Modéré, assez doux (moderate, fairly gentle). This section of Nainen kikan is the slowest; it is in A and is marked by a lyrical mandolin melody and a six-note double bass ostinato (the beginning of this melody and the accompanying ostinato in the double bass part are shown in Example 4.5).

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Example 4.5. Nainen kikan, mandolin and double bass, mm. 71-75.64

This is another anhemitonic melody that uses overlapping (as well as conjunct) tetrachords. But the mandolin melody of Section 3 becomes chromatic once it reaches m.80, a section that is labeled “BACH” in the score (the beginning of which is shown in Example 4.6 in both the original score and in transcription).

Example 4.6. Nainen kikan, mandolin I and II mm. 80-81 in original score (top) and transcription (bottom).

64 “Penna” notated in the score just before m.69 indicates use of the mandolin plectrum. 150

This section is also in A. It also features a sequence in the bass, and is reminiscent of passages in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suites (BWV 1066-1069).65 At m. 88, a lengthy transition begins, with repeated chords on A. The trombone plays repeated G-sharps at m. 104; this leads into a solo in E major for the trombone. Although the solo only lasts for two measures, multiple glissandi paired with the relative sparseness of the rest of the orchestra make the trombone’s outburst seem bombastic. The solo and the preceding repeated G-sharps are shown in Example 4.7.

Example 4.7. Nainen kikan, trombone, mm. 105-09.

Section 4 of Nainen kikan begins at m. 112, marked Gaiement, un peu moins vite (cheerfully, a little slower). It is the longest section of the work proper and is perhaps the section that best reflects the “engine” of the work’s title. This section features loud, “piston-like” ostinatos in all the string parts, the first four measures of which are shown in Example 4.8.66

65 I have not found this section to be a direct quote of any of Bach’s works; however, the subsection at m.84 marked Animé…et vitement bears a marked resemblance to some of the triple-meter movements of Bach’s Orchestral Suites and Brandenburg Concertos. 66 The “piston-like” movement in the ostinatos of this section has been the sole focus of at least one summary of Nainen kikan in Japanese; see the liner notes for Ensemble Mandolinistica Bianca Fiori: 19 Concerto Regulare (2010). 151

Example 4.8. Nainen kikan, mm. 112-15.

Section 4 concludes with a section built on iv chords in B minor, which might suggest a return to E major. However, this transition ends abruptly just before m. 147; after a brief pause almost the entire orchestra embarks upon a tutti descent from A to C on their way to a fff C major chord at m. 148 (marked Majestueusement), over which the trombone and bass clarinet play a simple melody, mostly with the notes of a C-major triad (Example 4.9 below).

152

Example 4.9. Nainen kikan, mm. 148-51. 153

At m. 155 the orchestra, minus the timpani, pauses at a fermata. A slow coda commences; melodic fragments in the flute and piano parts give way to a brief restatement of the pentatonic mandolin melody from Section 3, this time in A. This in turn overlaps with a quieter version of the “piston” ostinato from Section 4 in the dulcitone and guitar parts, now using only the notes of the mandolins’ pentatonic melody. At the Animé a trombone solo recalls mm. 105- 09 with a fast ascending line to B which, along with repeated Bs in the piano, establishes a dominant for the work’s final sffz chord in E major. The Animé section is shown in Example 4.10.

Example 4.10. Nainen kikan, mm. 163-65.

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The coda of Nainen kikan summarizes much of the material from the work’s previous sections; this material also overlaps in a manner reflective of Sugahara’s compositional style more generally during the later 1920s and 1930s. Works such as Nainen kikan show Sugahara’s assimilation of Western musical styles such as Neo-Baroque, and his implementation of contemporary orchestration techniques meant to evoke a machine aesthetic. At the same time, Sugahara’s use of Japanese musical materials only served to enrich his personal style, which— especially after he began to write for Japanese instruments in the early 1930s as part of the New Japanese Music movement—displayed a mixture of musical elements. An example of this mixture occurs in Nainen kikan at m. 80, when the previously-pentatonic mandolin melody suddenly gives way to chromatic material as the music progresses into the neo-Baroque “BACH” section. Another example is the mandolin and flute min’y melody beginning at m. 47 (Example 4.4). In performance, the mandolins’ constant tremolo is reminiscent of music for Japanese plucked-string instruments, especially shamisen. The mixture of different Western musical styles in Nainen kikan is also notable. For example, the “piston-like” layered ostinatos of Section 4 are contemporary to Sugahara’s time, while the melodic and harmonic elements of the “BACH” section are not. However, the “BACH” section provides an interesting connection between Sugahara and many of his European modernist predecessors and contemporaries, including Ferruccio Busoni, Paul Hindemith, and Dmitri Shostakovich, all of whom published works directly influenced by the music of J.S. Bach; see, for example, Busoni’s transcriptions of Bach’s keyboard music (Bach-Busoni Gesammelte Ausgabe, 1916 and 1920), Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis (1942), and Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950/51). Such a juxtaposition of styles could also serve as evidence of Sugahara the “postmodernist.” Hermann Gottschewski makes just such an argument in his essay for Sugahara’s centennial celebration, “Sugahara Meir no piano sakuhin to chembaro sakuhin” (Sugahara Meir’s Piano and Harpsichord Works). He explains that Western modernism built upon the historical foundations of the past while trying to make things appear completely new; then postmodernism picked up the fragments of a collapsed historical foundation and used many of those fragments, regardless of historical context. The conventions of Western music were rooted in Europe, and a great deal of time was required for Western musicians to break free from those conventions. But in Japan, where Western music was originally introduced in fragments, composers might have turned directly to those styles and methods that we now associate with

155

Western postmodernism. Because of this, Gottschewski claims that “the works of Sugahara Meir seem to be the epitome of ‘postmodernism’.”67 For all of this composition’s various points of interest, the only aspect that receives attention in secondary literature on Nainen kikan (of which there is very little) is its general innovative nature (for Japanese ygaku of the time period), and its similarities with Arthur Honegger’s Pacific 231 (1923).68 Sugahara himself never wrote at length about Nainen kikan, so it is difficult to know how he contextualized his own piece. But he did write multiple essays about Honegger’s music, which merits discussion. Admittedly, the title Nainen kikan, as well as the time of its composition, invites scholars to compare this piece to Honegger’s Pacific 231 (1923), as Luciana Galliano did. Yet this comparison is problematic, given how Sugahara felt about Honegger’s symphonic movements. He certainly knew of Pacific 231, probably soon after it was premiered. In an untitled essay from 1936 published in Gekkan gakufu, he mentions Pacific 231 among the earliest compositions with which he became familiar during the mid-1920s.69 But Honegger’s symphonic movements did not interest him nearly as much as Honegger’s pared-down, neoclassical works. Sugahara’s interest in Pacific 231, he wrote, stemmed from the fact that he was seeing the title of the work mentioned repeatedly in French concert programs.70 In an article from 1932, he expressed his dissatisfaction with Symphonic Movement No. 2, Rugby (1928), stating “that is no rugby [match] I would want to see.”71 In the same article, he rejects the “storm surge of emotions” that

67 Hermann Gottschewski, “Sugahara Meir no piano sakuhin to chembaro sakuhin” (Sugahara Meir’s Piano and Harpsichord Works), in Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai (Unpublished booklet, 1997; Catalogue No. C62-265, Kunitachi College of Music), 7. 68 See, for example, the interview Gitaa no jikan conducted with Bianca Fiori orchestra member Taguchi Shuntar, for their recording of Nainen kikan (10 August 2010; available online at http://294bros.com/gj/news/bianca2010 /biancafiori.html; accessed 2/24/2014); Akiyama Kuniharu’s article, “Sugahara Meiro: Kokde kibishī m hitotsu no Nihon sakkyoku-kai - seishin-shi (ue)” (Sugahara Meir: One more Rigorous Maverick of the Japanese Composing Industry – Intellectual History, Part I), in Ongaku Geijutsu (June, 1988): 104-7; and Ishida, 85. 69Sugahara Meir, “Mudai ni-sh” (Two Untitled Chapters), Gekkan gakufu (September 1936). In this article and a later one titled “Oneggā no koto” (Of Honegger) in Firuhāmonī (November 1942), Sugahara lists a handful of Honegger’s compositions that initially attracted him to the French composer. Interestingly, the first was Honegger’s Chanson de Ronsard, a song published in the music supplement of the May 1924 issue of La Revue Musicale (which Sugahara was apparently receiving in Japan or borrowing from someone who was receiving it in Japan, as he mentions first seeing the work in La Revue Musicale). Other works he mentions in these articles include the piano piece Le Cahier Romand (1923), the short symphonic movements Pastorale d'ete (1920) and Chant de joie (1923),the ballet Horace victorieux (1921), the String Quartet No. 2 in D (1935), and the oratorio Le Roi David (1921), which Sugahara repeatedly praised and conducted on multiple occasions. 70 Sugahara Meir, “Oneggā no koto” (Firuhāmonī, November 1942); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 251. 71 Sugahara Meir, “Konogoro no watashi no shinky” (My State of Mind in the Current Age; October 1932, Gekkan gakufu); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 94. 156

“exceeds the limit of the senses” found in many contemporary works.72 But Sugahara did not reject sentiment in music; on the contrary, he saw it as a requirement. It was the sentiment of Honegger’ works such as Le Roi David (1921) that interested Sugahara, works which he believed possessed a beauty without the “decadence common to pre-World War composers,” a beauty that was “close to Handel, and also close to Bach.”73 Such “classics,” as Sugahara saw the works of J.S. Bach and Handel to be, were significant in recording the emotional development of the human race. Classic pieces—past works in any field or medium that remained relevant and available as models for creative development—were markers showing the principles of human sentiment across the eras of cultural history.74 Like the modernist poet Maekawa Samio in “The Course of Neo-Classicism” mentioned earlier in this chapter, Sugahara was conscious of the path that he, as a modern Japanese composer, should take in order to create modern, Japanese music, a path that led through modern Western music as well as through Japanese traditional genres. In a 1933 article titled “Sz no katei ni susume” (Advances in the Creative Process), Sugahara outlined what he called the two most recent phases of the Japanese music world: the Meiji era’s “uncritical importation” and then, beginning in Taish and leading up through the early years of Shwa, importation of modern art by knowledgeable musicians who surfaced “amidst a vast majority of amateurs.”75 It was the more critical eye taken by these skilled artists, Sugahara claimed, that led to the re-examination of the classics only after studying modern European music: the music world “began to admire the classics with new awareness.”76 While the classics to which he referred here were Western (he mentioned Bach and Mozart by name later in the article), he took a similar stance with classical Japanese music in another article, titled “Neiraku no kyūto ni nokoru kogaku” (Ancient Music Remaining in the Old Capital of Nara), in which he criticized Japanese historians who saw the old and traditional as “a major misfortune of Japanese music history.”77

72 Sugahara Meir, “Konogoro no watashi no shinky,” 95. 73“Oneggā no koto,” 252. 74“Ssaku shinten no tame ni” (For Creative Development; Ongaku sekai, January 1934); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 130. 75 Sugahara Meir, “Sz no katei ni susume” (Advances in the Process of Creation; Gekkan gakufu, March 1933); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 114-15. 76 Ibid., 115. 77 “Neiraku no kyūto ni nokoru kogaku” (Ancient Music Remaining in the Old Capital of Nara; Gekkan gakufu, August 1936); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 140. 157

Such writings should not be interpreted as Sugahara’s turning his back on new or modern music. In an article from 1937 titled “Gendai ongaku no kansh ni tsuite” (Concerning the Appreciation of Contemporary Music), he compared the reception of modern and (Western- style) classical music in Japan in an effort to understand why contemporary works were not as admired. Either the reality of the modern world was too strong a stimulant, or those who appreciated classical music more than contemporary music were too disconnected from reality and therefore could not appreciate old and new music equally. Classical music had to be appreciated as art rather than as nostalgia.78 Sugahara also encouraged his readers to “return to a clean slate” in their approach to modern music, to bravely explore contemporary pieces without seeking any prior opinion that might negatively affect their appreciation.79 For a practical rather than theoretical example of his balanced appreciation of contemporary music, one need only look at the concert programs Sugahara helped to arrange for his student Yoshida Takako’s orchestra, Kreo Muziko, during the 1930s. Kreo Muziko’s programs featured a variety of compositions, Japanese and Western, historical and contemporary. In an undated interview conducted by Akiyama Kuniharu, Sugahara credited Yoshida with the organization but proudly stated that Kreo Muziko sought to play “the forgotten classics” as well as to create “music of [the Japanese] ethnicity.”80 Classical music was important to Sugahara, as was an appreciation of modern music. But so was his quest to create “Japanese” music, a goal he shared with other progressive Japanese composers, including Miyagi and Yoshida. As he stated in his 1934 article “Ssaku shinten no tame ni” (For Creative Development), The Japan of today, borrowing current European music in the musical arts … has a direct assimilative power beyond comparison. Yet imported goods are imported goods, after all; borrowed things are borrowed things. There is no way to proceed other than to invent our own music.81

Sugahara’s search for new Japanese music is reflected in the eclectic mixture of styles in Nainen kikan. Although he wrote it three years before his earliest collaborations with hgaku musicians involved in the New Japanese Music movement, Sugahara was already combining features from a variety of sources from Japanese and Western genres and time periods. Nainen

78 “Gendai ongaku no kansh ni tsuite” (Concerning the Appreciation of Contemporary Music; Ongaku sekai, August 1937); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 161. 79 Ibid., 162. 80 Akiyama Kuniharu, “Sugahara Meir-shi ni kiku” (Asking Mr. Sugahara Meir), in Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai, Japanese Symphony Works Exhibition 5 (1997), 19. 81 Sugahara Meir, “Ssaku shinten no tame ni,” 131. 158 kikan brings together elements of the European symphony orchestra and the mandolin orchestra, and Sugahara had been studying the instruments of both ensembles for more than a decade. He was familiar with European methods of orchestration from his close study of them during his time in Nara. But Sugahara’s experience as a performer of plucked string instruments, his dozens of pedagogical writings and essays on mandolin orchestration, and his many original works and transcriptions for solo mandolin and ensembles demonstrate an even deeper familiarity with plucked string instruments. Citing Suzuki Sadami’s definition of Japanese modernism,82 I would argue that the mandolin ensemble served as a familiar receptor through which Sugahara imported and assimilated characteristics of European orchestral music. He joined the Sinfonia Mandolini Orchestra only three years after its founding in 1915. Yet even by that time in Tokyo, mandolin ensembles attracted more participation from Japanese musicians than conventional Western symphony orchestras, the latter of which would not see a stable organization until the mid-1920s. Performance on mandolin and guitar was fast becoming a tradition in Japan; it was through this tradition that Sugahara brought together elements of Japanese folk and Western Baroque and contemporary music to create Nainen kikan, a composition that evokes not only the mechanized modernity of Japan, but also its eclectic musical world.

Fuefuki me (1931)

In a 1941 article, “Nihon kakyoku ni tsuite” (About Japanese Song), published in Ongaku Sekai in 1941, Sugahara commented upon Fukao Sumako’s poem, Fuefuki me:83 Despite what everyone says, while there is much poetry, there are few poems that sing. For example, there is a poem called "Flute-Playing Woman" by Ms. Fukao Sumako. When read (silently, to oneself), its logic is utterly incoherent. One cannot feel what it is trying to say. However, it is extremely interesting when read aloud. Indeed, a different effect comes out. This is an example of one of few such poems.84

Sugahara draws attention to one of the reasons he chose to set the poem: it possessed a “singing” style, a lyricism that he felt was best suited to vocal music incorporating the Japanese language. Also, its effect when read aloud was similar to that of poetry by the French Symbolists; this may

82 As I discussed in Chapter One, Suzuki sees Japanese cultural modernism as the adaptation of Western modernism through what he calls “receptors” derived from Japanese traditional thought and ways of life. Such receptors could be ideas, styles, people, or places believed to be particular to Japanese culture. Imported ideas were thus adapted to change or redefine the conditions of modern Japanese life. 83 Fukao Sumako was born in 1888 and died in 1974. 84 Sugahara Meir, “Nihon kakyoku ni tsuite” (About Japanese Song; Ongaku sekai 1941); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 247. 159 have been another reason that Sugahara was drawn to Fukao’s poetry, given their shared interest in France and modern French aesthetics. Fukao’s poem Fuefuki me (Flute-playing Woman) first appeared in the April 1928 issue of the popular Japanese general-interest magazine Kaizo, almost immediately after she returned to Japan from her second of five trips to Europe. The issue featured a number of poems from Fukao’s upcoming anthology, Mendori no shiya (A Hen’s View, 1930); the poetry is notable for its lyricism and epistolary style. Mendori no shiya is the work of a Japanese female author whose experiences abroad during the 1920s were reflected in her writing. Many of Fukao Sumako’s poems of the 1920s and 1930s are striking in their use of impressionistic imagery juxtaposed with direct and moving expressions of emotion. She has been called “modern,” “impressionist,” “progressive” “humanist,” and “feminist” by her biographers; her lengthy career as a writer, musician, and social activist attests to her multifaceted interests and the many ways through which she expressed her ideas as a modernist in her own right.85 Besides Sugahara, Fukao Sumako was well acquainted with progressive Japanese composers, including Yamada Ksaku and Hashimoto Kunihiko. She was also close friends with vocalist and harpist Ogino Ayako, who traveled with Fukao to Paris in 1930.86 Like Sugahara, Yamada and Hashimoto also set Fukao’s poetry to music; in fact, more than twenty Japanese composers have set her poetry since the 1910s. A musician herself, Fukao picked up both the flute and the violin in the early 1920s and took lessons from multiple teachers during her trips to Paris. In 1930, she studied with flute

85 Fukao Sumako went on to publish many more collections of poetry, books, essays, and translations throughout her life, including the earliest Japanese translations of French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), with whom Fukao became close friends during her first trip to Paris. Her interests extended past the arts; her 1934 book on sexology was written in response to the courses she took on the subject at the University of Paris in 1930 and 1931. As an activist for women’s rights, especially those of female Japanese poets, Fukao helped to found the Female Poets Society in 1937. In a comment about the goals of the organization, Fukao said that “Male poets, in their tyranny, deliberately do not attempt to recognize women. Women will compete for that recognition with their compositions.” She also represented Japan at the fourth gathering of the World's Democratic Women, held in Vienna in 1958. Fukao engaged in brief but intimate correspondence with poet Hirato Renkichi (1893-1922), the author of the 1921 Japanese Futurist Manifesto. Hirato was one of the driving forces behind Nihon miraiha sengen und, the Japanese Futurist Movement, during the late 1910s and early 1920s. It is probably no coincidence that Fukao later found the urban sights and sounds of Paris so attractive; in March 1932, writing as a correspondent for a daily newspaper in Osaka, she published in a column called “Urban Noises of Life’s Large Symphony,” in which she shared her impressions of Paris and the vitality of its sonic landscape. For more information on Fukao Sumako, see Miyazawa Kentar, “Fukao Sumako no shz” (Portrait of Fukao Sumako), The Fleur-de-lis Review 44 (December 2008): 47-66. 86 Ogino Ayako (1898-1944) premiered many vocal works by modern Japanese composers, including Sugahara, Yamada, and Hashimoto Kunihiko, during the interwar era, and she was a premiere performer of modern European art song in Japan. 160 virtuoso Marcel Moyse (1889-1984). It is perhaps due to her experiences as a flautist that references to the flute abound in Fukao Sumako’s poetry. She published a collection of stories and poetry in a 1936 collection titled Ivu no fue (The Flute of Eve).87 The relationship between Fukao and the flute is also projected in poems such as “May Flute,” which describes blowing a wheat stem in the fields in Tamba, Japan, and “Cactus Flower.” Fukao chose the phrase “Ware, fuefuki ne” (I played flute) for her own epitaph.88 The text of Fuefuki me is written from the perspective of a woman playing a flute who is reflecting upon both her external surroundings and internal feelings.89

1 笛を吹候 I play the flute 笛吹悔ゆ候 I play the flute, and regret 笛吹析候 I play the flute, and hope 笛吹生く候 I play the flute, and live.

2 尺篠竹 About thirty centimeters of bamboo あ手作 It is an unreliable, handmade flute 唯そす But just for the fun of it 笛吹く子候し I am as a child, playing the flute.

3 笛を吹候 I play the flute 宙し A silver space 早瀬ゝ冴ゆ初鮎 Like the first ayu fish to swim the rapids 音秘候 The sound a violet mystery.

4 笛を吹候 I play the flute 笛眞 It is truth 宙神 It is divine を申 It imparts nothing without praying [to it] first.

5 笛吹け When I play the flute 小犬立ち止候 The little dog stands still 雀を候 The sparrows dance 壁耳を傾け候 The walls listen.

87 This collection was originally issued by the Murasaki shuppan-bu publishing house in 1936. 88 Aoyama Yuka, “Kindai nihonjin sakkyokka ni yoru shoki no furūto ongaku” (Early Flute Music by Modern Japanese Composers), in Kagawadaigaku kyiku gakubu kenkyū hkoku (Kagawa University Faculty of Education Report), Part I, 126 (2006): 26. 89 Fukao Sumako, “Fuefuki me”; from Sugahara Meir, Fuefuki me [music score] published in the appendix of Gekkan gakufu 25 (October 1934): 1-3. The stanza numbers that I have provided in the transcription of the poem match the stanza numbers mentioned in connection with the music examples displayed later in this chapter. 161

6 笛を吹候し Even though I play the flute 売人声聞えし I cry when I hear it た吹止候 Suddenly, I stop playing やた吹出候 But before long, I begin to play again.

7 ゆゆゆゆ “Hiyu hiyu, hiyu hiyu” 吹く孤独笛候 Thus I play the lonely flute あい Oh, all too soon え涙を忘け Pierrot forgot his tears.

8 寂しや Lonely 哀しや Sad しや Empty 笛吹く候 Nevertheless, I play the flute.

9 哭た Weep 只哭た Just weep 哭笛吹た If tired of weeping, play the flute 望一管笛や候 Hope only resides in this flute.

10 人を吹すし To inspire someone's thoughts いけし世 Pretending, toying with them, more and more 名うそ The name, even the body, are trivial 笛した笛を吹候 I play simply to serve the flute.

11 笛吹や If I play the flute, 春候を Spring has come. 笛吹雲懸橋を渡や Playing the flute, I cross the bridge of clouds 笛吹天戸をや I astonish the gate of heaven.

12 をを音 With my flute's tone the fragrance of lilac 今宵ゐ異國牧歌調候 I play the idylls of a foreign land tonight 酔た Become intoxicated by it 異國月をし The foreign moon is mysterious…

In his musical setting of Fuefuki me, Sugahara used instrumentation that was relatively popular in France in the 1920s, solo flute and voice, in which the vocal part is more recitation than singing. Regarding the recitation style of the vocalist, Aoyama Yuko suggests that in studying French music, Sugahara would have been exposed to and influenced by the recitative- style songs of Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, and others.90 Yet Sugahara’s music for Fuefuki me also has distinct ties to traditional Japanese instrumental works: Morihide Katayama identifies different

90 Aoyama, 25. 162 styles of traditional Japanese flute playing expressed in the flute part, including nkan, used in n dramas; shinobue, the high-pitched bamboo transverse flute used in festival ensembles and the nagauta ensembles of kabuki theater; and the ryūteki of gagaku (classical Japanese instrumental music traditionally associated with the imperial court). These influences can be heard throughout the work, not only in whole melodic phrases but also in ornamentation: occasional acciaccaturas mimic the portamenti so often employed in traditional Japanese flute music. Also, the piece follows an ABA’ form, shared by both French song and instrumental gagaku pieces.91 In its relative expressive restraint and impressionistic style Fuefuki me is an excellent example of Sugahara’s blending of French and Japanese elements. The music is intended to be freely flexible according to the tempo of the narrator, hence the score for Fuefuki me includes no tempo indications and only one bar line.92 Since the poem is recited rather than sung, it receives no five-line staff of its own but is instead printed in the score just above the flute line. Although the piece follows a ternary form, with a variation of the first two flute melodies returning toward the end, the character of the word-music relationship changes as the piece progresses. It is not a tonal piece; it is “impressionistic” in the sense that the flute provides general impressions of the poetry; the flute’s melody includes few leading tones that ordinarily would create and resolve tension. The second melody in particular is Debussyian. Using Morihide Katayama’s discussion of the work as a starting point, I have identified three different melodies or motives in the flute part: first is the “nkan” melody, named for its similarities in performance to the sound of the Japanese transverse flute utilized in n dramas.93 This is the first melody heard in the piece (shown in Example 4.11 below). The first half of the opening melody of Fuefuki me emphasizes long, high-pitched sustained tones within a relatively limited range of pitches. The held tones in this melody are similar to the loud, sustained high pitches that are characteristic of nkan performance (although pitch in nkan performance is relative). Other similarities to the playing style of nkan include the ornaments, which function like the rapid turns usually heard between each held tone in nkan performance, and the brief

91 William P. Malm, Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (New York: Kodansha International, 2000), 117. 92 Katayama Morihide, liner notes for Bridges to Japan (CD; BIS 1059, 2000), 6. 93 Although my use of the term Nkan as a label for this melody refers to its stylistic similarities (especially its melodic shape, range, and ornaments) to the flute parts traditionally played to accompany N dramas, this is a simplification of the variety of music that accompanies N. However, I do feel that Morihide Katayama, in his identification of such stylistic similarities between the flute melodies of Fuefuki me and those of traditional Japanese flute genres, accurately describes the mixture of styles that Sugahara achieved with this piece. 163 change of pitch at the ends of held tones just before the next phrase begins (for example, the C natural following the D in the first phrase shown in Example 4.11, and the E natural following the D at the end of the first system). This change reflects a simplified version of the pitch slides common in nkan performance.94

Example 4.11. Fuefuki me, systems 1-2.95

The second, “singing,” melody is lyrical and legato, and it features a broader range of tones, including occasional chromatic movement that is only slightly different from the chromaticism of the nkan melody. This melody returns twice in the piece, although each time its character changes slightly. Example 4.12 shows the “singing” melody’s first iteration, in the middle of the second stanza of poetry (systems 4 and 5 of the score).

94 Because typical nkan lines are relative in pitch and meter, I have elected not to show a transcription of a nkan part for comparison. However, many recordings of n music (featuring the instrumental ensemble, or hayashi, with the jiutai, the vocalists) are available online. One such recording is Kyoto Nohgaku Kai, Japanese Noh Music (CD; Lyrichord World 7137, 1994), which is accessible through the Naxos Music Library. The first track of this recording demonstrates the typical performance style of the nkan: http://fsu.naxosmusiclibrary.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/stream.asp?s=56370%2Ffsunmlpaid09%2Fq07010%5F101 (accessed 25 April 2014). 95 I have elected to designate portions of this piece by musical system or poetic stanza, given that the musical score does not include regular bar lines; in fact, the only bar line in the entire score occurs in the section shown in Example 4.13, in the middle of the second system. All musical examples for Fuefuki me come from Sugahara Meir, Fuefuki me, published in the Appendix of Gekkan gakufu 25 (October 1934): 1-3. All excerpts from Sugahara’s scores shown in this chapter come from copies received with permission from the copyright holder of Sugahara’s music. A copy of the permission letter for use of this music is provided in Appendix 2. 164

Example 4.12. Fuefuki me, systems 4-5.

The third melody of Fuefuki me may be identified as the “tetrachord” melody because of its emphasis on the tetrachord (three smaller intervals that span the interval of a perfect fourth) as a unifying melodic element. The combination of tetrachords to form modes or scales is central to the tetrachord theory of traditional Japanese music conceptualized by Koizumi Fumio (1927-83). According to Koizumi, most of the melodic material in Japanese traditional music can be effectively organized through the combinations of four different tetrachords (shown in Example 4.13). Each of Koizumi’s tetrachords is a unit consisting of two stable outlining tones called kakuon (nuclear tones) and one unstable intermediate tone, the latter of which decides the type of the tetrachord. It its first appearance, assuming the F acciaccaturas are embellishments, the tetrachord melody mixes ascending ritsu (D, E, G), ascending min’y (E, G, A), and descending miyakobushi (C, A-flat, G) tetrachords. Unlike the opening nkan melody, the tetrachord melody features a gently rising line in quarter notes, periodically broken by quarter rests; it is also unlike the second, “singing” melody in its pitch content, because of its modal character, lack of chromatic movement (barring ornaments) and separated phrases (Example 4.14).

Example 4.13. Tetrachord types according to Koizumi.

165

Example 4.14. Fuefuki me, systems 7-8.

The flute’s relationship to the poetry changes as the piece progresses. At the beginning, the flute and voice alternate, with the flute entrances following the vocal entrances (Example 4.11). Until the third line of poetry, the flute seems to comment upon, or echo, the declaimed text. But at the third line, the nkan melody supports the character of the poetry, and the voice and flute become equals in expressing the text. When the second melody begins halfway through stanza 3, the flute takes the lead. Here, the text’s colorful imagery is supported by the chromatic lines in the flute part, which add to the “mystery” described in the text. This is contrasted by the section beginning at stanza 5: instead of adding color to the text, the flute’s relative absence (top line of Example 4.14) provides a sparse backdrop for the text’s little dogs, dancing sparrows, and listening walls. In the sixth stanza (Example 4.13b, bottom line), the tetrachord melody accents the poetry with brief, separated phrases: “Even though I play the flute/I cry when I hear it” (笛を 吹候し/売人声聞えし). The flute even mimics the next line: “Suddenly, I stop playing” (た吹止候); the flute does not return until after the phrase “But before long, I begin to play again” (やた吹出候). The nkan and singing melodies return at stanzas 7 and 8, respectively, to begin the A’ section; this time, the flute and declaimed text are equal partners in expression, almost from the very beginning. In stanzas 8, 9 and 10, similar to stanza 3, the singing melody accompanies the mention of intangible things, such as the sadness and longing of the flute player. However, the melody builds and continues into stanza 9 of the poem, as the flute player claims her instrument

166 to be hope amidst sadness. If one assumes that the music in this portion mirrors the sentiments of the poetry, then the singing melody—the most Western-sounding melody in the piece—could encompass the hope that the poet finds in her flute. Yet because we cannot know Sugahara’s intentions regarding this aspect of Fuefuki me, it remains ambiguous. The final section of the music provides another tantalizing example of ambiguity. Before the tetrachord melody begins its restatement at stanza 11 and after a long, sustained tone by the flute, the flute and vocalist share a moment of silence after the poet describes servitude to her instrument.96 After this the voice and flute perform together, but now the flute comments on the poetry, as what is probably the most traditional-sounding melody of the piece overlays the poet’s mention of “idylls of a foreign land” (今宵ゐ異國牧歌調候) in system 16. This section includes none of the chromatic movement of the singing melody that served to destabilize earlier references to mystery and transience, even though the final line of the poem mentions a “mysterious” foreign moon. Instead, pentatonicism is foregrounded (with a few ornamental non-pentatonic notes), and the flute takes the lead in this last section, even continuing after the text has ended. This section encompasses poetic stanzas 11 and 12 (music systems 15- 17, shown in Example 4.15). Beginning on the first C natural in system 15, the flute melody almost entirely resides within the y mode, a pentatonic mode derived from the combination of two conjunct min’y tetrachords. A scalar transcription of the y mode on C, and an organization of the same pitches as conjunct min’y tetrachords, is shown in Example 4.16 for comparison. Although Sugahara gives no explanation in any of his writings for his specific melodic choices, the melody here can be seen as a pertinent reminder of the poet’s (here meaning Fukao Sumako herself) location and point of view when she wrote this poem. Fuefuki me was most likely penned while Fukao was in France, or very soon after her departure from France to return to Japan. From her writings and the lengthy amount of time she spent in Europe, it is obvious that she quickly grew attached to, and perhaps even identified with, modern European culture and its music. So while the phrase “idylls from a foreign land” might indicate a non-Japanese style, it may also be pointing to traditional Japanese music, as the folk-like, pentatonic melody accompanying it could suggest. Perhaps Fukao is gazing with fondness at her homeland, though

96 Although the silence is not explicitly marked in the score, the graphic nature of the (mostly) bar-less staves suggests that the empty space between the end of a vocal line and the beginning of a flute melody (or vice versa) indicates a shared rest. Such moments are treated as rests by Manuela Wiesler and Ogawa Noriko in their recording of Fuefuki me on Bridges to Japan (CD; BIS 1059, 2000). 167 not resonating with its music as she was with the music of Europe. Perhaps Fukao establishes for the poem a speaker whose experience, like that of the poet herself, leads her to see Japan as most Europeans did at the time: a mysterious, exotic Other.97

Example 4.15. Fuefuki me, systems 15-17 (poetic stanzas 11-12).

Example 4.16. Japanese y scale on C.

Another possible reading is that the final pentatonic melody evokes only a façade of traditional music, the gloss of Japonisme with which Sugahara was undoubtedly familiar. This calls into

97 Aoyama Yuka suggests that Sugahara’s comment about this poem’s being “incoherent” is “undoubtedly due to Fukao's mixing her own hands-on life experience into the poem.” Aoyama, 26. 168 question whether or not the idylls, or perhaps even the “foreign land” from which they hail, exist at all, or are instead merely unattainable ideals. The mysterious “foreign moon” at the very end also suggests a connection between the pentatonic melody and a foreign country. Yet the remaining ambiguity calls attention to the similarities between modern French and Japanese music, and it forms a testament to Sugahara’s hybrid style. One has only to listen to the flute and vocal works of Debussy, Milhaud, or Honegger to hear similar sounds: for example, Honegger’s Chanson de Ronsard for voice, flute, and strings (1924), a piece about which Sugahara wrote very fondly, includes pentatonic melodies in the flute part that sound very similar to some of the phrases in Fuefuki me.98 Sugahara’s setting of Fuefuki me reflects Japanese interwar modernism in two major ways. The first lies in the poetry he chose to set; Fukao Sumako’s poetry, career, and outlook embody many of the ideals and aesthetics that Japanese modernists in other fields championed.99 The second is through the combination of styles within the song, which reflects the particular interests of its composer. Sugahara’s Fuefuki me presents a stark character which, when combined with an avoidance of leading tones, communicates a late-nineteenth- or early- twentieth-century French musical style, rather than the German Romanticism that had been popular with composers of ygaku since the 1890s. This reflects Sugahara’s interest in French music as well as his desire to move in an artistic direction that differed from that of the majority of his contemporaries. But it also seems that Sugahara effectively combined French and Japanese musical characteristics in such a way that the piece occupies both spheres simultaneously, employing effects common to both Japanese traditional flute genres and impressionistic French musical styles (which also demonstrates the ambiguity inherent in his source material).100 The work embodies a type of Japanese neoclassicism that speaks to Sugahara’s French contemporaries (themselves often considered “neoclassical”) as well as to his championing of

98 Sugahara first writes about Honegger’s Chanson de Ronsard in the essay “Mudai ni-sh” (Two Untitled Chapters), published in Gekkan gakufu in September 1936. In another article, “Oneggā no koto” (Of Honegger, Firuhāmonī, November 1942), Sugahara reaffirms his attraction to this piece in the midst of expressing at length his thoughts about Honegger’s music, career, and international reputation. 99 Here I am referring to progressive artists such as Murayama Tomoyoshi of the collaborative art group Mavo; architect Maekawa Kunio and his pursuit of a modern international design; and the experimental prose works of interwar authors such as Yokomitsu Riichi, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, and Hayashi Fumiko, which reflected the multiplicity of modern Japan through an amalgamation of inherited and assimilated styles and content in new compositional formats. 100 It would be interesting to compare the recitation-style vocal part of Fuefuki me with those of Sugahara’s other songs; unfortunately, none of Sugahara’s relatively few lieder have been commercially recorded, and even obtaining copies of the scores is very difficult, since they are all in manuscript. 169

Japanese traditional musics through the New Japanese Music movement. The ambiguity of sentiment in Fuefuki me might indicate the composer’s own balanced position between Japanese and Western music, as well as the restrained expressive style of gagaku, which Sugahara praised and sought to revivify in modern music.101

Conclusion

Despite his vast and varied oeuvre, his prominent teaching posts and successful students, his many collaborations with (arguably better-known) writers, conductors, composers, and performers, and the wealth of fascinating texts and opinionated writings on music that are all part of his legacy, Sugahara is still a figure who remains somewhat in the background of music history, in Western as well as Japanese scholarship.102 Yet in Japan, those scholars who have focused upon Sugahara identify him as the leader of the “modern French school” in Japanese composition during the early Shwa era, the composer who harmoniously combined Western and traditional Japanese musical elements. 103 One author has even called him a “rigorous maverick” and a strong-willed composer who walked a lone path in combining the idioms and instruments of the Western world with those of Japan.104 During the interwar era, Sugahara’s colleague and friend Horiuchi Keiz praised him as “a researcher of multiple classical musics who had no equal,” and compared his compositional skills to those of Ravel and Honegger.105 The same two threads run through all of these accounts of Sugahara. First, he broke the mold in ygaku composition by choosing to champion modern French composers and styles over German ones, a departure from the most famous Japanese predecessors of the previous generation (including Taki Rentar, Yamada Ksaku, and Nobutoki Kiyoshi). Second, his study

101 In his study of fin-de-siècle art and music in France, Roger Shattuck associates ambiguity with French modernism, especially in the music of Erik Satie. See Shattuck, The Banquet Years: the Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, reprint of revised edition (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 36-37. 102 For example, Sugahara receives very little mention in the introductory chapters of the first volume of Nihon sengo ongakushi (Japanese Music History after World War II; Heibonsha, 2007), despite the fact that other pre- World War II composers, such as Yamada Ksaku, receive much more coverage. Likewise, in recent English- language studies such as Bonnie Wade’s book Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), interwar composers such as Yamada and Miyagi Michio receive dozens of mentions, while Sugahara is completely excluded. 103 Katayama Morihide, “Gi-sha to modanisuto to aruchizan,” 3-4. 104 Akiyama Kuniharu, “Sugahara Meiro: Kokde kibishī m hitotsu no Nihon sakkyoku-kai• seishin-shi (ue)” (Sugahara Meir: One more Rigorous Maverick of the Japanese Composing Industry – Intellectual History, Part I), Ongaku Geijutsu (June 1988): 104-5. 105 Miyoshi Akira, “Rekishi no naka no hitosuji no oriito” (Weaving the Threads of History in a Line), in Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai (Unpublished booklet, 1997; Catalogue No. C62-265, Kunitachi College of Music), 18. 170 of Japanese classical genres led to some of the earliest fruitful combinations of Western and Japanese music by a Japanese composer. Even for these achievements alone, Sugahara should be recognized as a chief innovator in modern Japanese art music of the interwar era. One of the most common criticisms of pre-1945 Japanese creative activity focuses upon artists who indiscriminately imitated foreign models as a means of modernization; in music, this criticism is aimed at composers who directly imitated the Romanticism of Western Europe’s recent past, as well as composers who superimposed shallow, pan-Asian, exoticism over Western forms, and those who played up Japonisme in an effort to make their music appeal to an international audience.106 As a neoclassicist, Sugahara combined his knowledge of Western classical music and Japanese classical music and used elements of both within a modern Western framework to consciously engage traditions of the past without sacrificing his own integrity as a modern Japanese composer. Far from indiscriminate imitation and blatant exoticism, works such as Nainen kikan and Fuefuki me reflect years of research and scholarship. Sugahara’s music uses imitation, borrowing stylistic features from various historical and cultural genres. However, this imitation is guided by what Martha M. Hyde calls “metamorphic anachronism,” one method of implementing a neoclassic aesthetic.107 Through metamorphic anachronism, composers deliberately dramatize historical elements to confront and use the conflict of period styles self- consciously and creatively; Sugahara’s “BACH” section in Nainen kikan is one example of this deliberate dramatization. Metamorphic anachronism can also be used to recover or revive past models through an expulsion of intervening styles, rejecting an immediate past in favor of a more distant one; for example, Sugahara’s mix of modern French and classical Japanese elements in Fuefuki me eliminates the German Romanticism of many of his ygaku predecessors. Sugahara’s neoclassicism also resembles the traditionalist modernism of the poet Maekawa Samio in his mixture of Western modern and Japanese classical elements.

106 Helpful discussions of this use of exoticism by pre-World War II Japanese composers include the following sources: Rysuke, Shiina, "Contradictions of Modernism: Reading Matsudaira Yoritsune's Articles," Contemporary Music Review 17, No. 4 (1998): 17-30; Luciana Galliano, “Nationalism and Music,” in Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, transl. Martin Mayes (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002): 114-15; and Judith Ann Herd, “The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese Contemporary Music,” Perspectives of New Music 27, No. 2 (Summer 1989): 118-63. 107 Martha M. Hyde, “Neoclassic and Anachronistic Impulses in Twentieth-Century Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 18, No. 2 (Autumn 1996): 205. 171

During the early 1930s, Sugahara knew what Western neoclassicism entailed, and he recognized the First World War as a catalyst for European composers.108 Around the same time, he saw his own nation preparing for war, and he felt the pressure placed upon Japanese artists to create nationalistic works in support of the government; for him, this pressure resulted in prose statements of anti-Western sentiments.109 Yet Sugahara has also been recognized as a composer who worked in quiet protest of militarism and the music that supported it. His research of Japanese classical traditions contributed to the traditionalism that Japanese modernists in many fields incorporated. Mixing Japanese and Western elements, Sugahara made significant contributions to the artistic hybridity of the interwar era.

108 Sugahara Meir, “Konogoro no watashi no shinky” (My State of Mind in the Current Age), Gekkan gakufu (October 1932,); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz, 93. 109 Galliano, 115. 172

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MODERN GIRL AS ARTIST AND ACTIVIST: YOSHIDA TAKAKO

Yoshida Takako (1910-56) was a rarity among Japanese female musicians of the interwar era. After Western music became a fixture in Japanese education during the late nineteenth century, a number of middle- and upper-class Japanese women pursued ygaku as a hobby, especially as amateur vocalists or pianists. Moreover, teaching public school music courses or instructing privately became respectable professions for Japanese women by the 1900s. While Japanese urban areas during this time did not lack for female ygaku musicians, even by the early 1930s such a prolific, progressive, and outspoken female composer as Yoshida Takako was unheard of. Her music was published and recorded; she founded and conducted an orchestra; she supported left-wing artists in writing and song; and she published articles using polemical, animated language that implored composers to create innovative music. Unlike many of her male contemporaries in ygaku, Yoshida maintained a solid anti-war stance and progressive social outlook throughout the 1930s and 1940s, enduring multiple incarcerations as a result. In appearance and lifestyle Yoshida purposefully emulated the Modern Girl, an archetype that resisted traditional boundaries set for women. Yoshida adopted this image as she advocated for progressive Japanese art through journalism and protest. She supported music that reflected a constantly changing reality; in her own music, she incorporated elements of European, popular, and traditional styles to reflect her own reality. Using a historical framework depicting the modan gāru (Modern Girl) as an image and agent of Japanese interwar modernism, this chapter reveals Yoshida Takako to be a modernist in her music, writings, and social activism.

The Japanese Modan gāru as Modernist

Save for scholarship on the writings of Yosano Akiko and Hayashi Fumiko, whom I discussed in previous chapters, very few English studies exist on the art of pre-World War II female Japanese modernists. Yet there is another avenue for exploring the connection between modernist art and the progressive, politically active woman in interwar Japan. Groups such as Seitsha (Bluestocking Society) and the Shinfujin Kykai (New Woman Association) of the late 1910s and early 1920s gave way to a number of controversial female images, including the

173 suffragist, the socialist, a revised “good wife, wise mother” (rysai kenbo) ideology, and, most prominently, the Modern Girl.1 Apart from the writings of Japanese feminists, there was a discourse of feminine sexuality running through the texts of the historical avant-garde era in Japan and throughout the Western world. Jane Goldman has written that gender provides the metaphorical staging and basis for many of the wider concerns of modernist literature and culture, while Naomi Segal has argued that “the alienation from patriarchal discourse that belongs to its creative deviants is . . . after all the true avant-garde.”2 The modan gāru, a highly-commodified cultural construct crafted by journalists who debated her identity during the tumultuous decade following the Great Kant Earthquake of 1923, was a popular subject for this discourse. According to Miriam Silverberg, the Modern Girl was a “glittering, decadent, middle- class consumer who, through her clothing, smoking, and drinking, flaunts tradition in the urban playgrounds of the late 1920s.” She links the media creation of the Modern Girl to the growth in female employment and the new category of shokugy fujin (working woman), the rapidly growing numbers of white-collar employees who went to work in Western dress in areas such as Tokyo’s financial district, as well as brand-new jobs including bus conductors, café waitresses, elevator girls, and girls who handed out publicity for businesses—all jobs that required women, usually young women, to dress in a “modern” style.3 Most media depictions of the Japanese Modern Girl show a young woman clothed in fashionable Western dress and sporting a short haircut (often a close bob), often either smoking or drinking. As a symbol of modern mass consumption, the Modern Girl crossed gender, sexual, and cultural boundaries in her attire, behavior, and attitudes. In this sense, she is comparable to the third generation of U.S. “New Women,” who also emerged in the 1920s, and the interwar garçonne in France.4 Because the term modan (modern) was most frequently used in the 1920s as part of the compound modan gāru, the tendency to associate the term “modern” with an often negative

1 Dina Lowy, The Japanese “New oman”: Images of Gender and Modernity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 129. 2 Jane Goldman, Modernism, 1910-1945: Image to Apocalypse (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 20; Naomi Segal, “Sexual Politics and the Avant-Garde: from Apollinaire to Woolf,” in Visions and Blueprints: Avant-Garde Culture and Radical Politics in Early Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Edward Timms and Peter Collier (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 249. 3 Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 51, 66. 4 Lowy, 129. 174 gender stereotype was widespread. Cultural historian Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke (1892-1931) subtly injected the element of gender into his theory of modernity; in his view the consumer culture introduced as the superstructure of Japanese capitalism was dominated by images of “flapper modernism,” associated with “hairdressing, skirts, and movie actresses.” In his article “Hyaku pāsento moga” (One Hundred Percent Modern Girl, 1929), the critic ya Sichi sketched the “bob-haired, artificially made-up, consumeristic, parasitic, sensation-based and superficially intellectual” Modern Girl as a fiendish mix of shallow consumerism and manipulative sexuality. ya then countered this stereotype with an idealized picture of a female socialist activist, who, he states, is the true “Modern Girl.”5 In this way, ya’s essay fits a wider pattern in which cultural commentators of the 1920s were torn between depicting women as representative of Japan’s developing consumption-oriented society on the one hand, and as representative of the urban populace’s newfound political engagement on the other.6 For both depictions, the hybrid nature of the Modern Girl fit: she was neither reactively Japanese nor representative of the Meiji era’s forced Europeanization, but was instead, according to artist Kishida Ryūsei, a harmonious blend of international characteristics, one in which “Japan was not to lose its identity.”7 However, as an autonomous cultural producer/consumer, the Modern Girl was still a volatile figure in interwar Japan; she symbolized a threat to social stability, whether she was a political activist or a frivolous young urbanite.8 The Modern Girl appears often in Japanese modernist literature. Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s serialized novel Chijin no Ai (A Fool’s Love, 1924) follows salary-man Jji’s attempt to groom a Eurasian-looking girl, Naomi, to be a Westernized woman. In the process, the novel captures the sheer exhilaration of unprecedented material abundance, mobility, and diversity of experience available to Japan’s new middle class during the 1920s, which contributed to the novel’s popularity. The character Naomi seemed to breathe life into the newly minted concept of the Modern Girl.9 However, the narrative of Chijin no ai is filtered through the male gaze; Naomi is

5 ya Sichi, “Hyaku pāsento moga” (One Hundred Percent Modern Girl), Chū kron 1929; reprinted in ya Sichi zenshū, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Sysha, 1981), 10-17; quoted in William O. Gardner, Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 42-43. Translated by Gardner. 6 Silverberg, 59. 7 Ibid., 55. 8 Angela Coutts, “Imagining Radical Women in Interwar Japan: Leftist and Feminist Perspectives,” Signs 37/2 (Winter 2012): 327. 9 Gregory Golley, When Our Eyes No Longer See: Realism, Science, and Ecology in Japanese Literary Modernism (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 103-4. 175 mostly a passive figure, who serves as a canvas upon which others (mainly Jji) project their ideals of Westernization, progress, and decadence. A different portrayal of the Modern Girl is the protagonist of Hayashi Fumiko’s semi- autobiographical novel Hrki (Diary of a Vagabond, 1927). Hayashi’s protagonist is essentially a protean central character who seems compelled to enact with her own body every possible role available to women in the new, post-1923 city of Tokyo. Many of the identities with which the protagonist experiments can also be found among the most prominent media portrayals of girls and women in 1920s Japan. Juvenile delinquent, factory girl, café waitress, office worker, political radical, sexual rebel, writer—the “identities” the narrator tests in the course of the novel are precisely the subcategories that combined to form the contradictory media image of the Modern Girl.10 Aside from discussions of women’s changing appearance (hairstyles, clothes, makeup, physique), the two themes that dominate accounts of the Modern Girl are the rise of working women and the changing of sexual mores. Notably, these two themes—-work and sexuality—also dominate Hayashi’s Hrki. Moreover, the themes were deeply interconnected, both in Hayashi’s novel and more broadly in discussions of the Modern Girl.11 Hayashi tracks the protagonist as she performs a bewildering variety of labor roles, and tests various constructions of sexual and emotional relationships with men and women in a harsh urban environment in which both work and sexuality are commodities. By also sketching the protagonist on the verge of becoming a professional writer, she completes the circle of media- subject formation (begun by the mass media’s creation of the Modern Girl), opening the possibility that her heroine will shape the development of modernity through her role as a cultural producer.12 In stark contrast to Tanizaki’s Chijin no Ai, Hrki presents the Modern Girl as a self-defining female artist, fully capable of writing her own version of history.

Pre-World War II Japanese Female Composers

While female writers such as Yosano Akiko and Hiratsuka Raich were involved in social activism and, at least in some ways, lived the life epitomized by the Modern Girl ideal, most female composers steered clear of such associations. In fact, Japanese women who

10 William O. Gardner, Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 152. 11 Gardner, 148. 12 Ibid., 168. 176 composed music during the late nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries were known first and foremost as performers or teachers. Kda Nobu, one of the first graduates of the Tokyo Music School whom I mentioned in Chapter Two, is not known so much for her exceptional Violin Sonata of 1897 as she is for her role in educating her two most famous students, Taki Rentar and Yamada Ksaku. Another Tokyo Music School graduate, pianist Matsushima Tsuné (1890-1985), showed her conscious acceptance of creative activity by calling herself a composer—she wrote more than a thousand pieces, vocal and instrumental, chamber and orchestral.13 Yet Matsushima is better known for her 1929 book on piano performance technique, which is considered epochal for music pedagogy in Japan. Matsushima also performed, although she was reluctant to appear on the stage publicly.14 Some interwar Japanese female composers, such as Kanai Kikuko (1906-86) and Toyama Michiko (1913-2006), were not known mainly as teachers; however, they either composed most of their total output after World War II, or their circumstances kept them largely outside the mainstream of the male-dominated Tokyo music circles. Kanai regularly used Japanese folk elements in her music, including melodies, scales, and harmonic language associated with the musical idioms of her home in Okinawa. While other nationalistic composers adopted basic folk music elements common to many areas of Japan, Kanai's musical language, which was derived exclusively from the traditional music of one particular place, was personal and novel. Also novel was the fact that she married in 1932 and enrolled in composition at the Tokyo Music School a year later, with the full support of her husband.15 Yet Kanai composed most of her works after 1945, and today she is recognized as mainly a postwar composer. Toyama, on the other hand, began her study of music in Paris in 1930, and, with a developing interest in composition, she became a pupil of Nadia Boulanger in 1936. She submitted her piece Yamato no koe for soprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, and cello to the Fifteenth International Modern Music Festival in Paris (1937), where it won a prize, the first composition by a female Japanese

13 Matsushima composed children’s songs and more advanced vocal works (the texts for some of which came from Buddhist sutras), and instrumental works for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra. 14 Teruka Nishikawa attributes this reluctance to Matsushima’s father’s social attitudes. According to Nishikawa, Matsushima’s father was concerned that his daughter might develop a bad reputation, because for the older generations of Japanese at this time public music performance was associated with low social status. Teruka Nishikawa, “Four Recitals and an Essay: Women and Western Music in Japan, 1868 to the Present” (DMA thesis, University of Alberta, 2000), 41. 15 Ibid., 44-45. 177 composer to do so. However, the same piece would not be performed in Japan until 1993, evidence of Toyama’s status as an outsider in Japan’s compositional world.16

Life and Works of Yoshida Takako

In word and deed, Yoshida Takako proved to be much more ambitious than her female predecessors—indeed, even than most of her contemporaries in music in general. Yoshida lived a full life as a musician, composer, conductor, and writer. She was also one of the rare Japanese musicians who held fast to her anti-war beliefs throughout World War II, despite multiple arrests, while many other musicians cooperated with the government. She was the center of an extensive network of artist and writers, a network that was almost entirely made up of men. Yoshida was born in Tokyo in 1910 into the family of a high-ranking army officer. She started music lessons early in her childhood: she began koto lessons at age four and piano lessons at the age of twelve. In her teens Yoshida attended concerts at a variety of venues, including the Saturday concert series at the Tokyo School of Music and the New Symphony subscription concerts. At the age of nineteen, she officially began to study composition: she became a pupil of Kunihiko Hashimoto, to whom she was drawn because of his experimentation with European modernist elements in Japanese art song. At the same time, Takako studied harmony with Tamura Hirosada and piano with Paul Rosenstand, the latter of whom introduced her to the works of J. S. Bach, Chopin and the music of modern French composers.17 She also studied French at the Athénée Français, and attended lectures and activities at the Nanki Music Library in Azubu-Iikura.18 From the late 1920s, she composed incidental music for the Tokyo puppet theatre troupe Puk, and she participated in academic discussions at the Imperial School of Music

16 Nishikawa, 49-50. Toyama also studied with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud at the Paris Conservatory. She later enrolled at Columbia University in 1955 to study electronic music. In 1961, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, she established a studio for electronic music in Japan; however, according to Nishikawa, the electronic studio did not come to fruition because of problems with her collaborator in Japan. 17 Rosenstand’s dates are unknown; however, a pianist by the name of “Paul Rosenstand” (whose dates are also unknown) appears in the liner notes of many Japanese interwar recordings. If these two Rosenstands are one and the same person, then he contributed to many of the earliest recordings of Yamada Ksaku’s music; he also recorded many Western compositions in Japan during the 1930s. 18 The Nanki Music Library (Nanki Ongaku Bunko) was the first public music library in Japan. Founded in 1918 by Marquis Tokugawa Yorisada, the collection includes rare music manuscripts and associated literature from around the world. Although the library closed in 1931 due to financial difficulties, the collections have been preserved and are now hosted digitally on the Digital Nanki Auditorium Website: note.dmc.keio.ac.jp/music-library/. The Athénée Français is one of the oldest French language schools in Japan, established in 1913 in Ochanomizu, Tokyo. 178 and at the homes of prominent composers and performers, such as Sugahara Meir and pianist Kondo Hakujir (1900-32).19 Yoshida appeared every inch the Modern Girl. Pictures of her from the 1930s show a professional-looking woman smartly dressed in European clothes, with a short haircut and light makeup, almost always accessorized by a confident smile or stance. A photo of Yoshida is shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1. Yoshida Takako, c. 1936.20

19 Yoshida Takako, Yoshida Takako, ed. Kuritiiku 80 (In the series Gendai Nihon no sakkyokuka 2; Tokyo: Ongaku no sekaisha, 1993), 125. The aesthetic goals of La Pupa Klubo (an Esperanto phrase usually shortened to Puk), founded in 1929 by Kawajiri Toji, were based on freedom of expression and anti-war ideals. Puk’s early shows featured marionettes; however, the troupe soon enlarged its technical range, adapting hand puppetry, rod puppetry, shadow puppetry, Japanese traditional puppetry, and many other styles. The Puk troupe still performs monthly in Shinjuku, Tokyo; the group’s website provides more information: http://puppettheatrepuk. wordpress.com/. The troupe’s early experiments with Esperanto seem to have made an impression upon Yoshida, for she later named her own orchestra Kreo Muziko (Esperanto for “Creating Music”). 20 “Gakudan ssei jidai, Ginza ni te” (During the time of Gakudan Ssei, in Ginza). This image first appeared in Tsuji Hiromi, Sakkyokuka Yoshida Takako: kaite, koishite, kapposhite (Tokyo: Kyikushiry shuppankai, 2011), 34. Reproduction courtesy of Kyikushiry shuppankai; a copy of the permission letter from the publisher is included in Appendix A. 179

In her biography of Yoshida, Tsuji Hiromi wrote that modernist painters employed Yoshida as a model for depictions of the Modern Girl. Tsuji cites Kubo Mamoru’s (1905-92) untitled portrait from 1929 and Migishi Ktar’s (1903-1934) Shjo (Young Lady, 1932) as two examples.21 Yoshida left Hashimoto’s studio in 1931 to study with Sugahara Meir; around this time she published her first composition, the piano piece Canone.22 In a brief description of Canone published in the journal Ongaku sekai, Yoshida was granted a rare opportunity, as a female composer, to defend the formal and stylistic choices she made in her first published work. “The flow of my life, at one point, provided me with some form. A rhythm was beating unflaggingly, and started throbbing violently … but that brief expression flowed in flux to the rhythm of eternity,” she wrote. Canone was a sample of what Yoshida called “Italian neoclassicism” (Itaria no neo-kurashishizumu); its form, she affirmed, was the most rational choice for representing her expression of flowing time.23 At a little over two minutes of playing time Canone is indeed a very short composition, especially as a stand-alone work produced by a Japanese ygaku composer during the early 1930s.24 It has an ABA’ form and begins and ends in A minor. In order to emphasize the independence of the two parts, Yoshida staggered the bar lines in the score. The first three and a half bars are shown in Example 5.1 below.25

Example 5.1. Canone, mm. 1-3.5.

21 Tsuji Hiromi, Sakkyokuka Yoshida Takako: kaite, koishite, kapposhite (Tokyo: Kyikushiry shuppankai, 2011), 27-29. 22 Canone was published in the music scores appendix of the October 1931 issue of Ongaku sekai. 23 Yoshida Takako, “Watashi no sakuhin nit suite” (Concerning my Piece), Ongaku sekai (October 1931); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 61. 24 Playing time is based upon the recording of Canone included on Yoshida Takako seitan 100 nenkinen konsāto (Yoshida Takako Centenary Concert), CD (Recorded 5 December, 2010 at Kyūdkai Hall, Tokyo); included with Tsuji Hiromi, Sakkyokuka Yoshida Takako: kaite, koishite, kapposhite (Tokyo: Kyikushiryo shuppankai, 2012). 25 All score excerpts from Canone come from Yoshida Takako, “Canone,” Ongaku sekai (October 1931): 276-77. According to JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers), this score is in the public domain and requires no copyright authorization to be reproduced (email correspondence with the author, 19 May 2014). All measure numbers shown in the music examples of this chapter follow the top line of the score. 180

The beginning of the B section is marked by an accelerando, during which the piece becomes progressively more chromatic. The B section features more fluctuations of tempo than the A section, and the harmonic tritone at every phrase ending keeps the B section harmonically unstable. In her article on the piece, Yoshida remarked that the “clash of rhythms” between the left and right hand in this section should be emphasized, highlighting ascending chromatic sequences in both hands. The first eight and a half measures of the B section, which begins at m.8, are shown in Example 5.2 below.

Example 5.2. Canone, mm. 8-16.

181

The end of Canone also denies a typical harmonic resolution; although the final note (played by the left hand) is A, the last five measures simply repeat the first bar of the canon theme over and over. Yoshida characterized the end of the work as “a constant flow, a stream” that “fades away.”26 These final bars are shown in Example 5.3.

Example 5.3. Canone, mm. 30.5-36.

As Yoshida’s first published composition, Canone represents a bold first step into the Japanese contemporary art music scene. In its simplicity of form and texture, and its aversion to conventional cadences, Canone reflects Yoshida’s own aversion to the German Romantic-style works of contemporary mainstream Japanese composers, and her budding interest in modern French music, especially that of Erik Satie. Canone marks the first of many attempts by Yoshida to move Japanese ygaku away from what she termed the “opium” of music of the past by avoiding Romanticism and Impressionism.27 In its avoidance of the grandiose forms used by her male contemporaries, Canone reflects Yoshida’s aversion to the works of mainstream Japanese composers at the time. She discussed her dislike of such compositions in her first critical essay, “Myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron” (Essay about Music Journalism). Using the male pseudonym “Ban Takashi” Yoshida submitted “Myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron” to the journal Ongaku sekai in November 1931. The essay won a prize, and it

26 Yoshida, “Watashi no sakuhin nit suite,” reprint, 61-62. 27 Yoshida Takako, “Myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron,” Ongaku sekai (January 1932); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 62. 182 was subsequently published in the January 1932 issue of Ongaku sekai.28 Along with Yoshida’s hopes for young composers and new music, the essay is full of criticism of the Japanese music world at that time. It is also notable for its juxtaposition of short, poetic phrases with longer prose paragraphs, as well as an overall emphatic tone—almost a third of the essay’s sentences end in exclamation points. Yoshida begins her essay with an abrupt sentence: “‘Time’ flows.” She repeats this phrase several times throughout the piece, even employing it in her closing remarks, so that the phrase serves as a bookend for her essay. The constant movement of time was very important to Yoshida, evidenced by her need to explain Canone in its relation to time in her earlier article “Watashi no sakuhin ni tsuite.” One of her main points in “Myūjikku jānarizumu” is that music, like film, painting, literature, and theater in Japan, had to move with the “tide of the current era.”29 Yet the Japanese music world, in an effort to keep in step with the West, uncritically imitated and imported forms and styles. In doing so, musicians and audiences alike also imported, wholesale, the traditions of a foreign musical past, and they consequently became stuck in a foreign historical era. This was, as Yoshida wrote, “an audience and music world that covets laziness in the opium of Romantic music of the past (which is not in our past!).” According to Yoshida, there was no tradition of the past to be defended to the Japanese music world; there were also no mistakes of the past that had be wiped away or replaced. Instead, Yoshida encouraged her readers to focus on the future.30 Yoshida used Western music history, as well as the music of current, prominent Japanese composers—even her former teacher, Hashimoto—to make her point concerning current Japanese art music: The Romanticists reacted to the pressure of their surroundings; then Impressionists reacted as a backlash to Wagner. And yet the music world in Japan is still weighed down with them today. Take, for example, recent [Japanese] performances. First, [operas] Ayamé (1931) and Kurofune (1929) by Yamada Ksaku … Already, [Yamada] is a man of the previous era. A critique of his works can be summed up in one phrase: flattery by the Japanese of foreign objectives! Then, there is Mr. Hashimoto Kunihiko’s [ballet] Yoshida Goten (1931). This is basically a work from a leftover era (it’s a good excuse that it was written to order). The impression received from the symbolist work Yoshida

28 Tsuji Harumi states that this essay won “second place” in an unnamed contest run by Ongaku sekai at the time; however, no first place award was given (Tsuji, 23). 29 Yoshida Takako, “Myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron,” Ongaku sekai (January 1932); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 62. 30 Ibid., 62-63. 183

Goten is that it is modern in a bad sense. I forgive Yoshida Goten as symbolist poetry, but a modern sensitivity—even eroticism, even the grotesque—is not present.31

For Yoshida the music of contemporary Japanese composers, such as the pieces she mentioned by Yamada and Hashimoto, embodied no “euphoria.”32 She wrote that such euphoria could be achieved in music through its embodiment of the hybridity of modern Japan, by reflecting not only the traditional “wooden house” and “charcoal brazier” but also the modern business district of Marunouchi and the “frenzy” of Shinjuku in Tokyo.33 She also lamented that the more “progressive” composition groups, including the Proletarian Music League, had not yet received the press they deserved.34 As a prologue to the essay’s final section—an emphatic call for action by young Japanese composers—Yoshida offered the following charge: Young composers! [Create] our music! [Create] current music! The music of bread that can be eaten! The music that can dwell within us! Step forward, go lead this generation!35

Even without the following paragraphs these poetic lines aptly convey Yoshida’s main concerns. She closed by encouraging young composers to use available media outlets (such as newspapers, monthly journals, and recordings) as weapons in the fight for new and original Japanese music, and reminded them once again that “time flows; the wheel goes around … . The difficult struggle of young composers begins in the days ahead.”36 Yoshida’s efforts on behalf of new and innovative music would continue to be a major topic in her writings throughout the 1930s.37 She encouraged Japanese composers to write music that did not conform to any traditional or nationalistic molds. Closely related to this were her writings about “Japanese-ness” in music and dance, and realism in art and music.

31 Yoshida, “Myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron,” reprint, 64. 32 Ibid., 64. 33 Ibid., 65. 34 Ibid., 66. 35 Ibid., 67. 36 Ibid., 69. 37 Yoshida discussed this topic at length in such articles as “Omoitsuku mama ni: Bychū dokushokan” (Ongaku Sekai, September 1934), “Geijutsuteki kijun no mondai” (Ongaku Sekai, February 1936), “‘Atarashī naiy to minzokuteki dent’ ni tsuite no hashirigaki” (Ongaku Sekai, January 1940). 184

By the mid-1930s Yoshida had become active in various music organizations. She joined the Proletarian Music League (PM) in 1932, and quickly became one of the League’s most prominent composers. In 1935, Takako joined the Nihon Gendai Sakkyokuka Renmei (Contemporary Japanese Composer’s Federation), the name that the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei had adopted that year. In the same year, she joined Fukai Shir’s Concerts Bijoux and had a major hand in organizing the ensemble’s Bach Festival (commemorating the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach’s birth) in June. Yoshida’s time in Concerts Bijoux was short-lived, however. In December 1935, wanting to take her vision of a progressive art music ensemble in a different direction, Yoshida formed Kreo Muziko (Esperanto for “Creating Music”), with the help of a dozen of her colleagues in music and other fields, including her teacher Sugahara and arts-collaborative Mavo founder, Murayama Tomoyoshi (1901–77).38 Yoshida served as director and conductor of the orchestra, which gave a total of five concerts between 1936 and 1939 at various venues, including the Tsukiji Little Theater.39 Kreo Muziko mainly performed the works of contemporary Japanese and Western composers (including Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Yoshida), but it also included an eclectic assortment of older works, as well, such as Renaissance composer Clément Janequin’s chanson La guerre.40 Yoshida also worked as a translator and arranger for some of the Western compositions featured on the programs. At a time when female orchestral musicians were unheard of in Japan, Yoshida Takako was conducting her own orchestra. During the 1930s, Yoshida’s music was featured in a number of recitals and theatrical works. Between 1936 and 1940, she conducted her own music that was featured in Japanese translations of Goethe’s Faust and Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber, staged by Murayama Tomoyoshi’s Shinkygekidan (New Cooperation Theater Company), an avant-garde theatre troupe known for its modernist performances of works with proletarian and anarchic

38 Playwright, visual artist and novelist Murayama Tomoyoshi is by far one of the most famous personages associated with Japanese interwar modernism. For more information on his work and the work of his group MAVO, see Gennifer Weisenfeld, MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). In some sources, Kreo Muziko is also called “Gakudan Ssei” (Orchestra Creation) in Japanese; however, the ensemble’s concert programs used “Kreo Muziko.” 39 Tsuji, 38-40. The Tsukiji Little Theater was a veritable hotbed of proletarian and anti-war activity, as well as the site for multiple mass-arrests of those suspected of having committed “thought crimes” for Communist or anarchist sympathies. 40 Janequin’s chanson was performed during Kreo Muziko’s third concert on December 15, 1938. Tsuji, 42. 185 tendencies.41 She also created incidental music for the premiere of Kubo Sakae’s (1900-58) landmark socialist-realist drama, Kazanbaichi (Land of Volcanic Ash, 1938). The lengthy play, which describes the struggles of a reform-minded intellectual in the Hokkaido countryside, is based on actual events surrounding the famine of 1934. In the introduction to his English translation of the drama, David Goodman claimed that “no work of modern Japanese drama has had greater impact than Land of Volcanic Ash.”42 More has been written about it than about any other modern Japanese dramatic work.43

Proletarian Music League and Social Activism

Despite periodic illness from chronic peritonitis and pulmonary tuberculosis, Yoshida maintained a high degree of independence throughout her life, even through multiple stays in prison. As a member of the Proletarian Music League she was arrested four times between 1933 and 1940 for thought crimes in violation of the Public Security Preservation Law.44 As mentioned in Chapter Two, the Proletarian Music League (PM) was created in 1929 by musicians from two different organizations, the Union of Avant-Garde Artists and the Japanese League for Proletarian Arts. It was an entirely voluntary organization, and many of the musicians who were involved published articles and reports about their activities in Ongaku Sekai and published essays and scores in Gekkan gakufu. Their activities were heavily censured by the government, and their scores were frequently confiscated. In 1934, the group was forcibly disbanded.45 However, all the composers who were active in the PM continued to have normal careers as composers. Luciana Galliano claims that the best music produced by these composers

41 Nayoung Aimee Kwon, “Translated Encounters and Empire: Colonial Korea and the Literature of Exile” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2007), 128. 42 Kubo Sakae, Land of Volcanic Ash, revised edition, transl. David Goodman (Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1993), 3. 43 Goodman quotes from Abe Itaru, an “unsympathetic critic,” who wrote: “its reputation as the finest realistic drama of the prewar period … is firmly established.” Kindai gekibungaku no kenkyū (fūsha, 1980), 195; translated and quoted by Goodman, 3. 44 The 1925 Public Security Preservation Law (Chian Iji H) was enacted in an effort to ward off socialism, communism, and anarchism. As one of the most significant laws of Imperial Japan, it stated that anyone who formed or joined an association that attempted to a) alter the kokutai, or b) alter the system of private property, would be liable to imprisonment for ten years or less. Given that the term kokutai is a politically-loaded term that blends politics and ethics, the result was that any political opposition could be branded as “altering the kokutai.” Kokutai can be translated into English as “sovereign,” “national identity; national essence; national character,” or “national polity; body politic; national entity.” 45 Galliano, 118. 186 was undoubtedly that by Yoshida Takako.46 As a leader in protest activities, Yoshida also served in executive positions within the PM Tokyo branch beginning in late 1933. The League presented five concerts of revolutionary songs with great success, at least one of which included Yoshida’s 1932 song Kuwa (The Hoe).47 The group also published four LPs of their most important compositions, which included Yoshida’s music. Even though it meant severing connections with her family, and with the knowledge that she was exposing herself to public criticism, Yoshida was determined to devote herself to the Proletarian Music League.48 The cost was great, however. By joining the PM, Yoshida isolated herself not only from her family but from the circle of music colleagues who had nurtured her creativity until then, as well as from her teacher, Sugahara.49 In one essay, Yoshida recalled the dispute between fellow musicians on pursuing music outside of academic circles: “‘There is no music out there—are you throwing away the music?!’ ‘No, no, music is the place where we must blaze out a new way’; the dispute raged; in those days, I had to turn away from close friends and teachers …”50 There were, however, people who stood by Takako in protest, including her first husband and fellow Puk puppet-theater founder, Takayama Sadaaki.51 In late February 1933, Yoshida composed a song in memoriam for the death of Kobayashi Takiji, a proletarian author and member of the Japanese Communist Party, who had been beaten to death at the Tsukiji police station earlier that month.52 The events surrounding his brutal death enraged Japanese leftist groups, who converged on the Tsukiji Little Theater in March to hold a public memorial service and protest; the organizers of the service were arrested beforehand, however, and many attendees were also taken into custody. Despite this, a similar meeting was held in August in Tsukiji, this

46 Galliano, 119. 47 Yoshida’s song Kuwa debuted at the fourth Proletarian Music League concert in March 1932. Tsuji, 31. 48 Nishikawa, 47. 49 Tsuji, 31. 50 Yoshida Takako, Search for Music (no page number provided); quoted in Tsuji, 31. 51Takako and Sadaaki were married in the autumn of 1932; they divorced only two years later. 52 The death of Kobayashi Takiji (1903-33) became a major chronological marker for pre-World War II Japan’s escalating militarism and government control, signaling the end of the Japanese proletarian arts movement. On February 20, 1933, lured to a rendezvous by a police undercover agent, Kobayashi walked into a trap. At the Tsukiji Police Station, he was tortured and beaten unconscious when he refused to divulge what he knew of the Communist party; he died at a nearby hospital less than six hours after his arrest. When news of his death was released the next day, the police identified cause of death as a heart attack, and sent the official inquiry regarding the disposition of the body not to his mother in Tokyo but to relatives in Hokkaido on the technicality that Hokkaido was his domicile. This enraged the Tokyo leftist community, who protested until the body was released to his immediate relatives. Although it was obvious from the bruises, welts, and abrasions on the body that Takiji’s death had not been natural, an autopsy was never carried out—the medical schools refused outright, due to fear of government censure. 187 time in outright protest of Japan’s escalating militarism. Takayama accompanied Yoshida to the meeting, where they were both taken into custody.53 Yoshida condemned the nationalist propaganda that dominated almost every concert and musical event in the 1930s. Starting in the early 1930s, the police began to arrest musicians; raids on the offices of left-wing music associations increased so much that several times a month premises would be totally ransacked, all documents confiscated, and all those present arrested and held in prison for up to a month. The composers who were members of the Proletarian Music League were particularly subject to harassment, and in 1934, PM was forcibly closed down.54 Although most of Yoshida’s prison stays were brief, in 1940 she was finally sent to prison for what was to be an extended stay. She was freed after six months, however, due to an extreme flare-up of her chronic peritonitis; Sugahara acted as her sponsor when she was released. Afterward, she was unable to continue her anti-war protests and was in fact bed-ridden until 1945; she heard the news of the end of World War II from her sickbed.55 After the war, Yoshida returned to her creative activities. Unlike numerous others who had participated in pre-war left-wing organizations, she did not succumb to tenk, the ideological conversion discussed in Chapter Two. During the ten years prior to her death she wrote mainly vocal works, in which she often set anti-war texts.

Overview of Yoshida’s Music and Writings

Yoshida Takako’s musical output consists of ten pieces for the stage, including music for ballet and theater; chamber works for piano and strings, including an intricate three-movement violin sonata (1952); and more than twenty-five vocal works, for which she set Japanese translations of European poetry, and the poetry of Japanese proletarian and feminist authors. The anti-war poem “Kimi shi ni tamou koto nakare” (Brother, Do Not Give Your Life) by feminist Yosano Akiko served as inspiration for Yoshida’s unfinished opera of the same name.56 Besides

53 “Yoshida Takako (1910-1956) kanren nenpy” (Yoshida Takako [1910-1956] Related Chronology), in Yoshida Takako, 126. 54 Galliano, 120. 55 Nishikawa, 48. 56 Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) was a pioneering feminist, pacificist, and social reformer. She is also one of the most famous and most controversial modern female poets of Japan, notable for her tankas. She published more than twenty volumes of poetry and at least eleven volumes of prose. Her tanka poems are usually noted for their explicit sexual themes and individualism. Her poem “Mountain Moving Day” (1911), in which she compared women's creativity to a volcano, was embraced and used by many women during the height of the postwar Women's Movement in the U.S. 188

Yosano, Yoshida set poetry by a number of other female poets, including tsuka Naoko, Nakano Suzuko, and Got Ikuko, the last of whom was one of the few recognized Japanese female poets of the interwar proletarian movement.57 Yoshida’s music is characterized by a well-developed sense of melody; Galliano claims that she was untainted by contemporary nationalist trends, perhaps due in part to her aversion to Nihonteki narumono (“Japanese-ness”); she did, however, occasionally use traditional Japanese melodies. She also displayed a certain flair for theater that is evident in works such as Nomi No Uta (Song of the Flea, 1936), one of a set of songs that Yoshida composed for performances of Goethe’s Faust.58 In the freely inventive style that characterized her instrumental writing—such as that heard in Seinen No Uta (Song of the Youths, 1933), for two violins—she moved away from the late-Romantic German style so prevalent in the ygaku of interwar Japan, which, by the mid-1930s, was represented by the large orchestral works and operas of Yamada Ksaku.59 Yoshida was also a prolific prose writer; more than four dozen of her articles appeared between 1931 and 1954. She also edited and published a collection of Mussorgsky’s music. After World War II, Yoshida compiled a number of her own essays into the book Ongaku no tankyū (Search for Music, 1949, revised 1956).60 In her writings, Yoshida repeatedly touches upon the themes of creativity in new music, her aversion to overt nationalism, and the future of Japanese composers. As discussed in Chapter Two, the concept of “Japanese-ness” in music was a hot topic in the 1930s. Yoshida waded into the Nihonteki narumono debate bravely with her article “‘Atarashī naiy to minzoku-teki dent’ ni tsuite no hashirigaki” (“Scribblings on ‘Ethnic Heritage and New Content’”), arguing that no music—Japanese or otherwise—should be ruled out as inspiration for new music. In this article, Yoshida railed against her contemporaries in

57 tsuka Naoko (1875-1910), Nakano Suzuko (1906-58), and Got Ikuko (dates unknown). 58 Given Yoshida’s preoccupation with the music of Modest Mussorgsky, it is not surprising that her setting of “Song of the Flea” is similar to Mussorgsky’s 1878 setting in Russian of Goethe’s text. However, instead of being written for low voice and piano—Mussorgsky’s original setting was for contralto, although most contemporary performances are by baritones or basses—Yoshida’s Nomi no uta is written for soprano and guitar. Other differences are apparent in the vocal melody of Nomi no uta, and in the effects that Yoshida employs in the vocal part. For example the A melody in Yoshida’s setting is pentatonic, and she incorporates effects such as glissandi, pitch- bending and speech-singing throughout the song. While the last technique is also used in Mussorgsky’s setting (and the degree of its application varies from performer to performer), speech-singing, extended sections of ad libitum unaccompanied laughing, and speech-like recitation are more prominent in Yoshida’s setting. A recording of Nomi no uta is available on the Yoshida Takako Centenary Concert CD. 59 Galliano, 119. 60 Ongaku no tankyū (Search for Music), Shinzenbisha, 1948 (rev. ed. Tokyo: Rironsya, 1956). The origin of Yoshida’s interest in Mussorgsky relates to Mussorgsky’s reputation as a composer who was inspired by the music and history of his own country. Yoshida mentions Mussorgsky in a number of her articles. 189

Japan who had felt the need to write “superficial Orientalism” and “exoticism” into their music as a way to appear more Japanese to an international audience.61 At the same time, she held up Miyagi Michio and Yamada Ksaku (but only his more intimate early works) as examples of composers who appropriately fused Western and Japanese elements that resulted in new, creative forms and content. She argued that the simple act of Japanese composing creates “Japanese” music; there are no specific stylistic requirements, although she does state that In our musical creations—composition, performance—we always hope to reflect the form of life advancing with the times!! We seek to explore this truth of life with passionate devotion. And yet … only those who accomplish [the] systematic, critical process of working through the treasure trove of all preceding art ranging from classic to modern, and only by sincerely learning the best portions of expressive techniques stored therein, can one become a creator of music of the new realism.62

Throughout her career, Yoshida wrote about how to define and create “Japanese” music.63 This topic was treated by many Japanese composers, often in tandem with a discussion of realism in art and music. Some of Yoshida’s articles and essays deal almost exclusively with realism, although most of the time she interwove that theme into writings on a variety of related topics (as she did in the aforementioned “Scribblings on ‘Ethnic Heritage and New Content’”).64 In a 1936 article titled “Jitsushin no watashi” (My Reality), Yoshida discussed realism in relation to another topic close to her heart—herself. In “My Reality,” Yoshida brought together the various elements that comprised her reality at that time: issues of realism in music and art, the Proletarian movement, criticism of her works, and her life as a female composer. She described her personal quest for the truth of art, which she admitted was not at all easy. Early in the article, she used the plural to speak for collective music realist composers and realists in other arts (including Russian author Mikhail Sholokhov in literature and Sakae Kubo in theater), and their

61 Yoshida Takako, “‘Atarashī naiy to minzoku-teki dent’ ni tsuite no hashirigaki” (Scribblings on “Ethnic Heritage and New Content”), Ongaku sekai (January 1940); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 81. 62 Yoshida, “‘Atarashī naiy to minzoku-teki dent’ ni tsuite no hashirigaki,” reprint, 79. The double exclamation point appears in Yoshida’s original text. 63 See, for example, Yoshida’s articles “Wareware no tokoro ni atta mono: buy to Nihon ongaku no mondai” (Buy Shinch, June1935), “Atarashī naiy to minzoku-teki dent” (Jiyū, December 1937), “‘Nihonteki’ sakkyoku to mhitotsu no mono” (Ongaku shinbun, January 1940), and the essay that she used as the introduction of her book, “Riarizumu ongaku no tankyū ichi tsuide ni kaete” (Ongaku no tankyū, 1948). 64 Articles in which Yoshida focused on realism include “Ongaku ni okeru anarīze no mondai (2): Ongaku ni okeru riarizumu ni tsuite no tsuide to shite” (Gekkan gakufu, October 1935) and “Ongaku no riarizumu ni tsuite no kans” Parts 1 and 2 (Gekkan gakufu, December 1936 and January 1937). 190 goal to embody fully the “significance of depicted reality.”65 But later, the article turned much more personal: [My experience of] domestic oppression, the unequal treatment of boys and girls, began at the same time as my reliance entirely on my own awareness of things around me. As a common case … freedom of study was given to my big brother, but because I was a woman, I was oppressed … I found an outlet in the covert study of music composition.66

It is here that Yoshida connected herself to an international women’s movement. Referring to the French garçonne later in this paragraph, she framed her own experience as part of the female rebellion against men in capitalist society while also calling attention to contradictions that she perceived between the “trendy, contemporary sound” of the term garçonne and the reality of the modern woman’s plight regarding inequality. She also cites her composition Canone as the embodiment of that contradiction.67She later mentioned specific criticism her works had received, and she fought back: The naysayers who say “dilettantism is represented in the work” [and] “I want to say that Ms. Yoshida Takako’s piece ‘Life’ is entirely a work of failure. As a musician, she has become the sacrifice of her own worldview” … are these not critical attitudes tending to dilettantism of a sort?68

Towards the end of the article, Yoshida described her new collaborators, the members of Kreo Muziko, as serious, artistic, and studious musicians, each of whom drew upon his or her own life experiences for inspiration. These musicians would help Yoshida to get her works—and the works of other realists—performed, an integral part of Yoshida’s main artistic goals: “to draw reality more accurately through our view of the world.”69 Although her writing was not necessarily a breakthrough for female Japanese composers in journalism, Yoshida divulged personal thoughts on her own history and artistic outlook and fought back against her critics, defending specific pieces of her music as representative of her personal quest for musical realism. In particular, she defended her songs from the Japanese adaption of Faust (including Nomi no uta, Song of the Flea) and her song Seikatsu (Life) as examples of musical realism. Along with concerns regarding innovative music, Japanese-ness, realism and the proletarian movement, the topic of female Japanese musicians is another leitmotif in Yoshida’s

65 Yoshida Takako, “Jitsushin no watashi” (My Reality), Ongaku kurabu (September 1936): 50-51. 66 Ibid., 51. 67 Yoshida, “Jitsushin no watashi,” 51. 68 Ibid., 53. 69 Ibid., 54. 191 writings. Although most of her writings focusing on women and music date from after World War II, her article “Joryū sakkyokka o kataru” (Talking about Female Composers, Wakakusa September 1934) and entries from her personal memoirs attest to her earlier preoccupation with this subject. Her 1949 book Ongaku no tankyū (Search for Music) includes several of her critical essays on the regrettable situation of women composers in Japan. Yoshida also published articles not directly related to female topics in women’s journals during the 1930s; in those she discussed music criticism, progressive music and ensembles, and her own compositions. Throughout her life, Yoshida felt a strong sense of mission to fight against the prevailing social climate in Japan, specifically against the biases and restrictions that many female musicians endured. Yoshida was publishing articles on this topic as early as 1933, and her personal memoirs include fiery recollections of personal frustrations as a female composer and as a woman in general.70 Concerning her time as Hashimoto’s student, she wrote, With Hashimoto, artistic issues do not matter, they remain unresolved. Meanwhile, frustration with gender inequality merely amounts to a phenomenological backlash. I have the right to enjoy love, just like a man. The maidenhood of woman is an insult to women. Throw such a thing in the gutter. As a person, I can have equality with “man”! Meanwhile, give us the freedom [of academic] study!71

In her book Ongaku no tankyū, Yoshida wrote of Japanese women composers, “[A female composer's task] is to depict the pain, anger, joy, and sadness of females who have been neglected and oppressed in the short history of western music in Japan, despite their abilities.”72 As an early means of combating this oppression, Yoshida published some of her articles using a male pseudonym to achieve equality in print with her male counterparts.73In her biography of Yoshida, Tsuji Hiromi points out that the opportunity and place for women to speak freely in music magazines had not yet manifested at this time in Japan.74

70 Yoshida Takako, “Joryū sakkyokka o kataru” (Talking about Female Composers), Wakakusa (September, 1934). 71 Yoshida, autograph memo, page unknown; quoted in Tsuji, 23. 72 Yoshida Takako, Ongaku no tankyū (Search for Music) (Tokyo: Rironsha, rev. 1956), 42; quoted in and translated by Nishikawa, 47. 73 The aforementioned “Honp sakkyoku-kai, oyobi sore ni fuzui seru myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron” (Ongaku sekai, January 1932); “Daiyonkai PM ongakkai o tsūjite, puroretaria ongaku und e no ichi shaken: aruiwa, ichi ongaku gakusei no seinen ongakuka ni okurukotoba” (Through the First Four PM Concerts, and an Opinion on the Proletarian Music Movement: or, Words to give to Young Musicians from a Music Student, Ongaku sekai, May 1932); and “Ongaku ni okeru ssaku hh no mondai” (Problems of Creation Methods in Music, Parts I and II, Puroretaria ongaku, March-April 1933). 74 Tsuji, 25. 192

In “Joryū ens-ka ni nozomu koto” (Hope to Female Musicians), Yoshida looks back on several decades of Japanese music history, reflecting on the struggles of female musicians to make a place for themselves in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. She explains that despite the many extremely talented female performers who had emerged in Japan since the late nineteenth century, the number of confident, outspoken, and creative female musicians—mainly composers and critics—was still regrettably low. She referred to the pioneering performances of Kda Nobu and her sister, violinist Ando K (1878-1963) who, despite enthusiastically entering the volatile arena of ygaku performance, were “burdened by the mark of the historically inexperienced Japanese music world, which was lagging far behind global music standards.”75 Yoshida blamed this burden for the tragedy of Kuno Hisa (1886-1925), a pianist who studied with Emil von Sauer in Europe. After von Sauer explained that her Japanese musical training was not up to international standards and that she would have to start over with piano fundamentals, she committed suicide.76 But even these female musicians, who studied outside of Japan (at a time when it was still rare for men to do so), were not the ambitious creators of new music that Yoshida was seeking. “A true artist needs to forge new paths,” she wrote, “when the time comes for big changes in this era, I have high hopes for gifted female musicians to blaze a new and unique path. Moreover, I cannot help hoping that many female composers and critics will also emerge.”77 Some of the themes Yoshida wrote about in her essays and articles also emerge in her music and are reflected in her choice of text for a song, particular melodies she arranges, or a piece’s harmonic language and overall form. One of Yoshida’s earliest songs, Ponchi ponchi no saramawashi (Juggler of Twirling Plates, baritone voice and piano, 1931), portrays the balance of Japanese and Western elements that Yoshida advocated in “Scribblings on ‘Ethnic Heritage and New Content’.” The poem, written by Japanese modernist author and dramatist Nakamura Masatsune (1901-1981), a master of nonsense humor, represents some of his more nihilistic verses. On the surface, this piece seems to be heavily inspired by early-twentieth-century European song, an influence that appeared in songs by Yoshida’s two main teachers, Hashimoto Kunihiko and Sugahara Meir. More evidence of her indebtedness to Hashimoto also shows in

75 Yoshida Takako, “Joryū ens-ka ni nozomu koto” (Hope for Female Musicians; Fujin bunko, July 1949); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 99. 76 Yoshida, “Joryū ens-ka ni nozomu koto” reprint, 99. 77 Ibid., 102. 193 her use of free declamation and a Sprechstimme-like vocal style in the middle portion of Ponchi ponchi no saramawashi; this style was made famous in Japanese composition circles during the late 1920 in part by Hashimoto’s songs Kabi (Mold) and Hanmy (Beetle).78 But as musicologist Komiya Tamie has written about this piece, not everything is as it seems: “Everything that appears to be decorated with [Western] modernism at first glance can, in fact, be explained based on the techniques of traditional Japanese music, which are employed almost unconsciously by the composer.”79 Komiya Tamie called attention to chromaticism and stretta, which, while common to Western music, are actually in this song a fusion of Western and Japanese song elements. In the same way, Yoshida’s use of Phrygian harmony in this song allows for melodic lines based upon a Japanese miyakobushi scale.80 Yoshida’s use of elements common to both traditional Japanese music and Western modernist music demonstrates hybridity and the creative “third space” (to use Homi Bhabha’s term) that such hybridity constructs. But unlike Komiya Tamie, I believe that Yoshida was conscious of the new space that she created through her music’s stylistic multivalence; such a space reflected the tensions she experienced (and wrote about) as a female ygaku composer. Support for the Proletarian movement and her quest for artistic realism found an outlet in several of Yoshida’s compositions, including Seinen no uta (Song of the Youths) for two violins (1933). Much of Yoshida’s activism manifested itself musically in song; for example, she set anti-war texts by female poets Yosano Akiko (the aforementioned Kimi shi ni tamou koto nakare, 1949) and tsuka Naoko (Ohyakudomde, 1953), and her song Kuwa (The Hoe, 1932) sets a text by female Proletarian poet Nakano Suzuko. Seinen no uta stands apart from these other works in that it is an instrumental piece, yet it conveys a message of activism through its quotation of two contemporary proletarian anthems, “Tej odori” (Shackles Dance) and “Dshiyo kataku musube” (Bind up Firmly, Comrade). This work is political and an example of the musical realism that Yoshida supported. For its premiere at a Proletarian League concert, Seinen no uta was originally

78 Although I have not found any direct references to Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire in Japanese sources relating to Hashimoto Kunihiko, Schoenberg’s music was widely known in Japanese intellectual music circles during the interwar era, beginning in the mid-1910s. Articles about Schoenberg appeared in issues of Ongaku to bungaku, and Sugahara touched upon Schoenberg’s music in some of his interwar articles. Hashimoto even studied with Schoenberg in Los Angeles sometime between 1935 and 1937. 79 Yoshida Takako, 151. 80 Ibid., 151. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to acquire a copy of the score of this piece; however, a recording of Ponchi ponchi no saramawashi is included on In the Land of the Rising Sun: Songs by Japanese Women Composers, CD (ALCD-7134; Alm Records, 2000). 194 supposed to be sung by a vocalist; however, the work was adapted for two violins at the last minute, due to censorship.81 Yet it sounds more experimental and progressive than Yoshida’s ideologically charged songs because of its jarring dissonances beneath folk-inspired modal melodies, which are juxtaposed with sections of stark unison in an overall episodic form. The quoted themes sound aggressive and distorted; Komiya described the execution of the “Shackles Dance” theme as violent.82 Yoshida’s use of popular—or “populist,” a more fitting term in this case—contemporary melodies in her compositions certainly reflects the reality of her time and place; more importantly, however, the realism of such works as Seinen no uta emerges in the aesthetic challenge that the music poses to the artistic, and political, establishment.

Conclusion

In her music and writings, Yoshida radiated a progressive and pioneering attitude. She regularly sought out creative collaborators; when existing ensembles failed to meet her needs, she created her own orchestra. The innovative nature of her early works, such as Canone, attest to her pioneering spirit as a modernist composer actively breaking away from contemporary mainstream practices in ygaku. And even though she spoke out against Nihonteki narumono, she found harmonious ways to meld Japanese and Western idioms in her music, such as the fusion of styles that characterizes Ponchi Ponchi no saramawashi. She mixed politically charged music, socialist realism, and progressive harmonies in such works as Seinen no uta. Yet her individualism, one of her most prominent modernist traits, is best expressed by the fact that she neither yielded to political pressure and tenk, nor did she adopt nationalistic tendencies before or during World War II. Even though she was imprisoned and subsequently suffered years of illness, Yoshida maintained her progressive and pacifist views. She never allowed her personal tribulations to prevent her active involvement in the Japanese music world during the last ten years of her life; she was so active after the War, in fact, that many of those closest to her criticized her over-activity as uncouth.83 In her often-cited essay “Modern Girl as Militant,” Miriam Silverberg repeatedly stresses that the “real” Japanese modan gāru was an economically and sexually autonomous woman who

81 Yoshida Takako, 149. 82 Ibid., 148. A recording of Seinen no uta is available on the Yoshida Takako Centenary Concert CD. 83 Sugahara Meir, “Semete ato jū-nen” (At Least Ten Years Later), Kuritiiku 80 Concert Program (14 September, 1981); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 52. In this essay Sugahara also expresses the concern he felt for Yoshida’s welfare at the time, since he was one of the only people who knew how ill she had been since her last incarceration. 195 defined her own reality and who resisted traditional boundaries set for women. Yoshida Takako lived this reality, writing about it in journals and newspapers and advertising it through the performances and publication of her music. In the case of Yoshida, Silverberg’s real Modern Girl—the self-defining woman activist—became the self-defining woman artist as well. Unlike so many of her male colleagues, Yoshida stood by her beliefs and remained outspoken before, during, and after World War II. Through music and writing, Yoshida supported the creation of progressive music, Japanese music created by Japanese composers that toed no party line but reflected each composer’s own reality. She used contemporary European musical materials as well as the textures and scales of Japanese music to tell her own story, that of a Japanese female composer who strived to make a difference in her society.

196

CONCLUSION

My discussions of specific composers, their works, and their musical milieu between 1905 and 1937 provide a preliminary study for conceptualizing Japanese ygaku as a product of modanizumu, modernism, as it was practiced in Japan during the interwar era. The outlook of the composer is the most important facet of this concept. During the interwar era, Japanese modernism primarily manifested in the theories and methodologies discussed by composers in books, journal articles and memoirs, and through the exchange of ideas between composers and modernists in other fields. The three composers whom I covered in my case studies all had international outlooks: Yamada acted as an unofficial musical and artistic ambassador as he established connections and collaborated with musicians and artists outside of Japan; Sugahara was drawn to contemporary French music as well as older Western and Japanese styles for inspiration; and Yoshida saw herself as part of an international female and proletarian movement. These composers also shared a determination to create music that was new and that reflected its era. This sometimes meant revising the old, in the case of Sugahara’s neoclassical Nainen kikan and Yoshida’s Canone (which Yoshida described as “Italian neoclassicism”). It could also mean incorporating a newly-codified “Japanese style” in the music of a brand-new genre, such as the Japanese elements that Yamada incorporated in his choreographic poems. Yamada, Sugahara and Yoshida were also preoccupied with artistic creation itself; references to a search for the “new” appear throughout their writings and are manifested through their performances with other progressive artists in visual art, dance, and literature, as well as with musicians representing traditional musical backgrounds. The modernist drive to find or create the “new” was coupled with severing ties to the past. However, as many scholars of Japanese history have already discussed, the sweeping societal changes enacted by the Meiji government severed many ties to past artistic practices all at once, and that had been accomplished prior to the period under consideration. I would argue that in many cases Japanese modernism was more about picking up the fragments of multiple indigenous traditions—such traditions could be longstanding or newly constructed—and combining them with fragments of imported materials to create new, hybrid works of art. This practice has led authors such as Hermann Gottschewski, whom I discussed in Chapter Four in relation to Sugahara, to comment upon the possibility of pre-World War II Japanese postmodernism. There were a number of elements in the recent Japanese past from which

197 interwar modernists sought to break free: for example, Sugahara and Yoshida both identified an earlier time when Japanese composers had indiscriminately imitated Western music; each of them sought to break with that period by creating new Japanese music. Also for Sugahara and Yoshida, French contemporary music provided a welcome break from the dominance of German Classic and Romantic styles within ygaku and from the academicism those styles represented. My concept of Japanese musical modernism also incorporates the borrowing or adaptation of Western elements to change, redefine, or respond to the conditions of modern Japanese life, often in conjunction with the evocation of Japanese people, places, or ideas. For example, during the 1920s and 1930s Sugahara created a number of musical “impressions” of Japanese architecture and festivals; these compositions incorporate French impressionist techniques as well as elements of Japanese musical idioms specific to the historical eras evoked and to locations referenced in titles.1 Hybridity resulting from adaptation and amalgamation is especially evident in Sugahara’s Fuefuki me, elements of which are derived from hgaku flute genres and contemporary French music. The result of Sugahara’s integration of French and Japanese characteristics in Fuefuki me emphasizes the commonalities between the styles that he brought together. In contrast, Yamada’s incorporation of multiple styles into a single work or movement through taiih, stylistic counterpoint, draws attention to the differences in style from section to section and from movement to movement. This is evident in his choreographic poems including Sie und Er, Die Blaue flamme, and Frühlingstraum. To return to David Pacun’s description of Yamada’s stylistic counterpoint, the choreographic poems can be perceived as nascent examples of musical hybridity during the early interwar era; such compositions “directly reflect Japan's own early-twentieth-century culture, with its remarkable play of traditional and modern, and Eastern and Western forms.”2 Repeated theorizing of identity in prose, and the ways in which Japanese identity manifested itself creatively, are also facets of Japanese interwar modernism. In their various musical endeavors, Yamada, Sugahara, and Yoshida all shared a preoccupation with their individual identities as Japanese composers and with the concept of “Japanese” music. In their

1 For example, in Chapter Four I mentioned Sugahara’s orchestral suite Saiten monogatari (Celebration Story, 1925- 28), a musical impression of a Buddhist celebration in Nara; in this work, Sugahara incorporated melodies from the Kamakura period (1185–1333). And “Suien,” the finale of the piano work Hakuh no uta (Song of the Hakuh Era, 1932), is a musical impression of Yakushi-ji’s East Pagoda, in Nara. 2 David Pacun, “‘Thus We Cultivate Our Own World, and Thus We Share It with Others’: Kósçak Yamada's Visit to the United States in 1918-1919,” American Music 24, No. 1 (Spring 2006): 69. 198 prose, such discussions often reflected nationalist attitudes. Yamada’s description of Kurofune as an opera in which the “errors” of previous “Orientalist” works, including Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, would be “corrected” represents a reactionary perspective during the early years of World War II.3 In 1934, Sugahara expressed the need for Japanese composers to “invent” their own musical idiom rather than continue to borrow from foreign ones.4 He later discussed the creation of music of an “ethnically” Japanese music in relation to Kreo Muziko’s concerts of the 1930s.5 Kreo Muziko, however, performed an eclectic variety of works, which suggests that music of the Japanese ethnicity to which Sugahara referred was also eclectic. The ambiguity of Sugahara’s Fuefuki me could be perceived as an expression of both Sugahara’s ambiguous attitude toward what constituted a Japanese musical idiom and his recognition of its hybridity. In her 1932 article “Myūjikku jānarizumu ni tsuite no shron,” Yoshida emphatically called for the creation of new Japanese music. In the 1940 article “‘Atarashī naiy to minzoku-teki dent’ ni tsuite no hashirigaki,” she stated that such music had no specific requirements of style or content, although she encouraged the fusion of Western and Japanese elements that resulted in new, creative forms and content.6 Yoshida’s identity was complicated by her roles as a progressive female Japanese composer and social activist; she repeatedly discussed these facets of her identity in her writings. As Japanese musical modernists worked through issues of identity, they also focused upon the processes of artistic creation; this is a characteristic that Japanese modernists shared with their Western counterparts, especially those in the United States. But it is also indicative of the tension between the global and local (or “space and place,” to cite David Harvey’s conception of modernism) that is central to Japanese modernism. In my study of Japanese interwar musical modernism, I have found very little evidence of the “autonomous artist,” the term Bonnie Wade uses to refer to artists who focused solely on “art

3 Yamada Ksaku, “The Opera ‘Dawn’ or ‘Black Ships,’” Contemporary Japan: a Review of Japanese Affairs 9, No. 11 (1940): 1432; quoted in David Pacun, “Style and Politics in Ksaku Yamada’s Folksong Arrangements, 1917-1950,” in Music of Japan Today, ed. Edwin Michael Richards and Kazuko Tanosaki (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), 46. 4 Akiyama Kuniharu, “Sugahara Meir-shi ni kiku” (Asking Mr. Sugahara Meir), in Sugahara Meir seitan hyakunen kinen enskai, essays and programs printed in commemoration of Sugahara Meir’s centennial concerts (produced by Matsushita Hitoshi in cooperation with Tokyo Concerts Inc.); Japanese Symphony Works Exhibition 5 (unpublished booklet, 1997; Kunitachi College of Music Catalogue No. C62-265), 19. 5 Sugahara Meir, “Ssaku shinten no tame ni” (For Creative Development), Ongaku sekai (January 1934); reprinted in Maesutoro no shz: Sugahara Meir hyron-shū, ed. Matsushita Hitoshi (Tachikawa: Kunitachi ongaku daigaku fuzoku toshokan, 1998), 131. 6 Yoshida Takako, “‘Atarashī naiy to minzoku-teki dent’ ni tsuite no hashirigaki” (Scribblings on “Ethnic Heritage and New Content”), Ongaku sekai (January 1940); reprinted in Yoshida Takako, 79. 199 for art’s sake,” who regarded the work as the only reason for composing.7 I do not believe that this is a defining feature of Japanese modernism as it was practiced by composers such as Yamada, Sugahara, and Yoshida during the interwar era. Carol A. Oja identifies collaboration as a major facet of American musical modernism during the 1920s. Instead of viewing New York modernists as “solitary, rugged Americans,” she understands them as “part of an interdependent modernist community.”8 In Japan, collaboration with other composers and with artists from other disciplines produced new genres, forms, and content commensurate with their modernist outlook. Examples of such collaborations include Yamada’s concert appearances abroad, his associations with dancers Ishii Baku and It Michio in the creation and execution of Yamada’s buyshi, and his work with poet Kitahara Hakushū on the journal Shi to ongaku. Similarly, Sugahara contributed to Ongaku to bungaku, a journal produced through the close association of musicians and writers who introduced their readers to Western modernism through their own evaluations of international music and literature and through translated contemporary foreign writings. Sugahara also collaborated with Miyagi Michio in the New Japanese Music movement to create works combining Western and Japanese traditional instruments. As a founding member of the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei (Emerging Composers League), Sugahara sought to create music that reflected his time and place. Even during his period of intense musical study in Nara, Sugahara interacted with other artists in his community, attended concerts out of town, and instructed the mandolin club at Dshisha University in Kyoto. Yoshida’s list of collaborations was also extensive; during the 1930 she worked with playwrights, actors, and visual artists, and she collaborated with other musicians in organizations such as the Proletarian Music League and her own ensemble, Kreo Muziko. In this dissertation, I have posited many examples of Japanese interwar ygaku as more than imitation, and the works’ respective composers as creators of innovative and original music. The 1920s and 1930s in Japan were not the “creative purgatory” that Judith Ann Herd has described.9 But as Roy Starrs notes, not all Japanese modernist endeavors were successful, any more than their European or American counterparts were. Many works by Yamada, Sugahara, and Yoshida remain in manuscript form; they were never published or recorded, and are rarely if ever mentioned in Japanese secondary literature. In their lengthy overview of musical

7 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 215. 8 Carol A. Oja, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 7. 9 Judith Ann Herd, “Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music,” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, 43. 200 developments prior to World War II, the editors of the 2007 Nihon sengo ongaku-shi (Postwar Japanese Music History) discuss the difficulties composers experienced in finding audiences for progressive works, and the absence of musicians in Japan who were capable of performing those works.10 In other cases, works by these composers that may not fit into the category of “modernist” have received more performance and scholarly attention than more innovative works; Toyama Kazuyuki stated in his essay “Yamada Ksaku to modanizumu” that while Yamada was a modernist he is best known today as a composer of relatively conventional songs.11 All the compositions by Yamada, Sugahara, and Yoshida are ygaku, or Western- informed music. However, as Alison Tokita has argued, this characteristic alone does not make their works “modernist.”12 This is why, for the case studies, I chose only those pieces that reflect the modernist aesthetics of their respective composers.13 Because this study of Japanese musical modernism is largely introductory, I recognize that there are many composers and pieces, as well as aspects of Japanese interwar music and culture that I do not cover. But I believe that the potential is great for future studies of this topic. A number of composers, including many individuals named in my previous chapters, such as Fukai Shir, It Noboru, and Hashimoto Kunihiko, have received almost no attention in English language studies yet. Even those composers who have been included in such studies, such as Matsudaira Yoritsune, Kiyose Yasuji, and Ifukube Akira, have been discussed mainly in the context of the postwar era; their pre-World War II careers, especially their own writings from the interwar era, have yet to be considered at length. To do so will require the translation of primary sources, most of which can only be acquired or consulted in Japan. But from my preliminary assessment of library and archive collections in Japan, I know that hundreds of articles, books, scores, recordings, and concert programs associated with the interwar careers of these composers exist, and translating these sources will provide a much more nuanced picture of Japanese musical modernism. I have already begun to collect Japanese scholarship related to It Noboru and Fukai Shir, two of Sugahara’s most innovative students. Like their teacher, they were

10 Nihon sengo ongaku-shi kenkyūkai, editors, Nihon sengo ongaku-shi (Postwar Japanese Music History), vol. I (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2007), 56. 11 Toyama Kazuyuki, “Yamada Ksaku to modanizumu,” in Yamada Ksaku Chosaku Zenshū, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2001), 2. 12 Alison Tokita, “Takarazuka and the Musical Modan in the Hanshin Region 1914-1942,” in Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Boston: Global Oriental, 2012). 13 Unfortunately, my musical choices were also limited by availability and accessibility; in the case of Yoshida especially, I have only been able to acquire a very small number of scores and recordings. 201 members of the Shink Sakkyokuka Renmei, and they both contributed many articles to Japanese music journals during the 1930s. It Noboru was one of the most avant-garde composers of the interwar era in Japan. For example, in his expressionist work Madorosu no hiai e no kankaku (1929) he tied atonality to the crisis of spirit and alienation experienced by lower- class, blue-collar Japanese laborers.14 His Composition (1930) for chamber orchestra was one of the first polytonal and polyrhythmic works written by a Japanese composer; in the same year he wrote a piece for eleven percussion instruments, and another piece for voice and orchestra titled Taiy ni utau (Song to the Sun), the entire vocal line of which is an extended melisma on three vowels.15 Fukai, like Sugahara, was drawn to French Impressionism and neoclassicism, and some of his compositions include evocative titles such as Asufaruto (Asphalt, 1932), for mandolin orchestra, and Tokai (Metropolis, 1934), which is ballet music. Fukai also exhibited the “parodical spirit” identified by Suzuki Sadami in Japanese modernist literature of the mid- 1930s. Each of the four movements of Fukai’s Quatre mouvements parodiques (1933/36) for orchestra is named for a modern Western composer—Manuel de Falla, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Albert Roussel—and each movement satirizes the musical style of the composer for which it is named. In 1937 Fukai founded the Gakudan Puromete (Prometeo Orchestra), the members of which created and performed several atonal works. The Gakudan Puromete attracted progressive composers who were opposed to Japanese nationalism in music, some of whom gravitated toward Fukai’s ensemble after they were forced to leave more explicitly left-wing activist groups.16 There are also many other pieces by the composers discussed in my case studies that I plan to write about in the future: this includes Sugahara’s early-1930s compositions incorporating hgaku instruments, his interwar piano pieces, and his 1925 movement for mandolin orchestra Mahiru no gyretsu (Midday Procession, 1925), the last of which was originally written as one-third of San'nin no tomo no kumikyoku (Suite of Three Friends), a collaborative composition he created in 1925 with numa Satoru and Takei Morishige. Mahiru no gyretsu has since become one of his most popular works in Japan. I have also recently

14 Nihon sengo ongaku-shi kenkyūkai, 57. 15 Luciana Galliano, Ygaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 78. It is interesting to note that It Noboru wrote a piece for percussion ensemble in 1930, given that during the same year, Cuban composer Amadeo Roldán (1900-39) wrote the fifth and sixth of his Rítmicas, and Edgard Varèse (1883-65) wrote his Ionisation. These works are considered to be the earliest pieces composed in the Western classical music tradition scored for percussion alone. 16 Ibid., 78-79. 202 located scores for many of Yoshida’s compositions from the 1930s, the study of which will provide a more complete assessment of her compositional style as a modernist. The experiences of interwar ygaku composers abroad are other aspects of Japanese musical modernism that would especially benefit from more research. The editors of Nihon sengo ongaku-shi discuss a number of composers who studied and performed abroad during the 1930s, for example, Ikenouchi Tomojir (1906-91), who was one of the first Japanese composers to study at the Paris Conservatory during the late 1920s; Kishi Kichi (1909-37), who conducted multiple concerts of his own works in Berlin in 1934; female composer Toyama Michiko (1913- 2006), whom I named in Chapter Five, who studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and whose work Yamato no koe (Voice of Yamato) for soprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, and cello won a prize at the Fifteenth International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in Paris in 1937; and zawa Hisato (1907-53), who studied composition at Boston University and the New England Conservatory of Music in the early 1930s, and whose Second Symphony and Second Piano Concerto (1935) were praised by French composers and critics alike when they premiered in Paris in 1934 and 1945, respectively.17 Archival research in the cities in which these composers performed and studied might also yield new sources. My dissertation engages in a dialogue with newly translated primary sources and recently published scholarship on Japanese modernism; to that end I have introduced composers previously little-known in Western scholarship, Sugahara and Yoshida, as well as works by a well-known ygaku composer, Yamada, that are not discussed as often as many of his other pieces. To cite the work of Edward Said, I wanted to provide a “contrapuntal reading” of interwar ygaku, one that does not focus exclusively on musical imitation as many past studies have done. While I included discussions of the composers’ experiences of Japanese nationalism, another aspect of my goal was to go beyond the framing of interwar ygaku as reflections of only one facet of Japanese interwar culture. As I discussed in my review of literature, past scholarship in English has repeatedly addressed the relationship between nationalism and interwar ygaku. As a study of modernism it was not my objective simply to find common characteristics between Japanese and Western music of roughly the same time period. Neither was it my intention to elevate works of Japanese interwar ygaku as more complex than they are. Instead I

17 Nihon sengo ongaku-shi kenkyūkai, 57. 203 sought to give voice to the composers themselves, as a way of understanding how three of them conceived of the music they wrote, and how their compositions reflect the individual experiences of the composer as well as more general trends of their time period. To return to Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, the ambiguous “third space” inhabited by many of these composers’ compositions attests to the reciprocal flow of aesthetics and methodologies between Japan and Western countries; it also sheds light upon the tension experienced by these composers as they each dealt with the “anxiety of influence” of both Western modernity and Japanese history.18 The hybridity of music by Yamada, Sugahara, Yoshida, and many of their contemporaries demonstrates recognition of the power of Japan’s past and the hegemonic power of Western music, and the rejection and simultaneous embrace of both. In this way, Japanese interwar modernist compositions can be described as being neither Western nor Japanese. They are, however, intimately tied to the period in which they were created, a time when progressive artists in Japan fashioned a new space of creative amalgamation of everything that modern life had to offer in their efforts to construct the “new.”

18 The term “anxiety of influence” comes from Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), which was one of the earliest books to advocate for a revisionary approach to literary criticism. 204

APPENDIX A

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE PHOTOGRAPH OF YOSHIDA TAKAKO

205

206

APPENDIX B

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE MUSIC BY SUGAHARA MEIR

207

208

APPENDIX C

SUGAHARA MEIR, NAINEN KIKAN EXCERPTS (ORIGINALS)

All of the excerpts shown in this Appendix are scans from a copy of MS. A096 of Nainen kikan; they are being included here as references for the transcribed excerpts shown in Chapter Four.

Nainen kikan, mm 1-3 (for Example 4.1).

209

Nainen kikan, mm. 13-20 (for Example 4.2).

210

Nainen kikan, mm. 35-38 (for Example 4.3).

211

Nainen kikan, mm. 46-49 (for Example 4.4).

212

Nainen kikan, mm. 70-75 (for Example 4.5).

Nainen kikan, mm. 76-81 (for Example 4.6).

213

Nainen kikan, mm. 105-107 (for Example 4.7).

214

Nainen kikan, mm. 108-112 (for Example 4.7 and Example 4.8).

215

Nainen kikan, mm. 113-117 (for Example 4. 8).

216

Nainen kikan, mm. 147-151 (for Example 4.9).

217

Nainen kikan, mm. 162-165 (for Example 4.10).

218

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Kathryn Etheridge graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a Bachelor of Music Education (2006); her studies focused on music history, transcription, and pedagogy. At The Florida State University she received a Master of Music in Historical Musicology (2008). Her master’s thesis “Classical Saxophone Transcriptions: Role and Reception” examines the history of transcriptions within the classical saxophone repertoire between the late nineteenth century and the early twenty-first century. In conjunction with this project, Kathryn created an extensive online database for listing recordings of saxophone transcriptions. Kathryn’s primary research interests focus on international musical modernism, music and globalization, music in film, and early-twentieth-century Japanese culture. Kathryn has twice received grants to conduct archival research in Tokyo for her dissertation, “Japanese Musical Modanizumu: Interwar Ygaku Composers and Modernism.” While at Florida State, she taught courses in music history, music literature, and music appreciation. She has presented papers at the national meeting for the American Musicological Society and at regional meetings for the Southern Chapter of the American Musicological Society and for the Southeast and Carribean Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Kathryn lives in Tallahassee, Florida with her husband Seth and their two dogs, Bishop and Adelia.

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