Japanese Contemporary Piano Music: Cultural Influence and Identity

Home , 2009 in Japanese music, Dai Fujikura, Greater Need, Music of Japan, Sawari, Shigeo Kishibe

JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY PIANO MUSIC: CULTURAL INFLUENCE AND IDENTITY

Stephanie Titus

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

December 2020

Committee:

Nora Engebretsen-Broman, Advisor

Jeremy Wayne Wallach Graduate Faculty Representative

Mikel Kuehn

Marilyn Shrude

Stephanie Titus

Nora Engebretsen, Advisor

In an increasingly globalized community, a composer’s cultural heritage may or may not manifest itself in their compositions. Conversely, manifest influences from different cultures may not coincide with the composer's identity. This document examines the piano works of three active Japanese composers, Dai Fujikura (b. 1977), Jo Kondo (b. 1947), and Joji Yuasa (b.

1929), through the lens of cultural influence. Analyses of representative pieces are contextualized in relation to the composers’ opinions on the importance or relevance of writing music that embodies their own identity and cultural heritage. Examples of Japanese elements incorporated into Western-based composition include a circular rather than linear conception of time, ma as manifest through relationships and dualities, pulse-driven organization of rhythm, nature references, noise as an inseparable component of performance, and other extra-musical considerations.

A brief overview of identity and globalization, along with an examination of numerous historical texts of both Western and Japanese origin, provide context for identifying these

Japanese elements. Orientalism and musical exoticism provide additional grounding in scholarly work from Western sources about Eastern cultures, focusing specifically on music.

These analyses offer insight into the differing ways cultural influences manifest in

Japanese composers as a starting place. It is my hope that performers recognize the importance of seeking out the composer’s intentions to align the performer's interpretation with the composer's artistic vision. iv

This document is dedicated to my great-uncle, Dick TR Titus, in loving memory. May your

basket always be full of beautiful tunes.

v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the numerous individuals who helped make this document a reality.

First, to the wonderful members of my committee, Nora Engebretsen, Mikel Kuehn, Marilyn

Shrude, and Jeremy Wallach, for their unwavering faith and patience, especially in these final months. I thank them with all my heart for finding the time and energy to simultaneously guide me through the process while navigating life and teaching during a global pandemic. To Nora

Engebretsen, for always seeming to know what words I meant to write and for fearlessly leading the charge. Her positivity and insightful feedback kept me going when I doubted myself the most. To Marilyn Shrude, for her fierce leadership of the Contemporary Music doctoral program.

Her genuine support and enthusiasm mean the world to those of us still trying to find our voices.

To Mikel Kuehn, for lending a critical eye through his various areas of expertise. To Jeremy

Wallach, whose class on Asian popular music gave me the foundation and courage to tackle the topics of the first chapters of this document.

I would like to also thank Dai Fujikura for his willingness to speak with me on a topic that, for some, is contentious. His frankness and openness were invaluable.

I would not be where I am today without the endless love and support of my parents.

Thank you for nurturing my passion for music and always cheering me on in all my endeavors.

Finally, a special thanks to Andrew Liebermann not only for his assistance in engraving the musical examples and figures, but also for being a constant source of encouragement and love.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1. THE STUDY OF CULTURE ...... 3

CHAPTER 2. JAPANESE CULTURE ...... 8

Japanese Anthropology and Japan’s Complicated History ...... 11

Focus on Difference ...... 13

Nihonjinron ...... 18

Uniqueness ...... 19

CHAPTER 3. IDENTITY AND GLOBALIZATION ...... 22

Globalization and its Effects on Identity ...... 24

CHAPTER 4. ORIENTALISM ...... 32

CHAPTER 5. MUSICAL EXOTICISM ...... 39

Influence versus Borrowing ...... 45

Analytical and Compositional Use of Exoticism ...... 49

Current Discourse ...... 50

CHAPTER 6. MUSIC IN JAPAN ...... 53

Timeline of Music Development and Western Music Influences in Japan ...... 53

Genres, Styles, and Structure ...... 57

Contemporary Composers and Performers ...... 62

CHAPTER 7. JO KONDO ...... 66

Biography ...... 66

Piano Music ...... 70 vii

Japanese Elements ...... 70

Transparency/Instant-Based Processes ...... 71

Dense Harmonies ...... 79

Noise ...... 81

Extra-Musical Elements ...... 82

Ma ...... 84

Dynamic Stasis as Circular Time and Space ...... 87

Conclusions ...... 94

CHAPTER 8. DAI FUJIKURA ...... 96

Biography ...... 96

Piano Music ...... 101

Japanese Elements ...... 102

Nature ...... 102

Duality/Relationships ...... 104

Time ...... 108

Extra-Musical Elements ...... 110

Conclusions ...... 114

CHAPTER 9. JOJI YUASA ...... 116

Biography ...... 116

Piano Music ...... 121

Japanese Elements ...... 121

Ma ...... 122

Time ...... 131 viii

Pulse versus Meter ...... 135

Nature ...... 137

Noise ...... 137

Conclusions ...... 140

CHAPTER 10. CONCLUSIONS ...... 142

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 145 ix

LIST OF EXAMPLES

Example Page

1 Walk, mm. 51-55 pitch content ...... 73

2 Sight Rhythmics, recurring material in fixed registers ...... 74

3a Sight Rhythmics, extracted pitch and rhythm ...... 74

3b Sight Rhythmics, hidden melody ...... 74

4 Ritornello, mm. 1-2 wide interval theme and mm. 33-34 sixteenth-note chords ...... 76

5 Cantus firmus used in In Nomine ...... 76

6 In Nomine, tracing the melody ...... 77

7 Click Crack, ametric rhythm ...... 78

8 Opening sonority of Ritornello ...... 80

9 Ritornello, (01245789) symmetrical set ...... 80

10 Subsets of (01245789) ...... 81

11 Whole tone collection with “pivot” ...... 81

12 Pulse in Walk ...... 84

13 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, possible lead sheet labels ...... 85

14 Movement closure in Sight Rhythmics ...... 86

15 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, sustained pitches in mm. 1-7 ...... 88

16 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, trichords ...... 88

17 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, recurring gesture ...... 89

18a Bizet’s habanera ...... 90

18b Kondo’s ostinato in Tango Mnemonic ...... 90

19 Caccia Soave, additive rhythm ...... 93 x

20 Frozen Heat, right-hand texture ...... 104

21 Frozen Heat, left-hand texture ...... 105

22 Frozen Heat, increasing density ...... 105

23 Frozen Heat, lyrical left-hand material ...... 106

24 Returning, hand crossings ...... 106

25 Returning, tonality-based gestures ...... 107

26 Returning, rhythmic theme ...... 109

27 Returning, pitch and rhythm mapping ...... 111

28 AYATORI, playing Cat’s Cradle through counterpoint ...... 112

29 AYATORI, tetrachords ...... 113

30 Stratified layers in the opening of Cosmos Haptic ...... 123

31 Cosmos Haptic, symmetrical tetrachords ...... 124

32 Stratified layers in the opening of Cosmos Haptic II ...... 124

33 Melodies, establishing pitch registers ...... 125

34 Melodies, pitch registers established ...... 126

35 Cosmos Haptic II, sliding rhythmic layers ...... 127

36 Temporal flux between hands in On the Keyboard ...... 128

37 On the Keyboard, pitch-space expansion and contraction ...... 128

38 Cosmos Haptic, expansion into stratified layers ...... 129

39 On the Keyboard, space and resonance ...... 130

40 Cosmos Haptic, rhythmic variation of the bell-like motive ...... 133

41 Cosmos Haptic II, rhythmic variation in tremolo-like gesture ...... 134

42 Opening chords of Cosmos Haptic II ...... 138 xi

43 Melodies, activation of silently depressed keys ...... 139

44 On the Keyboard, proximity of the last note to the silently depressed keys ...... 140

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1 “Click crack” in katakana symbols ...... 83

2 Returning, comparing pitch-classes between hands in mm. 1-5 ...... 107

3 Form diagram of Returning ...... 110

4 Projection Topologic, frames in canon ...... 126

5 Form diagram for Cosmos Haptic ...... 131

6 Timeline of Cosmos Haptic II tracking resonance ...... 137

INTRODUCTION

In an increasingly globalized community, a composer’s cultural heritage may or may not manifest itself in their compositions. Conversely, manifest influences from different cultures may not coincide with the composer’s identity. Nevertheless, stereotypical notions of exoticism, novelty, and characteristic sounds or features in music by composers from particular parts of the world still exist, particularly so concerning composers from East Asian countries.

One of the best-known examples of a non-Western composer writing in the Western art music tradition is Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, whose music has been a topic of much scholarship and interpretation. He is often cited as a “bridge” between Eastern and Western musical traditions and aesthetics for his use of Japanese elements within predominantly Western musical language. An examination of Western-based scholarly writing on non-Western composers highlights dialogue about various influences incorporated in their music and functions as a lens for understanding the representation of music by Japanese composers. Contemporary

Japanese composers continue to incorporate Japanese elements into Western-based compositions, but these influences manifest in widely differing ways.

This document will examine the piano works of three active Japanese composers, Dai

Fujikura, Jo Kondo, and Joji Yuasa, through the lens of cultural influence. The piano is an instrument deeply rooted in Western music and culture, but it has proven to be an extremely versatile vehicle for composition. I have chosen to focus on these composers’ piano works to engage performative and interpretive considerations from my perspective as a pianist. I will analyze representative pieces in relation to the composers’ opinions on the importance or relevance of writing music that embodies their own identity and cultural heritage. I hope that shedding light on conscious and subconscious evidence of cultural influences in this music will 2 highlight the importance of understanding the different ways these influences can manifest themselves in composers’ works. Depending on the composer, seeking an understanding of

Japanese elements in a work may be useful in crafting a successful interpretation and performance. Though pianists can often rely on their own knowledge of pianistic writing, idioms, and other stylistically appropriate manners of performance, there is much to learn from the composer’s intent and personal influences, both musical and cultural.

The first chapter examines methodologies and issues related to the study of non-Western cultures from a Western perspective. Chapter 2 explores essential components of Japanese culture, as identified by Japanese historical writings and Western interpretations of Japanese culture. Chapter 3 addresses the construction of identity and the impact of globalization on these definitions. These early chapters are not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to serve as a historical backdrop contextualizing discussion of “othering” and evidence of its remnants in

Western music scholarship. Chapters 4 and 5 provide an overview of orientalism and exoticism, respectively, while Chapter 6 delves into music in Japan, leading to the discussion of the individual composers and works in Chapters 7-9. The final chapter offers synthesis and conclusions. All Japanese words are written in standardized Romanization and italicized.

Throughout, the English style of presenting names is used with given name first and family name second.

CHAPTER 1. THE STUDY OF CULTURE

To adequately explore and identify cultural influence in music, we must first acknowledge that culture as a field of study is particularly challenging to navigate. Raymond

Williams is often cited for his claim from Keywords (1976) that “culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.”1 It is complicated because so much depends on how one defines the word “culture” and on the multiple dimensions and assumptions associated with that definition. The inclusion of the works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity further complicates the notion of culture, since creative output is such an individual experience and outlet of expression. This, in itself, carries the definition of culture well beyond the idea of a unifying set of principles governing a group of people to include ways in which individuals navigate their own multifaceted experience within that culture or cultures.

To further complicate this, the idea of culture is not definitive; its definition is always being examined, developed, refined, based on things like time, place, perspective, and of course, the crucial issue of “context.”2 Context refers to various elements from the historical placement of an event and any political influences surrounding the people or places being examined, to the collective and individual psychological condition of the group or society being examined.

Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) is a hugely influential text addressing the study of culture. Specifically, Geertz develops a system of analysis to understand the nature of culture and symbolic expression. Kuper interprets Geertz’s work as interested in a

“redefinition of culture” from an anthropological and scientific viewpoint.3

1 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 87. 2 Judy Giles and Tim Middleton, Studying Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 9. 3 Adam Kuper, Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 240. 4

According to Roland, anthropologists have interpreted other cultures in three basic ways: evolutionism, universalism, and relativism.4 Evolutionism is fundamentally teleological, suggesting that different cultures are simply at different stages in a single trajectory of advancement. This approach is heavily laden with Western-centric sentiments. It carries associations of the justifications surrounding colonialism and the “white man’s burden” to “help” other cultures advance further along this single trajectory towards the apparent superiority of

Western society. Universalism has similar undertones but focuses on locating a presumed single normative universal. Using this as the basis of cultural interpretation and study, higher-order commonality predominates, and cultural differences are overlooked or oversimplified to fit into larger, generalized categories. By contrast, relativism analyzes a culture within its own system and context. Its greatest pitfall is that it does not provide categories that enable comparative study with other cultures. Relativism is lauded as the dominating approach and preference of many Japanese scholars whose works have been translated and addressed in this document.

“Orientalism,” to be discussed more in-depth later, arose in part as a reaction to alternatives to Western philosophies and means of cultural interpretation. It was for a time a means of dealing with Eastern, rather, non-Western, cultures and philosophies with undertones of universalism and evolutionism. As a reaction against “Orientalism” and in dialogue with concepts such as cultural relativism, deconstructionism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism, many non-Western scholars aim to reclaim and preserve “differences” to thwart Western egocentrism and colonial dominance in the distillation of self to a single universal concept.5

4 Alan Roland, “How Universal is Psychoanalysis? The Self in India, Japan, and the United States,” In Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West, ed. Douglas Allen (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 29. 5 Douglas Allen, “Social Constructions of Self: Some Asian, Marxist, and Feminist Critiques of Dominant Western Views of Self,” in Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West, ed. Douglas Allen (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 18. 5

Allen laments that in doing so, “the pendulum may have swung too far.” A striking example

Roland cites is the research of psychoanalyst Takeo Doi (1920-2009) on the psychology of the

Japanese. Doi’s approach is highly relativistic, so much so that it is not useful in comparative work with Western cultures or even other Asian cultures.6 Though rife with problems in methodology, approach, and even the instinct to protect one’s culture from misinterpretation, judgment, or qualitative comparison, there is a need in the modern world to relate to each other as humans, to understand commonality, and to appreciate and respect differences. This is especially true in light of globalization and how the world is becoming “smaller,” so to speak.

“We have no choice but to recognize the historical, political, economic, technological, and ecological structures of increasing global interconnectedness.”7

So, what do we mean by “culture”? Culture can refer to actual products, including the results of mass culture, but can also describe a process. A more prominent view of culture is that it is expressed in art, institutions, and learning.8 Expressive culture includes religion and arts, as examples. According to Levinson et al (2008), all cultures have fine arts which are easily considered the most readily identifiable form of expressive culture. Artistic expressivity has a wide variety of functions, notably reflecting or promoting feelings of group solidarity and ethnic identity, as well as to mediate communication between the artist and his or her audience, and most notably as a means for expressing both positive and negative emotions.9 The famous anthropologist Edward W. Said, in Culture and Imperialism (1993), investigates the stories or discourses told through literature, music, and art. Said’s Orientalism written in 1978, which will

6 Roland, “How Universal is Psychoanalysis?” 33. 7 Allen, “Social Constructions of Self,” 20. 8 Giles and Middleton, Studying Culture, 20. 9 David Levinson, Martin J. Malone, and Cecil H. Brown, Toward Explaining Human Culture: A Critical Review of the Findings of Worldwide Cross-Cultural Research (New Haven: HRAF Press, 1980), 177. 6 be discussed more in-depth in later chapters, is a critical element to our investigation of culture through the lens of Western perspective on non-Western cultures.

A contrasting approach to comparative study avoids comparison but rather “discovers” certain general laws seeking to uncover a particular society’s shared attitudes and values.10 The appeal of this approach, particularly for this study, is that it avoids as best as possible ethnocentric assumptions that could place a value judgment on the level of “development” a society contains. Judging a culture by “development” fosters the view that some societies and cultures are (generally from the Western perspective) more advanced and further along in a teleological trajectory of the society, presumably always moving forward from primitive toward an idealized state. Kuper in Culture (1999) offers yet another strategy to approaching culture: to treat it in a preliminary way, such that it forms part of an analysis including social or biological processes. In this way, culture is better seen “as a series of processes that construct, reconstruct, and dismantle cultural materials, in response to identifiable determinants.”11 Kuper also suggests that culture encompasses shared ideas and values, or a “collective cast of mind” expressed in symbols that exist in an infinitely variable range of forms.12

Since there are many aspects of culture, it is necessary to state what culture is not.

Biological inheritance does not determine culture; culture is learned. Therefore, culture is not defined or limited to groups of individuals who share biological traits who might consider themselves to belong to the same “race.” Race itself, however, is purely a social construct.

Descriptions of racial differences, either physical or character, are used functionally to symbolize difference and “otherness.” Categorizing and emphasizing difference by these perceived “racial

10 Giles and Middleton, Studying Culture, 23. 11 Kuper, Culture, 246. 12 Kuper, 228. 7 differences” has real effects on the lives and experiences of those they describe. Social practices of inclusion or exclusion, along with symbolic representations of national identity, are guided by assumptions and categorization of people based on possible ethnic similarity judged from physical evidence.13 Hence, it is essential to clarify that culture does not equal a study of race. A number of the historical Japanese scholarly works challenge this idea, intent on reinforcing an emphasis on the Japanese as a biological race.

This paper incorporates material formed through research from more than one of the above approaches. This approach is necessary to get a more holistic view of how Western-based research has shaped our understanding and perspective on non-Western cultures. Through this lens, one more easily traces the historical dichotomous views of East and West to current attitudes and evaluations of music as culture.

13 Giles and Middleton, Studying Culture, 36. 8

CHAPTER 2. JAPANESE CULTURE

A problem anthropologists and cultural researchers have faced in addition to methodology is perspective. This chapter will focus on issues that arise from employing fundamental approaches to interpreting and understanding cultures when studying Japanese culture. It is necessary to include a broad overview of some of the historical philosophical and academic writings about and from Japan to further elucidate this study’s context, focusing on the historical construction of national identity and the construction of self in dialogue with a broader community.

Peter Dale is particularly conscious of the difficulties of studying Japanese culture from a non-Japanese perspective, citing that, “unfamiliarity with the ideological sources of many

Japanese images and interpretative concepts, when mixed with a mode of analysis that has consistently failed to distinguish empirical sociology methods from the assumptions of an ingrained nationalism, have often compromised Western reportage.”14 The Japanese language and usages, as with most languages, are saturated with implied meanings, cultural history, and a wealth of nuance. Without a fully functional working knowledge of the layers of cultural associations, arguably impossible for a non-native to possess, total comprehension and appropriate context at the cultural level is likely impossible. This is particularly apparent in translations and Western scholarly study; we are not encountering “Japan” as the Japanese do, but rather as the society that its people intend to project, one constructed and interpreted through an intelligent nationalistic framework. The importance of this nationalistic image and its careful historical construction and modern maintenance will be addressed in a later section.

14 Peter Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 9. 9

The distinction between insider (emic) versus outsider (etic) has long been recognized.

However, some would argue that attempting to understand and study Eastern culture from a perspective deeply rooted in Western philosophy and values yields more misunderstandings and oversimplifications than deep comprehension. A recurring theme in many of the historical academic works studied is that it is absolutely necessary to be Japanese and speak Japanese as one’s native language to fully understand Japanese culture. Emic (uchi) versus etic (soto) are sharply distinguished in Japan with considerable social distance and emotional restraint imposed upon those outside one’s family and group.15 This supports the emphasis of group identity with an assumed ability to rely on those within the closed group. It also supports the emphasis that only those whose native language is Japanese can truly decode the layers of association and subtle nuance of meaning inherent to the language. The need to be an “insider” to understand a system or culture is not new; often, to gain certain levels of trust and insight into a culture, one must gain a deeper level of acceptance into the group. This is found across the field of anthropology in many different cultures and subcultures. The underlying “us” versus “them” stance is so poignantly defended in many examples of scholarly research.

An example of Japanese academic and research-based literature that emphasizes in subtle ways the necessity of being Japanese to understand or gain any further true knowledge of the formation of the Japanese as a people and culture is Eiichiro Ishida (1903-1968) and his book

Japanese Culture. A noticeable tone throughout the book refers to the “proper” manner of reacting and interacting. A seeming list of approved and unapproved methods of dealing with the particular subject matter at hand suggests strong culturally implied messaging between the lines and leaves one feeling that something must be getting lost in translation. This book is cited as a

15 Roland, “How Universal is Psychoanalysis?” 36. 10

“unique contribution to an understanding of comparative culture.”16 The use of the word

“unique” here and in many forth-coming examples is likely as a description not just of the book’s place in academic writing but as an inherent element of the subject matter. In writing Japanese

Culture, Ishida knew of Japanese folklorist Kunio Yanagita’s research, to be addressed later in this chapter, long before WWII, and states, “In my opinion, the purpose of the study of Japanese folklore is to understand Japanese culture.”17 This reinforces the idea of self-realization and cultural self-awareness, particularly in the face of modernization.

In his search for a means of defining the Japanese as a self-contained group, Ishida ruminates on differences between “races” and how using physical traits as a means of differentiating race espouses a range of problems, particularly in defining the limits. He, of course, addresses many scholars’ view that there is no such thing as race.18 He argues that “race” and reference to a “people” are not identical; however, in Japan, “people” and “nation” in the legal use as “nationality” are one and the same though this is proclaimed as untrue for other countries and people such as China and Poland.19 However, he goes so far as to declare the

Japanese as an exceptionally “endogamous” people who yet do not “lose their racial vitality and vigor.”20 A newspaper article is cited that supports Ishida’s theory on language about a man with mixed-race children who is contemplating what it means to be “Japanese.” The man laments that though his children have distinctively Japanese facial features, he cannot accept this as truly

16 Teruko Kachi, Preface to Japanese Culture: A Study of Origins and Characteristics, by Eiichiro Ishida, trans. Teruko Kachi (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974), vii. 17 Eiichiro Ishida, Japanese Culture: A Study of Origins and Characteristics, trans. Teruko Kachi (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974), 3. 18 Ishida, 13-14. 19 Ishida, 14-15. 20 Ishida, 115. 11 indicative of their nationality because they do not speak Japanese. He ruminates that even nationality is not sufficient in identifying someone as “Japanese.”21

Japanese Anthropology and Japan’s Complicated History

Research in Japanese culture within the field of anthropology has taken several turns.

Ruth Benedict and John Embree are recognized as the founders of modern Western Japanese anthropology. Ruth Benedict was commissioned by the United States Office of War Information to write The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) to understand Japanese thought and emotions to deal with this enemy. John Embree published The Japanese for the Smithsonian’s War

Background Studies series in 1943, followed by The Japanese Nation in 1945. Benedict’s research is interpreted as seeking a timeless “Japanese” to study, understand, and find weaknesses for military gain, while Embree’s mission was to account for Japan’s historical transformation and generate a linear approach to cultural patterns.

After Japan and Japanese scholarship debuted in “(Anglophone) anthropological debates” in the 1940s, Robertson notes that it lost favor compared to research on other non-Western countries. She argues that the primary reason Japan is less of a focal point for anthropological social research is that “Japan confounds the simple binarism informing the construction of anthropology’s Other: it was never a colony of ‘the West.’”22 This apparent lack of scholarly interest is linked to a similar lack of interest in Western Europe and North America. She poses this interesting proposition: “Is Japan, like western Europe and the United States, somehow perceived as too much like ‘us’ to be recognized and appreciated as a worthwhile subject of anthropological inquiry?”23 This is, of course, the opposite of the trends mentioned above in

21 Ishida, 19. 22 Jennifer Robertson, ed., A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 4. 23 Robertson, 4. 12

Western attitudes toward “non-Western” cultures, particularly in what is considered the Far East.

Robertson and Dale have interesting perspectives on the topic: on the one hand, Japan is so insistently “unique” that it falls into the trap of becoming the “Other” that is considered so inexplicable and unfathomable to Western understanding, while on the other hand, it is not

“different enough” in the sense that it was never colonized, never subjected to compulsory

Westernization in the same way as indigenous cultures and territories were encroached upon by colonizers.

Before WWII, “ethnology” was a term associated with the wartime research of Japanese cultural anthropologists.24 The Japan Society of Ethnology was founded in 1934. The expansion of cultural anthropology in Japan resulted from Japan’s colonialism and the greater need and desire to research and control the vastly diverse people within the Japanese empire. Japan’s colonization of Taiwan 1895 distinguishes Japan as a colonizer rather than having been colonized. Research done in Taiwan by the Japanese adapted the research techniques of several established disciplines, including the heavy use of German methodologies for the study of primitive law, British methodologies for the study of colonized indigenous people, and the comparative study developed in the Edo period.25 This Japanese, rather than “American style,” form of research turned the study of Japan to the study by the Japanese of other cultures.

However, Japan’s defeat in 1945 stripped it of its colonies. Since academics associated the term

“ethnology” with the racial policies of imperialist Japan, it was replaced with “cultural anthropology” as an academic discipline in order to address historical changes in research since

24 Katsumi Nakao, “Japanese Colonial Policy and Anthropology in Manchuria,” In Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania, eds. Jan van Bremen and Akitoshi Shimizu (Richmond, Surrey, UK: RoutledgeCurzon, 1999), 19. 25 Nakao, 22. 13

WWII and opinions concerning the identity of socio-cultural anthropologists in Japan.26

Ironically, Japan’s post-war economic success made more funds available for Japanese anthropologists to conduct research in areas unrelated to Japan. Thus, much of their methodology and ethnographic output resembles their European and American counterparts’ rather than being research to support colonial policy and control.27

Japanese anthropologists’ interests, as well as political and public interests, in ideas and artifacts from outside of Japan have gone through various waves, ranging from an intense interest in including and incorporating “Western” commercial items to periods of great isolation and rejection of outside influence in order to solidify a national identity.28 In various efforts to adapt yet remain in control, Japan needed to establish boundaries, however seemingly fluid, between what is Japanese and what is not.

Focus on Difference

Methods and analyses that emphasize cultural differences, such as cultural relativism, run the risk of reinforcing the dangerously dichotomous categories of “Eastern” versus “Western” in origin. Imperialism and colonialism propagated an attitude of justification Western and supposedly “more advanced” cultures’ interference in the lives and culture of other peoples, in what is commonly referred to as the “white man’s burden.” This trend continued and was later the basis for the insistence of the Other for sympathetic study and for Eurocentric analysis.

Cultural relativism, though advocated as a method less prone to judgments and misunderstandings from the Western perspective, still carries dangers. By focusing on obtaining unbiased information and perspective from native informants, these individuals become “judges”

26 Nakao, 19. 27 Nakao, 32. 28 Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 231. 14 for an entire culture. Even in asking carefully constructed questions, it is impossible to escape some form of “imperialism” by soliciting and eliciting his facts. In many ways, the very act of soliciting and eliciting information is a form of “imperialism.” It is too easy to create an image of a social order that rejects the possibility of plurality, of the coexistence of conflicting and diverse notions of the world and social order.29

Dale’s research has led him to conclude that the collective image of Japanese culture is centered on intentional comparison focused on nuances to create the desired image of nation in

Japan. Emphasizing nuanced differences generates an endless array of topics for discussing differences between the West (and China) and Japan.30 The popularity of geo-ecological differences plays a decisive role in the determination of cultural styles. The wedged difference between East and West is found not only in the emphasis of physical location but also in geography differences and the Earth’s physical features. Examples include the difference between desert versus wetland agriculture as determinants for violence or value judgments of societies.31 Other distinctions include ideas surrounding race in which the West is generally viewed as a conglomeration of races, whereas Japan is supposedly made up of a singular collective race. It is important to remember that while these generalizations are easily proven false, these comparisons are meant as symbolic rather than empirical.

“When it comes to establishing who is Japanese, most people inside and outside Japan possess an unquestioned definition that combines race, language, and culture.”32 One of the most striking examples of demonstrating who is considered Japanese is through the use of a common

29 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 5. 30 Dale, 39. 31 Dale, 42. 32 Aaron Gerow, “Nation, Citizenship, and Cinema,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 400. 15 language. The Japanese language does not seem to be related to a larger family of languages, furthering the Japanese’s stance of uniqueness.33 On a deeper level, the distinction between supposedly purely Japanese words and loan words of Chinese or Western origin is built into the

Japanese system of writing through katakana symbols rather than the syllabic hiragana that all

Japanese words and kanji symbols can be broken down into. This results in establishing more dichotomies in research and prevailing thought between pure and impure in terms of understanding and intuitive understanding of language nuance. Ultimately, the claim is that

Western words cannot fully explain Japanese (or any non-Western) culture for the words of these cultures are too loaded with cultural associations and meanings, presenting a strong case for cultural relativism.

Many Japanese scholars and philosophers, especially Ishida, argue that language and culture are intimately intertwined. “I think we may conclude that the Japanese are those people whose mother tongue is Japanese, who grew up within its context, and who assimilated Japanese culture through the medium of the Japanese language.”34 When studying the ancient Japanese,

Ishida ruminates first and foremost on whether these first island inhabitants spoke Japanese.35

Difficulties arise in declaring a single language to define “Japaneseness” when folk dialects developed in Japan’s rural areas. Kunio Yanagita (1897-1962), considered the father of Japanese folk studies, attempted to develop a dictionary of folk phrases as a kind of “living dictionary” to be used as a tool for cultural analysis. His motivation appears to stem from a desire to understand and categorize the behaviors and culture of Japan’s rural areas and find common ground to tie them together.

33 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 56. 34 Ishida, Japanese Culture, 22. 35 Ishida, 28-29. 16

It is commonly asserted that only foreign elements that fit the particular system are adapted, absorbed, and reworked into Japanese culture.36 This is identified as particularly

Japanese in itself. In the desire to both advance Japanese society and culture and maintain a distinctly Japanese essence, there is a long history of selecting from other cultures what is most suitable to them. This is confirmed in Ishida’s statement and recognition of Japan’s highly successful method of assimilating from other cultures, “since long ago the Japanese have been sensitive to alien cultures and have immediately assimilated them.”37 Likewise, in building a strong image and sense of “what is Japanese” or what has been adapted and incorporated in this image of “Japaneseness,” interpretations of the past are scrutinized, re-evaluated in order to address current issues and re-interpreted in order to find a common thread that links the new with the old. This is not a new or unique concept to Japan or any other culture. The need to use antiquity and tradition to uphold a belief, value system, or behavior occurs regularly. “The past, in other words, is commonly reconfigured in response to present needs.”38

Cultures labeled as “Western” are the main focus when identifying the assimilation of cultural elements into Japanese culture, primarily for their association with power. Interestingly, early Japanese scholars such as Ishida confirm this attitude, stating, “From Japan’s standpoint, the West was in every respect advanced and civilized, and Japan, in comparison, was an extremely backward Asian nation. It is also obvious that our ancestors, spurred by their consciousness of their country’s backwardness, absorbed Western civilization with great rapidity.”39 In explaining the intentional adaptation of carefully selected Western culture

36 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 52. 37 Ishida, Japanese Culture, 114. 38 Scott Schnell, “The Rural Imaginary: Landscape, Village, Tradition,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 202. 39 Ishida, Japanese Culture, 120. 17 elements into Japan, he exhibits an attitude of humbleness, as though Japan collectively views itself as inferior and genuinely in need of guidance. A similarly submissive attitude toward the

West is highlighted in A. Gerow’s 2005 research of Japanese cinema. He asserts that Japan deems the foreign spectator as the ultimate judge on what does or does not count as “Japanese,” and thus by this logic, “Japan exists only in the mirror of Western knowledge, and, by extension, assertions of the uniqueness of the Japanese nation rely on the Euro-American definitions.”40

This is ultimately due to the subordinate position Japan feels it occupies in the market and hierarchy of genres and media, such as film. By extension, this perspective can be similarly applied to Western Art music. Wade observes this directly through the famous story of how Toru

Takemitsu, often championed as the first Japanese composer to gain international recognition, gained popularity and international acclaim after attracting the attention of Igor Stravinsky:

“Although Stravinsky’s discovery of Toru Takemitsu is among Japan’s favorite musical stories, composers with whom I have spoken in Japan mark the 1967 premiere of November Steps by the

New York Philharmonic Orchestra in New York City – conducted by Ozawa – as the turning point in Takemitsu’s rise to fame.”41 Takemitsu himself claims his rise to fame is due to the favorable encounter with Stravinsky.42

In order to prevent these attitudes of being culturally subordinate to the West to overflow into being controlled or dominated by the West, establishment of intense nationalism and group identity became a new focus. The root of Japanese nationalism and the crystallization of the importance of loyalty to the group is traced back to the Meiji period (1868-1912). Meiji leaders

40 Gerow, “Nation, Citizenship, and Cinema,” 407. 41 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 79. 42 Toru Takemitsu, “Contemporary Music in Japan,” Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 201, https://doi.org/ 10.2307/833410. 18 were aware of the lack of feelings of loyalty towards Japan. They used media, education, military, and legal systems to construct a unified nation under the symbol of the emperor.43 Since the Meiji period, the ie has been regarded as the core of Japanese cultural identity.44 The most frequently occurring and most relevant key concepts that describe the essence of so-called

“Japaneseness” are ie (loosely “family”) and ma (“interval” or “space”). It is important to note that blood relationships are not privileged over other connections that establish kinships such as adoptions and other relationships.

Nihonjinron

Nihonjinron, a written genre loosely defined as “theories/discussion about the Japanese,” is a topic of much interest in Dale’s research into Japanese culture and is a central focal point in his book The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (1986). Often cited in attempts to define Japanese identity, it draws from a wide array of materials including historical culture, folklore, contemporary theory and news, dictionaries of Japanese usage, among other literature. This nationalistic body of texts seeks to justify and reinforce the idea of Japan’s absolute uniqueness, particularly as a unifying force. Dale insists that it is necessary to distinguish nihonjinron and

“serious empirical research on Japan.”45 It is a hugely ideological nationalism that pervades many elements of daily and professional life.

Nihonjinron is based on three main assumptions: 1) the Japanese are homogeneous people who have not fundamentally changed throughout history, 2) the Japanese are radically different from other peoples, and 3) it is necessary to be nationalistic to the point of hostility towards the possibility of non-Japanese sources used in the analysis of their culture. Dale

43 Gerow, “Nation, Citizenship, and Cinema,” 404. 44 Emiko Ochiai, “The Ie (Family) in Global Perspective,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 355. 45 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 5. 19 concludes that using materials classified as nihonjinron is not a formally valid way of studying and interpreting Japan and Japanese culture; however, the genre reinforces many of the distinctly

Japanese “ground rules” surrounding nationalistic idea in Japan discussed above that are manifest in various aspects of life from family structure theory, sociological concepts, as well as philosophical constructs. Dale acknowledges that though he believes nihonjinron lacking due to its inherent bias, it was used in the past as a force in social conditioning, shaping how the

Japanese regarded and presented themselves in all manner of media.

Dale follows his description of cultural re-appropriations and how Japanese writers of nihonjinron repackage a modern idea or concept with older ideas such that it retains a firm grasp in cultural history while reinforcing concepts of national identity.46 Such a stance enables the construction of a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” To recap, this aligns with Schnell’s affirmation that

“The past, in other words, is commonly reconfigured in response to present needs.”47

Uniqueness

In studying Japanese tradition and ideology, one is likely to be puzzled by contradictions.

These contradictions appear to evade logic but nonetheless do not allow one to cast Japanese ideas and ideals as meaningless.48 A particularly salient example of the appearance of contradictions is the ideology of “uniqueness.” The plethora of words used to describe and perpetuate the high import of uniqueness “tips the balance from the mere ‘distinctively different’ to the ‘absolutely unique.’”49 Not only does this particular usage of “unique” mean “one of a kind” but also infers that it is something distinctly Japanese implying it has very few parallels in foreign countries.

46 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 17. 47 Schnell, “The Rural Imaginary,” 202. 48 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 15. 49 Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, 25. 20

One prominent and commonly cited example of Japan’s uniqueness is its relationship with nature. The “Japanese” sense of nature is often presented as unique, somehow holistic and different from the “Western” concept of nature, Martinez’s article “On the ‘Nature’ of Japanese

Culture, or, Is There a Japanese Sense of Nature?” (2005) points out various academic examples that reinforce the poetic and spiritual components of this interconnectedness with nature.

However, historically there is a wide range of attitudes towards nature in Japan. One of the most widely held views of the Japanese relationship with nature creates an image of a holistic society that falls back upon forms of othering. Othering is defined as treating people as fundamentally different and often inferior, with an emphasis and reliance on reductive definitions. Martinez investigates the Japanese attitude toward nature as a social construct that has varied over time, region, and social class that attempts to decode the paradox of being one with nature while destroying it.50

Shinto, a native religion of Japan, is often noted as a key factor in the supposed Japanese ability to live with nature. However, Shinto has gone through a series of filterings, created initially to oppress Buddhist importation, through interactions with Taoism, Confucianism, and

Buddhism.51 Kami, the concept that all things and beings are imbued with a spirit or power, represents the very forces of nature. Though the language differs between how “the West” views and treats nature, there is underlying evidence that in the Japanese view, nature must be worked on to be acceptable, that “the highest form of Japanese nature is estheticized and best expressed in various forms of art (i.e., bonsai tree formation, flower arranging, etc.).”52 “The ideology of being in nature, as some would have it for the Japanese, does not preclude the possibility of

50 D.P. Martinez, “On the ‘Nature’ of Japanese Culture, or, Is There a Japanese Sense of Nature?” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Robertson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 187. 51 Martinez, 187. 52 Martinez, 188. 21 trying to bind it up: in fact, the most beautiful examples of Japan’s ‘working with nature’ are often the most culturally bound examples of nature as culture.”53

It is easy to see why scholars such as Dale are perplexed by the historical attitudes in researching the Japanese’s cultural origins and how one might be tempted to discount the insider view as one that weaves its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Ishida seems to anticipate this argument by declaring that,

It can perhaps be seen from the above that one characteristic of the Japanese Peoples is that they do not pursue any issue to its logical conclusion, or make exhaustive inquiries into any problem; in fact, there is even a tendency to undervalue such approaches. The Japanese are often said to be illogical, but according to the traditional Japanese consciousness, logic is an attitude that entered Japan only after the Meiji Restoration, along with standards of Western civilization.54

53 Martinez, 196. 54 Ishida, Japanese Culture, 117. 22

CHAPTER 3. IDENTITY AND GLOBALIZATION

The study of culture must involve the study of individuals. Humans are autonomous yet are shaped in differing ways and degrees by the structures of the society in which they belong.55

Humans are unique, go about daily life in their own way, and act individually despite social structures. This ability to act independently is commonly referred to as agency. Similarly, identities adopted by individuals in order to define themselves are formed through a combination of cultural and social contexts in which we draw assumptions and conclusions about our own and others’ natures, the idea of individuality, and the definition of “self.”56 Identity can be defined as the way we choose to represent ourselves and perform our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions in society, in the social world.57 This definition assumes conscious decisions by the individual to act out a part, to develop an image of the self that suites their mental, emotional, and physical components as they choose to show them to others. It does not take into account at its core the unconscious and learned elements of culture that are nonetheless perceptible by unintentional performance. Giles and Middleton illustrate the high potential for unconscious cultural influence through an anecdote about an art student discovering his work had an association with his religion, as enlightened by a stranger at a gallery presentation, without describing himself in association with or expressing even interest in Islamic art.58 Thus, an individual’s chosen identity does not necessarily acknowledge or recognize cultural influence. Focusing on a composer’s identity might highlight intentional influences (such as other composers, styles, culturally significant instruments, sound world, etc.). However, it does not give insight to underlying components of their artistic output that bear some mark of cultural influence.

55 Giles and Middleton, Studying Culture, 30. 56 Giles and Middleton, 30-31. 57 Giles and Middleton, 31. 58 Giles and Middleton, 33. 23

Identity and territorialization are intrinsically linked: one’s identity does not form without territory. Places and spaces are shaped by and can themselves shape the beliefs and values of those who inhabit them.59 In short, places are filled with meaning in themselves and meaning imposed on them by association within a particular culture. However, identity is part of one’s self-formation and the consequence of what groups and others impose on one.60 Wise, along with many other cultural anthropologists, identifies two basic views of identity: essentialist and anti- essentialist. The essentialist theory describes identity as an element of a group’s natural characteristics, ultimately biological in nature and, therefore, inescapable. The anti-essentialist position argues there are no biological bases for identity since it is impossible and inaccurate to make blanket statements such as “all Asians are…” or “all women are …”61

An expanded definition of identity dictates that the self has specific essential properties and some contingent ones. i.e., this is the real me, but I have to disguise it at times.

Psychoanalyst Takeo Doi believed in a two-sidedness: the front (public) and the back (private) similar to the continuum between inner and outer, and true core versus public expectations.62

This inherently raises moral issues and questions of power struggle. However, identity is not only a private matter, in such that a person’s true identity is held solely within, but also includes how one is perceived by others and is continuously “lived out in the world, in a dialogue with others.”

Furthermore, within that dialogue, the identity is coalesced and participates in a collective identity.63 A tangential view is that identity is a cultural construct, that culture bestows upon a

59 Giles and Middleton, 104. 60 J. Macgregor Wise, Cultural Globalization: A User’s Guide (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 13. 61 Wise, 13. 62 Susan Orpett Long, “Constrained Person and Creative Agent: A Dying Student’s Narrative of Self and Others,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan, ed. Jennifer Roberson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 383. 63 Kuper, Culture, 235. 24 person an identity. However, there is no way to explain how a particular person ends up with a particular identity. As pointed out by Kuper, “cultural identity can never provide an adequate guide for living. We all have multiple identities, and even if I accept that I have a primary cultural identity, I may not want to conform to it” and “[culture theory] tends to draw away from what we have in common instead of encouraging us to communicate across national, ethnic, and religious boundaries, and to venture between them.”64 This crossing of boundaries, real and imagined, is a common thread in music.

Composers and performers are often negotiating cultural spheres, in particular, the nooks and crannies between them to find and create a unique voice and a new artistic expression. This expression has no choice but to be laden with some component of cultural influence.

Ethnomusicologist John Blacking (1928-1990) emphasized the organized interaction involved in music, especially the connotations surrounding who participates in music and why. Generally, there are three main groups of participants: the creator/composer, the performer, and the audience. Depending on the music, different participants interact. Some, such as the creator/composer, are absent, and other times the distinction between these groups is blurred.

“We can’t judge with our eyes, there are elements of the experience that cannot be seen or are intentionally internalized.”65

Globalization and its Effects on Identity

With so many opinions on the origin and construction of identity in a world increasingly interconnected in which it is possible to perform multiple identities depending on the need or function, we are part of an age that is beginning to experience an “identity crisis.”66

64 Kuper, Culture, 247. 65 John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), 33. 66 Kuper, Culture, 45. 25

Just now everybody wants to talk about “identity” as a keyword in contemporary politics. It has taken on so many different connotations that sometimes it is obvious that people are not even talking about the same thing. One thing at least is clear – identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis. When something assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty.67 This crisis is often associated with the term globalization. In the face of greater global movements, people feel detached from identities that had defined older generations. This detachment is likely primarily the result of technological advancements. However, poverty, war, and occupation (among other power struggles and unstable territorial boundaries) all have far- reaching consequences on how we define ourselves, and just as importantly, how we are defined by others.68 To complicate things further, though autobiographical writing should lay bare one’s identity, there may be a gap between identity as it is represented and how it is lived, but that does not mean the two are mutually exclusive.69 Perspective and context, and intention are a few of many possible causes and justifications for the gap. One cannot fully know how his or her identity is perceived or assumed, and the perceiver’s prior experiences can play a huge role in this.

Globalization is generally understood as a series of processes that are both working for and against one another, with an emphasis on the movement of people, ideas, products, technologies, etc. Global should not be confused with international, as there is a clear distinction between the two: international refers to relations between nations, including the relations of culture, economics, and politics in that particular framework. Global, as defined by Wise, transcends boundaries and in a unique way. “Not only is one aware of other people and places, but there is a sense of simultaneity and interconnection, that events and decisions made in far-off

67 Kobena Mercer, “Welcome to the Jungle: Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Politics,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1993), 43. 68 Kuper, Culture, 47. 69 Kuper, Culture, 47. 26 places can have consequences for your everyday life, and that your everyday life can have consequences for many others a world away.”70 The interconnectivity crucial to this distinction makes it difficult to trace. Our experiences inform our reading of texts, and our perceptions focus on different elements in highly individual ways. It is not enough to think of globalization, or one functioning as a direct consequence of globalization, as the influence of one nation or culture upon one other. It is the simultaneous whole of many different ideas from many different origins expressed in individually unique ways that make globalization a prominent force in modern life.

To keep research on globalization and the most recent popularity of globalization in a realistic context, the actual existence of globalization must come into question:

Some people think that globalization is a fact – that it has an objective existence that deeply impacts on human development. They see humankind as entering into a global age. On the contrary, others insist that globalization is simply a fiction promoted by Western scholars and perhaps represents the conspiracy of a new imperialism. In their view, globalization has to be a myth if only because the diversity of human politics, economies and cultures can never be globalized.71 Here the wording becomes increasingly problematic. To state that some cultures cannot be globalized needs clarification. This lack could be geographically focused, but the statement’s undertones suggest something much more problematic: the interpretation of globalization as

Westernization since the source of the prevailing values is the West, and then mostly the United

States.

This is a dangerous conflation of terms that warrants the necessary assertion that globalization is not equivalent to Westernization. “Equating globalization with Westernization is more apparent when we examine the form and contents of globalization as elaborated in the

70 Wise, Cultural Globalization, 29. 71 Yu Keping, “From Sino-west to Globalization: A Perspective from China,” in National Perspectives on Globalization, eds. Paul Bowles, Henry Veltmeyer, Scarlett Cornelissen, Noela Invernizzi, and Kwong-leung Tang (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 47. 27 received theory,”72 namely, the idea that globalization is synonymous with progress, and progress is a central concept of European Enlightenment. Even the idea of individuality is strongly tied to Western Enlightenment ideology. These links suggest that perhaps much of the scholarship surrounding the popular term “globalization” is perpetuated under a false pretense that equates progress with Westernization. Befu continues to explore this problem stating, “What is problematic in the received notion of globalization is that such values as humanity, individualism, freedom and the like, which are assumed to be the stuff of globalization, are taken for granted to be universally applicable to all humans. But these values are applicable throughout the world only in the imagination of the West.”73 Ultimately it must be recognized, if not outright stated, that there are many centers of globalization rather than a center (namely the West).

Not all globalization is Western-centric. As already explored, Japan is an Asian nation that went through a strange series of eras waffling between isolationist and Westernization emphases and finds itself in an arguable self-imposed state of balance between the perpetuation of tradition and forward cultural and economic expansion. Befu introduces the concept of

“Japanization,” stating that “the term ‘Japanization’ has been used to refer to the spread of

Japanese culture and products around the world.”74 This is often used in parallel to

“Americanization.” Befu explains that, “By indigenizing the West on Japanese soil, Japan made it easier for other Asian countries to digest this already ‘Asianized’ or Japanized Western culture.

In the past this process had been called the ‘Westernization of Japan’; but it is at least equally valid to call it the ‘Japanization of the West.’”75 In this scenario, Japan sits in a position of

72 Harumi Befu, “‘Japanization’, ‘Asianization of the West’ and ‘Creolization’: A Perspective from Japan,” in National Perspectives on Globalization, eds. Paul Bowles, Henry Veltmeyer, Scarlett Cornelissen, Noela Invernizzi, and Kwong-leung Tang (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 139. 73 Befu, 140. 74 Befu, 145. 75 Befu, 145. 28 power, deciding what is introduced into Asian cultures and how it is adapted for a supposed easy transition.

Globalization as an economic and ideological phenomena, whether and to what degree one agrees on its true existence, generates the by-product that can be best described as a “global person.” The premise of a “global person” existing in an emerging “global culture” is thus encapsulated: “Such a person is, above all, a global person rather than a Chinese, an American, a

French or a Russian person.”76 But what does this stripping away of national labels do for or against an individual’s identity?

There are two primary effects globalization has on an individual’s identity. One outcome is the feeling that one must choose a particular set of identifiers that in sum describes definitively and in totality an individual’s identity. The second effect is the feeling, based in truth or not, that a singular and particular identity has been chosen for an individual by an outside force ranging from one individual to society as a whole. The first effect is felt strongly by individuals whose identities are formed around consistent and influential access to more than one culture. These individuals often feel they are too much of one or the other depending from which culture’s vantage point they are being judged. But Wise asks a crucial question at this juncture: who do you want to be? [my emphasis]. He states that ultimately that doesn’t matter: “Which do you want to be? And one can’t put off that choice forever. But there’s also the feeling that there isn’t much choice; these others have already made up their mind about what you are (or should be).”77

He goes on that these are

stories of a struggle with the idea that one can only be one thing or the other; that there is a choice, and that one can choose to be authentic this or authentic that, or not. These are stories that are not new, but I feel are growing in frequency worldwide. These are stories of people in a particular place, at a particular time, who are dealing with the legacies of

76 Keping, “From Sino-west to Globalization,” 54. 77 Wise, Cultural Globalization, 1. 29

other places and other times. We could state that these are stories of globalization, and they are, though they seem much more personal than the issues usually addressed around that trendy term. But most of all these are stories of culture, of the realm of meanings, traditions, and experiences; of the frameworks through which people make sense of their lives and how parents, friends, and people on the street seek to shape that framework. These are stories of culture in a global time.78 One of the best ways to describe identity is as an and rather than an or. Wise posits the question of false dichotomies, such as the supposed inability to be linked to a particular identity due to seemingly incongruous aspects such as sex, geographic location, and skin color. He encourages the idea that identity is an everyday construction and fluid process and subject to influence rather than something in crisis or in need of transformation.79 Ultimately, being cosmopolitan (not as in elite, but as aware and educated) is stressed, but why? “The first answer, the more pedagogical answer, is that engaging with these stories makes us personally reflective, considering our own place in the world and how globalization affects each of us.”80 Therefore,

“if we take this idea of cosmopolitanism, or deep citizenship, seriously, then we must realize that there are no Others, only others, finding their way through their ordinary everyday lives.”81

An important concept still to explore briefly in relation to identity in the face of globalization is strategic essentialism. This is a way of expressing an element of “essential identity” specifically for gain with a “strength in numbers” mindset. It is a means of finding common ground for a larger group, such as emphasizing the larger category of “African music” rather than specifically “Kenyan music.”82 Though strength can be found in this essentializing, it is in a delicate balance with problems of over-simplification found in both exoticism and

Orientalism. One of the greatest dangers of Orientalism is the creation of dangerous dichotomies,

78 Wise, 2. 79 Wise, 148. 80 Wise, 152. 81 Wise, 154. 82 Wise, 14. 30 the most famous being the East versus the West. This implies that one is and can only be what the other is not. In addition to this, Orientalism perpetuates the practice of Western academe speaking for others. It can be argued that the “power” of the Western scholar could bring light to a people and culture that otherwise would not attain global attention. The inherent problem centers on how Western scholars wield their powers in deciding what information is important to report and what is not. Wise sums up this problem neatly: “Any project that studies globalization must be wary of Orientalism, that is essentializing the Other. This is especially true when

Westerners write with authority on non-Western matters. I’m not arguing that they (we) can’t do it, but that one needs to be wary of the West once again speaking the Truth for the Orient in which the Orient itself is conspicuously silent.”83

Global music is a general term used to refer to music that “circulates globally” and as a term does not do justice to the range of complexity involved.84 Hence, there is truly no way to label music as intentionally or unintentionally global music and begs the question then if it is music intended for global circulation what goals are achieved. Music, particularly from cultures considered non-Western, is highly subject to cultural imperialism, put at high risk for tourism and exploitation by the West. The term “world music” itself is a Western construct. Though much-considered world music is more hybrid in nature, there is still pressure to represent a cultural “authenticity,” even the label of world music gives an unvoiced presupposition of at least some level of authenticity. “The demand to be authentic is an essentialist view of identity, which argues that individuals and groups have ‘natural’ affinities to particular musics or rhythms.”85 To elaborate further on the topic of hybridity, influence, borrowing, and outright

83 Wise, 24. 84 Wise, 78. 85 Wise, 85. 31 appropriation, Wise goes as far as to say, “Given all the cross-cultural borrowing (for example between North American and Africa over the past number of centuries), what is considered

‘Western’ music is debatable.”86 And now we have the crux of the matter! With so much available for intentional and unintentional influence from a composer’s so-called “toolbox” of compositional techniques and personal approaches to much, what really is “Western” music?

Can it even be defined based purely on how it sounds? It depends on the lens through which one is examining a piece and the intention of the reader. Blacking’s findings and feelings about music aptly gets to the heart of the matter, stating, “music is not a language that describes the way society seems to be, but a metaphorical expression of feelings associated with the way society really is.”87

Of most importance is the core of globalization’s definition: the movement of ideas. In discussing the flow of music on the global scale, Wise asserts, “as people move, their music moves with them. The movement of diasporic peoples changes not only their music but the music of the places they move to and through.”88

86 Wise, 87. 87 Blacking, How Musical Is Man? 104. 88 Wise, 87. 32

CHAPTER 4. ORIENTALISM

The previous chapters focused on both modern and historical writings, specifically about

Japanese culture, to establish common aspects used both emically and etically to define Japanese culture. The obvious sticking point is intention: what was the purpose or goal of these writings?

Peter Dale is trying to debunk ideologies around the Japanese being a homogenous culture. The nihonjiron writings attempt to establish the Japanese as wholly different from the collective West and avoid being dominated by an outsider’s interpretation of the culture.

This fear of an outsider, particularly one positioned in Western cultures, exerting power over the Japanese and taking the reins of influence is legitimate. Orientalism is a field of study that exemplifies the dangers of the West influencing thought and dialogue about unfamiliar cultures and places. Edward Said, a highly influential scholar and literary, wrote his famous and often-cited book Orientalism (1978) to trace the trajectory of said field, analyze its texts, and situate the reader to understand better the impact it had on scholarship regarding countries and cultures considered Eastern, or “oriental.” Some fundamental doctrines outlined by Said in his analysis are particularly relevant to this paper, particularly how the study of cultures considered non-Western has progressed and how this shapes current writing and discourse about cultural products from these countries.

Within the scope of Said’s work, India, Japan, China, and other countries in the region are designated as the Far East and are not discussed individually because the roots of orientalist thought stems first from discussion about the Near East. Though not explicitly discussed, the same terminology is later applied to the Far East countries and remains pertinent to this paper.

Orientalism as a term exists primarily in academia, though specialists are veering away from it due to its association with European colonialism and its general vagueness. The term is 33 laden with negative connotations, particularly in that it functioned for a time as a means for the

West to dominate, control, and restructure what it defined as the Orient for its own purposes.

Said describes the premise of the dichotomous orientation of Orientalism as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.’”89 He further clarifies that the Occident is the necessary opposite of the Orient. However, this vantage point does not necessarily define a physical place but rather an

Other that exists to contrast the West. Therefore, “[t]he Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West), as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.”90 In every way, whether factually accurate or not, the Orient as defined by Orientalism represented an opposite, but not an equal opposite.

Understanding Orientalist texts as political-intellectual culture poses a grave danger of false representation. The West is often speaking for the Other as a display of power but through a highly filtered and limited lens. What makes this form of representation dangerous are the consistencies found within the field of Orientalism. These oversimplifications and generalizations take on a feeling of legitimacy through repetitions (since everyone says it, it must be true!). A key term woven through Orientalist texts is hegemony, defined as leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.

These representations may not be accurate and often serve a purpose for the West centered on power and self-legitimizing. Said emphasizes that his analysis of these texts,

“therefore places emphasis on the evidence, which is by no means invisible, for such

89 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 2. 90 Said, 1-2. 34 representations as representations, not as ‘natural’ depictions of the Orient.”91 Orientalism not only encompasses a scholarly field set about with a Western-centric stance but the people and images that are created: “Orientalism is the discipline by which the Orient was (and is) approached systematically, as a topic of learning, discovery, and practice. But in addition I have been using the word to designate that collection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available to anyone who has tried to talk about what lies east of the dividing line.”92 To fully grasp the repercussions of this field, one must look at the context, style, setting, and devices, and not analyze the correctness of these representations. The focus is on the surface and not the interior meanings.

As all fields are, Orientalism was created. A field can change dramatically, even in seemingly fundamental ways, to create a bank of all-purpose definitions of a subject matter.

Orientalism does this in some striking ways. Four main themes are highlighted throughout: 1) power balance (or rather, imbalance), which negotiated by way of 2) knowledge, and 3)

Othering, which leads to the establishment and reinforcement of 4) stereotypes. These four themes fuel the underlying problem of representation, particularly from the Western perspective, that can be traced back to these early scholarly interpretations of culture.

Thus, the Orient is treated as a specimen that needed understanding in order to conquer.

Power and knowledge are intricately linked in Orientalism. To have systematized knowledge over another culture indicates that a higher fact and truth beyond self is obtained, and ultimately allows the bearer of that knowledge to hold authority over it and decide whether or not to grant it autonomy (which by definition autonomy is not granted).

91 Said, 21. 92 Said, 73. 35

So great is the influence of this idea of possessing knowledge over another culture, that is was no longer relevant who the people actually are, or any attempt made to understand differences in cultures that fall under the umbrella term Oriental. The goal was not to actually learn about the peoples under this label but to codify the label into a set of easily understood generalizations. Said suggests that

In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these.93 By gathering supposed information and knowledge, the scholar of Orientalism is feeding into a system whose end goal is to exhibit power over those “being studied.” This is strong evidence that those who identified as Western or Occidental in the nineteenth century sought their own identity in something of a cultural identity crisis. This need to band together in ideology required the creation of a category, a catch-all in a sense, of everything that the West is not. By reinforcing this category called the Orient, Western scholarship legitimizes it along with the notion that the West is somehow culturally and perhaps even biologically superior: “In essence such a category is not so much a way of receiving new information as it is a method of controlling what seems to be a threat to some established view of things.”94 The threat is less of a physical threat of domination from the East but rather the potential for colonized cultures and regions to rise up and declare equality with their European colonizers.

What makes this field tricky is its view on texts. Testimony rather than research through existing texts is viewed as “literature” rather than science.95 These texts are based on a personal aesthetic, or purpose, which further complicates the power struggle. The key to this style of

93 Said, 177. 94 Said, 59. 95 Said, 157. 36 analysis is interpretation. Western-centric interpretations at this time inherently had power- driven agendas. Power is viewed as being derived from knowledge, whatever form that might have taken. In establishing a base of systematic knowledge, stereotypes arise from generalizations and categorizing which further drive apart the dichotomous approach of East versus West, most effectively achieved by way of Othering.

The capital O Other has a strong foothold in Orientalism, perpetuating ethnocentric comparisons intended to deride or diminish that non-Self that is being scrutinized. These extremes of fact and generalizations position the Orient as a forbidden world, one that is so extraordinarily different it becomes enticing. “The Orient at large, therefore, vacillates between the West’s contempt for what is familiar and its shivers of delight in – or fear of – novelty.”96

Novelty in particular plays a vital role in the Othering of music as discussed later. What began as a recognition of geographic relationships turned into a selective study of a region, which spawned a whole field of texts filled with biased interpretations with power-driven undertones.

The rooting of ideology on these supposed differences is a powerful force on psychological factors. Representation based on such texts not only affect those who invented them but takes on a different struggle for those who are unjustly represented.

“The idea of representation is a theatrical one: the Orient is the stage on which the whole

East is confined.”97 This theatre has limited characters who represent a larger whole, and thus a closed field with surprisingly limited terminology to describe a vast range of peoples and cultures that include “characters” and “images” that allow the West to “understand” or interpret what is largely unfamiliar to create something self-contained and self-reinforcing. Much of this system relies on similes: something that is like a familiar thing to a European rather than a true

96 Said, 59. 97 Said, 63. 37 broadening of perspective and understanding. Another result of this kind of representation of peoples who fall under the Oriental umbrella is kind of counter-response. To demonstrate, what was often initially over esteemed, either in its novelty or difference, is replaced by feelings in which that same culture is viewed as backward and barbaric, in some cases even considered less human. Thus, the profession of Orientalists served to enshrine this inequality and special paradoxes.

Two important terms come to fruition with the expansion of actual scholarly knowledge of the Orient in areas such as linguistics and nineteenth century growth in commerce: latent and manifest Orientalism. Latent Orientalism simply refers to unconscious positivity while manifest

Orientalism encompasses stated views on Oriental society, language, and other aspects of the cultures. Said’s conclusions about the trajectory of the study and field of Orientalism states that

“Orientalism can thus be regarded as a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the

Orient.”98 It is ultimately a product of many factors and include writings meant as empirical

“science,” philology, and other writings such as travel books. We assume (and hope) that over time, scholarship and learning move forward. However, in this case, it appears much more the case that previous work is built upon in a way that codifies and even solidifies as truths things that under the surface are limited by way of intention, assumptions, and imagination. Thus, “The

Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire.”99 Not the real Orient, but the field that has developed around the word. Though partially a result of Western crisis as its powers begin to lose their comfortable control over the

98 Said, 202. 99 Said, 203. 38 rest of the world, now the Orient is an even greater challenge to confront and understand, accept into cultural thought and scholarship, but now also viewed as more of a partnership, as something to be actually studied.

Numerous scholars, including Said, agree that history is a complex order not just of events, but temporalities and meanings that cannot be distilled down into a singular idea of culture, likewise culture to ideology and further still, ideology to theology.100 This attitude has led to a comfort in summing up whole societies in only a few manuscripts, deeming the

Orientalist as somehow inherent in the ability to understand, decipher, and logically repackage the summation of a culture into one easily digestible form for the Western consumer. However, in later discourse “It necessarily provokes unrest in one’s conscience about cultural, racial, or historical generalizations, their uses, value, degree of objectivity, and fundamental intent,”101 suggesting feelings of guilt from the Western perspective of the far-reaching effects of

Orientalist texts on politics and culture. Even with this increased sense of awareness, four dogmas are still present in modern Orientalism:

1) the absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior; 2) abstractions about the Orient […] are always preferable to direct evidence drawn from modern Oriental realities; 3) The Orient is eternal, uniform, and incapable of defining itself; therefore, it is assumed that a highly generalized and systematic vocabulary for describing the Orient from a Western standpoint is inevitable and even scientifically “objective;” and 4) the Orient is at bottom something to be either feared […] or controlled.102 The direct repercussions of these attitudes are manifest in music within a field know as musical exoticism.

100 Said, 298. 101 Said, 98. 102 Said, 300-301. 39

CHAPTER 5. MUSICAL EXOTICISM

“Exoticism in music is a quality that links a work to some especially fascinating, attractive, or fearsome place: to an Elsewhere and, usually, to its inhabitants and their supposed inclinations and ways.”103 The “exotic” and exoticism have many meanings and manifestations in music. Ralph P. Locke, author of the seminal scholarly evaluation of exoticism, Musical

Exoticism (2009), sorts through some of the most relevant examples that refer to or evoke a place other than “here.” His exhaustive study, including his categorization of exoticism in music and exploration of implications of various levels of exoticism, greatly informs my analysis of contemporary Western Art Music written by composers from non-Western countries. Further exploration of some of the nuances of his definitions and distinctions serve as a guide to analysis.

First, a brief look at what musical exoticism is, how it functions, and ultimately its cultural implications.

There are two pairs of distinctions to keep in mind and consider when dealing with musical exoticism. The first is the difference between exotic styles that are either closely related or derived from real cultural practices, and exotic styles that are designed to sound like the real thing but are largely invented by Western musicians. To illustrate music derived from real cultural practices, ethnomusicologist and celebrated Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote many of his famous teaching pieces, Mikrokosmos, directly in the style of Hungarian folk traditions. Furthermore, his Op. 20 Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs includes an index of folk melodies he transcribed and used as the basis for each piece. In contrast, a piece that uses no folk or traditional materials might rely on the use of a particular scale or mode in order to evoke a general impression of a culture without any true ties to this intended origin or to

103 Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1. 40 evoke a vagueness of origin. The second pair of distinctions is recognizing the difference between exotic works that reflect another culture’s music versus works that attempt to represent a culture as a whole. Here the emphasis is on intention: to reflect, or show, in as accurate a manner as possible another musical tradition, or to reduce an entire culture down to a singular representative sound in which those represented may or more likely may not have the power or voice to control. Locke asserts that, “[w]ithin the musical realm […], exoticism has often been treated less as a broad mindset or artistic approach and more as a lexicon of specific stylistic devices that the composer – and presumably many listeners – associated, rightly or wrongly, with the distant country or people in question.”104

As a direct artistic outcome of culture, it is almost impossible for music to carry zero cultural implications and exist in its own vacuum of time and space. Jonathan Bellman, in the opening lines of his introduction to a compilation of writings titled The Exotic in Western Art

Music (1998), is upfront about the exotic coming from the Western perspective: “On one level, the idea of ‘musical exoticism’ is almost self-explanatory: it may be defined as the borrowing or use of musical materials that evoke distant locales or alien frames of reference.”105 It is, essentially, a tool for composition, a way to craft the unfamiliar into a more familiar or in some cases more approachable style. He expands the definition of exoticism by emphasizing that, “the suggestion of strangeness is the overriding factor: not only does the music sound different from

‘our’ music, but it also suggests a specifically alien culture or ethos.”106

While Locke and Bellman establish a consensus on the definition of exoticism, Locke favors words like “borrowing,” “imitation,” and “influence,” while Bellman chooses less

104 Locke, 43. 105 Jonathan Bellman, ed., introduction to The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), ix. 106 Bellman, xii. 41 committed words like “evoking” and “suggesting.” Locke’s bolder vocabulary in describing exoticism supports his urge that, “We need to pay attention to what the chosen musical materials were intended to signify, in context, and what they have meant to audiences and critics over the years.”107 In order to adequately pay attention to intention and context, culminating in meaning,

Locke suggests a broader approach to defining and identifying musical exoticism. An important point that broadens the scope is that exoticism is “the process of evoking in or through music– whether that music is ‘exotic-sounding’ or not–a place, people, or social milieu that is not entirely imaginary and that differs profoundly from the home country or culture in attitudes, customs, and morals.”108

Recognizing Said’s work towards understanding the development of Western perspective on non-Western, particularly Eastern, cultures, Bellman refers to Said’s 1978 Orientalism, stating, “he consistently acknowledges the complexities of the multifaceted West-East equation, the tendencies of the West to ‘read’ the East not as itself but rather as an idealized object of desire, focus of evil, focus of good, bastion of purity, bastion of decay, or any of myriad other interpretation.”109 Richard Taruskin, in his article “‘Entoiling the Falconet’: Russian Musical

Orientalism in Context,” puts the complex nature of teasing out exoticism particularly clearly:

“The East is the East only to the West: the very act of naming it is already constitutive and heavily invested, consciously or not, with theory. There can be no investigation of it that is not both itself an ideological critique and subject to ideological critique in its turn.”110

107 Locke, Musical Exoticism, 46. 108 Locke, 47. 109 Bellman, The Exotic in Western Music, xi. 110 Richard Taruskin, “‘Entoiling the Falconet’: Russian Musical Orientalism in Context,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 195. 42

“Exoticism is not about the earnest study of foreign cultures; it is about drama, effect, and evocation”111 parallels the way that much of Orientalism originally had little to do with true knowledge, but systematic categorizations. Connecting and contextualizing Orientalism and musical exoticism, Locke distills Said, summarizing that “he points out that aesthetic pleasure, subtle workmanship, complex structuring – in short, artistry – could serve in part to ‘occlude’

(veil from sight from the European reader or audience members) the functioning of empire.”112

This allows the conqueror to avoid looking directly at the harm imposed on the people due to the gross simplification and stereotyping used to describe a particular culture and people in a geographic region.

Just as Said stresses that the Orient is a product of the Occident’s perspective, “the portrayal of a (real) geographical and ethnic location in a work of fiction (for example) was not, when that work was first released into the world, taken as necessarily ‘true’ – i.e., as a reliable representation of that location – even by those who consumed it.”113 The general understanding then is that evoking a feeling of Other in a clear and understandable manner was of prime importance, whereas authenticity had little to do with the merits of such works. This leads to the unfortunate problem that these exotic works served to shape the “knowledge” of certain countries or regions to the West.

Musically, the late nineteenth century trends that supported the expansion of exoticism to works beyond opera include the expanded research and collection of folk music and increased contact with traditional instruments. Groups exhibiting music and demonstrations of culture from foreign lands appeared in the Paris World Fair of 1889, followed by a similar fair held in

111 Bellman, The Exotic in Western Music, xiii. 112 Locke, Musical Exoticism, 34. 113 Locke, 18. 43

America near Chicago called the World Columbian Exhibition in 1893.114 Scholarly research to collect and preserve unfamiliar musical traditions paralleled the spread of the European empire, increasing access to translations and scholarly works, along with the rise in political and cultural nationalism.115 Thus, there is increased attention towards and awareness of groups that refer to a particular ethnic or cultural group. Until Locke, very little formal research was done on the

Western views of these regions as represented in music.

While Locke fully acknowledges the inherent problem of identifying exoticism in abstract works that are not overtly extra-musical, focusing his own research on works specifically about exotic places or people, he establishes two models for analyzing exoticism in music. The first he calls the Exotic-Style Paradigm: “The Exotic-Style Paradigm assumes that music is, by compositional intent, exotic – and that it registers as exotic to the listener – if (and, often, only if) it incorporates specific musical signifiers of Otherness.”116 An exotic “marker,” dubbed “an Exoticism,” tend to be extracted, simplified and generalized, but that does not make them less evocative of a people or place. It creates a stereotype, something “close enough” to musical traditions of another place that are presented in Western art music in an easily recognizable form. Having established the possible definitions of Other as essentially “not us,”

Locke gives a useful description of Self and Other to help understand the dialogue and relationship between the two:

The Other is primarily understood in the present book the way it is understood in much cultural and critical theory dealing with Western culture: as referring to geographical, ethnic, racial, and religious difference from the West. But the concept of the Other derives ultimately from more basic philosophical principles, pondered over millennia, of

114 Locke, 132. 115 Locke, 133. 116 Locke, 48. 44

how the individual subject (“I,” or the Self) conceives of and relates to another individual (“you,” the Other).117 The second model is referred to as the All the Music in Full Context Paradigm. Music is heard and understood as exotic because we hear it in the context of what we know to contain exotic musical features. This is most apparent in program music and staged/dramatic works.

Furthermore, how we hear any musical passage is highly dependent on its context: an instrumental line by itself may not indicate any Otherness; it could be highly sentimental in one instance or vengeful in another. The context in which this instrumental line is heard significantly shapes the perception of intended or unintended signifiers of an Other. There are no hard and fast signifiers in music as much as some would want to believe this, which makes analysis and identification of exoticism particularly subjective at times, especially the argument on the existence of truly absolute music. To address the many-faceted ways context shapes interpretation, given that interpretation is dependent on one’s experience, Locke lays out three categories of exoticism that address the blurred boundary between exotic and non-exotic, particularly in an increasingly globalized world: Overt Exoticism, Submerged Exoticism, and

Transcultural Composing.

Overt Exoticism is precisely as it sounds: an exoticism is presented with the intention of representing a culture or vagueness of Other by means of oversimplification. Submerged exoticism, however, can include the whole tone and octatonic scales simply by being considered unusual and for exploratory use in tonality.118 The octatonic collection is associated with asymmetrical rhythms and harsh orchestration though it has no real Eastern association,

117 Locke, 82. 118 Locke, 226. 45 meanwhile, the whole-tone collection is associated with the music of Claude Debussy, especially when evoking Asian imagery. The effect is of a “special” yet undefined other.119

Transcultural Composing, by contrast is defined as “the practice of composing for

Western contexts – for example, a piano recital or a wind-ensemble concert – a work that incorporates certain stylistic and formal conventions of another culture’s music, often a music that has an entirely different context.”120 Examples include religion ceremonies, rites, celebrations, etc. The word transcultural is not standard in this context; many others have come to similar conclusions about bridging and bringing together two different traditions of composition or performing music. Other words include “transethnic,” “intercultural,” and

“hybrid” but the word transcultural allows for a broad range of relationships and interpreted as a conversation between cultures. “Conversation” implies two-way communication, in which one culture or musical tradition is not necessarily dominating or appropriating another for its own uses.

Influence versus Borrowing

When dealing with works displaying potential exoticism or evoking some sense of Other either explicitly or not, it is worth noting the difference between “influence” and “borrowing”

(also known as “appropriation”). The ambiguity in this distinction can lead to a creative gray zone for composers. Locke comments on this: “Attempts at quoting, adapting, or even inventing foreign styles were and remain only one drawer that the exotic composer may choose to open in his or her toolkit. In this regard, the exotic (or, we might say, exoticist) composer is often closely analogous to the nationalist one.”121 Negative reactions to exoticism, in this sense, focus on what

119 Locke, 228. 120 Locke, 228. 121 Locke, 22. 46 is being borrowed from a musical tradition and questions if it should be borrowed. Here we get into issues of ethics and appropriation. A more productive way to evaluate the use of what could be labeled a “clichéd” use of cultural borrowing includes figuring out the extent and nature of the borrowing and “how imaginatively the clichés are used and to what expressive – and in some cases, arguably ideological – end.”122 The nineteenth century is particularly known for composers seeking out and incorporating traditional musics of other locales as a genuine attempt to “expand and refresh their own musical language.”123 He concludes,

at the point when numerous composers do become deeply responsive to foreign styles – namely in the first half of the twentieth century – critics (and, subsequently, historians) tend to view this responsiveness as a marker of honest intercultural exchange, presumably free from the taint of Western dominance or condescension.124 Steve Reich notably speaks out against Western musicians using any material that appears to define a characteristic “local color,” stating that

one can create a music with one’s own sound that is constructed in light of one’s knowledge of non-Western structures… This is a more genuine and interesting form of influence because while listening, one is not necessarily aware of some non-Western music being imitated. Instead of imitation, the influence of non-Western musical structures on the thinking of a Western composer is likely to produce something genuinely new.125 Here Reich is describing something more like a synthesis, in which the influence creates in his eyes an entirely new product that is arguably neither Western nor within the context of another culture’s music structure. Discourse of these “genuinely new” works or genres has spawned the recently popular, and perhaps too-freely used, term hybridity. American composer Harry Partch is a prime example of hybridity. His personal musical/theatrical style is modeled after non-

European traditions (namely Greek) to create a unique form of art centered on ratio-driven tuning

122 Locke, 32. 123 Locke, 152. 124 Locke, 233. 125 Steve Reich, Writings on Music, 1964-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 70-71. 47 systems to be performed on instruments of his invention. His music does not neatly fit or even awkwardly fit into a genre; the art he created is truly a fusion of various cultures expressed through one-of-a-kind instruments.

“Musical exoticism is not ‘contained in’ specific devices. Rather, it arises through an interaction between a work, in all its aspects, and the listener.”126 Additionally, exoticism is not merely a musical device that signifies or represents another musical tradition; musical exoticism results from multiple relationships and interactions, especially between the composer and the performer, and the performer and the audience. However, the connections do not stop there.

Audience members or listeners can only understand or read into a piece based on what information is given to them and what they already know from their personal experiences. These experiences are so individual it can never be taken for granted that everyone will derive the same meaning from a work even if the word has program notes or contains lyrics. A performer’s interpretation is informed again by the performer’s own knowledge, understanding, and experience. It is possible to transmit an unintended meaning due to context:

Responses to exotic works with a substantial musical component are- like all forms of knowledge (taking that word in the broad sense) – “situated”: that is, they are shaped by such primary factors as social and cultural context, community values and the experiences and attitudes of the individual listener. Although some aspects of the works and their meanings are relatively fixed, others are constantly open to negotiation.127 An essential factor to address is the relationship between art and society. The social context of a work is paramount, Said had much to say about “worldliness” in this regard and the need for worldly criticism.

126 Locke, 3. 127 Locke, 3. 48

“Composers, critics, and scholars have tended to brand musical exoticism as either healthful and invigorating or decadent and noxious.”128 In other words, exoticism, in most forms, elicits some form of reaction. The overall tone and attitude toward exoticism from the past few centuries (including a wealth of Romantic and Classical operas that portray distant lands and people in a desirable and “fabulous” way) are generally positive, coming from the perspective of the listening (and by extension the critic). It stimulates the imagination, allowing people to travel visually and musically to places beyond their reach and in a manner that is understood as fantastical. One way this element of fantastical and exotic is created is through novelty. What is

“new” and “different” has a long history of drawing positive attention and thus perpetuating itself. It also has a pastoral connotation, a desire to return to nature and away from the bustle and noise of the post-industrial revolution era.

Intention and meaning are further complicated simply by the awareness of the negative baggage generated from Orientalism and by extension explicit forms of stereotyping or appropriation in musical exoticism: “Any such attempt to reach across cultural boundaries through art, or to use artistic means – whether (as the ‘All the Music in Full Context’ Paradigm allows) exotic or not – in order to comment on life beyond those boundaries is fraught with risks, no matter what the nationality/ethnicity of the creative artist or artists who undertake it.”129 If only it were full-proof to distinguish the portrayal of the exotic versus the use of foreign styles without “conveying an exotic charge” all the while exploring how exotic works can creatively engage with or undermine the various binarism outlined above (i.e. “the real and fictive”, “self and other”).

128 Locke, 25. 129 Locke, 42. 49

Another very real danger marking the present-day performance of Exotic works is self- promotion: “Not surprisingly, it has served regularly as an effective – some might say manipulative – device for marketing musical events and careers.”130 The performance of especially overtly exotic works as a means of presenting novelty is culturally dangerous; to put another culture on display reverts us to a time of Othering and an unhealthy intrigue for that which is marked by difference. In another sense, commercializing another culture’s music from someone who identifies with that culture is rife with connotations of self-exoticizing, promoting the exotic through the claim of authenticity for personal gain. This is a difficult topic to navigate because so much relies on the presenter’s intentions and how the packaging of this music shapes the audience’s reading and understanding of the music.

Analytical and Compositional Use of Exoticism

How does instrumental music represent anything extra-musical? The solution has been to avoid musical criticism because of this problem and instead focus this kind of research as

“musical analysis.” Locke calls this “a type of scholarly research that focuses on a work’s internal structure and other elements that are (or at least are often described as being) relatively independent of context and social function and therefore, by definition, highly ‘autonomous.’”131

It ignores elements not explicitly included in the written score, social function, extra-musical associations, and performer’s/composer’s creative insights. The real question is what can be found, given the possibility of multiple interpretations and meanings depending on the appropriate and useful context.

Music and extra-musical signs that point to potential exoticism include verbal cues, like titles or performance markings. These can suggest not only a style but a performative way of

130 Locke, 312. 131 Locke, 16. 50 playing. “Instrumental evocation” means to evoke or replicate the musical style, gesture, or performative sound through the use of Western instruments. This can be achieved in a broad manner of ways, from pitch-bending to pacing through a phrase in a way reminiscent of a particular genre of music from another culture. This brings into focus the need to not only identify individual signs on the printed score itself but to be sure to address all elements of the work, such as a narrative, premise (what is it “about”), and other elements more relevant to musicodramatic works, as applicable.

Current Discourse

By the twentieth century, composers are “worldly,” as Said might put it, and Locke suggests that the explicit portrayal of a distant people or place is soundly Overt Exoticism. The other types, namely Submerged Exoticism and Transcultural Composing, truly gain traction at this point in music history, arguably beginning famously with Debussy’s encounter and influence of gamelan heard at the Paris World Fair. Just as intention and meaning can be multifaceted concerning context, works are viably read to be in dialogue with more than one of these three approaches to twentieth century exoticism. “Around 1900 or a bit before, some of the most skillful and adventurous composers of concert and stage works were beginning to hold Overt

Exoticism in disdain”132 based on two historical trends: a turn of attitude against or in doubt of

European powers and their empire-building, and increased access to cultural products of distant peoples and lands through commerce, the expansion of ethnomusicology, and advances in sound recording technology. Generally speaking, through greater exposure, a greater appreciation for knowledge of other musical cultures, and an expanded worldview beyond the Western-centric lens of Us versus Them, Overt Exoticism has fallen out of favor. Out of this disdain for Overt

132 Locke, 215. 51

Exoticism, two compositional trends arise: 1) the rejection of Romanticism by many and the quest for true originality because exotic devices are now deemed too familiar, too cliqued, and overused, and 2) paralleling trends in visual art, there was a rejection of realistic representation, such that “artists sought out realms of strangeness as analogues to the dream world – the desires and fears – of the creative mind.”133 A new originality is sought that might be so original it breaks free from cultural ties.

Globalization has made a massive impact on the dissemination of ideas, culture, and music. So much so it seems that the things being disseminated are moving in the opposite direction. Locke refers to this as “the Rest to the West.”134 Many musical traditions are recorded and widely distributed under larger recording labels, but what is being exported may not necessarily be entirely traditional but rather part of a tourist attraction. The resulting word

“authentic” that comes to mind bears its own set of complications and has itself become highly commodified.

Locke outlines four current trends in the composition of Western art music: 1) more

Western composers from places in the world previously without many composers are studying and working in a Westernized/modernized sense; 2) foreign musical traditions are so different and unfamiliar sounding that audiences could not be counted on to have on hand the appropriate association; 3) modernist emphasis on originality and uniqueness shuns Overt Exoticism, and looks for more structural aspects of foreign musical traditions rather than the superficial; 4) though the emphasis has been on the composer’s intentions, this can change as soon as the piece is heard and received elsewhere.135

133 Locke, 216-17. 134 Locke, 277. 135 Locke, 281. 52

One wonders again, if there is any substantive difference between composing in an Overt Exotic(ist) manner and in an intercultural (or what I call a Transcultural) one - except, that is, in the mind of the composer, listener, or commentator. After all, audiences for much inter/Transcultural music end up being primarily Western. One suspects that these listeners find the music fascinating both for its unfamiliar sounds and for its association with a distant culture. They perceive it as surrounded, to some degree, by an exotic aura.136

136 Locke, 281-2. 53

CHAPTER 6. MUSIC IN JAPAN

This chapter focuses first on tracing the history of music development in Japan and the role of music in the Japanese government’s shifting agendas of modernization and

Westernization. In addition, an overview of styles and genres, theory, and structure of traditional

Japanese music is laid out drawn from important sources by Western scholars. At the core is a critical look at the language used by these Western sources in describing the music, sounds, and aesthetics to identify plausible musical and non-musical “Japanese elements” for analysis and for consideration on the topic of representation. An overview of the various innovations twentieth century music takes lead us to celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu and beyond. A common thread throughout is representation through the lens of Western academic writing: what words, both musical and non-musical, signify “Japaneseness”?

Timeline of Music Development and Western Music Influences in Japan

Around 400-500 AD there was a steady flow of cultural exchange in the region between

Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Much of the cultural exchange from Japan came in the form of imperialism using Japanese Buddhism as the vehicle for cultural transfer. Later, this is much as how European music and culture came to Japan in the form of Christian missionaries. There is much evidence of importation of sacred and secular music, instruments, and instruction of music from China, Korea, and India the Nara period (553-794).137 These instruments and music get assimilated and modified during the following Heian period (794-1185) and produces the height of court music. This signified the beginnings of “native influence on imported music and instruments.”138 After much growth and development of several dramatic and vocal forms such

137 William P. Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1959), 26. 138 Malm, 30. 54 as noh opera, the Tokugawa period (also known as Edo) (1615-1868) brought about a time of isolation and resistance to change. It is during this time that instrumental genres for the shamisen, koto, and shakuhachi rise in popularity. Other forms of theatre and low-brow entertainment flourish during this time of great class division where the wealthy enjoyed noh drama, the imperial court had its exclusive music and musicians, and the common people indulged in pleasure district entertainment.

The Meiji period (1868-1912) was a time characterized by intense modernization. One problem was that music up to this point was prominently utilitarian. Different musics were associated with particular groups and with different purposes (i.e., Shinto shrine ceremonies, shamisen-accompanied songs for popular theatre and adult entertainment), but none of these were appropriate for children. Music for children received great attention and consideration in educational reform during this period. One subtext of the government’s attention to music was to select the best from European and oriental music and make it their own so the traditional music would not be supplanted by the foreign.139 Even in music, the Japanese were concerned with maintaining control over their culture and country, to decide what adaptations were to be made without being unintentionally “influenced” or coerced. This set a precedent for a new nationalized music through the school system (children’s songs) using functional harmony that had a developed technique but freer emotional expression.140 To illustrate the fervor with which the Japanese government invested in the instruction of Western tonal music, May summarizes that,

They [the Music Study Committee which became the Tokyo Music School in 1887] encouraged the best Japanese musicians to study Western music and to make some fusion

139 Bonnie C. Wade, Music in Japan: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 13. 140 Shigeo Kishibe, forward to The Influence of the Meiji Period on Japanese Children’s Music, Elizabeth May (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), vii. 55

of the two, particularly in the realms of harmonization and of the accompanying of a song of one culture by an instrument of another. This fusion of the music of the two cultures, begun in the ‘eighties, is today a significant aspect of Japanese music.141 The efforts to incorporate a Western style of music into the education of Japan’s youth was thorough and far-reaching:

In the Taishō […] a number of children’s songs that were composed under the influence of music imported from the West were sung everywhere in Japan – in the streets, in schools, in kindergartens, on radio programs. […] This phenomenon played a prominent part in the history of music in Japan of the period after the Meiji era (1868-1912) and has endured until the present time, when the music of Japan has been modernized by further influences of the music of the West.142 Contact between Japan and the West traces back to the 16th century when mercantile companies sent traders. Missionaries came as well, which brought the first musical influence from outside: Western worship music.143 Thus, hymns and other vertically-oriented group singing were popularized. Not only did this music serve for congressional singing, it instilled a powerful shared musical experience with origins outside of established Japanese music genres.144

Not surprisingly, the piano became the instrument of choice. A signifier of wealth, instruments were initially completely imported. Paralleling the generations of European attitudes of music as a leisure pursuit for affluent young ladies, it became the instrument parents had their children study “for their personal development and upward social mobility.”145

The Taisho period (1912-26) and Showa period (1926-89) continue the trend of infusing the education system with Western tonal music. Traditional Japanese melodies were frequently harmonized using the European tonal system during this time.146 An increasing divide between

141 Elizabeth May, The Influence of the Meiji Period on Japanese Children’s Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 62. 142 Kishibe, forward to The Influence of the Meiji Period on Japanese Children’s Music, vii. 143 Wade, Music in Japan, 8-9. 144 Wade, 15. 145 Wade, 15. 146 Wade, 13. 56 traditional musics and imported Western styles marks these two periods. Favor of one or the other around the World Wars is extremely volatile.

“Participation in traditional musical genres continued, of course, but prestige and economic opportunities offered in the sphere of European and then American music pulled the populace farther and farther away from indigenous styles.”147 For example, imported jazz became hugely popular in the 1920s. At the same time, music reserved for the imperial court was now open to the public as a kind of cultural propaganda.

To offset protests of those in support of maintaining “nationalistic” music, the Japanese national radio (NHK) began a program in 1931 showcasing Japanese composers writing in the

European-classical music tradition. This allowed “home-grown” musician to flourish without the market being flooded with foreigners. At this time Japan followed suite of England as a colonizing power by controlled Korea and, ironically, introducing European music and instruments there.148 This “nationalism” took a steep turn and artists faced high amounts of government censorship in the name of protecting Japanese culture against the “West.”149

However, after the end of WWII in 1945 when Americana begins pouring into the country, attitudes swing drastically in the other direction: jazz is welcomed, baseball introduced and quickly coveted, etc.150 In a frenzy to meet the changing times full-on, attitudes become anti- nationalist such that overt musical nationalism was not tolerated.

A divide emerged the Japanese in post-war music scene: academic/European-classical tradition were seen at odds with experimental composition (i.e., Toru Takemitsu and Joji

147 Wade, 19. 148 Wade, 131. 149 Wade, 132. 150 Wade, 133. 57

Yuasa).151 The position of postwar modernity of Japan were juxtaposed with the still-present traditional musics in everyday life. Much has changed in the decades following WWII. The effects of globalization have allowed niche music to be readily available in Japan: one can find anything from ska, to salsa, to Bavarian folk song.152 At present, though Matsuri (festivals that celebrate heritage and tradition) still regularly occur and its characteristic music still accompanies it, it is no longer an integral part of “everyday life.” Ironically, traditional music such as gagaku is rarely a part of everyday modern life or even widely known by the layperson.

One possible explanation is that after nationalistic music was left behind there was a feeling of being lost and a need to search for roots after the whirlwind of rapid modernization. Also, a basic need is still found in the quest to maintain boundaries and successfully rally together (us versus them). This creates a need for authenticity in the production of non-Japanese styles, thus these fringe genres are less likely replicated but imported.153

To sum up recent attitudes and developments in gagaku:

By the mid-twentieth century, [the responsibility of the art lay] in the hands of some twenty men at the imperial palace and their few colleagues elsewhere. However, the many unique features of gagaku soon attracted an international audience. There were world tours, new compositions by both Japanese and Western composers, and performance groups formed outside Japan. It is a pleasure to know that this ancient tradition will survive and change. There is an anthropological term called “marginal survival” which indicates that the oldest versions of any tradition are best found, not at their point of origin, but rather at the furthest point traveled from it. Perhaps in the near future Japanese gagaku will be best heard in California or Texas.154 As globalization generates the means to widely distribute music it brings rise to the genre of

“World music” and Japan finds itself of specific interest to the “Western” world.

Genres, Styles, and Structure

151 Wade, 135. 152 Wade, 137. 153 Wade, 138. 154 Malm, 102. 58

In the Japanese language there are different words for the various musical cultures:

Western classical musics (ongaku), Western musics (yōgaku) and the pre-Meiji period traditional music of Japan (hōgaku).155 The scope of hōgaku includes orchestral music, chamber music, opera, and a variety of vocal forms. Malm gives an apt description of this music from the

Western perspective: “At the same time, there is an equally large part of Japan’s musical life that is either completely incomprehensible to the Westerner or greatly oversimplified for him by convenient stereotypes provided by only partially-informed writers. This music is hōgaku, a word which means music that is uniquely Japanese.”156 Hōgaku can be organized into the following basic genres: early music, religious music (for use during Shinto or Buddhist rituals and rites), gagaku (“proper music,” often translated as music for the imperial court), nohgaku

(music for noh theatre), kabuki music, folk musics, and by individual instrument (biwa, shakuhachi, koto, and shamisen). Each genre has numerous unique styles and representative pieces.

Many surviving folk or folk-like melodies originating in Japan are based on a five-note scale, often labeled “pentatonic” by Western music theory terminology and is frequently associated with China and Japan. This scale is often viewed in a simplistic manner as “missing” notes from the typical Western major scale, which Locke has pointed out is blatantly

Eurocentric.157 In her study of a collection of 182 children’s songs from northeastern Japan

(Tōhoku no Warabe-uta), May drew some conclusions about the poetry/rhyme and meter but especially the melodies: “The scales, the most distinctive element in Japanese folk song, are complex. They have been variously analyzed and labeled by Eastern and Western, nine-teenth-

155 Wade, Music in Japan, xiii. 156 Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments, 23. 157 Locke, Musical Exoticism, 129. 59 and twentieth-century writers, who, however, all arrive at one basic conclusion: they are pentatonic, with variable notes.”158 Wade’s wording gives a hint that perhaps the idea of a pentatonic collection being “Japanese” has encouraged it to proliferate in what might otherwise not have been a pentatonic-based melodic system: “the popular scale that is recognized as distinctively ‘Japanese’ now, with a nucleus of five pitches (with the ascending intervals of whole step, half step, major third, and half-step, as in pitches A B C E F).”159 She refers specifically to a shift away from a modal scale system used by shamisen to the popular pentatonic scale.

The structure of the music can also be interpreted as “aharmonic,” in other words, the harmonic functions of Western music is assumed rather by rhythmic devices. At the same time, and almost contradictory, “it should be noted that most Japanese music is not meter-oriented.”160

Rather, named rhythmic patterns within the context of eight-beat frames are somewhat standardized and stereotyped by genre and instrument. Though viewed within this eight-beat frame, the pattern itself may be anywhere from two to twenty beats in length.

A form used in gagaku but also commonly used to define structure in other pieces and genres is Jo-ha-kyu. Jo = introduction, ha = a breaking apart or exposition, and kyu = finishing section. The gradual increase in speed, followed by a special section for prominent “first chair” players, relaxing to a single plucked note follows the Jo-ha-kyu structure. This is the basis for an aesthetic shape that can be represented in large scale and through the course of multi-movement works.161

158 May, Japanese Children’s Music, 9. 159 Wade, Music in Japan, 69. 160 William P. Malm, Six hidden views of Japanese music (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), 42. 161 Malm, 42. 60

Another commonly cited characteristic of Japanese music is ma. Often this is associated with the use and importance of silence or the balance of the sound and silence duality. Malm finds a different way of associating ma with music, identifying what he calls “sliding” disjunct phrases that contribute to the sense of forward motion: “A hidden aspect of time in Japanese music, however, is the concept of ma, the space between events. This concept is well known in most Japanese arts. In music it provides a rhythmic elasticity in which silence is as powerful as sound. Awareness of the art of ma is one of the rewards of enlightened listening.”162 Takemitsu is often cited with this for his compositional aesthetic of creating time and space, or in his words,

“negative space,” a quality he identified in gagaku frequently.163 The flexibility is within the spaces, creating varying layers of interaction between loosely independent parts. At its core, ma is about finding balance and the experience of expansion and contraction through space and time.

A slightly different interpretation defines ma as more of “a between,” that “ma describes neither space nor time, but the tension in the silence and in the space surrounding sounds and objects.”164

“Noise” is often cited as having a particular aesthetic value in Japanese music. For example, sawari (“touch”) effect on the biwa creates a harmonically complex sound. This

“noise” is intended to heighten the dramatic effect of the instrument as it accompanies storytelling. It is also thought of as a critical component of the music and not a separate byproduct of performance. Noise from the act of playing the instrument receives as much consideration and importance as the pitched musical results:

In Japanese traditional music there is no clear distinction between pitched sound and noise. There is an interpenetration between sound and noise, as exemplified in performances on shakuhachi. This attitude seems to be closely linked to the Zen statement, Issoku ta, ta soku ichi, which states that one is equal to many and many are

162 Malm, 43. 163 Wade, Music in Japan, 159. 164 Luciana Galliano, Yōgaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 14. 61

equal to one. That is to say, a single sound has a complex component, and a compound sonority may often be heard as just one sound.165 In addition to aspects the music styles and instruments developed in Japan, the descriptive language used by Western scholars when addressing “Japanese” music is worth exploring. The way the music and sounds are represented in scholarly writing from outside Japan bring into focus more ways to interpret the cultural components embedded in such music.

There are a number of common words used to describe the timbre, ensemble, types of sounds from gagaku, and the individual instruments. The music term “heterogeneous” is often applied to the texture of gagaku music, with emphasis on the stylistic transparency that can be achieved. “Sparse” is a frequently occurring descriptor, especially when discussing the playing style of the koto where clusters and striking sounds occur on important beats with a structure that strategically highlights particular beats.

Malm speaks often in comparisons: i.e., relating Buddhist chant to J.S. Bach’s sacred or secular cantatas.166 This comparative style of research helps the reader relate to the topic but does not allow it to stand on its own. His description of the sho’s function in the gagaku ensemble and sound have a particularly nature-oriented flavor:

In the West chords tend to color a melody and drive it on by setting it in situations of tension which require release, in music terms, by setting up chord progressions. The chords of the sho, however, do not serve this function. Rather they “freeze” the melody. They are like a vein of amber in which a butterfly has been preserved. We see the beauty of the creature within but at the same time are aware of a transparent solid between us and the object, a solid of such a texture that it shows that object off in a very special way. It is the solidifying effect of the sho which to a great extent gives gagaku its rather transcendental quality.167

165 Joji Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection of a Composer’s Cosmology,” Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (1989): 192, https://doi.org/10.2307/833409. 166 Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments, 64. 167 Malm, 99. 62

Other flowery descriptions use words like “timeless” or “pure,” words that do not necessarily evoke nature but move beyond purely musical description. Wade describes traditional koto music as having a “flowing ongoingness” without a tune that is somehow still melodic and rhythmic. Motives are repeated but not developed.168 Since nohgaku is intrinsically connected to the drama of the play, it is not unusual to use words that relate more to the extra- musical elements. Noh, however, is tied to Zen Buddhism, opening up a new set of descriptive terms: “It must be remembered that the influence of Zen Buddhism, with its love of allusions and its emphasis on non-logical procedures, was strong when noh was developed” and “In noh, everything is restrained in an attempt to produce as pure an aesthetic atmosphere as possible.”169

As already seen, scholars are generally not shy to impose extra-musical elements in describing Japanese music. It would be viewed negatively if, say, a Beethoven symphony were reviewed with descriptions like “blossomed” or “smoldered like an ember.” So why does it seen as perfectly acceptable to do this with Japanese music? The most plausible explanation is the importance of nature to the Japanese:

In Japanese tradition, an awareness of nature has shaped a good deal of aesthetic expression, often in the form of thematic intertextuality. Recurring again and again in art, poetry, and music from ancient times to the present are motifs of nature, among them wind, water, birds, trees, blossoms – and also the seasons, each with meaningful connotations. I think of some traditional gardens in Japan, designed and planted so that they will be transformed and distinctively beautiful in each season.170 Contemporary Composers and Performers

The twentieth century was marked by rapid change with new musical materials and technology. The following is a sample of some of the contemporary music trends and prominent

168 Wade, Music in Japan, 72. 169 Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments, 128. 170 Wade, Music in Japan, 163, 63 composers and performers who challenged and shaped the future of traditional instruments and genres.

Malm describes this new music using traditional instruments by contemporary Japanese composers as “a third world in musical Japan, one might call it a limbo.”171 The genre of contemporary classical music even receives its own special designation in Japanese: gendai ongaku. These works make use of a traditional instrument’s timbre and gestural abilities but distinctly outside their established styles of playing. Michio Miyagi, blinded by disease in childhood, took on training as a musician of traditional Japanese instruments. He grew tired of the established repertoire and took to composing. While studying in Tokyo, a city considered significantly more cosmopolitan, found favor with nontraditional enthusiasts.172 Koto player

Keiko Nosaka is another example of a musician with traditional background who moved to modern and contemporary performance. She felt limited by the traditional koto and created a new instrument with first 21, then 25 strings.173 This new instrument called for a new set of repertoire, fueling the creativity of composers. The Nihon Ongaku Shudan (Ensemble Nipponia) is comprised of virtuoso players organized by composer Minoru Miki (b. 1930) who performs contemporary music on traditional instruments during the 1960s and was considered very radical at the time.174

Toru Takemitsu is likely the most recognizable name of Japanese composers. He famously combined gagaku orchestra with the Western symphony orchestra in a commission by the New York Philharmonic in his piece November Steps. A striking question of exoticism arises here: “There are questions here of cultural identification and auto-exoticization on the

171 Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments, 23. 172 Wade, Music in Japan, 70-71. 173 Wade, 68. 174 Wade, 67. 64 composer’s part that are not easily disentangled.”175 Locke claims that though few pieces were written by Takemitsu for traditional Japanese instruments, these are the ones that have become popular. There are, however, many other people besides Takemitsu who have used a blend of

Western and Japanese instruments.

Historically, there are many ways of categorizing a music as originating from Japan and being distinctly “Japanese” in some sense. But how does this search for “Japaneseness” impact composers today? Wade addresses the question of Japaneseness and her experiences by asking composers if the question is asked of them and how they react to it: “Appearing in symposia or presenting guest talks about their pieces outside of Japan, Japanese composers who have been thoroughly educated in European classical music have each almost inevitably been asked, as if something were lacking: ‘What is Japanese about your music?’”176 Of course, the response varies greatly from individual to individual. Some become self-conscious about “Japaneseness” in their music in a way that has “opened their eyes to indigenous musical traditions that they had little if any desire to experience previously.”177 Others choose to consciously explore it while others are indifferent. Others care deeply about finding ways to express “Japaneseness” in their musical creativity.178 Of great importance is not if or how one’s music is Japanese, but the manner that the topic is approached.

Wade insists that the act of asking “What is Japanese about your music?” implies that something may be “missing.” Rather, as a performer it would be invaluably helpful to know if some inspiration for a particular piece came from a relationship with Japanese culture. The intention of the inquisitor is of great relevance just as the information given by the composer has

175 Locke, Musical Exoticism, 294. 176 Wade, Music in Japan, 157. 177 Wade, 158. 178 Wade, 158. 65 a particular agenda (i.e., promoting some aspect of cultural influence or actively avoiding any hints of cultural leanings).

The piano music of Jo Kondo, Dai Fujikura, and Joji Yuasa will now be examined for evidence of indicators of Japanese music or culture influences. These composers maintain different attitudes and intentions about expressing their “Japaneseness” in their music, however, cultural influence inevitably manifests in one form or another.

CHAPTER 7. JO KONDO

Biography

Jo Kondo was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1947. He studied composition at the Tokyo

University of Arts, where he still presents composition classes, graduating in 1972. In 1977-78 he spent a year in New York through the John D. Rockefeller III Fund. While in New York, he met American experimental composers John Cage and Morton Feldman and was deeply influenced by their work with indeterminacy. Their philosophical explorations of sounds and the definition of music resonated with Kondo’s musical aesthetics. Immediately following, in 1979, he began his extensive teaching career as a guest lecturer at the University of Victoria, British

Columbia. He has taught and served as composer in residence at numerous universities in the US and Europe, as well as teaching at summer festivals. Currently, at the Ochanomizu University of

Tokyo, he is Professor Emeritus of Music.179

A highly prolific contemporary composer, Kondo has written over 160 compositions for a wide array of instruments and ensembles. His success and renown extend beyond Japan to the international music community. His dedication to the performance of contemporary music is evidenced by his founding of the Musica Practica Ensemble in 1980, which he continued to lead as musical director until it was disbanded in 1991. Numerous ensembles worldwide have commissioned and performed his works, including the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the London

Sinfonietta, Arditti Quartet, and NEXUS. In addition to his success as a composer, he has written extensively on contemporary music and aesthetics, including numerous articles and books regarding his own music and style.180

179 “Biography,” Jo Kondo, Bluesheet, accessed June 28, 2020, https://jokondo.b-sheet.jp/en/biography/. 180 Bluesheet, “Biography.” 67

The topic of what is “Japanese” in his music has come up repeatedly. The film A Shape of

Time (2016), exploring Kondo’s life and music, addresses this topic in numerous ways. One striking and succinct description stands out: “For a Japanese audience it sounds ‘Western,’ and for the West it is regarded ‘Japanese.’ A music in-between categories.”181 In part, it is what the listener finds meaning in that defines the music to that individual, and this will be different depending on the individual’s background and associations. The film’s description asserts that

“Kondo wants his music to appear ‘normal,’ without spectacular surface or narrative elements.”182 While the term “normal” is laden with different meanings and connotations, it is clear that Kondo wishes for his music to be experienced and heard as sounds coming together for individual interpretation without needing separate or specific intentions, or predisposed logic in its construction. To sum up from a slightly different angle,

His music is characterized by a unique personality which synthesizes Japanese aesthetic sensibility and western harmonic structure. Perhaps there are echoes of Morton Feldman, the great American composer, but Kondo’s music inhabits a far larger universe, at once serene and dynamic, at once contemplative and energetic.183 Kondo’s compositional style displays remarkable consistencies from 1973 to present. He developed his own terminology to describe this style, especially for works written between 1973-

1980, referred to as Sen no Ongaku, which translates to English as “Linear Music.” Kondo characterizes this “line” music as “an endless row of tones flowing without interruptions, tones that keep on unfolding with artless simplicity.”184 To write in this style, Kondo relies on listening and waiting for the next logical sound or event that should come next. As such, “His music is composed intuitively, and at the same time it is highly abstract. Without clear directionality and

181 “A SHAPE OF TIME – The Composer Jo Kondo – Film,” Filmwerkstatt Kiel, accessed June 28, 2020, http://jo-kondo-film.com/film.html. 182 Filmwerkstatt Kiel, “A SHAPE OF TIME.” 183 Bluesheet, “Biography.” 184 Jo Kondo, “The Art of Being Ambiguous: From Listening to Composing,” Contemporary Music Review 2 (1988): 20, https://doi.org/10.1080/07494468808567064. 68 at the same time not without form.”185 His interests in the cognitive experience of music along with the perceptual evaluation of what “is” and what “is not” music is central to his aesthetic:

“When everything can be taken as music, we might start longing for a kind of music that is not everything.”186

Sen no Ongaku and Kondo’s general philosophical approach to music are heavily influenced by his encounters with Feldman and Cage in New York. Cage reacted strongly against Western concepts of teleological time, turning to various Eastern philosophies, particularly Japanese Zen Buddhism, for alternative models for space and time.187 By the 1950s,

Cage combined Eastern philosophies and quantum physics to form a relativistic understanding of space and time, resulting in the compositional techniques of indeterminacy, chance, randomness, and simultaneity.188 These treatments of time and space are employed in Sen no Ongaku and exemplify a circular rather than goal-oriented experience of time, to be discussed more fully with the music of Joji Yuasa.

In addition to this style of composing “Linear Music,” Kondo describes other compositional techniques and considerations in his compositions, such as additive rhythmic technique, an active awareness of temporal perception (namely, the abstract concept of musical time), and two techniques he has coined “pseudo-polyphony” and “pseudo-repetition.”

“Pseudo- polyphony” refers to the resulting sense of polyphony due to adjacent dyads or thicker harmonies. No intentional “voice-leading” in the traditional sense is employed, but a multi-voiced path can be surmised in the aural effect of these harmonic events. “Pseudo-repetition” is almost as static as literal repetition, but at the same time, becomes a vehicle for hidden change and movement. Perhaps the best terms to describe this fluid situation, contradictory though they may seem, are the words “dynamic stasis.”189

185 Filmwerkstatt Kiel, “A SHAPE OF TIME.” 186 Kondo, “The Art of Being Ambiguous,” 8. 187 David Ingram, “‘The Clutter of the Unkempt Forest’: John Cage, Music and American Environmental Thought,” American Studies 51, no. 4 (2006), 568, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41158263. 188 David Ingram, 570. 189 Kondo, 25. 69

He relates this to real life: Each day is very similar through one’s daily routine, but no two days are exactly the same.190

Of great importance to Kondo’s music is the art of ambiguity. This aspect of his musical style relates very directly to his influence from Feldman and Cage. He is less interested in expressing a particular idea or feeling, but rather listening intuitively for successions of pitches and rhythms that can be interpreted differently by different listeners. This openness to interpretative and insistence of overarching simplicity is not necessarily easy to achieve. Kondo achieves this aural result through what he calls “ambiguous application of syntactic devices”:

All syntactic devices are ways of grouping sounds on a cognitive level. But if the groupings are too vague, the sounds lose their mutual relationships, and the outcome resembles Cage’s chance music. If, on the other hand, the groupings are too unambiguous, the listener ends up listening only to the resulting structure and falling prey to its expressive effects. It is essential to find the proper balance, an arrangement where sounds are heard as mutually connected by groupings, and yet each sound keeps its own individuality without becoming completely submerged under the upper level structures.191 According to this definition, examples of syntactic devices in traditional Western music that

Kondo cognitively groups together are melodies, rhythm, meter, harmony, tonality, and timbral groupings. By focusing on one such device, for example, rhythm, Kondo creates rhythmic groupings that are highly subjective to interpretation but not so vague as to not be understood as

“belonging together.”

Kondo aptly describes his music thus: “Were I asked what the ‘content’ of music is, my answer might not refer to what is psychologically or emotionally aroused in my mind when listening to music, nor would I say that the sounds as such constitute the content, but rather the mutual relationships between sounds crystallizing into very definite ambiguous states.”192

190 Kondo, 25. 191 Kondo, 19. 192 Kondo, 29. 70

Piano Music

Kondo wrote extensively for the piano. The following selection of solo piano pieces will be examined: Click Crack (1973), Sight Rhythmics (1975), Walk (1976), Tango Mnemonic

(1984), High Window (1996), Ritornello (2005), In Nomine (2006), The Shape Follows Its

Shadow (2011), and Caccia Soave (2016). Several notable solo piano works originated as ensemble pieces. Sight Rhythmics (1975) first entered the world as a chamber work for a rather unusual instrumentation: violin, steel drum, banjo, electric piano, and tuba. The pseudo- polyphony greatly relies on the listener’s interpretation since any sense of melodic continuity is spread between all members of the ensemble because each contributes a single note at a time. In this manner, individual voices can focus on each sound’s “life” without being burdened by how it necessary should or should not relate and connect to the next sounding event. As a piano solo, however, the individuality of the pitches and events is more challenging to make audible since instead of several minds and ears collaborating and contributing their unique timbres to the whole, one pianist is controlling all the tones. In this way, a piece written to be ambiguous is made further ambiguous since the timbre range is limited to that of the piano and the performing pianist’s coloristic abilities. Other examples include The Shape Follows Its Shadow (1975/2012), originally for two pianos, and Walk (1978), originally for flute and piano. A few piano works were written for other instruments and later became piano solos: Caccia (2006), for toy piano, is the basis for Caccia Soave (2016), for solo piano, and In Early Spring (1993) indicates it is for either solo piano or mandolin.

Japanese Elements

Within the scope of Kondo’s extensive writing for piano, several of his compositional styles and aesthetics map easily onto the identified Japanese elements that are the focus of my 71 analysis. Examples drawn from a selection of solo piano works explore transparency/instant- based processes, atmospheric and dense harmonies, noise, extra-musical considerations, the emphasis on relationships/suggestions and its ties to ma, and dynamic stasis as a manifestation of consideration toward time and space.

Transparency/Instant-Based Processes

Kondo realizes his aesthetic of intentional ambiguity in different ways, including through rhythmic and formal ambiguity. His compositional process is based on a combination of intuition and listening in order to determine a desirable relationship with the previous chosen sound/event.

The results of this intuition-based composing are instant-based processes in which an event seems to “reveal itself” in a way that generates spontaneity yet the piece is held together by an

“inner logic.” Without following a long-term trajectory or intentional form, the aural result is one of natural unfolding, an organic journey through cell-based events and small motives intertwined into a logic of their own. In addition to intentional ambiguity and its reliance on listening in the moment, a sense of transparency pervades many of the piano pieces. Rather than complex polyphony, or harmonic motion based on functional relationships, the lines are clear and unobstructed. Hence, it becomes evident how this clarity, more easily achieved through single- line instruments, is not just a limitation of non-polyphonic instruments but also an intentional partiality towards sparseness and atmospheric textures.

These sparse and disparate-seeming lines for single-line instruments are maintained in his piano writing. The solo piano appears to be Kondo’s instrument of choice for intentional ambiguity. When polyphonic lines are performed on the piano, the pianist must take great pains to understand these individual lines and represent them as though more than one person is performing them. In this way, a pianist must be like a miniature god over a kingdom of potential 72 polyphony, at times literally impossible to perform with two hands due to physical constraints and the instrument’s size and range. Even though the original two-piano version of The Shape

Follows its Shadow was written expressly with the piano and its singular set of timbral possibilities in mind, combining the two parts into a solo work blurs any potential polyphony one might hear in a performance of the two-piano version. The primary reason is that the score treats all the events as merely the next occurring events and not pitches of the two different parts being realized. With only one piano, the resulting resonances are inherently different and create a more homogenous overall experience of the piece, rather than the potential interplay of two like instruments performing together.

Walk takes this even a step further: originally a piece for piano and flute where the two parts play similarly sparse lines (i.e., the parts could, in essence, be swapped and one would not be identified as the “piano” or accompaniment part, but as true chamber music equals) is transformed into a solo work that lacks the original clarity of division between two entirely different timbres. Here Kondo’s intentional ambiguity plays out in the connections the listener might make in grouping sounds into logical units. There are numerous “melodies” hidden within that are not melodies in the traditional sense; rather, notes that are or are not part of the melody must be inferred by the audience and very likely differ depending on the listener. One similar grouping repeats, not necessarily as a memorable tune, but hint at designating sections and contribute to feeling the passage of time. The word “STOP” is found frequently in the score. It is often placed in the middle of a “measure” and functions as an intentional “interruption,” like this walk or musical journey is just an experience where nothing is necessarily planned. However, observations are made, and reactions happen in the moment, whatever that moment might be.

Though the polyphony is more explicit in the piano and flute version, the perpetual rhythmic 73 pulsing aurally brings attention to some manner of division or parts that need to be heard as somehow interactive, orbiting one another yet adhering to their own inner logic.

In addition to the rhythm’s role in creating an instant-based listening experience, pitches regularly shift by register and octave. The registral reordering of the same pitch-classes creates the sense that greater pitch variety is employed even when it is quite limited. Example 1 maps the pitch content in its given register in mm. 51-55, followed by the pitch collection condensed into one octave with pitch-class duplicates omitted.

EXAMPLE 1 Walk, mm. 51-55 pitch content

The techniques employed in Sight Rhythmics are indicative of Kondo’s early style of writing and most prominent compositional characteristic of his early years. Again, this piece, originally written for a chamber group, achieves a greater level of intentional ambiguity when reworked for solo piano. This piece stands apart from his penchant for writing without a pre- determined form in mind because it is structured into six movements, each of the same length, that can be interpreted as a loose set of variations. A feeling of great care and precision pervades, a necessary factor to keep in mind as a performer. When accurately executed, the aural result is like a shimmering kaleidoscope or mobile, in many ways similar to Messiaen’s etude, Mode de valeurs et d’intensités (1949). Stratified layers create the feeling that particular pitches, durations, and articulations, particularly in the low register, are of greater importance and are often repeated in the same way. Example 2 extracts various recurring, stratified materials: lower 74 pitches that are short and accented, middle range material that is often overlapping featuring rhythmic ties, and longer durations often with fermatas in the upper register.

EXAMPLE 2 Sight Rhythmics, recurring material in fixed registers

Moments of aurally extracted melody sound almost modal, giving the impression that these pitches could join together into a familiar melody, perhaps some hidden folk melody that is melancholy and mournful, and yet this melody never truly materializes. Example 3a shows a reduction of a section including only pitch and rhythm. A representation of the pitches that stand out aurally as melodic, removing durations longer than a half-note, reveals a melody in G-aeolian as seen in Example 3b.

EXAMPLE 3a Sight Rhythmics, extracted pitch and rhythm

EXAMPLE 3b Sight Rhythmics, hidden melody

Indeed, an evasive but present sense of inner logic is found in each sound event. Each sound has its own weight and space yet seems to move on to the next inevitable event seamlessly. Without true tonality, cadence-like gestures at the end of each movement establish an irrefutable closure.

Longer pauses and silence contribute to feelings of closure. Though the piece is notably lacking in pulse or meter throughout (except for the fifth movement, which feels oddly more

“rhythmic”), the whole piece is notated within a gridwork of 4/4 measures that provide only a graphical representation of timing and placement of pitches and not a meter with traditionally associated metric groupings.

Ritornello was written as part of a set of related pieces: Piano Dances, High Window,

Small Summer Dance, and Ritornello as the fourth. This set features similar compositional constructs, namely, thick reverberations of similar arrangements of pitches. At its core, it is based on recurring gestures and cell-based motives that function as repeating sections, as suggested by the title, but in a manner that is not aurally predictable. The influence of modernist composers such as Boulez is evident, featuring complex structures laden with interconnection and highly sophisticated use of post-tonal compositional techniques. Written much later than pieces like Sight Rhythmics, the stratified, thick harmonies are part of larger groupings and forward motion. A greater sense of urgency is felt throughout though the precise tempo markings suggest an overall slow pulse. The unpredictability of the rhythm is nothing new for Kondo’s music, but the sharp and sudden changes in direction give the piece greater depth of character.

There is a great density of tempo changes: as many as five changes on a single page of the score.

Numerous themes can be identified, some more readily than others primarily due to their rhythmic character: slow, soft, expansive, wide-interval chords give way to homorhythmic sixteenth-note trichords in a condensed mid/upper range of the piano as seen in Example 4. 76

EXAMPLE 4 Ritornello, mm. 1-2 wide interval theme and mm. 33-34 sixteenth-note chords

Ambiguity is achieved through the unpredictability of the ordering of these themes and their starkly different characters. The listener easily recognizes these themes are recurring, but they do not “develop” in a traditional sense. Instead, they are accepted as they occur in their place defined by an internal logic.

In Nomine represents another example built upon open, transparent harmonies and constantly shifting rhythm. It was written for a commissioning project by the instrumental

German ensemble Lecherche for composers to create new In Nomine incorporating the

Gregorian chant melody “Gloria tibi Trinitas” (See Example 5).

EXAMPLE 5 Cantus firmus used in In Nomine

Kondo’s take on the use of the chant melody is pure intentional ambiguity: almost every note of the chant melody is present throughout the piece; however, each is hidden within a harmony or changing register so that no part of two consecutive pitches sound like they belong together as part of any discernable melody. Taken out of rhythmic context, Example 6 shows the placement 77 of the first seven notes of the chant melody within the dense vertical sonorities of the first five measures of the piece.

EXAMPLE 6 In Nomine, tracing the melody

Extraordinarily specific rhythms are used throughout, again, with barlines that do not denote specific metric groupings. The sounding result is almost improvisatory, as though the performer were feeling the direction and proper placement of each gesture. Again, these groupings are situated much more like small cells, fleeting thoughts of varying lengths, that do not develop or form larger units, but simply exist in their particular moment.

Click Crack (1973) is Kondo’s first work for solo piano and self-identified as the beginning of Sen no Ongaku (“Linear Music”). However, it does not appear to exhibit “linear music” qualities overtly. It again features instant-based rhythm and is cited as pseudo-serial.193

Composed out of his own listening experience, he would “wait for the next sound” to come naturally and organically without any pre-determined duration or form. The listener finds evolving motives, familiar sounds but not exactly the same, perhaps closer to a less-obvious

“pseudo-repetition” (i.e., Sight Rhythmics). Like other “line music,” successions of pitches are intended to be interpreted as melodies. The lack of phrasing creates the ambiguity so that each listener’s groupings may be very different.

193 Maurice Hinson, Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire, Third Edition (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), 454. 78

One notable visual feature in this piece is the absence of measure divisions. The continuous stream of pitches lack rhythmic regularity or aural implications of meter as can be seen in the extracted melodic line of the first system in Example 7.

EXAMPLE 7 Click Crack, ametric rhythm

Barlines often function as a guide for the performer in counting the notated durations. In

Sight Rhythmics, these measures do not correlate to a particular meter in the sense of rhythmic groupings, nor do they indicate any kind of specific amount of time passing within a particular measure (i.e., measures do not necessarily contain the same number of beats, they are there merely for convenience). This lack of measure divisions allows the visual component of the score to give the same sense of the space achieved in its performance. It gives greater clues to what the piece should sound and feel like: something that is both an accurate realization of precisely notated rhythm but without a rhythmic or metered hierarchy. This lack of metrical hierarchy is the omitted syntactical device Kondo refers to when composing in the “linear music” style.

Another layer of ambiguity is achieved through enharmonic notation: on numerous occasions, adjacent pitches separated by an octave represent enharmonics. It would be clearer to see that these pitches are related directly as an octave apart, for example, B-flat 4 ascending to B- flat 5 at the end of the second system. Instead, Kondo chooses to write this succession of pitches as B-flat 4 ascending to A-sharp 5. Kondo may have chosen to do this to insert ambiguity, as a statement that the A-sharp 5 is indeed its own pitch, merely the next pitch in the succession of pitches, and not simply an octave displaced repetition. Kondo is very particular in his use of 79 repetition, especially as a means of establishing an audible clue for formal division. Therefore, the use of enharmonics to represent individual pitches and downplay pitch-class relationship is a conscious and intentional compositional device.

Dense Harmonies

High Window features dense, slow-moving harmonies. The specific rate of change is thoroughly analyzed in the Ph.D. dissertation of John Liberatore, a composer who had the great privilege to study with Kondo through the support of a Fulbright scholarship. The slow pace of the complex sonorities in High Window draws attention to the minute changes and encourages the listener to become aware of the music in a meditative way. The emphasis in not in the exact makeup of the close packing of pitches in the mid/upper register of the piano, but the sound as a unit, occurring as an unbreakable whole. In many ways, this is similar to the shō, a Japanese wind instrument discussed previously, known for the complex sonorities it can produce. The characteristic sustain typical in performance is comparable to slow breathing. In this interpretation, not only are performers and listeners waiting for the next atmospheric sound created in the piece’s soundworld, the pianist’s touch should take great care to eliminate as much as possible the initial articulation of depressing the keys. Thus, the result is a gentle cushion of sound, as though each sonority is breathed into existence.

As discussed above, Ritornello features the use of thick reverberations of similar arrangements of pitches. Ritornello’s vertical stacking of dense or similar pitches and block-like structures matches his general compositional style at the time. 80

EXAMPLE 8 Opening sonority of Ritornello

The opening harmony renders great insight into the structure and origin of many the related harmonies in Ritornello. The opening harmony, stacked [3, 4, 5, 8, t], is vertically oriented and can be generally described as quintal “plus” because of its emphasis on stacked fifths with one “extra” note that doesn’t appear to fit the surface pattern (See Example 8). It features stacked perfect fifths with an added semitone. The perfect fifth (P5) is often described as open or hollow, and without the third does not imply a leaning towards major or minor.

Prominent in this piece and others is interval class (ic) 1 (a semitone, regardless of specific spelling), sometimes spaced as a m7th, m9th, or, in its smallest form, the m2. When the remaining sustained notes of mm. 1-2 are considered with the first vertical event, the resulting set (01245789) is a symmetrical set with the axis of symmetry between 0-1 and 6-7 (See

Example 9).

EXAMPLE 9 Ritornello, (01245789) symmetrical set

(01245789)’s subset characteristics include pairs and groups of three semitones clustered together (See Example 10). 81

EXAMPLE 10 Subsets of (01245789)

It is neither a true whole tone scale (since the P5 cannot be created using a whole tone collection) nor is it a true octatonic though it contains eight unique pitch-classes. It is as though the “extra” semitone shifts the second half of the original WT collection to become the second half of the second possible WT collection (See Example 11).

EXAMPLE 11 Whole tone collection with “pivot”

This allows the creation of the prominent P5s in the opening sonority. The added notes themselves, [0, 1, 9], form an (014), a particularly famous set-class broadly used by members of the Second Viennese School. It is particularly malleable because M3 and m3 subsets can be created, the missing “inner” note to the otherwise vague and directionless P5, along with the m2 that marks the only difference between the two intervals. The structure and direct intervallic relationships of these sonorities through subsets and shifting around an axis of symmetry create the internal logic for the pitch content that generates much of the piece.

Noise

Caccia Soave features silently depressed notes indicated at the beginning of the score. All black and white keys between D2 and C-sharp4 are to be silently depressed and engaged with the sostenuto pedal for the duration of the piece. This creates an unearthly cloud of sound from the sympathetic resonance of the thicker, harmonics-rich lower strings of the piano. This added layer of noise that accompanies the single line of music being performed adds a level of nuance to the 82 piece’s atmosphere. Kondo uses this noise element of the resonating strings to effectively bring the piece from the toy piano to the piano without losing many of its original charms: the melody is clearly articulated above a cloud of resonance without giving away its structural secrets.

Another piece that utilizes noise through resonance is Click Crack. In this example, resonance is used as a sort of pseudo-polyphony. In other words, it functions as an indefinable yet ever-present “second voice” to the primarily singular notes that form the texture of the piece.

One could think of this treatment of resonance similarly to the premise of The Shape Follows Its

Shadow, discussed later in greater depth. In both pieces, the resonance creates a continuous line, possibly a melody, but more like a singular, thin, and delicate thread. This line leads the piece forward without a sense of “forward” motion aside from the natural passage of time. One could hear the appearance of an almost independent second voice as a substitute for the implied polyphony created from multiple performers. The piano (and other instruments inherently polyphonic) allows a singular performer to realize numerous lines at a given time. However, each voice does not have the same kind of agency that would occur with individuals controlling each line. Perhaps, in this case, the pianist is performing “with” a shadow of their past.

Extra-Musical Elements

Attention to extra-musical elements is found in the title of Caccia Soave: A caccia is a form of round, meaning “chase” in Italian. The Italian term soave is added to the title to indicate a smoother, gentler style of performance than the more percussive tone of the toy piano. Also,

Caccia Soave is intended to be performed at a slower tempo on the piano. It is marked “Gently and Softly” with a metronome marking of 60 beats per minute, compared to Caccia’s lack of tempo indication with simply a metronome marking of 70 beats per minute. 83

Kondo does not directly indicate the meaning of the title Click Crack either in the score itself or in liner notes. One possible interpretation is that the title has to do with the relationship of these words’ sounds rather than what the words themselves mean or could mean together as a phrase. Like much of Kondo’s music, relationships are important, especially the concept of pseudo repetition. Almost all the sounds are the same between the two words; only the vowel at the core of the words has been significantly altered. When representing the two words in katakana, it is important to note that in the Japanese symbol systems, the romaji symbols for R and L are in some ways interchangeable. There is no distinction between the two though context would indicate the proper spelling in romaji. The hard R does not exist in the Japanese language; when encountering an R, it is often pronounced as a soft R, almost gently rolled such that it sounds more like a blend of R and L together. The katakana symbols themselves for “click crack” have similar shapes, with a curved figure on the right-hand side. With one exception, all symbols consist of three strokes (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1 “Click crack” in katakana symbols

The extra-musical meaning of the title Walk, again, not explicitly explained by Kondo, is likely a reference to the literal physical act of walking through the use of a prominent and persistent pulse. The piece is “metered,” in a loose sense, in 2/4 with repeated notes that seem to move the piece forward at a brisk walking speed as seen in Example 12. 84

EXAMPLE 12 Pulse in Walk

As already evident, relationships, particularly ones that are hidden or covertly woven into the fabric of the music, are of great importance to Kondo. Ambiguity by way of “suggestion” and providing a listener with numerous options for aural interpretation directly tie to the Japanese concept of ma. The indirect nature of ma, as a suggestion and emphasis on relationships, combined with the interest in the perception of space and intervallic time, are compellingly drawn upon in Kondo’s music. Ma is often identified in music as representing space, sometimes referred to as “negative space,” and especially silence as the opposite of sounds. Though silence is often a compelling marker for potentially representing ma in music, any two potentially opposing forces have the potential to embody this relationship of opposites to create a feeling of space and the unfolding of time.

The Shape Follows Its Shadow can be understood through the lens of ma when viewed as interacting layers of sound. These layers have a distinct characteristic that enables the listener to hear them as opposing yet related elements. The prominent characteristics of these layers is that of a sustain over time that features decay and resonance, versus the short and articulated events that exist only for a fleeting moment.

What Kondo describes as an underlying “sustained melody” also functions to create layered harmony. There are numerous instances of “tall tertian”-like harmonies that could be readily labeled with jazz chord symbols (Example 13). 85

EXAMPLE 13 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, possible lead sheet labels

Many moments of very clear open, major harmonies, with added ^6, or ^2 as one might hear in popular or tonally-based “dissonances” give the piece a grounding in familiar tertian-based harmonies that reinforce the harmonic series. However, these extremely tertian and recognizable major and minor based sonorities are not as immediately familiar for a few reasons. For one, the

“shadow”/resonance that stays behind, as is implied by the name, is not in the foreground of the sounding events, but rather a result. Amid the building of the shadow are sharp, articulated dissonances that are unrelated to the slow-moving shape. Though brief, these punctuated clashes demand our attention as listeners and snap us in the present. The looming shape and its shadow function more as a background, a musical fixture that goes by without needing to announce itself or even make us aware of its existence. The cloud of sustained, and importantly, constantly decaying, sonorities function as both foreground when sounded, and backdrop during the decay, to the present quality of the fleeting articulated material, often featuring singular pitches rather than harmonies. A delicate balance is achieved: bringing the awareness to the present through the foreground while allowing enough time and space to notice and appreciate the ever-constant shadow of resonance coloring the backdrop.

Similarly, the sonic experience of High Window can be viewed as representing an aspect of duality and space in time. As discussed above, High Window is structured as sustained vertical sonorities without meter but with specific, generally long, durations. The effect is that of 86 breathing and that each event is gently released into the performance space. Though the piece does not feature periods of silence or rests, the seeping away of the sonorities through the natural decay of the piano is the force opposite the moment the next, slightly different, sonority is played. The onset of the new sonority and its decay form a duality of existence similar to the balanced physical act of breathing in and out. This slow path through a shifting harmonic fabric invites the listener to a different style of listening, a Zen-like state of simply waiting and allowing the next event to occur. The feeling of time passing is very different in this piece than listening to a piece with a clear and predictable form. Without a form guiding expectation and allowing retrospective analysis of themes and tonal centers as they change in very tangible ways, the attack and decay simply are the piece without the need for anything else.

This is not to say that Kondo does not make deft use of silence in his works. Two piano works stand out for artful use of silence: Sight Rhythmics and Click Crack. These two pieces use silence as a means of denoting structural breaks. As discussed regarding Sight Rhythmics, the instant-based logic that drives the motion is calm. Like other works, longer notes give the impression of creating a melody due to the aural prominence of these pitches. Through this seemingly slow meandering, the ending of each movement is signaled through the use of two, articulated notes of the same pitch in the low range of the piano followed by a double-bar

(Example 14).

EXAMPLE 14 Movement closure in Sight Rhythmics

Like a drumbeat signaling the end of a cycle, they sound as the previous material is still fading away and is always followed by meticulously timed silence. This silence is longer than any 87 moment of rest and serves as a dividing line to cleanse the palette of the movement’s events before commencing anew with the next.

Similarly, Click Crack features silences and near silences (i.e., moments where no additional pitch material is introduced but the resonances of silently depressed notes still linger) that function as quasi structural. Since Click Crack does not follow a prescribed form and lacks formal indications in the score, the silences act as negative space to the overall relatively active character of the piece. Subtle repetition gives shape and overall form and creates cycling of highly contrasting motives, but the breaks bring balance and a pacing that is much more energetic without being breathless.

Dynamic Stasis as Circular Time and Space

Pseudo repetition is a self-identified compositional characteristic of Kondo’s music.

Kondo states in the online liner notes to his latest album of piano works: “Literal repetition is in itself static, heading nowhere. Pseudo-repetition is almost as static as literal repetition, but at the same time becomes a vehicle for hidden change and motion.”194 This fluid state between literal repetition and uncovering these hidden changes through careful listening is best described as

“dynamic stasis.” This cycle of repetition that is slowly changing is aesthetically in line with the conception of time as circular. Space is created through these repetitions along with a strong sense of connection to previous iterations and those yet to come.

One feature of dynamic stasis is the exploitation of intentional ambiguity. The fact that these compositional elements interact so closely and most effectively through their relationship to one another is a component of the circular nature of the process and experience. For example,

194 “Inoue, Satoko: Presents Jo Kondo’s New Works for Piano,” SquidCo, accessed July 1, 2020, http://www.squidco.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=S&Product_Code=28281. 88 the melody of The Shape Follows Its Shadow is so stretched out across time it hardly feels like a melody at all. Example 15 tracks the sustained pitches.

EXAMPLE 15 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, sustained pitches in mm. 1-7

No singular melody stands out, each listener would interpret differently which notes connect together as “melodic.” Certain groupings of pitches can easily be heard and interpreted as

“belonging together” in some sort of melodic gesture, but this is still highly subjective, as is the point with intentional ambiguity. Therefore, each sound becomes, in a way, its own entity, floating in time with its shadow/fading resonance, only loosely connected to the events around it.

The short, articulated trichords juxtaposed with the sustained “shadow” layer change throughout the piece but are highly connected in their intervallic content. Example 16 tracks the

“dynamic stasis” of the slight variation in pitch content and sets across the piece.

EXAMPLE 16 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, trichords

Notice, the set class changes very little, starting at (026), contracting and expanding to include

(024) and (025), respectively, then stretching to (027) right before the middle point of the piece where the tetrachord (0246) superset of the opening (026) both intervallically and through pitch content is presented. It is also the intervallic combination of the (024) and (026). The following 89

(027), (026), and (025) are not replicants of previous iterations of these sets, but the final (026) is the same as the opening. Though the pitch content changes between different sets, common tones frequently appear to create a slow-moving sense of voice-leading.

The first 1/5 of the piece features a repeated gesture with the resulting opening sustained

“shadow” leading the overarching shape. Though in itself not forming a memorable melody, this material is repeated verbatim in mm. 10-11, and finally in mm. 19-20 (Example 17).

EXAMPLE 17 The Shape Follows Its Shadow, recurring gesture

Numerous cells of material make exact reappearances but are not readily perceived as repeating due to the timing of material around them. In this case, the material repeated verbatim establishes the stasis that is made dynamic and changing due to the way its woven into its slightly changing surroundings.

Similarly, Tango Mnemonic features a repeating figure to ground the overall piece. True to its title, the piece is a tango, albeit one that has been slowed down and altered in character.

The habanera rhythm associated with tango music is easily identified throughout the piece.

Compare the rhythm, articulation, and shape of the traditional habanera rhythm bassline ostinato famously used in Bizet’s Carmen to a reduction of Kondo’s ostinato in Example 18a and b. 90

EXAMPLE 18a Bizet’s habenera EXAMPLE 18b Kondo’s ostinato in Tango Mnemonic

It is cleverly disguised upon listening due to the slow tempo and avoiding any familiar harmonic progressions one expects to hear in a tango. The habanera figure is presented verbatim 15 times throughout the piece. A staff added to the standard grand staff setup for piano requires using the sostenuto pedal to create a sustained layer featuring a shifting harmonic backdrop to the unfaltering habanero. These sustained harmonies are similar in pitch-class content and change slowly over time, similar to High Window. The consistent use of the habanera ostinato represents a literal repetition that interacts seamlessly with the slightly changing and evolving sustained layer, giving a sense of forward motion without a feeling of development or end goal.

Another piano piece that features a cyclic expression of time and space through dynamic stasis is In Nomine. In his program notes, Kondo describes In Nomine as representing “this harmonic character, constant tone is colored with a chord.”195 It is the constant nature and sameness of the tones but shifting in new contexts and position within harmonic space that give the feeling of dynamic stasis. Though grounded with a chant melody, the placement of the melody is continuously changing, shifting through into different ranges and varying in placement within the vertical sonority (See Example 6). Like Tango Mnemonic, both change and constant

195 SquidCo, “Inoue, Satoko.” 91 exist together within an established texture and process, giving the impression of evolving sameness.

Ritornello takes dynamic stasis to a whole new level: true to its title, the piece is said to be intentionally built upon a recurring melody. However, unlike the predictable and structured

Baroque form from which the title is derived, there appear to be numerous melodies that are constantly changing direction. This dramatically obscures what the real “ritornello” melody is and necessitates the question of whether or not there is “one” repeated melody. The impression is that numerous “themes” are organized to flow in one almost stream of conscious manner. It is not so surprising that Kondo would find such a form appealing to experience with, as repetition and “pseudo-repetition” play a prominent part in a large number of pieces. The piece as a whole imbues a much more complex kaleidoscope of sounds and motions, demanding audibly more virtuosity and fortitude of mental energies than some of the others pieces that together form a set according to Kondo.

Kondo indicates that the ritornello of the title refers to a melody that occurs again and again. It is not necessarily a singular theme/melody, but an idea, with its tangential thoughts, that are allowed to develop without being forced into a direction. These melodies return again and again where each iteration ponders more closely a different tangent or finds a new digression from that tangent. This variety in repetition is achieved while still returning to familiar and audibly recognizable musical ideas.

The structure of Sight Rhythmics lends itself easily to dynamic stasis and circular time.

The piece is divided into six “movements” of equal length. This gives the appearance of a set of variations, and by the strict definition of the word, would not be incorrect. However, the

“variations” lack the type of overall changes expected from the genre. For example, there is no 92 variation that features a particular rhythmic figure throughout or a variation transposed to a different “key” or “mode.” The changes that occur are subtle and are not limited to one or more particular changes in parameter. A striking feature of the piece is that a sizeable segment of each movement is left utterly unchanged. This section is strategically situated two-thirds of the way through the piece to hide the literal repetition. For this reason, it is not audible. Perhaps a listener may suspect it to be the same, but would likely assume they have not heard the hidden change, and thus a compositional slight of hand occurs.

High Window is the epitome of dynamic stasis in Kondo’s piano works. Subtle changes are occurring throughout; the pitch content of each event is slowly evolving. This very much exemplifies the idea of dynamic stasis achieved through “pseudo repetition” described as similar to a daily routine where each day is essentially the same; however, no two days are exactly alike.

The listener’s ear becomes accustomed to how the composition unfolds; one knows or thinks one knows when the next event will happen. Pulses, like breathing, rather than beats or subdivisions become the unit of this circular time.

This concept of pulse versus meter is expressed in the opposite way as Walk: Walk relies on a pulsing figure on a repeating pitch to emphasize the pace at which “time” was passing in the work. High Window features singular stacks of vertical sonorities that in themselves form a much slower and less active pulse. The use of repetition is almost monotonous and, in many ways, meditative. The listener’s ears become attuned to these regular events and start to gravitate towards noticing small changes, perhaps as one becomes more aware of their breath during meditation. More obvious changes quickly draw our attention, but through repetition, quickly become the backdrop of the present, melting into the fabric of the sonorities almost as though 93 they came about naturally. Each sonority feels as if they have always been there just waiting to be revealed.

An extensive and insightful analysis of this piece’s compositional construction by John

Liberatore (2014) tackles analysis through the composer’s own terms and a mathematical representation of the change in pitch content through all 112 numbered events over the course of the piece. He aptly concludes that “time in High Window is not a container in which musical events occur, but the fabric of musical time is made from the events themselves.”196

Caccia Soave uses dynamic stasis in a couple of distinct ways to allow the piece to unfold in time in a cyclical manner. In the beginning, as the melody is being unveiled, additive rhythm is employed but in reverse (Example 19).

EXAMPLE 19 Caccia Soave, additive rhythm

Slowly, sixteenth-notes are added to the leading melody along with the second voice in canon functioning as filling-in the empty spaces until rhythmic saturation is achieved. Decreasing the note values of the first three events opens space for more sixteenth-notes to graduation fill in.

This rhythmic process sets the tone for the entire piece, suggesting the pitch content and trajectory will unfold in a similarly gradual manner. The limited pitch range of the “melody” does not lend itself to being easily heard: all the pitches are close together so that no easily identifiable gestures stand out. Therefore the second voice’s iteration of the melody is also devoid of clear melodic/gestural markers. This generates a prominence of ic 1 (semi-tones) that gradually move to higher pitches throughout. This gives the impression that the same small

196 John Liberatore, “Mutual Relationships: an Aesthetic Analysis of Jo Kondo’s High Window” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 2014), 56. 94 melodic processes, with the vigilant presence of the second voice, repeat in order to form one long and gradual journey from one set of focal points to a new set. The evolution is almost imperceptible due to the minute changes and the constant flow of sixteenth-notes. It is in many ways comparable to Ligeti’s harpsichord piece Continuum (1968). Small clusters of chromatic groupings occur regularly, clustered around D4, A4, and D5. These pitches mirror the opening pitches, pointing to these focal points as the main pillars of the piece with chromatic fluctuations that congregate and morph around these points of reference. Beginning in m. 38, the full aggregate is often employed between the two hands. The range changes very little and remains consistent, likely a result of the piece’s origin on the toy piano. The smallest span, excluding the ending that converges on a singular pitch, being nine semitones and the largest only 15. This use of the aggregate gives an almost pan-diatonic feel without being tied to serial techniques to avoid specific pitch centricity. The swirling barrage of interlocking sixteenth-notes exudes a sense of sameness while shifting slowly within its limited range, sounding the same without true repetition.

Conclusions

In this chapter, I have surveyed transparency and instant-based processes, use of dense harmonies, noise, extra-musical elements, ma, and dynamic stasis in some of Kondo’s piano pieces. These elements are not important because they are Japanese, and their inclusion does not necessarily cause a piece to “sound” stereotypically Japanese. These connections are valuable for the performer to keep in mind when learning a piece, however, to connect more deeply with it and the composer and better understand the structure to convey the composer’s style to audiences effectively. Kondo’s own descriptions of his music and compositional process unsurprisingly use strikingly similar language to the language used in describing important components of Japanese 95 culture. This does not necessarily define him as a composer of “Japanese” music but instead informs the performer and listener what to be mindful of to appreciate his craft and intention.

These piano works represent a highly effective and nuanced music representative of his distinct personal flavor and compositional style. This analysis has more to do with expectations on the type of sound-world to create and the expectations one should or should not have when approaching Kondo’s music. One will not find here clearly defined themes and tonal schemes found in much of Western art music of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, but something rooted in Eastern philosophy and reminiscent of the aesthetics of Feldman and Cage, who ask some of the most profound questions of music. Though adamant that his music is not

“Japanese,” he is heavily influenced by the ideas and aesthetics of Cage, who famously turned to

Eastern philosophy in the development of his style and aesthetics. One gets the sense that

Kondo’s music brings these concepts full circle.

CHAPTER 8. DAI FUJIKURA

Biography

A fierce advocate for the arts and prominent composer of many genres of music, Dai

Fujikura is a multi-faceted composer whose music has gained international acclaim. Born in

Osaka, Japan, in 1977, he began his music studies learning the piano at age eight, though even at an early age his real interests lay in composition. At the age of fifteen he moved to the United

Kingdom for musical training, studying with Daryl Runswick at Trinity College of Music, Edwin

Roxbough at the Royal College of Music, and later with George Benjamin at King’s College

London.197 He currently resides in the UK and travels frequently to performances and premieres of his works. Since 2014, he holds the position of Composer-in-Residence for the Nagoya

Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France in 2017-18.198 An active arts curator, Fujikura serves as the Artistic Director of the Born Creative Festival at Tokyo

Metropolitan Theater, among others. Additionally, he leads youth composition classes as part of the El Sistema Japan in Soma, Fukushima, where he brings together musicians from around the world to teach young composers about instruments, composing, and communicating with musicians, with the opportunity for the students’ compositions to be performed.199

Though Fujikura serves as a composition professor at the Royal College of Music in

London, he does not rely on a singular institutional position as his primary source of income.200

He has the ability to base his career primarily on composing and can support himself and his family through the commissioning fees for the pieces he writes. This level of artistic

197 Dai Fujikura, “Biography,” accessed September 10, 2020, https://daifujikura.com/biography. 198 Dai Fujikura, “Biography.” 199 “Dr. Dai Fujikura | Biography,” Royal College of Music, accessed September 10, 2020, https://www.rcm.ac.uk/composition/professors/details/?id=02798. 200 Thierry Vagne, “Conversation with Dai Fujikura,” accessed November 9, 2015, https://vagnethierry. fr/conversation-dai-fujikura/. 97 independence is relatively uncommon and demonstrates his resourcefulness within the field as well as the continued and growing interest from individuals and music organizations for his music.

Fujikura’s compositional influences range greatly, from Boulez and Ligeti to Takemitsu, with an emphasis on exploring the sonic possibilities of different instruments and instrument combinations. He was first introduced to the music of Toru Takemitsu when his neighbor, from whom he received English lessons, loaned him a copy of November Steps.201 He recalls, “When I first heard it, I thought, ‘It’s Debussy!’ (Laughs),” and continues, “When I was a student, I think

I was very much influenced by it. How about now, I think it is a mixture of various influences,”202 referencing his views on his musical development.

Fujikura has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Silver Lion Award from the Venice Biennale, the Paul Hindemith Prize, and second prize for the 2003 Toru

Takemitsu Composition Award, as well as the being the youngest winner of the Serocki

International Composers Competition.203

With a catalog of over 150 pieces ranging from a diverse assortment of solo instruments to full orchestral works and three operas, Fujikura’s musical renown attracts an international audience. He has received commissions from numerous leading ensembles and orchestras around the world, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra,

Ensemble Intercontemporain, I.C.E., and he has worked closely with prominent contemporary performers and conductors such as Claire Chase, Martha Argerich, Pierre Boulez, and Gustavo

201 “Dai Fujikura: A Taste of Utopia,” Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, accessed November 9, 2015, https://hcmf.co.uk/Dai-Fujikura-a-taste-of-Utopia. 202 Dai Fujikura, “All Music was Once Contemporary Music,” accessed November 15, 2015, https://www. daifujikura.com/un/Mayonaka_interview.pdf. 203 Dai Fujikura, “Biography.” 98

Dudamel.204 Over 10 albums of his music have been released, and his compositions are published through Ricordi Berlin.

When composing for a particular musician he dedicates much time and energy meeting with the musician, asking questions, and becoming more knowledgeable not only in writing for the instrument but in exploring the sonic possibilities and the unique interests and abilities of the performer. This is often done through online exchanges where Fujikura sends score fragments to musicians with the request that a recording of them be sent back. So important is this interaction,

Fujikura often includes a line in the commissioning contract requiring this style of communication throughout the composition process.205

Fujikura is regularly asked about his Japanese heritage and for insights about if or how this is represented in his music. While he does not think of his musical influences as “Japanese” since he followed a strongly European-style musical training, the frequency of this inquiry makes him extremely aware of his position within the global community: “To be a composer who seems Japanese and who lives in Europe makes me particularly resistant to exoticism. I erase everything in my music typically Japanese sounds (whatever can be).”206

He is adamant that including cultural signifiers intentionally into one’s compositions reinforces stereotypes and exoticizing, that to prioritize their obvious inclusion is detrimental to the artistic product: “I don’t think a composer should consciously put [Japanese elements] in the composition unless it is requested or the music was written for a particular situation. Otherwise, the only reason I think someone would ‘put’ in such an element is for some kind of promotional

204 Royal College of Music, “Dr. Dai Fujikura | Biography.” 205 “Fifteen Questions Interview with Dai Fujikura,” 15 Questions, accessed November 9, 2015, https://www.15questions.net/interview/fifteen-questions-interview-dai-fujikura/. 206 Vagne, “Conversation with Dai Fujikura.” 99 purpose, not for artistic reasons. I don’t really want to do that in my own music.”207 Although he is actively removing any indication of Japanese culture or Japanese musical influences from his compositions, he expresses an acute awareness of Takemitsu: “I avoid using dreams and rain in titles (laughs), and when I was seen as a Japanese composer who works in Europe, I can’t ignore

Takemitsu’s existence.”208

Interestingly, Fujikura did not experience traditional Japanese music or instruments until age 20. He studied these with the same interest as any unusual instrument or style from another culture: “I had to go around to these performers’ houses to learn and to see what they do. I sort of, I suppose, know how to write for oboe and violin, but for sho and koto, I had no idea. I really started studying the instruments, that was a great joy for me as I am always interested in music culture from other countries.”209 He has an almost stereotypical image of what it might mean to write “Japanese music” and the mannerisms of a “Japanese composer”:

Because I am originally from Japan I don’t write to write something that is sort of expected. Meditative maybe, slow music and with a gong ringing… and so on which is sort of the picture of a Japanese composer writing in the music world, which I don’t want to do, and that’s not my nature anyway! I don’t think so, but a lot of people think I am quite an energetic guy, I speak fast and so on, my music should reflect that I think. So I think the way I try not to include those, I try to avoid exoticism also of course, but the main reason as I said is that my utopia should not have a border.210 Though frequently declaring the absence of “Japaneseness” in his music, Fujikura aptly recognizes that he is Japanese and that aspects of his cultural heritage are likely rooted in his being and therefore cannot be truly “removed.” He accepts the probability that his cultural

207 Dai Fujikura, email message to author, November 26, 2015. 208 Dai Fujikura, “All Music was Once Contemporary Music,” accessed November 15, 2015, https://www.daifujikura.com/un/Mayonaka_interview.pdf. 209 “NMC Debut Discs – Dai Fujikura Secret Forest,” NMC Recordings, uploaded May 28, 2012, Video, 6:09, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I4N7K0wDRo. 210 NMC Recordings, “Secret Forest.” 100 heritage may bear some mark or influence in his music without his explicit knowledge or intention:

In this piece [Solaris], the character of the music changes very quickly, which for me is closer to modern Japanese reality, as I knew it in my childhood. If I had come to Europe at the age of eighteen, I would have been, or at least my mind would have been more Japanese. I think fifteen is a crucial age in a child’s development. For this reason, my mind seems to me to be a balanced mix of the two, but it’s hard to say.211 Ultimately, he concludes that his music is crafted in exactly the way he wishes, to include everything he wants, and to exclude all the things that he does not desire in his art: “I don’t understand from my point of view why would anyone who is a creator of music must be inspired by a culture or country. At the same time as I often say, for me composing music is creating a utopia that I want to live in.”212

As alluded to above, Dai Fujikura thinks of composition as creating a kind of Utopia, a carefully crafted world of his own design: “A ‘perfect world’ exists only in my imagination where nothing I dislike exists, which I try to recreate in my composition. In a way, that’s the reason why I compose music.”213 There are many ways he achieves this Utopia in his pieces.

One is through clear compositional structures that define the shape, content, and scope of a piece, much like a microcosm.

Sometimes when I start composing I think of a system. For example, when writing an orchestral work, I often just want to go for big chords, expanding them from one chord to the next, until each chord fragments becoming more abstract – even rhythmic. When working like that I don’t want to write organically, I just want to write something where one rule or method works throughout contrasting sections.214

211 Vagne, “Conversation with Dai Fujikura.” 212 Concertclassic, “Solaris au Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.” 213 Ben Saxon, “Dai Fujikura,” London Sinfonietta interview, July 2009, accessed November 12, 2015, audio, https://www.daifujikura.com/un/interviews.html. 214 “Dai Fujikura,” Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Encore 2012: Alumni News, accessed November 10, 2015, https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/alumni/encore. 101

He strongly believes listening to music should be a holistic and even tactile experience, emphasizing that it is more than just hearing. He approaches composition thinking of how it might “taste,” thinking conceptually of the texture in physical terms, or what colors or images might be evoked through the sounds:

When I hear a sound, I don’t just hear the sound or see the colour (as some people say they do), but I can also see the movement of an object. I explore what would it be if I could put this musical material (it could be a phrase, or a chord played) in my mouth; what sort of taste and feeling would it have? What if I put this chord against my cheek, what sort of temperature does it have, or how would I feel it if I were to rub it against my cheek? Hearing music is a sensual experience of swarming.215 This extends beyond static states of being or sensing. The interactions between sounds, the dynamic space between one or more musical objects, and how that relationship or state of being transforms are all of great interest to Fujikura as he composes:

I am very interested in states of texture and their transition; how does a solid become liquid? Like melted chocolate: we all know what it’s like, but when it’s actually melting, it’s quite sexy, quite beautiful. I very much like my music to trigger all the human senses: not just hard and soft, but hot and sour and sweet... […] Music covers everything, so why be just visual?216 Piano Music

Though the piano is Fujikura’s primary instrument, he does not write extensively for it over other instruments. As is the case with commissions, often the instrumentation has been decided. In creating his Utopia, his concern is about writing music that is somehow true to the instrument. His writing for piano is structured in an idiomatic and logical manner for the instrument, demonstrating his mastery over physical limitations while still creating unique compositions that highlight the timbral possibilities available through traditional playing techniques. Interestingly, he chooses not to employ extended techniques (i.e., plucking or

215 Dai Fujikura, “What Music Can Learn from the Movement of Birds and Fish,” Music Blog (blog), The Guardian, November 30, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/nov/30/what-music-can-learn- from-birds. 216 Huddersfield, “A Taste of Utopia.” 102 scraping strings, knocking on various parts of the instrument’s body, etc.) and instead relies on using the instrument in ways following its original performance practices.

The primary piano pieces still acknowledged in his catalog (in which earlier, “student” works have been largely eliminated) and explored in this paper include Piano Studies 1-2, titled

“Frozen Heat” and “Deepened Arc,” respectively, written in 1998, which are examples of some of his earliest “student” works still performed. Returning (2006) was written as an exercise in exploring a particular compositional system and serves as the basis of the piano part for his first piano concerto, Amphere (2008). Also to be discussed are Joule (2009) and two little piano pieces (2011) titled “seksek” (“hopscotch”) and “AYATORI” (“cat’s cradle”).

Japanese Elements

Not surprisingly, given Fujikura’s awareness of his cultural heritage and intention to remove any audible or tangible aspects that might highlight his “Japaneseness,” very few

Japanese elements can be teased out of his piano works. Japanese elements are not found in the pitch content/treatment or the structure of his pieces, nor do they truly manifest in aspects like an underlying musical aesthetics, i.e. a “meditative”-style as quipped above. However, much subtler examples of cultural influence are found indirectly through references to nature, an interest in dualities and relationships, a circular rather than linear treatment of time, and several extra- musical elements stemming from language and directives to the performer with the score. These few examples are highly subjective and represent analyses of possible ties to Japanese culture manifesting in Fujikura’s artistic output.

Nature

Referring to his ensemble piece, Secret Forest (2008), “I wanted to create a forest. Funny thing is, I have a very strange relationship with nature because I am a very allergic person and I 103 hate nature. I just don’t want to go into a forest or any of those things. I don’t even like the sound of birds, which are singing right now, because they never sing the way I like them to sing.”217 It is not necessarily that Fujikura has an aversion to nature itself, but rather a distaste for certain aspects of nature that are less idyllic, the parts that cannot be controlled. This is directly in line with his compositional premise of always creating perfection in his musical Utopia. The controlling of nature is of particular interest: it parallels the aesthetic foundation of the Japanese garden, especially the art of bonsai growing or flower arranging. Quintessentially Japanese is the idea of having one’s attention drawn to the beauty of nature, but not necessarily of nature naturally occurring but the result of careful control and mindful placement for effect.218

As discussed previously, Fujikura consciously avoids using terms like “rain” or references to water because of Takemitsu’s frequent use of these types of words. Joule, however, is an example of a perhaps less poetic title referencing nature. A joule is a scientific unit of energy that is the same as the unit of work such that all forms of energy are essentially the same and interchangeable. In this way, this piece is about an invisible and universal energy flow.

Frozen Heat also exemplifies a subtle reference to nature that evokes a particular elemental association through its title. Though potentially a destructive force, images of wind, for example, often evoke serene or meditative images. Though not as direct as references to water, or mountains, this title represents a modern take on nature that emphasizes motion and energy, a kind of excitement that embodies more than just a general nod to nature. The words

“frozen” and “heat” do not give an exact image of a specific scene (i.e., what is frozen), but instead establish an open-endedness for the listener to decide what they hear in the music. These

217 NMC Recordings, “Secret Forest.” 218 “Chapter 12: Aesthetics,” Japanese Gardening, accessed September 12, 2020, https://japanese gardening.org/handbook/aesthetics/. 104 words in particular are less poetic and more scientific in tone. In Fujikura’s musical Utopia, he describes his intentions: “I imagined that there is energy and bursting heat inside a frozen box like an ice cage, which are fighting to break through the box. I was attracted by the idea of being emotional inside, but cool on the outside. Wild but controlled.”219

Duality/Relationships

In addition to using words related to the natural world, Frozen Heat’s title imbues a contradiction: “Frozen” often denotes a cold or low temperature, frigid state, whereas “heat” is the opposite, associated with high temperatures and molecular movement. This reference exemplifies a duality, of coexisting opposites that interact and complement one another. The relationship between these two descriptive words goes beyond their definitions, a relationship that is dynamic and changing, having almost contradictory physical responses. I interpret this combination as having qualities similar to dry ice: a coldness of such extreme that the damage it could instill is referred to as a “burn,” a term used for damage caused by intense heat.

As revealed in Fujikura’s description of the piece, the reference is not just about physical responses, but emotional responses as well. The two opposing forces are represented as contrasting textures in the music. “Frozen” is depicted as motoric and mechanical through the use of sixteenth-notes in perpetual motion shown in Example 20.

EXAMPLE 20 Frozen Heat, right-hand texture

219 Fujikura, “What Music Can Learn.” 105

The static extreme registers of the opening immediately establish a sense of physical space, but the right hand’s octave gesture oscillating between C7 and C8 is the cold, unrelenting, and emotionally unsentimental ostinato. This motoric texture, though changing registers at times, is fixated on pc 0. Jarring, unpredictably occurring accented non-pc 0s infiltrate this layer; however, this texture remains a constant presence throughout the piece. The left hand performs the opposing “heat” in passages marked espressivo shown in Example 21.

EXAMPLE 21 Frozen Heat, left-hand texture

Emotional warmth is presented in these passages with lyrical, multi-measure phrases juxtaposed against the continuing motoric right-hand texture. The use of ties and triplet divisions gives the left-hand material a smoother, less angular feeling as it glides along. The two forces ebb and flow at the same rate through the use of synchronized dynamic swells so that one hand is not overpowering the other, but each builds in intensity in its own way. The “cold” right-hand material builds intensity by stacking more pitches in to create simultaneities of increasing density until saturation is achieved when as many of the non-pc 0 pitches as possible are collected and played at once forcefully with a rhythmic accellerando.

EXAMPLE 22 Frozen Heat, increasing density

106

In contrast, the “warm” left hand’s lyrical material is expanded to include a second bell-like voice in the same register (see Example 23). This adds a layer of resonance and sustain against the motoric right-hand material.

EXAMPLE 23 Frozen Heat, lyrical left-hand material

Though not as explicit in terms of named opposing forces, Returning is structured in a delicate balance between clashing dissonances and the outlining of familiar tonality-based tertian harmonies. The piece is polyphonic, constructed by combining two then three independent lines that weave artfully in and out of one another’s ranges seamlessly as shown in Example 24.

EXAMPLE 24 Returning, hand crossings

Upon first listen, the pitch material has a strong sense of 12-tone organization due to the lack of pitch centricity and recurring interval classes that seem to wander chromatically. On closer inspection, one finds the first five measures of the piece make use of nine of the twelve pitch- classes, omitting [5, 7, 9] from the aggregate. See Figure 2 below. 107

FIGURE 2 Returning, comparing pitch-classes between hands in mm. 1-5

Certain pitch-classes cycle loosely in each hand, forming motivic cells and providing a quasi- division between the hands. Notice how in the left-hand pitch-classes 4 and 2 occur next to one another. The pattern 4, 1, 4, occurs twice in this small excerpt. Likewise, the right-hand pitch- classes in the first half feature 6, 2, and 1, though never in quite the same ordering, whereas t and

0 are more prominent in the second half.

The opening three-note gesture of the right-hand melody form an unmistakable B-minor triad in second inversion connected to a root position B-minor triad through the use of C-sharp as a tonal passing tone. In rhythmic unison with the right hand, the left-hand melody features a series of pitches that do not lend themselves immediately to a familiar tonality-based tertian, but the opening E - C-sharp - E gesture followed by the return of the original C-sharp almost establish C-sharp minor. Example 25 outlines the pitches of the opening two measures for first the right-hand, outlining B-minor, and the left-hand centering loosely in the key of C-sharp minor.

EXAMPLE 25 Returning, tonality-based gestures

These two lines in themselves have a tonal feel, but with perceived pitch centers a whole step apart, the resulting vertical dyads oscillate between dissonances (i.e., ic 2 through the use of M2s and m7s) and consonant P5s. This forms the basis of the linear and resulting vertical intervallic 108 content for the piece. Consonant intervals are easily heard both simultaneously and as part of tonal-like gestures delicately balanced with close semitones that temporarily rub and clash against one another before resolving into major or minor thirds as can be seen in Example 25: the consonant M6 achieved briefly on the downbeat of m. 14, as well as the final m3 of the example.

Time

Fujikura expresses some intriguing and nebulous thoughts about the temporal nature of music and different ways composers actively interact with time:

I think time is the most important big thing for composers, and I feel that the flow of time is different. That’s why, in a sense, a composer is a time-consuming job, so when it comes to living, he is born straight forward and toward the future. I want to keep going if I feel like the tempo has flowed well. Sometimes I look back and learn what I can learn- and create slow rhythms and sounds, learning from the listener. No matter how hard I try, I feel the difference in the flow of time, no matter how fast I feel. I can only move forward and into the future.220 The vagueness of these ruminations is striking, that he, as with everyone, is borne on a forward path in time. Yet our memories enable us to travel backward, to mentally revisit and re-examine a point in time from a new perspective, resulting in fresh insights and conclusions than from the original real-time experience.

Returning features the unfolding of a cyclic compositional process. As the title suggests, an element, in this case rhythmic, returns in different guises. The rhythmic theme is long, irregular, and is not made up of easily audible or memorable units, nor does it have a clear internal logic. Example 26 presents the string of 42 rhythmic durations that serve as the rhythmic theme without beamings or groupings. Each subsequent iteration in the piece it is grouped differently, represented with ties, and through constantly shifting time signatures that do not recur in a discernable pattern.

220 Dai Fujikura, “The Most Important Thing in Life: Time,” accessed November 15, 2015, https://www. daifujikura.com/un/021_jikan_fujikura.pdf. 109

EXAMPLE 26 Returning, rhythmic theme

The pitch content does not have a direct correlation to the treatment of the rhythm. In a sense, the repetition of the rhythm is similar to a set of variations where the rhythm is constantly reworked with different pitch content. When the unit cycles back to the beginning, it is often hidden by starting in the middle of a measure, often in the middle of a beamed rhythmic beat unit. Since rhythmic and melodic aspects do not form repeating motives (recurring patterns of aural recognizable melodic and rhythmic groupings), there is an overall feeling of searching. Also contributing to the feeling of searching is the lack of cadential points or clear breaks such as silence.

The form diagram for Returning (see Figure 3) clearly highlights how the rhythmic theme returns and shapes the overall structure of the piece. In many ways, the form resembles the familiar rondo form, ABACA, with its returning reprise and contrasting episodes. It is not as straight-forward or audible in Fujikura’s piece. A represents the reprise, returning in its exact pitch, rhythm, and length at the approximate midpoint of the piece, m. 40. Here, instead of two voices, one for each hand, the left-hand plays both parts at once while a rhythmically independent new layer is played by the right-hand. A returns in its exact pitch and rhythmic content in the last ten measures but in retrograde. Smaller segments marked A1 represent reiterations of the first 21 durations of the rhythmic theme. This smaller segment is cycles four times in the manner described above. Sections B and C serve to intensify the music in different ways. In B, the texture of the music thickens by incorporating dyads and snappier rhythms with 110 the use of 32nd-notes. C seems to take on a life of its own, combining short, fast, articulated, gestures against brief longer durations marked espressivo. The rhythmic division becomes smaller and the succession of notes more compact as the section gains momentum, only to decelerate and dissolve back into the material that it originally surged out of.

FIGURE 3 Form diagram of Returning

The final ten measures are an exact melodic and rhythmic retrograde of the opening twelve measures. Extra pains are taken to hide this connection through the use of different meters so the visual representation of the individual durations lends a striking visual disconnect.

Example 27 presents the pitch and rhythmic content of the opening twelve measures with a reconstruction of the last ten measures lined up underneath to demonstrate the different rhythmic groupings and time signatures created with the same sequence of pitches and rhythmic durations.

Extra-Musical Elements

Non-musical elements that indicate influence or reference to Japanese culture come in a wide range of forms. Two ways that Fujikura’s piano music points to Japanese culture are the titles of the individual pieces of two little piano pieces (2011) and the tone and language of written instructions in the score for the performer.

The two short piano pieces are titled after Japanese children’s games: AYATORI (“cat’s cradle”) and seksek (“Hopscotch”). Though appearing in numerous variations in various cultures,

Ayatori has a particular significance in Japan: “It is one of the most intelligent traditional games 111

EXAMPLE 27 Returning, pitch and rhythm mapping

in Japan. What is interesting about Ayatori is the fact that it was not only a game of strings.

There was a time in Japan’s history when it was used in divination and magic.”221 To play the

221 “Ayatori: An Interesting Game of Strings,” YABAI – The Modern Vibrant Face of Japan, accessed August 27, 2020, http://yabai.com/p/4292. 112 game, patterns and shapes are formed by threading a piece of string that has been tied into a large loop. It is intended as a two-player game, though it can be played by a single person. Based on the pattern, the other player grabs the yarn in one of several particular ways to form a new pattern. The game ends when a player makes a mistake resulting in a tangled mess or the dissolving of any workable pattern.

The physical act of playing the game is represented in several ways. First, the hand crossings mimic the careful exchange of the string from one player the another. The two lines

(one per hand) interact through carefully crafted counterpoint. Notice in Example 28 how the two hands begin on the same key and are immediately crossed: the left-hand staying stationary for a moment while the right-hand dips below. The left-hand responds by carefully reaching further above the right-hand before the right-hand reverses direction to reset the hands in their proper position. The mood of the piece is subdued and calm with a steady and almost mechanical forward motion, portraying the calm nature of the game, the concentration used to execute the manipulation of the string, and the fluidity of the hand movements.

EXAMPLE 28 AYATORI, playing Cat’s Cradle through counterpoint

Similar to other pieces by Fujikura, the harmonic content is vaguely tonal. The prominence of P4 and P5 intervals (inversionally related) are juxtaposed with whole steps and m7s (again, inversionally related). Additionally, the sets (0237) and (0136) are featured prominently throughout, creating interlocking P4/P5 (ic 5) and either M3/m6 (ic 4) or m3/M6 (ic 113

3) that form many sustained vertical sonorities as shown in Example 29. Stem direction of the dyads indicate in which hand they occur.

EXAMPLE 29 AYATORI, tetrachords

Language, one of the key methods of determining inclusion as “Japanese” according to numerous scholars as explored in previous chapters, serves as a subtle clue to aspects of

Fujikura’s cultural influences. French composers such as Debussy and Boulez are known for non-standard expressive indications appearing in French in the musical score. These range from simple commands to indicate style, to almost poetic descriptions of the intended musical effect.

The score for Joule (2009) has numerous such indications in English. Fujikura likely chose to include so many written directions because the piece was commissioned by BBC for the 2006 winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition rather than a collaboration with a particular pianist. Two particular markings stand out. At m. 127 Fujikura writes “play as if one continuous plain line. Imagine that the rests are muted notes and you can feel their existence.”222 The emphasis on the rests having as much importance as the notes is much like the examples of duality discussed previously and through other examples in Fujikura’s piano pieces as outlined above. It is a direct evocation of sound and silence as balanced opposites as a representation of ma. The invitation to “imagine” and to “feel” as particularly striking. It gives the pianist a feeling

222 Dai Fujikura, Joule (London: G. Ricordi, 2009), 9. 114 as though they are as welcomed part of the process rather than being commanded to play in a particular way. It has a warmer feeling of inclusion, reminiscent of Japanese hospitality. The second follows shortly after: “please count the rest bar”223 in m. 134. Both have a manner of pointedness yet politeness, inviting the performer to a glimpse of Fujikura’s intentions through words full of thoughtfulness and grace.

Conclusions

Though highly subjective, the Japanese elements identified in Dai Fujikura’s music are not important because he is Japanese. I make no claims that these elements cause the pieces to

“sound” in any way like Japanese music; however, the process of examination is in itself valuable for the performer when learning to connect more deeply with a composer’s music, better understand the formal and structural devices, and to convey the resulting style and intentions of the composer to audiences.

Fujikura has an intense awareness of his position in the global musical community, as he puts it, “To be a composer who seems Japanese and who lives in Europe.”224 This places him at the cultural epicenter of establishing his own musical identity in a way that is independent of decades of the cultural baggage of “East meets West” and similar generalizations and intentional polarization created for different reasons on either end. Though it is clear he is not a composer of

“Japanese” music, certain aspects of culture can still be distilled from his works. These cultural influences manifest in subtle ways that do not impact the resulting sound or character of his works. This does not validate or invalidate any claims, but reinforce that he has achieved his goal of erasing all possible signs of “Japaneseness” from the surface of his music.

223 Fujikura, 9. 224 Vagne, “Conversation with Dai Fujikura.” 115

Similar to Jo Kondo, Fujikura has a highly individual compositional style formed from a variety of influences and interests that he uses to create sound-worlds. In this case, it is not of significant value to have any knowledge or understanding of Japanese music or culture. To assume this type of knowledge as required before performing a piece would prove problematic, reinforcing an expectation for some manner of exoticism, an expectation that continues to follow composers who are considered non-Western by birth country or heritage. A delicate balance is needed: to acknowledge that some composers draw very directly from aspects of their culture in concrete ways, while others simply do not.

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CHAPTER 9. JOJI YUASA

Biography

Internationally acclaimed composer Joji Yuasa was born in Koriyama, Fukushima, Japan, in 1929. Primarily self-taught, he became interested in music while studying medicine at Keiō

University in 1949. After joining the Jikken-Kobo (Experimental Workshop) in 1952, he devoted his full energy to music and composition. Since then, he has written a wide variety of compositions, from orchestral works, chamber ensembles, and solo pieces, to multi-media, electronic, and computer music, as well as music for theatre.225

Yuasa is the recipient of numerous prizes for his works, including the Prix Italia

(1966, ’67), Grand Prizes at the Japan Arts Festival (1973, ’83), the Kyoto Music Grand Prize

(1995), and the Japan Art Academy Prize (1999), to name a few.226 He has received commissions from various ensembles and organizations, including Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra,

NHK Symphony Orchestra, IRCAM, and the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.227

Yuasa received numerous fellowships and scholarships abroad, such as a Japan Society

Fellowship to visit Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the University of

Illinois. He served as Composer-In-Residence at the University of California San Diego’s

(UCSD) Center for Music Experiment in 1976, later teaching there from 1981 until retiring in

1994. He is currently professor emeritus at UCSD and Nihon University, as well as an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music.228

225 “Joji Yuasa,” Schott Music, accessed September 17, 2020, https://en.schottmusic.com/shop/autoren/ joji-yuasa. 226 Schott Music, “Joji Yuasa.” 227 Schott Music, “Joji Yuasa.” 228 Schott Music, “Joji Yuasa.” 117

Sponsored by the American Cultural Center and established by Yuasa, Akiyama

Kunihara, and Roger Reynolds in 1966, Cross Talk Festivals, later known as Interlink, presented current trends and developments in Japanese and American music. These festivals served to connect and better situate Japan within the global music world in an increasingly globalized community.229 Yuasa has served as a guest lecturer, composer, and judge for a wide variety of festivals around the world. Festivals include the Festival of Arts In This Century in Hawaii, New

Music Concerts in Toronto, Internationale Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, and a great multitude of others.230

In his youth, the mountainous lake region around his home was rich in culture and tradition, leaving a lasting impression on Yuasa: “it gives a strong sensation of vastness, an openness that seems to reach the cosmos itself. This scenery has remained locked within me, and it a fundamental part of me.”231 Yuasa’s father contributed significantly to his exposure to the wealth of art and culture. As an active amateur musician playing the mandolin, violin, shakuhachi, he was also editor of a poetry magazine. He was actively involved in noh opera as a librettist and performer.232

Even without formal composition training in his youth, Yuasa began composition studies in late high school and used his piano skills to study Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, and Sibelius’s works. He was drawn to recordings of French composers such as Debussy and Poulenc and

Prokofiev and the Russian Five. He took an avid interest in Messiaen and Jolivet’s music, particularly these composers’ views on music’s relationship with spirituality, religion, and

229 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 65. 230 Schott Music, “Joji Yuasa.” 231 Luciana Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 1. 232 Galliano, 1. 118 humanity. While consuming a vast quantity of music by prominent European composers, he maintained an acute awareness and attentiveness to pre-war Japanese composers’ activities during the development of contemporary Japanese music.233 Critical to understanding Yuasa’s musical development is that there was no initial “conflict” of Western and Japanese music, that these musics and aesthetics coexisted happily in his life.234 He is considered one of few Japanese composers with significant exposure and knowledge of traditional Japanese music, having studied Japanese-style singing and participating with his father in noh performances. This early awareness and understanding of conceptual differences between traditional Japanese music and

Western art music is the impetus to exploring concepts of time and silence through the lens of both noh theatre and Webern’s treatment of spareness and silence.235

Yuasa’s artistic interests extend beyond music. He has an intense interest in existentialism and the concept of non-being as ultimate truth through his studies of Sartre.236

From these studies, he adopts the aesthetic position that his music’s expressive content is more about impressions rather than personal sentiments. He relates to time as a moving sculpture, influenced by Alexander Calder’s mobiles combined with the “unpredictable present” espoused by Faulkner.237 A multi-faceted composer with a breadth of artistic influences beyond music,

Yuasa finds a deep connection with several aesthetics found in traditional Japanese music and

Japanese culture.

This early awareness of the depth of his connection to Japanese culture helped shape

Yuasa’s ability to embrace these aesthetics and incorporate them into his music in informed and

233 Galliano, 2. 234 Galliano, 2. 235 Galliano, 152. 236 Galliano, 12. 237 Joji Yuasa, “Temporality and I: From the Composer’s Workshop,” Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 2 (1993): 221, https://doi.org/10.2307/833386. 119 genuine ways. He frequently writes of his opinions on the formation of a composer’s musical identity and Japanese cultural influences adopted into his compositional style:

From the beginning, it seemed remarkable that inside of me there existed a Japanese musical world together with an international musical world, both in turn shared externally with a new musical generation of which I was a part. It was odd that they were separated, and from that initial sensation of twofold existence came the thought that I should conscientiously confront this issue. My personal background and conscience, together with my ideology, tended towards tradition, but my personal identity was constructed on the basis of my interests.238 In addition to feeling a strong connection to both his Japanese cultural heritage and the international and cosmopolitan music community, Yuasa recognized the importance of acknowledging these different “pulls” to reconcile this feeling of multiplicity. For his own artistic clarity, he delved deeply into exactly how he would engage with his cultural heritage and, most importantly, in what form it would manifest in his music:

Not long after I chose to become a composer, I came to realize that, as a Japanese, rather than unconsciously receiving my own tradition, I wished to consciously inherit and extend it, while at the same time exploring the universal language of all human beings. However, for me, the inheritance of my tradition implied a way of thought and perception rather than simply the adoption of superficial phenomena such as the pentatonic scale, or the simple usage of traditional instruments such as the shakuhachi, biwa, and koto. In other words, for me, remaining within a tradition meant retaining a system of thinking.239 Of great importance, then, was the avoidance of self-exoticizing. The act of inserting a

“superficial phenomena” would serve only a surface-level signal of Japanese culture. Instead, only the underlying structure and specific conceptual elements driving the piece would bear any evidence of Japanese heritage through specific intention.

Though creating a compositional style and technique logical to his musical and cultural exposure, some have described Yuasa’s music as radical, and “the marriage of western Avante-

238 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, 6. 239 Joji Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection of a Composer’s Cosmology,” Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (1989): page, https://doi.org/10.2307/833409. 120

Garde procedures […] with an aesthetic not so closely linked with Japanese musical material as with the Japanese Zen thought process.”240 Yuasa describes his compositional process regarding the role of the composer in controlled and uncontrolled influences with great precision:

When I work, I am engaged in an intuitive way of composition and at the same time a systematic way of composition. What this means is that I place myself between control and decontrol. I don’t hate intuition – it is quite important. But if we always use the intuitive, we tend to behave stereotypically. So in order to counterbalance stereotypical behavior, I employ strict systematic procedures. What results is an interesting interactive relationship between system and intuition.241 Yuasa identifies several “core issues” essential to his compositional process: 1) time and space (temporality and spatiality) viewed as inseparable and united, 2) timbre, 3) “sonic gesture in narrativity,” 4) the relationship of technology to innovation, and 5) language carrying meaning

“beyond the content of the words themselves.”242 Notably, a number of these issues map directly onto the Japanese elements used for analysis. His search for a kind of original and universal expression that explores how individuals perceive the exterior world stems in part from his interest in the Classical Japanese poetry of Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) as well as his general interest in the cosmos as a synthesis of body and soul.243 His mature works, in particular, are inspired by the Haikus and imagery of Bashō, described as his source of “creative speculation”244 and use melodic elements to explore the narrative possibilities of music.

Yuasa frequently writes about his approach to time in music, particularly his “interest in the nature of time, how syntax is developed along a temporal axis (aka musical narrative).”245

His musical language centers on “sculpting time and giving it a mobile and iridescent structure.

240 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, xvi. 241 Richard Boulanger, “Interview with Roger Reynolds, Joji Yuasa, and Charles Wuorinen,” Computer Music Journal 8, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 52, https://doi.org/10.2307/3679776. 242 Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection,” 217. 243 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, 113. 244 Galliano, 116. 245 Yuasa, “Temporality and I,” 217. 121

The result is the creation of a non-linear experience of musical texture, in the interpenetration and contrast of events placed as absolutes in themselves which mutually colour one another.”246

These core issues and compositional considerations are featured prominently in many of his solo piano works.

Piano Music

Yuasa wrote numerous composition series with titles such as Chronoplastic, Projection, and Cosmos Haptic, where pieces within each group were written for different instruments or instrument combinations but included unifying elements like quotations. The result is groups of pieces that are all part of the same narrative though written at different points in his life. The solo piano works Cosmos Haptic (1957), Cosmos Haptic II (1986), Projection Topologic (1959), and

Projection esemplastic (1961) are part of such groups. His early works for solo piano, written before he established his compositional style, are Two Pastorals (1952), Three Score Set (1953), and Serenade: chant pour “Do” (1954). Additional pieces included are On the Keyboard (1972) and Melodies (1997).

Japanese Elements

Noh theatre is self-identified as highly significant to Yuasa’s creative output and energies: “If I were to explain this relationship in a rather schematic and rationalistic manner, I could say that the issues which modern music is confronted with today – that is to say the various problems deriving from essential differences between the societal structure of the West and the

East – are manifested in the world of Nō.”247 Noh theatre is an ancient Japanese art form combining drama, dancing, and music. The costumes are elaborate and often feature masks of a

246 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, 33. 247 Joji Yuasa, “The World of Nō as I Perceive It, Concerning Some Problems in Music,” Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 2 (1993): 186, https://doi.org/10.2307/833383. 122 set standardized characters.248 The movements and gestures are slow and highly stylized, originating from Buddhist rituals, and the language poetic and intoned.249 “Nō embodies typically Eastern modes of thought, of understanding reality.”250 These modes of thought identified by Yuasa include dichotomies that are not about opposites, but instead balance. These dichotomies do not just coexist but are part of a dynamic act of becoming one. Additionally,

Yuasa’s music reflects the idea that space does not equate emptiness or lacking, but rather something that contains emptiness.

Fifteenth century noh reaches heightened aesthetic ranking: “moving it toward a metaphysical beauty, outside the boundaries of reality and toward a reality beyond the phenomenal, one of eternal silence, an aesthetic version of the attainment of the contemplative experience.”251 These concepts and aesthetics manifest in Yuasa’s music in numerous ways. The organization and awareness of space and time through techniques such as stratified pitch layers and layered rhythmic groupings as well as the incorporation of silence and resonance. At its core is ma through dualities and relationships. The various aspects of noh will be treated separately in the categories of time (time-space and circular treatment), ma (relationships and duality), and the use of pulse versus meter. References to nature are also addressed.

The Japanese concept of ma is represented in multiple ways in Yuasa’s piano music.

Mostly defined as a reference to Japanese aesthetics on relationships, it encompasses the idea of duality and balance, as found in Zen teachings. In Yuasa’s compositions, these relationships

248 “Noh Drama: Asia for Educators,” Columbia University, accessed October 1, 2020, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1000ce_noh.htm. 249 “Noh Theatre,” Japan Guide, accessed October 1, 2020, https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2091.html. 250 Yuasa, “The World of Nō,” 187. 251 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, 148. 123 include rhythmic groupings, layers of both pitch and rhythmic material and their changing positioning with one another, and the creation of a balance between different musical parameters such as sound/silence and motion/stasis. Ma is also expressed through Yuasa’s use of registral space through juxtaposing extreme registers along with the often-stratified positioning of these registral layers and the feeling of flexibility in both time and space through fluid expansions and contractions.

One of the clearest ways Yuasa creates a sense of space is through stratified layers across the full registral range of the piano. Each of these stratified layers has its own texture and activity. Being spread out across the full range of the piano allows each component to have its own space to resonate. The reduction in Example 30 of the established registers in the opening of

Cosmos Haptic demonstrates this clearly.

EXAMPLE 30 Stratified layers in the opening of Cosmos Haptic

The outer, most extreme layers are less active, functioning to create a sense of space for resonance. The uppermost layer throughout the piece features a bell-like tolling. In contrast, the 124 lowest layer provides a resonant gong-like base that serves to provide grounding and balance out the shrill bells in the upper register.

The middle two layers are the most active, remaining contained in their respective parts of the keyboard. These stratified layers are within themselves established in a way that creates an overall sonic balance. In addition to the registral placement, the inner two active layers feature symmetrical tetrachords: {1, 3, 7, 9}, {0, 2, 6, 8}, {2, 4, 8, t}, {3, 5, 9, e}, all (0268) sets, as seen in Example 31.

EXAMPLE 31 Cosmos Haptic, symmetrical tetrachords

The tri-tone, the equal division of the octave, is a salient feature of these sets. These tetrachords present a surface-level balance to the created pitch-space.

EXAMPLE 32 Stratified layers in the opening of Cosmos Haptic II

Though written 30 years later, Cosmos Haptic II opens with a similarly structured stratification of lines to establish a sense of space. The stratified spacing is shown in Example 32. 125

Again, the register and pitch space of the outer layers are fixed. Some small variations occur within the established range of the middle voices. These small changes serve to provide timbre variety of the resonating block of sound without changing the sonority’s overall intervallic relationships.

Stratified layers are also found in Melodies, a later work most notable for using pitches to spell the names of Bach, Schubert, and Brahms as an homage to these composers whose works

Yuasa greatly admires. The opening system presents BACH represented as the pitches B-flat, A,

C, B in the right-hand against an ascending chromatic scale at the same rhythmic pace in the left- hand. These pitches are the seeds from which fleeting gestures erupt during the first section and become locked into particular registers using the sostenuto pedal to be reactivated each time they are struck throughout the following section. Example 33 shows the first pitch in the presentation of BACH next to its expanded version. These flourishes continue to add up, coalescing into stratified layers just before silently depressing the four pitches representing Bach at the end of page 5 of the score (See Example 34).

EXAMPLE 33 Melodies, establishing pitch registers

Projection Topologic, organized into three movements, contains a similar use of stratified layers; however, each movement’s brevity, combined with the increased activity and motion, obscure this feature. Of greater importance with this work in the way Yuasa structures the 126

EXAMPLE 34 Melodies, pitch registers established

relationship between gestures. Using randomly drawn numbers between zero and twelve to determine values for units or “frames” within each measure, he then used this same random assigning of numbers to allocate sound versus silence. Once structured and implemented, the

“frames” were filled based on these parameters with Figure 4 as a graphic representation of the end result. Though conceived as a simple canon, once implementing these different frames of silence and sound, occasionally, the “second” voice occurs first (indicated by an asterisk in the figure above), blurring the temporal line between present and future as well as creating an unpredictable musical structure. Though difficult to recognize in this highly structured system’s acoustic realization, an intense internal structuring of relationships was forged at the compositional level.

FIGURE 4 Projection Topologic, frames in canon

127

More clearly audible examples of the relationships between layers are found in several other piano pieces. One section of Cosmos Haptic II features a sliding relationship effect through layered rhythmic ratios. Solidifying in p. 10 of the score, the relatively static top layer is in rhythmic groupings of 3:4, under this are half-notes in quintuple division, followed by an oscillating figure in steady quarter-notes. Below the quarter-notes layer is a 3:4 ratio and quintuplet grouping similar to the top layers (See Example 35). Ties within these specific divisions also contribute to a feeling of sliding layers.

EXAMPLE 35 Cosmos Haptic II, sliding rhythmic layers

A particularly clear example of changing rhythmic relationships between layers occurs in

On the Keyboard. At several points in the piece, both hands are playing fast tremolo figures with one or two pitches at approximately the same rate. The right-hand is instructed to slow down and then speed back up to the original tempo while the left-hand stays at a constant speed. The effect is that right-hand is in a temporal flux that does not impact the left-hand figuration but has a striking acoustic effect, almost like phasing. 128

EXAMPLE 36 Temporal flux between hands in On the Keyboard

In addition to a change of rhythmic relationship between the hands, this could also be described as a rhythmic expansion and contraction of the right-hand figure. This use of reciprocated expansion and contraction of a parameter is a way ma is expressed. On the

Keyboard contains another example of expansion and contraction through pitch material. The opening, which bears a striking resemblance to Ligeti’s Continuum written only four years earlier, begins with a tremolo on a single note that expands slowly across adjacent semitones before an unexpected explosion to express the aggregate with G4/G-flat4 serving as a loose spatial axis before compressing back down as shown in Example 37.

EXAMPLE 37 On the Keyboard, pitch-space expansion and contraction

Cosmos Haptic similarly does this but through the expanding out of the stratified layers to activate the resonance and space, often starting from a small focal point and exploding into a wide range. Example 38 is a reduction of one of these expansions. Only the first iteration of pitches when activated in each range is shown to highlight the pacing of the expansion.

One of the most important manifestations of ma in music is through the dualities and balance between sound and silence, and motion and stasis. Yuasa is one of the numerous composers who evoke ma’s feeling and aesthetic through the use of silence. “Substantial silence has a value equivalent to sound. It is not to be confused with a pause or rest, that is, with merely 129

EXAMPLE 38 Cosmos Haptic, expansion into stratified layers

the absence of sound.”252 Projection esemplastic contains the most prominent and salient uses of the balance between sound and silence. The title refers to the melding and unification into a singular entity, part of the Zen concept of “becoming.” Galliano describes this feature in Yuasa’s music: “two can become one while still maintaining separate identities […], the non-existence of any duality, the essential of the non-discrimination, as the reciprocal interpenetration of A into

B.”253

A drastic change from his other works for piano, Projection esemplastic is a graphic score. It explores extended piano techniques such as plucking, strumming, or muting the piano strings, using items such as a stick to produce pitched sounds by striking the strings, and tone clusters on the keyboard. The series of spatially placed symbols are organized within 12 boxes. It is up to the performer to listen carefully to the sounds they produce to create the appropriate resonance and space. Just as there are blank sections within each box, there should be silence or the last traces of the previous sound event created. Much depends on the performer’s sensible timing to realize the piece in a way that is consistent with Yuasa’s musical style and aesthetic.

252 Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection,” 183. 253 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, 45. 130

In Melodies, the importance of silence is evident. Numerous fermatas are featured in the score, helping the performing achieve the intended pacing. These silences are often at the ends of sections while the pedal is still depressed, ensuring that the previous resonance can continue to ring and decay naturally. In this sense, it is not true silence that is featured, but the previous notes’ remnants. On the Keyboard takes this a step further by designating the approximate number of seconds that should be allowed to pass during each fermata. These timing indications are incredibly helpful in establishing the pacing due to the active sections’ perpetual motion. The section beginning at the bottom of page 9 of the score is strikingly marked “Listen into each resonance.” A rhythmic duration corresponding to the metronome marking assigned to the section indicates the duration of the time to wait. Pitched material and the resulting resonances are of equal importance. Rhythmic durations, fermatas, and timing indications are extracted in

Example 39 to demonstrate the prevalence of space and resonance.

EXAMPLE 39 On the Keyboard, space and resonance

Fermatas over resonating sonorities feature heavily in Cosmos Haptic, often denoting formal structure. Figure 5 maps the use of fermatas and overall structure of the piece. The opening stratified layers, as discussed in-depth above, serve as introductory material, establishing the space and resonance before the melodic thematic material that defines sections A, B, C, and

D. The reprise, as described above, functions as an overall postlude to the piece. The two short sections marked Tr are transitions and contain the same material. 131

FIGURE 5 Form diagram for Cosmos Haptic

Of particular interest is the grand pause-like fermata in m. 62 just before the return of the opening material. This is the only fermata over true silence. The previous section feels interrupted by its sudden approach. The effect is dramatic and brings particular attention to the revisiting of the opening material.

Silence, or the decaying resonance of previous sounds, also serves to create tension between sounds, as though the wait creates an energized state that anticipates the next sonic event. The tension created in the opening gestures of Cosmos Haptic II has a dramatic effect through the use of dissonant, crashing chords followed by resonating pauses of varying and unpredictable lengths.

Time

Yuasa draws clear lines about differences in how time is conceptualized: “Temporal structures are conceptual in nature. For example, linear time and circular time are conceptually different. The former is found in Western music in general and the latter is found in the Japanese traditional music affiliated with Buddhism.”254 There are several ways Yuasa represents circular time in his music that appear prominently in his piano works. Examples from several piano pieces demonstrate his use of reprise, music that contains variation-like returning material, and underlying compositional techniques employed to ensure a non-linear sense to the resulting aural experience.

254 Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection,” 178. 132

Though returning material such as a reprise is not uncommon in numerous genres and forms in Western art music, from the stance of circular time, a return to familiar material from the beginning of the piece has a different intention. It is like the forward motion of time loops back on itself to harken back to the beginning of the journey rather than a linear goal-oriented perspective of time. Circular time views the experience of the present as both the immediate moment and an acknowledgement of all the previous present moments that have come before together in a holistic sense. Unlike Western art music forms such as rondo form, the returning material is not treated as thematic or as a unifying motivic unit around which the piece is built.

Instead, it asks the listener if the material feels different after experiencing the rest of the piece. It seeks a sense of sameness without expectation or transformation where looking forward inherently means looking at the whole through a lens of experiencing and observing the moment.

Cosmos Haptic features a reprise of this kind. After a significant fermata over a rest, the only true silence in the piece, the final eight measures present material re-establishing the beginning’s character. The stratified layers remain intact; however, the ordering of the gestures is not precisely the same. Additionally, most of these gestural cells are transposed up by one semitone. These slight differences reinforce that though the listener experiences the same material, it has been transformed in meaning by the listener and literally.

In contrast, the end of Melodies presents a literal repetition of the opening presentation of the musical spelling of “Bach” in the right-hand with the chromatic counterpoint in the left-hand.

Following the literal repetition, almost as an echo, Yuasa includes one final reference to Schubert by musically spelling his name, followed by one last, distant and resonant iteration of “Bach.”

Kushida provides an apt description of the effect created by how Yuasa uses variation- like material, specifically in describing Cosmos Haptic: “Each musical idea is followed by a 133 series of repetitions or variations; but neither the ideas nor the variations imply a development which leads in a particular direction or towards new material.”255 One example of this in Cosmos

Haptic is the initial presentation of the stratified layers in the opening as the sound space is established. First, the gesture starts with a right-hand gesture followed closely by the left-hands similar response in a downward cascade. After the resonance is allowed to decay for three beats, this opening up the sound space occurs again, but this time beginning from the left-hand with slightly compressed rhythmic durations before activating the right-hand in an upward expansion.

This is repeated without a pause, but instead, the gestures occur back and forth between the hands in a brief conversation.

EXAMPLE 40 Cosmos Haptic, rhythmic variation of the bell-like motive

As another example, a high-pitched octave gesture like the clanging of bells is heard as its own layer and musical idea. Though it regularly returns throughout the piece, the rhythm is never the same between any two occurrences. The listener quickly identifies it and relates it to the previous iterations, but without a unifying rhythm, it is more like church bells that ring each

255 Mari Kushida, “Noh Influences in the Piano Music of Joji Yuasa” (Doctoral diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1998), 21. 134 day but never in the exact same pattern. Example 40 compares the rhythms of three iterations of this bell-like motive. Placement on the staff does not indicate pitches.

Cosmos Haptic II has similar instances of varied repetitions. This piece’s opening is treated in the same manner as Cosmos Haptic, in which stratified layers and a feeling of expansive space are established through the piano’s extreme registers. The gestures are activated in their respective registers but are always slightly different, with specific and subtle changes in rhythm. Instead of ringing bells, this piece features tremolo-like figures that sound similar to birds’ musical representation in several of Messiaen’s piano pieces. Unlike Messiaen, the speed of the tremolo and detail of the rhythm are altered slightly in each iteration. It is important to note that these changes do not represent any development of the musical unit. They are merely different without the need for logic or continuity over the course of the piece. Example 41 extracts the layer containing this motive from the texture to highlight the slight rhythmic variations in mm. 29-32:

EXAMPLE 41 Cosmos Haptic II, rhythmic variation in tremolo-like gesture

Non-linear time is featured prominently in two particular piano works: Projection esemplastic and Projection Topologic. As already described, the compositional process of

Projection Topologic ensures that one cannot predict which voice of the canon will occur first or the timing: it is rendered entirely unpredictable. Galliano describes the piece and Yuasa’s intended musical outcome:

different time signatures are assigned to each hand, and, instead of dividing each bar rhythmically in any conventional manner, the bar lines are marked by dotted lines. Yuasa continues to use this technique in subsequent compositions to find a musical language 135

with which he could sculpt time to give it a textural and mobile structure and create a non-linear experience of music time.256 In this case, the process creates intentionally “non-directional” musical outcomes.

Similarly, the graphic notation of pitch and time in Projection esemplastic requires that the performer create sounds in a mobile-like structure. It is impossible to create traditional themes or recognizable recurring motives, and to do so would be antithetical to realizing this style of notation. The piece’s written instructions indicate that the performer may start in any of the 12 boxes and proceed as they wish, and any box can be performed again up to three times.

Time as circular and non-directional is found on the surface level of these pieces as well as the underlying conceptual and compositional roots. The use of variation-like materials brings audible unity to a piece without requiring a linear trajectory. Without a teleological purpose,

Yuasa’s works inspire a different kind of listening. In summary, “Joji Yuasa’s personal conception of time is greatly influenced by the Zen teachings of Suzuki Daisetsu, drawing upon a paradoxical sense of time in which time is both unbroken and a collection of seemingly fragmented individual moments together.”257

Pulse versus Meter

Another way Yuasa engages with concepts of time and perception is through pulse-driven rather than metrically-driven organizations of rhythm. Yuasa explains: “One phenomenal difference exists between the traditional Japanese structure of time and that of Western time: traditional Japanese time is not based on physical movement; rather, it is based on respiratory continuity. It is thus, by comparison, far more spiritual than physical.”258 The pacing in Yuasa’s

256 Luciana Galliano, Yōgaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 160. 257 Galliano, Yōgaku, 178. 258 Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection,” 178. 136 music is related to the breath. Variations in rhythmic durations and especially the timing between phrases contain an inner logic that appears to correspond to breathing, especially in vocally- conceived melodic lines. With its slight rhythmic variations, Cosmos Haptic allows for the spacing of groups of events to proceed with a timing appropriate to enable the stasis of the lingering resonance to dissipate without completely giving way to silence. This also allows for changing perceptions of the density of the resonating sound cloud. The beginning section of

Cosmos Haptic II achieves a similar effect.

In several of Yuasa’s piano pieces, a 4/4 time signature appears; however, this functions purely as a grid for the performer to reference while executing irregular and, at times, unpredictable rhythms. The meter is not employed as a structuring device; rather, its inclusion not only helps the performer accurately execute these rhythms but highlights the need for precision without the associations of beat hierarchy often present in meters used in Western art music. On the Keyboard features such a section, notably, in the section marked “Listen within each resonance” (See Example 40). This indication further reinforces the idea that, though the composer expects the performer to be rhythmically accurate, the composer provides this rhythmic specificity to establish the exact pacing of the resonance. Cosmos Haptic is structured similarly. The opening section is in 4/4; however, a quarter-note pulse corresponding to this symbol is not audible. One reason is the often long duration of the sonorities; therefore, the sonorities themselves and their residual resonance provide the logic driving the forward flow of the piece. Though these durations are varied as discussed previously, these “pulses” and the time passing between each have a balanced sense of push and pull, expanding and contracting as explored through the concept of ma. Figure 6 is a timeline of the first section of Cosmos Haptic 137

II; each tick mark on the line is a measure of 4/4, brackets above the line denote the number of beats where no event occurs and only the resonance is sounding.

FIGURE 6 Timeline of Cosmos Haptic II tracking resonance

Projection Topologic features extremely complex and precisely notated rhythms and meters that are not structured within a 4/4 meter. It is impossible to find or feel rhythmic or metric grounding in this intentionally unpredictable structure. Galliano suggests Yuasa intended to realize the organic yet irregular and unpredictable nature of human emotions through this piece.259

Nature

Nature references take different forms depending on the composer and context. Like Dai

Fujikura, the only nature references found in Joji Yuasa’s piano music are through select titles.

Two Pastorales in which a “pastorale” refers to idealized and simple country life with its associations of picturesque landscapes appropriately populated with an abundance of flora and fauna. In the titles Cosmos Haptic and Cosmos Haptic II, “haptic” primarily refers to art historian Herbert Read’s description of art. Meaning is derived from internal rather than external or outward observation.260 Yuasa’s interest in the cosmos stems from a primitive perspective, viewing the cosmos not in scientific terms but as a universal connection between humanity, spirituality, and religion. The titles themselves are somewhat loose connections to nature and less poetic than flowery imagery or specific elements such as rain or mountains.

Noise

259 Galliano, The Music of Jōji Yuasa, 218. 260 Kushida, “Noh Influences in the Piano Music of Joji Yuasa,” 12. 138

As discussed previously, noise resulting from performing an instrument is often of equal expressive interest as the pitch and rhythmic materials in traditional Japanese music. Yuasa exploits certain noises particular to the piano in his pieces. Examples include silently depressed keys whose strings still vibrate due to sympathetic vibrations from striking other keys, overtones, and other metallic noises sometimes referred to as formants, sound masses or clusters, and conceptual creation of noise through compound sonorities.

Yuasa describes the opening of chords of Cosmos Haptic II as both “noise” and

“compound sounds heard as single sonorities.”261 The density of these dissonant, loud, and violent gestures suggests a sense of non-pitched clamor prioritized over seeking logic or continuity in the vertical sonorities. The use of pedal, depressed and allowing all strings to vibrate for the first six measures, assists in blurring these sonorities together.

Example 42 groups together simultaneous sonorities. The spacing of each of these three groups emphasizes wide, dissonant intervals such as d5, m7, and M7. These “compound sounds” include nine unique pcs, only three pcs away from a loudly resonating aggregate. The missing pcs, [6, 8, 9], form the first trichord of the second gesture, completing the full chromatic collection.

EXAMPLE 42 Opening chords of Cosmos Haptic II

Projection esemplastic, through the exclusive use of extended piano techniques, inherently generates unpitched noises through the process or striking or scraping strings inside

261 Yuasa, “Music as a Reflection,” 194. 139 the piano. The timbre varieties created are rich in resonance and make the piano seem like an entirely different instrument when played in this manner.

Two instances where keys are silently depressed so they sound not by being played but through other strings’ sympathetic vibrations provide different effects. First, in On the Keyboard, in the section marked “Listen into each resonance,” the performer is instructed to silently depress one key from the low register of the piano at a time. While this key’s strings are allowed to freely vibrate without the damper mechanism, short clusters are struck in the mid-upper register of the piano. The aural result is a faint shimmer created by the freely vibrating strings. Melodies requires the performer to silently engage a set of keys with the sostenuto pedal while the music continues. Instead of the atmospheric shimmer heard in On the Keyboard, the engaged pitches are activated when struck but remain frozen in stasis while cascading gestures unfold around and through them. Example 43 indicates with asterisks which pitches would continue to ring during the rests following the sixteenth-note gestures.

EXAMPLE 43 Melodies, activation of silently depressed keys

In two more different contexts, silently depressed keys enable a different acoustic phenomenon to occur: formants. According to James Jeans (1938), a formant is the collection of the harmonics of a pitch that becomes augmented by a resonance.262 The final two systems of On the Keyboard instruct the performer to depress D1, D-sharp 1, E1, and G1 silently. A tremolo- like figure using the chromatic figure E5, E-flat 5, D5 in the right hand initially activate the

262 Joe Wolfe, “Formant: what is a formant?” University of New South Wales, accessed September 21, 2020, https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/formant.html. 140 lower strings of the depressed keys. Yuasa takes pains to indicate “resonance” in the score under the fermata to be observed for approximately five seconds. The last five events are single notes performed loudly with a sharp and short articulation starting only an octave above the silently depressed keys and ending with two poignant iterations of C-sharp 1, a semi-tone below the depressed keys. The placement of the depressed keys relative to the last note of the piece is shown in Example 44.

EXAMPLE 44 On the Keyboard, proximity of the last note to the silently depressed keys

These final notes activate an array of overtones and noise best described as formants. Cosmos

Haptic II achieves a similar effect in the final two pages. In this case, a white-key cluster over the lowest ten keys of the piano is engaged. A variety of pointillistic vertical sonorities activate these strings until the lowest D-flat springs forth using a technique to mute the string with a finger at the piano’s bridge as the key is struck. The change in timbre, coalescing from swirling resonance and overtones into a singular, defined, and yet wholly unfamiliar sound is a mesmerizing and effective use of controlled noise.

Conclusions

Joji Yuasa does not shy away from discussing what is Japanese in his music. The formative experiences of his youth and early explorations of traditional Japanese art left a lasting impression on him, and as a composer, he has devoted much thought and writing to this topic. It is no surprise that his unusual immersion in Japanese culture created intense feelings of deep connection that resonate in his artistic output. His embrace of these influences and his struggle to 141 harness particular aesthetics of older traditions into the present without being superficial is what sets him apart.

Throughout my career I have remained convinced that a composer’s music reflects his individual cosmology, and that this cosmology encompasses both his cultural identity and the collective consciousness of the society which shares his language. In other words, I consider music as a metaphor or a metonymy of a composer’s cosmology. In this respect, I define my own identity as based on Japanese culture while, at the same time, maintaining a global point of view as a human being on this planet.263

263 Yuasa, “Music as a Reflections,” 197. 142

CHAPTER 10. CONCLUSIONS

The examination of numerous historical texts, of both Western and Japanese origin, uncovers attitudes that reinforce the idea that Japanese and Western cultures are fundamentally opposites. These texts arrive at this dichotomous view with different intentions. The West adopted the notion that “knowing” a differing culture through comparative or universalist methodologies enables control of those people. Additionally, encouraging an emphasis on these differences gave the capital O Other a mystique that generated a series of stereotypes. Japan reinforced cultural differences with the West in an attempt to codify the parameters that define group inclusion. This also served as a means of preserving culture to protect it from being obliterated or controlled by Western culture, especially during the Meiji era and post-war years.

Japan’s penchant for selective assimilation of Western ideas and culture continued to foster these attitudes.

Modernization and globalization have changed how people learn and share ideas, expanding how people interact with and identify with other cultures and ideas. Understanding identity as fluid, as a process that is continuously built and rebuilt within an individual and in dialogue with one’s surroundings and interpersonal interactions, paves the way for flexibility and strategies for averting an “identity crisis” while acknowledging the flow and exchange of information and culture on a global level. A wealth of potential source materials are now available to composers, but the baggage of history and stereotyped associations remains.

Locke’s seminal research on musical exoticism aids in differentiating between

“Othering” through stereotyped markers and legitimate exchange of cultural ideas through what he calls “transcultural” composing. His analysis model, All the Music In Full Context Paradigm, 143 moves beyond surface markers and addresses intention and how perception generates high levels of subjectivity when analyzing music for exoticism.

Certain culture-based concepts are legitimately different between Western culture and

Japan, such as concepts of time and aesthetics surrounding the balance of opposing forces.

Western scholars have speculated on how some of these core differences manifest in the music of Japanese composers. A balance must be sought to find appropriate ways to engage with these cultural markers without resorting to stereotypes or expectations on how music written by

Japanese-born composers should sound. Cultural heritage cannot be escaped; however, a composer has many ways of navigating this tricky territory thanks to globalization and increased awareness of representation and intention. Cultural influence manifests in strikingly different ways in the piano music of Dai Fujikura, Jo Kondo, and Joji Yuasa.

Dai Fujikura is exceptionally conscientious about avoiding audible references to Japan and works diligently to remove these from his music. He is successful at removing any audible elements that highlight any connection to Japanese culture or aesthetics. Nothing “sounds”

Japanese about his music, and nothing truly points to any particular aspects of Japanese culture.

His cultural heritage manifests in very subtle ways, primarily in extra-musical considerations and mannerisms in his score markings.

Similarly, Jo Kondo seeks not to be labeled as a “Japanese” composer and is notoriously resistant to inquiries about Japanese culture connections in his music. He insists there is no connection, that he has established an absolutely “unique” style of composition. However, this self-established compositional method and style is deeply seated in numerous aspects of

Japanese culture, particularly the connection between “dynamic stasis” and circular time. His 144 interest in Cage is particularly fascinating given Cage’s well-known interest in Eastern philosophy. It is as though the influences are looping back on themselves.

Joji Yuasa represents a unique position as a composer whose early years were deeply imbued with an unusual amount of exposure to traditional Japanese art forms, particularly noh theatre. He felt it his responsibility and the responsibility of all composers to address their identities directly and all influences that shape them. He concludes that several aspects of Noh resonate with him such that he openly discusses these influences and the way he incorporates them into his music, not as self-exoticizing, but to create deeply personal music that honors his connection to Japanese culture as well as his studies and contributions to Western art music.

As a performer, seeking out information about possible cultural influences included in a non-Western composer’s music often brings to light ways the performer can connect to the piece beyond the notational instructions. However, one cannot assume that any influences will manifest in audible or performative ways. If possible, it is a great opportunity for the performer to seek out the composers’ intentions to align the performer’s interpretation with the composer’s artistic vision.

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