Pittsburgh Enka: Jero, Cultural Nationalism, and Japanese Music
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111 I THE HUMANITIES REVIEW SPRING 2012 Pittsburgh Enka: Jero, Cultural Nationalism, and Japanese Music Shawn M. Higgins, Temple University, Japan Campus Enka is a Japanese pop music that began in the post-war era and was popularized in the 1960s. In the homegrown genre’s H R !fty year history, a few non-Japanese have broken out as The Humanities Review Volume 10, Issue 1 stars. Chinese-Taiwanese legend Teresa Teng, among the list Spring 2012 PP 111-126. of her singing awards, garnered the 1974 Kūkō New Singer St. John’s University Award in Japan, going on then to become the !rst triple enka Shawn M. Higgins Grand Prix winner for singles produced in 1984, 1985, and is currently a lecturer 1986. Indian Sarbjit Singh Chadha, known as “Chada,” sold in the Departments over 150,000 copies worldwide of his breakout 1975 song of Law and of Letters “Omokage no Hito”. However, perhaps no foreign enka sing- at Keio University in Japan as well as an er compares to the recent success of Jerome White Jr. from instructor at Temple Pittsburgh. Better known in Japan as “Jero,” he is the !rst Af- University’s Japan rican American enka singer in Japanese history. Jero comes Campus. He received from a racially-mixed background: he is three-quarters Afri- his MA in American can American and one-quarter Japanese. The Oricon music Studies from Columbia University in 2011, charts, Japan’s weekly chart which normally tracks the Japa- and will begin his nese superstars of pop and rock such as Hikaru Utada, B’z, and PhD in English at Glay, placed Jero’s !rst enka single “Umi Yuki” at #4 in 2008, a the University of feat no other enka artist has accomplished since the 1970s. To Connecticut in August compare, Misora Hibari’s canonical “Kawa no Nagare no You 2012. His research interests include Ni” (1989), arguably the most beloved enka single by the most American literature beloved enka singer of all time, only peaked at #8 on the Ori- and intersections of con charts. From there, Jero went on to win the Japan Record identity, geopolitics, Awards Best New Artist award in 2008 and has had a steady cross-cultural career as an enka superstar since. communication and popular culture. Jero and his family have a long history of struggling against culturally oppressive powers. Jero’s late grandmother, SHAWN M. HIGGINS PITTSBURGH ENKA I 112 Takiko, met his grandfather after World War II while he was stationed at the na- val base in Yokohama. The couple resided in Japan, raising their daughter Harumi (Jero’s mother) together until she was thirteen. However, due to students teasing Harumi so violently about her mixed-race parentage, the couple decided to leave Japan and relocate to Pittsburgh. When Harumi had Jerome in 1981, she decided to raise him without Japanese language, rather preferring to speak it only with her mother and to help Jerome avoid the teasing that traumatized her as a child. Grow- ing up as an African American/Asian American in Pittsburgh proved very di$cult for Jero as he found no outlet to explore his cultural identity in a “sometimes-un- easy mix of African Americans and Eastern European immigrants” (Lah). Jero’s high school Japanese language instructor, Isabel Valdivia, explains that “the dynamics of the neighborhood, a passionate interest in singing enka music -- and speaking Japanese -- does not o%er a small, skinny, shy African American kid a smooth path to popularity” (Harden 2). Feeling pressured by his surroundings to subvert his Japanese American identity, Jero never revealed his passions to his friends while growing up. Jero explains: “[my friends] knew my grandmother was from Japan,” but “my friends in Pittsburgh didn’t know about [enka] until my debut single was released. I called them and told them I was a recording artist in Japan. I explained that enka is a form of Japanese blues” (Harden 3). Throughout high school, Jero studied Japanese ferociously, visiting the country once when he was !fteen to enter into a speech contest, then again at twenty to participate in an exchange program at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka. Jero attended the University of Pitts- burgh where he studied information sciences, landing a job teaching English in Japan upon graduating in 2003. While living and working in Japan, Jero frequented karaoke clubs and contests, honing his skills as an enka singer and exposing him- self to always intrigued audiences. A judge at one of the contests Jero entered was from Victor Entertainment (JVC in the United States), who upon seeing Jero’s skill, o%ered him two years of vocal training and an eventual record deal for “Umi Yuki.” This essay argues that Jero’s transnational identity as a mixed-race enka performer from Pittsburgh both elucidates and challenges the traditional para- digms of music culture in both the United States and in Japan by forcing consum- ers to confront their own stereotypes about cultural identity. These stereotypes, I will argue, stem from nationalistic notions about cultural identity. Following the popular political science discourse of negating approaches to territorial exclusivity, I will assert that Jero’s hybrid form of “urban enka” disrupts the continuum of social collectivities such as ethnicity and replaces it with innovative performance that, in turn, transforms identity. Jero’s use of language and symbols of culture, both on and o% the stage, complicate the perceived notion of performance and per- sona by asserting that the nationalist’s view of the performer and the culture being 113 I THE HUMANITIES REVIEW SPRING 2012 performed do not hold true in an increasingly transnational world. This essay will closely examine “Umi Yuki,” his !rst single which launched his career, as well as a subsequent track “Hisame” in order to understand how his challenge to the identity of enka was introduced, nearly compromised, and eventually solidi!ed. My reasoning for connecting nationalism, identity, and enka music fol- lows along the same path as scholars such as Christine Yano, David Knight, Debra Occhi and others who have explained numerous ways in which music simultane- ously shapes and is shaped by both political and cultural versions of nationalism. The addition this essay o%ers is a close-reading of Jero’s career, a mixed-race enka performer who, as John Russell explains, necessarily must deal with his Other’s Oth- erness as an African American man in contrast to the perception of America as a white country. Christine Yano and others have explained that some non-Japanese enka artists have been able to “hide” their ethnic origins in hopes of simply being accepted on the merits of their ability while others like Teresa Teng and Chada have acknowledged and embraced their cultural Otherness as ambassadors. However, I assert that, because of the history of race relations between whites and blacks in the United States, and because this history is and has been interpolated onto the Japanese public by a dominant white soft power over the last hundred years, Jero’s experience as a non-native Japanese enka performer provides a sharper lens through which we can examine the relationship between nationalism, identity, and music. Nationalism and Identity It is neither possible nor desirable to summarize the entirety of argu- ments about nationalism in this single article. However, an explication of canonical theories pertaining to what constitutes cultural nationalism in regards to ethnicity and race is especially helpful before analyzing Jero’s e%ect as a transnational per- former of enka music. We will see that arguments for and against the inclusion of ethnicity in the construction of and maintenance of a nation and its creation myth are contested and inconclusive. What these arguments do show is that ethnicity is undoubtedly a factor which is visible to the general population and, even if it goes dismissed by some scholars, it should be considered when judging the “na- tion” from the eyes of a national (and especially a nationalist). We should also make the brief yet important distinction between a state (a legal body) versus a nation (a collective), noting that this essay will focus mainly on the nation and areas of belonging. This essay will also focus on “cultural nationalism” as opposed to “politi- cal nationalism” by following along John Hutchinson’s assertion that, while political nationalism aims for “autonomous state institutions,” cultural nationalism “seeks a SHAWN M. HIGGINS PITTSBURGH ENKA I 114 moral regeneration of the community,” although often on a much smaller, transient scale (Hutchinson 41). As Ernst Renan classically posited in his 1882 essay “What is a Nation?,” shared collective consciousness about the past and a continuing value of current heritage are two principle concepts that de!ne the nation and its members. The myth of a nation’s creation is as central to the health of a nation as are the languag- es and cultures that de!ne it. A creation myth encompasses two very important things: the semi-!ctional story of how the nation came into being and the forget- ting of peoples/events/ideologies that are counter to the current national dogma. Benedict Anderson, Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government and Asian Studies at Cornell University and pioneer of nationalism studies, asserts in his canonical Imagined Communities (1983) that “nations […] have no clearly identi!- able births, and their deaths, if they ever happen, are never natural” (Anderson 205). In the case of the United States of America, the birth of the nation cannot be di- rectly traced to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution because these events are more political and based on state foundation than they are cultural or philosophical.