Performing Japan

Performing Japan Performing Japan Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity ❖ Edited by Henry Johnson University...

Author: University of Otago | and Jerry C. Jaffe | University of Otago Edited by Henry Johnson

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Performing Japan

Performing Japan Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity ❖ Edited by

Henry Johnson University of Otago

and

Jerry C. Jaffe University of Otago

PERFORMING JAPAN CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSIONS OF CULTURAL IDENTITY

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

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

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

vii ix xii 1

Part I: TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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

11

Taiko Today: Performing Soundscapes, Landscapes and Identities MILLIE CREIGHTON

34

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

68

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

93

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

126

vi

Contents

Part II: PLACE AND IDENTITY 6.

7.

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

139

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

156

8.

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

9.

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

172

196

Part III: POPULAR CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND CONSUMERISM 10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Index

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

221 239

273

295 317

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

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Foreword

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

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

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List of Contributors

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

List of Contributors

xi

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

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

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

Introduction Henry Johnson and Jerry C. Jaffe

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

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Performing Japan

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

Introduction

3

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

part i

tradition and transformation

1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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Performing Japan

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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6

7

8 9

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


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

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Taiko Today: Performing Soundscapes, Landscapes and Identities Millie Creighton

❖ INTRODUCTION: DRUMMING UP IDIOMS OF JAPANESENESS

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

T

STAGING SOUNDSCAPES OF ‘JAPAN’ IN SEVEN ACTS

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

Taiko Today: Performing Soundscapes, Landscapes and Identities

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

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Performing Japan

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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Synchronizing Rhythms of Internationalization

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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Performing Japan Burakumin: Honouring and Challenging ‘Tradition’

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


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

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

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Performing Japan Non-Japanese: Creating a Society Valuing Diversity

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

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


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

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


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EPILOGUE

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

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

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Performing Japan REFERENCES

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


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

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


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

3

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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4

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


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

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18

19

20

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

Baumann, Max Peter. 2000. The local and the global: Traditional musical instruments and modernization. The World of Music 42(3): 121–144. Befu, Harumi. 1980. The group model of Japanese society and an alternative. Rice University Studies 66(1): 169–187. ——, ed. 1993. Cultural nationalism in East Asia: Representation and identity. Research Papers and Policy Studies 39 Institute of East Asian Studies, The University of California Berkeley. Berkeley: University of California.


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

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


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

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

4

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

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

G

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

07/11/1966

Kangen: Sōjō to hyōjō

Bugaku

Bugaku

Kangen: Ichikotsuchō to ōshikichō

Bugaku

Kangen: Banshikichō to taishikichō

1

2

3

4

5

6

18/01/1969

29–30/10/1968

13/03/1968

29/10/1967

01/03/1967

Date

Title of Recital

a

a

a

a

a

a

Type

Table 1 List of Gagaku Kōen Held at the National Theatre

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

Goshōraku ichigu, Chōbōraku, Somakusha, Taiheiraku

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

Manjuraku, Batō, Ōnintei

Enbu, Shunnōden, Kotokuraku, Chōgeishi

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

Detail of Content

Type of Instruments

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Group/Artist

Kangen: Watashimono

Bugaku: Shitenōji Shōryō-e

Gagaku

Kangen: Kangendachi to Bugakudachi

Bugaku: hashirimai

Komagaku

Bugaku: Hiramai

Kangen: Ikkogaki

Gagaku

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

30/10/1973

03/03/1973

31/10/1972

26/02/1972

30/10/1971

27/02/1971

31/10/1970

29/10/1969

01/05/1969

a, c

a

a

a

a

a

a, c

a

a

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

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

Manzairaku, Chikyū, Ama, Ninomai, Rindai, Seigaiha

Hassen, Nasori, Chikyū, Ringa

Batō, Kitoku, Ranryōō, Nasori, Konju, Genjōraku

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

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

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

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

traditional

traditional

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Shitennōji Garyōkai

Kunaichō gakubu

23/02/1974

Kangen: Nobe tada byōshi

Bugaku: Tsugaimai

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Sokō ichigu’

Bugaku: Taikyoku to kikyoku no saikō

Bugaku hōe: Mikkyō jōdo

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

Kangen

Kangen: Tōgaku taikyoku no fukkyoku

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

04/02/1978

31/10/1977

25/02/1977

18/09/1976

30/10/1975

22/02/1975

29/10/1974

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

a, b

a, c

b

a, s

a, b

a

a

a

Type

Toraden, Ryūkaen, Butokuraku, Tori no kyū

Stockhausen ‘LIGHT’*, Manzairaku, Genjōraku, Shundeika

Banshiki sangun, jo

Shika hōyō, Hokke hakkō

Sokō ichigu, Kananfu

Sokō, Senshūraku

Shunnōden, Shintoriso

Tori no ha, Tori no kyū, Manzairaku, Bairo

Detail of Content

traditional

traditional

traditional

Type of Instruments

Gagaku shigenkai

Gagaku shigenkai

Gagaku shigenkai

Ono gagaku-kai, Enryakuji hōgi onritsu kenkyūjo

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Kunaichō gakubu

Group/Artist

Bugaku hōe: Anyō rakudo

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

Bugaku

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

Bugaku hōe,: Mandara-ku

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

24

25

26

27

28

29

10/02/1981

30/10/1980

29/02/1980

28/09/1979

28/02/1979

31/10/1978

b

a, c, s

a, c

a, c

b

a, s

traditional

Sōrō kodatsu

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

reconstructed

traditional

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

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

Banshiki sangun (no ha, kyū)

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

Tōkyō gakuso, et al.

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

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso, Enryakuji hōgi onritsu kenkyūjo, Wakayama Taneo shachū

30/10/1981

Bugaku hōe: Nyoze gamon kyō kuyō

Saiiki no oto: Hichiriki 04/03/1982

Bugaku hōe: Myonon giki

Gongu: Kinzoku no oto

Bugaku hōe: Ungen

Fue: Iki no hyōjō

30

31

32

33

34

35

14/02/1984

30/09/1983

18/03/1983

30/10/1982

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

a, c

b, c, s

b, c

b, c, s

b, c

a, b, c, s

Type

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

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

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

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

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

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

Detail of Content

reconstructed

traditional

reconstructed

reconstructed

reconstructed

reconstructed

Type of Instruments

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

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

J. Sugawara, M.Takada, et al.


Tōkyō gakuso


Group/Artist

Bugaku: Ten’en chihō

Bugaku hōe

Bugaku: Genjōraku monogatari

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Sokō ichigu’

Gagaku to shōmyō ni yoru Heian no utage to inori

‘Shunnōden’ wo kiku

Bugaku

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

27/04/1997

09/04/1996

29/09/1995

11/11/1994

25/02/1994

30/10/1985

28/09/1984

a

a, c

a, b, s

a

a

a, c, s

a, b, c

Manzairaku, Batō, Engiraku, Ama, Ninomai

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

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

Sokō

Genjōraku, Batō, Nasori, Ranryōō

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

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

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

traditional

almost traditional

reconstructed

reconstructed

Kunaichō gakubu

Reigakusha, Tōkyō gakuso

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

Tōkyō gakuso

Tōkyō gakuso, K. Hōshō

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

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

Bugaku

Gagaku: Koten to sōsaku

Gagaku sennen: Sonokoro miyako ni hayaru mono

Kangen: Taikyoku ‘Manjuraku ichigu’

Bugaku

48

49

50

Jo to nokorigaku: Oto no asobi. Asobi no oto

45

46

Kangen

44

47

27/09/1997

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

43

19/05/2001

17/11/2000

24/06/2000

13/11/1999

26/06/1999

13/11/1998

11/07/1998

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

a

a

a, b

a, c

a

a

a, c

b, c

Type

Enbu, Kishunraku, Kotoriso

Manjuraku

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

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

Enbu, Taiheiraku, Chōbōraku

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

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

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

Detail of Content

reconstructed

traditional

traditional

almost traditional

Type of Instruments

Kunaichō gakubu

Tōkyō gakuso

Reigakusha

Reigakusha

Kunaichō gakubu

Tōkyō gakuso

Kunaichō gakubu

S. Shiba, T. Ōno, M. Miyata, et al.

Group/Artist

Kangen: Heian kizoku ga kiita oto

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

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

Gagaku: Denshō no bi wo kiku

53

54

55

56

13/11/2004

08/11/2002

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

52

16/11/2001

Gagaku: Sennen no oto wo kiku

51

a

a, c

a

a

a

a

Niwabi, Asakura, Shunnōden, Ringa

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

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

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

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

Manzairaku, Keitoku, S. Shiba ‘Shōtora shion’

traditional

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

Reigakusha

Kunaichō gakubu

Tōkyō gakuso

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

Jūnionkai

18/02/2005

Bugaku

Shōga: Koe de kanaderu kangen

Kuniburi no utamai

57

58

59

a

a

a

Type

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

Shōga

Sanju, Kitoku, Ikko, Shinmaka

Detail of Content

Type of Instruments

Kunaichō gakubu

S. Anzai, K.Tōgi, H. Bunno, et al.

Kunaichō gakubu

Group/Artist

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

12/11/2005

04/06/2005

Date

Title of Recital

Table 1 (continued)

Beyond the Court

109

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

110

Performing Japan

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

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

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

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

Bugaku

3

4

5

30/09/1986

07/03/1986

08/03/1985

27/04/1983

25/06/1982

Gaku to kyoku 2: onjō, koe no dentō

Kugo (Gaku to kyoku 3)

19/06/1975

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

2

1

Date

Title

a, c

b, c

b, c

b, c

a, c

a, b

Type

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

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

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

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

Chōshū chiku-fu ni yoru ‘Somakusha’

Content

Table 2 Extracts from Ongaku Kōen including gagaku pieces

S. Shiba, et al.

S. Shiba, et al.

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


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

kugo, etc.

traditional


S. Shiba, et al.

Performer

traditional

traditional

Instruments

Reigaku: kodai gakki no fukugen to ensō

Bugaku

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

Samazamani jōsō suru ongaku shiin (scene)

6

7

8

9

Title

Table 2 (continued)

b, c

a, c, s

b, c

Type

10–11/11/1988 a, b, c, s

11/03/1988

29/09/1987

13/03/1987

Date

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

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

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

Content

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

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

Instruments koto (Shōsō-in), etc.

koto (Shōsō-in), etc.

shitsu, etc.

ōteki, genkan, hōkyō, etc.

Reigaku: fukugen sareta kodai gakki no ensō

Ongaku

Daihyō kyoku wo iroirona katachide

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

Dentō ongaku wa ima

10

11

12

13

14

a, b

a, c, s

a, c

28/02/1991

b, c

15–16/11/1990 a

28/02/1990

29/09/1989

23/02/1989

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

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

Bairo, Manzairaku, Etenraku, Keibairaku, Dunghuang music

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

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

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

kugo, genkan, haishō, etc.

T. Ōno Tōkyō gakuso, S. Shiba, et al.

ōteki, genkan, haishō, etc.

S. Shiba, et al.

S. Shiba, Tendai shōmyō, et al.

ōteki, etc.

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

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

shitsu, koto (Hōryūji), genkan, etc.

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

Shiragi goto no fukugen to kodai gakki no ensō

17

18

08/07/1994

30/09/1992

Bugaku hōe: kansō no yamagoshi amida

16

27/09/1991

Bugaku hōe: kangen ongi

Date

15

Title

Table 2 (continued)

b, c

c

a, s, e

a, c, s

Type

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

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

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

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

Content

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

S. Shiba, et al.

gogenkin China), etc.

shiragigoto, koto, haishō, etc.

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


traditional, electronic

Performer

Instruments

Kofu no fukkyoku to kodai gakki no ensō

Tonkō monjo to gagaku: kodai gakki no ensō

19

21

05/07/1999

05/07/1999

b, c

b, c

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

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

Reigakusha

kin, tobio no koto, etc.


07/06/1985

24/04/1987

28/04/1988

28/04/1989

27/04/1990

26/04/1991

o5 Iki no isō: koe to kangakki

o6 Shōmyō to koe

o7 Yamatogoto: yamatogoto to wagon

o8 Yamatogoto II fukugen: Yayoi no koto

o9 Saibara, rōei, azuma asobi

Date

o3 Shōga

Title

a

a, c

a, c

c, s

c, s

a, c

Type

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

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

K. Yoshikawa ‘Tabibito kaerazu’*, Mikagura

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

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

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

Content

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

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

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

Kunaichō gakubu

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

traditional, ōteki, etc.

traditional

T. Ōno, S. Shiba, K. Tōgi, et al.

Performer

traditional

Instruments

08/04/1995

13/11/1986

30/09/1988

16/11/1989

o13 Kagurauta

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

s23 Bugaku hōe: shishin sōō

s24 Shōmyō: denshō: fukkyoku to sōsaku

c, s

c, s

c, s

a

a, s

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

Sanjūnisō, M. Ishii ‘Momotarō onitaiji’*

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

Mikagura

Junshi ōjō kōshiki

Kunaichō gakubu M. Takada, etc.

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




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

traditional

traditional

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

28/04/1993

o11 Gokuraku shōga: junshi ōjō koushiki

118

Performing Japan

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

Ongaku Kōen 6 Ongaku Kōen 8 Ongaku Kōen 10

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

kin (Hōryūji), wagon (Shōsō-in)

1984 1985

1987 1988

1989

1994

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

Ongaku Kōen 18

shiragi goto (Shōsō-in)

1993

1990

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

1983

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

1982

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

1975 1981

Concert

Instruments

Year

Table 4 Reconstructed instruments and their debut concerts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

part ii

place and identity

6

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

Joy Hendry

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

❖ The crowd broke, groaning, over sandstone thresholds and moved along before panes of plate glass, saw artificial rain fall on the copper entrails of latemodel autos as demonstration of the quality of materials, saw wheels turning around in oil, read on small black plaques, in paste-jewel figures, the price of leather goods and gramophone records and embroidered kimonos. . . . While here a new thoroughfare was being prepared . . . one of the oldest arcades in the city had disappeared. (Benjamin 2002, 393) PREFACE: DEMO-TV

emo, the massed street protests in the late 1960s, were often broadcast as if some popular high-rating TV drama and avidly watched by the Japanese population (Sawara 1970, 155–159). In the summer of 1992, a new representation of demo appeared that speaks to the sense of crisis that accompanied the rising success of contemporary Japanese arts and performance (shōgekijō) – the theme of this chapter. In a new season beer CM (television commercial), two salary-men in their early forties were depicted sharing beers at the end of a hot summer’s day. As they began to drink, the scene shimmered and the viewer was suddenly transported to the student protests of the 1960s. Grainy black and white footage showed swirling bands of helmeted students fighting the riot police and chanting slogans for the revolution. Soon, the scene shimmered again and the salary-men were seen expressing their

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satisfaction at such a pleasant memory, now an image so reified and commercialized as to be without dissent. This example of ‘demo TV’ is a floating scene without history and divorced from its original revolutionary context to the extent that it is rendered with a new, apparently apolitical, containment effect. It demonstrates Zygmunt Bauman’s observation that in the globalized cultural economy ‘information now floats independently from its carriers; shifting of bodies and rearrangements of bodies in physical space is less than ever necessary to reorder meanings and relationships’ (Bauman 1998, 18). Equally, as this case demonstrates, bodies and the places that we live in are reordered. The consequence of this is that memories of dissent are often displaced and are reworked in popular culture media industries as newly ensconced narratives of nostalgia under the rubric of capitalism. A further recollection, this time a poster image from 2003 utilizing student protest iconography to advertise university education programmes seen in Shinjuku station, demonstrates the enduring popularity of protest imagery, now so confidently owned by corporate power. In this image, smiling students seem to be playing at staging a demonstration. All the iconic signs of demo are shown: placards, headbands and a banner at the front of the march. The swirling bodies in the poster are actors shown raising their arms and crying out slogans. Incised from the image, however, is any suggestion of conflict. Unlike real demonstrations, there are no gebabo (fighting sticks), no crash helmets and no riot police and water cannons. There is no sense of opposition in the students’ playful protest and the performance has revisionist aims. In fact, we might wonder why there should be any sense of dissidence in this poster designed to advertise art school programmes and plastered on the walls of the station. The slogan that dominates the foreground of the image is ‘konna jidai no futsu ni naru na!’ (let’s suspend this moment and remain in this age of now). In other words, let’s remain in the euphoric, late capitalist moment where nothing has a past and nothing will change, let’s soften and trivialize the history of demo in Japan and commodify and ludify its transgression. It can be argued that the consequent lowering of the threshold of dissent effectively reconstructs a ‘consensus model’ (Mouer and Sugimoto 1986, 10) of Japanese society: an ideological framing of Japan as unique, passive and enduring. At the same time, it negates a history of conflict and difference. As will be seen in this chapter, the smoothing over of space, time and cultural intensity are hallmarks of a twenty-first-century enjoyment plaza, indicative of an ideological condition in Japan today.

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Performing Japan SITUATING ‘GLOBALITY’ AND THE PROBLEM FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS AND POLITICS IN JAPAN

This essay develops parallel and contrasting thinking on some contemporary trends in Japan’s diverse arts and culture scene. Principally, it aims to explore new spaces of arts and cultural life and emphasize some of their sociopolitical dimensions. The notion of the twenty-first-century enjoyment plaza, as well as referring to my extended analysis of Tokyo’s new garden of commercial-cultural dreaming, Roppongi Hills, points to a trend in postmodern and globalized societies to promote a kind of boundless happiness and empty euphoria in public life. Australian social scientist Clive Hamilton’s term ‘growth fetish’ (2003) links this sense of euphoria to empty promises of the consumer society and the global span of the neoliberal economy; the resulting social condition is one chasing its own tail in an ever-increasing and hopeless sense of running after growth. Like the replacement of the expression of protest with its ludic image, euphoria points to a general cultural logic that unfolds in performative spaces of globality. This is a logic of substitution and the sublimation of alternatives; it suggests a false sense of abundance. Globality is a term coined by Uchino (2004) that also relates to this condition (see also Uchino 2006) and aims to explore the ramifications for art and culture from the perspective of being perennially inside, rather than separate to or looking askance at, the dominant political economy. As Uchino argues, we can see a growing sense of the incorporation of art into always being inside the political field of globality as is evident in recent contemporary theatre. It is well known that the 1960s underground theatre (angura) scene was remarkable for its rejection of modern theatre (shingeki) and for its radical synthesis of traditional Japanese folk and popular cultures (dozokusei, taishusei) with elements drawn also from the international avant-garde movement. The rise of all these arts, moreover, corresponded with the rise of new-left political activities, student occupations of universities and the formation of counterculture society.1 The raison d’ētre of artistic production in the 1960s lay in its innovative aesthetic formations and interactions with the radicalizing cultural-political space of post-war Japan. During the 1980s, transgressive and potent images from the contemporary arts in Japan gained international prominence. For example, characteristic styles of angura became well known outside of Japan when performances by Suzuki Tadashi, Ninagawa Yukio, Ōta Shogo and butō companies such as Sankaijuku became popular at arts festivals in Europe, Oceania and North and South America.2 The impetus of 1960s Japanese


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theatre as a far-reaching exploration and interrogation of the Japanese body (tokkenteki nikutairon; see Kara 1997) and an excessive, expressionist use of space and design came to enter avant-garde performance vocabularies around the world. In terms of Japan’s cultural history, however, image and effect were split from ideology and politics. It can be argued that postmodern culture transformed Japanese arts as the concurrent rise of globalization in the 1980s worked to obscure the formerly central discourse – from the 1960s on – of history and marginality in Japan’s cultural production (see Eckersall 2006; Rolf 1992). As Ricardo Patella notes, ‘globalization drags economies towards the production of the ephemeral’ (cited in Bauman 1998, 78). Confirmation of this view lies in our recognition of the fact that the popularity of theatre in the 1980s (i.e. the mainstreaming of angura), was built on the aesthetic foundations of radical dramaturgy in the 1960s. The sense of physicality and spatial and temporal disturbance resulting in a radical abstraction of theatrical form, which in the 1960s was a rejection of dominant political forces, became in the 1980s much more of a playful gesture. Subsequently, the use of an angura style in an avowed corporatized and media informational play space approaches the exposition of globalization developed here. In the repositioning of bodies in the advertisements and through the speed and cuteness of theatre in the 1980s, we can see what Bauman terms ‘a new weightlessness of power’ (Bauman 1998, 18). Thus, in Asada Akira’s notion of ‘infantile capitalism’, Asada argues that Japan came to be conditioned by the logic of play: Children are running around each one as fast as possible, at the front lines of the history of capitalism as infantilization proceeds. They are enveloped by a ‘place’ whose age is hardly known – the ‘place’ that is transhistorical . . . or, if you like, posthistorical . . . the place which, moreover, is now electronic. (Asada 1989, 278)

Can one not now see this statement as defining globalization trends across the world? One need only highlight the degree to which the avant-garde has been transformed into a posthistorical play space. PERFORMATIVITY IN SPACES OF GLOBALITY

Shifting attention from theatre to space, architecture and visual arts, performance and play are nevertheless key words in my analysis. In 2003, a concentrated ‘lifestyle’ new performative space in Tokyo’s densely packed architectural and cultural life was opened. Conceived and constructed by Mori Minoru’s Mori Building Co., Roppongi Hills is a postmodern

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conflation of apartments, shops, cinemas, galleries, media organizations and other lifestyle-informational spaces and zones. It is argued here that Roppongi Hills and the concurrent opening of the Mori Arts Centre (MAC) located within the main tower of the site are performative enterprises relating to a new sense of space, art and cultural experience in contemporary Japan. (Note that the text displayed in smaller type below is more descriptive and aims to explore Roppongi Hill’s fictive and playful qualities. It expands on the details of the space and contrast with analytical prose. Plate 13.) Roppongi Hills when seen from Azabu Juban side appears as a large central glass tower and several tower apartment blocks. MAC is on the upper levels of the fifty-fourfloor Mori Tower to the right. On the left are Mori apartments. Mori Tower is uncanny in that it can be seen from all directions in southwest Tokyo. At night, its lights dominate the horizon. One night I saw the windows lit in an interactive display akin to pulsating sound-level meters that one finds on a tape deck or CD player.

To talk about a place in terms of performativity has significant precedents in performance studies and writings on culture. Erving Goffman’s investigation of everyday life as performance broke new ground in establishing the fact that dimensions including ideology, politics and the behaviour of individuals and groups are shaped and conditioned by performative moments and events in public space and time (Goffman 1959). People also respond to and construct the world through performative interventions. Hence, Henry Bial observes correctly that ‘much of what we call culture is in fact performance’ (Bial 2004, 263). Interactions with place provoke performative analysis: in ‘Walking the City’, Michel de Certeau notes hows the topography and social dimensions of New York form a kind of language and knowledge system that he calls ‘a texturology’ (de Certeau 2000, 101). There is a sense in de Certeau’s work that space is mapped and stratified. Richard Schechner adds a political dimension to this notion in his essay about protest, ‘The Street is the Stage,’ and asks ‘what is the relation between “the authorities” and “the people” when the people occupy public streets, squares, plazas and buildings’ (Schechner 1993, 45). To this we can add further questions in respect of the discussion of Roppongi Hills: What is the relation between the ‘authorities’ and the ‘people’ when the people occupy fully privatized city domains such as Roppongi Hills? What texturologies are present in such a place? What kind of performance text is Roppongi Hills? Lists of forbidden activities in Japanese and English are prominently on display at Roppongi Hills. Prohibitions include unauthorized gatherings and acts that impede commercial operations. The latter rule is so vague as to offer to banish any undesirable activity or persons at the whim of management. De Certeau suggests that small moments of chaos in the city create ruptures in the screen of power that overlays its operations.


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‘The city becomes the dominant theme of political epic but it is no longer a theatre for programmed, controlled operations’ (de Certeau 2000, 104). This cannot be said of Roppongi Hills. In its postmodern jumble of spaces, the ‘city’ offers a playful image of chaos when in fact it is the power-play of control and order that is rigorously enforced.

We can also note how the performative dimensions of Tokyo have been explored in terms that border on fetishism. Tokyo as cyberpunk city constitutes one of the key spaces of globality in the cosmopolitan popular imagination: ‘the sky . . . was the color of television tuned to a dead channel,’ intones William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ (1984) for example. Gibson fostered a trend in science fiction writing to reshape images of Japan into a polyglot future world; the film ‘Bladerunner’, released in 1982, was another cornerstone of imagining the new dystopian aesthetics. ‘Akira’ (1988) and ‘Tetsuo’ (1988) present Tokyo as body-city meld as if to show us how ‘the city and the body will interface’ (Grosz 2000, 303). Wim Wender’s ‘Tokyo Ga’ (1985), Trinh Min Ha’s ‘The Fourth Dimension’ (2000) and the Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’ (2003) are examples of ‘arthouse’ films that explore the mysterious chic and otherness of Tokyo as a visual-performative text: each offers a personal homage to the city. Meanwhile, Chris Marker’s (1982) interwoven images and impressions of Japan in ‘Sans Soleil’ remains one of the most significant films on Japan. Its exploration of history and memory as means of describing intersubjectivity and Deluzian becoming is profound. Notwithstanding these comments, however, in all these examples it is suggested that Asada’s reckoning of the posthistorical space is also one that might be recognized as modern Tokyo; the insubstantial city of bizarre fashions, labyrinthine streetscapes, unfathomable mysteries and hip urban cool. In the centre of the Roppongi Hills garden plaza there is a sculpture called ‘Guardian Stone’ by Martin Puryear. There are twenty ‘public’ art works dotted around the site, many of them by significant artists (see Nanjo et al. 2004). Puryear’s sculpture is a large granite shape suggesting a featureless head – a blank anonymous guardian. In shape and form it mirrors aspects of the mega-complex of Hillside behind. In the foreground, flowerbeds mark spaces between the traffic bollards. Everything is conceptual, everything fits in exactly right where it should and has been designed in relation to the total spatial concept. Everything is spectacularly clean and ordered.

The scope of performative analysis is likewise explored in scholarly works on Japan. Theodore Bestor’s (1989) anthropological study of Miyamoto Chō, an old time Tokyo neighbourhood, is alive to the interrelating performative dimensions of matsuri (festivals) with local politics in maintaining a sense of community and status quo. Matsuri are annual festivals where members of the community carry a portable shrine (mikoshi) through the neighbourhood, thereby marking space through forms of embodiment and collective performance that are culturally

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coded and ideologically significant (Bestor, 1989, 224–256). Such performances of local traditions work to resist Tokyo’s wholesale collapse into a homogeneous space of globality. On the other hand, John Clammer (1997), in studying the sociology of consumption in Japan, notes how consumption is performing cultural functions and subsequently forms ideological and political perspectives. He notes that ‘shopping is not merely the acquisition of things: it is the buying of identity’ (Clammer 1997, 68). In the essay ‘Tokyo Diary’, four Australian performance studies scholars explore the performative dimensions of Tokyo’s postmodern themed ‘future-city’ Odaiba, a monument to speculative capitalism and avant-garde architecture constructed on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay in the 1980s. Denise Varney’s exposition of the Deluzian notion of ‘smooth space’ as a reading of the Odaiba landscape (Eckersall et al. 2001, 75; see also Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 353, 474–475) is relevant to the present discussion of a place seemingly turning inside itself and without any sense of a past. Each of these scholars points to ways of reading and responding to the performative dimensions of public and private space in Japan. They help to identify the constituent features of Tokyo’s global side: playful, smooth, ambient and post historical – the city as an expression of globality. ROPPONGI HILLS: A TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY ENJOYMENT PLAZA ‘New New New New’ (Mori slogan on Laforet store. See Mori website.)

The Mori family are the largest and most successful land developer in Tokyo. In order to gain access to the land for Roppongi Hills, over the decade of the 1980s individual property owners either gradually signed over their land to Mori in return for new apartments in the Mori complex or sold-up and moved altogether. In fact, much is made of Mori’s corporate image as a company that acquires property by negotiation and fair trade in contrast to the disreputable tactics of some other property developers with links to organized crime in Japan. Socially responsible as the company may be, a vast commercially owned plot of land was created in central Tokyo in the construction of Roppongi Hills. Nor can one discount the morale-sapping effects of a gradually disappearing neighbourhood, or of postmodern gentrification on the older owners of the land. In fact, privatization of the city space and not community ethics is the goal of the Mori Company. Hence, Mori executive Yamamoto Kazuhiko notes how the company ‘conceived of a design wherein public elements – roads and


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parks – could be integrated into private architectural spaces. . . . Mori Building acted as the sole producer overseeing the entire redevelopment’ (in Nanjo et al. 2004, 159). This is a unique outcome in Tokyo’s history and might be compared to the gradually ceding of public space in Times Square to the Disney corporation, or the rise of gated communities in places like the Gold Coast, Hawai‘i and the US mainland (the Gold Coast communities exist in part thanks to Japanese investment). There is seemingly no role for the public here beyond the need that they attend events and shop. A wider community input or sense of public ownership has been excluded; however nice or eco-friendly the accommodation might be, Mori is king of his castle (Plate 14). A spiral stair in a glass tower leads to the lift for the MAC. It is superfluous to the logistics of an efficient entry to the tower. In fact, by clever design one has no sense of entering the corporate spaces of the tower. The pathway doubles back into an area of a floor above the ground floor and reserved for lockers, a museum shop and express lifts for the gallery, sightseeing and arts education centre floors only.

Art and a glowing and euphoric ethics of the culture industries heavily dominate both the spatial layout of the complex and its promotional face. As Mori writes, Roppongi Hills ‘is a modern destination for people seeking enlightenment through art and intelligence’ (in Nanjo et al. 2004, 6). He likens the use of space to the idea of an ‘artelligent’ (artistic and intelligent) space: a combination of art, shops and media, and a unique ‘lively gateway to culture’. The presence of art helps to position Roppongi Hills in humanistic and civic terms, and helps to disguise the fact of the privatization of the city space. It helps to distinguish Roppongi Hills from other corporate landmarks such as Shiodome, and is essential to the company’s aim to claim more than just another upmarket shopping mall status for Roppongi Hills. It is the conflation of art with the reality of the privatization of space that is new and unique to Roppongi Hills. ‘Maman’ by Louise Bourgeois is another popular sculpture. Nicknamed ‘The Spider’, it has become a popular meeting place for people visiting Roppongi Hills. Maki Fumihiko suggests the concentration of art and architecture adds a new ‘famous site’ (meisho) to Tokyo (in Nanjo et al. 2004, 16–21). If one thinks about a pilgrimage to Roppongi Hills, however, one is in reality proposing a shopping trip.

Mori proposes that Roppongi Hills is a Utopian lifestyle choice designed to bring ultimate freedom arising from wide-ranging aesthetic and informational, above all ‘cultural’, experiences. As Mori comments, ‘in creating Roppongi Hills, we imagined all of the ways people enjoy themselves, both at work and at play, and designed the commercial areas to reflect an abundance of lifestyle choices’ (Mori 2003a, 5). In another interview, he relates this fusion of work and play to notions of space and time: ‘we not only want to give people more time (by having them live on

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site), we want to provide them with more rewarding things to do with time’ (Mori 2003b, 34). It is clear from Mori’s general reasoning that enjoyment takes centre place in the rhetoric of Roppongi Hills wherein art has a critically euphoric role. As a space defining twenty-first-century capitalism and globalization, Roppongi Hills has transformed a Tokyo suburb. Formerly named Roppongi Sixth district (6 chome), even the residual history of the former neighbourhood is nostalgically remembered aesthetically as ‘cute’ (kawaii) small houses and disappearing neighbourhood spirit. Such sensibility is factored into the mythic collective hallmark of Roppongi Hills. ‘Roppongi Hills is the result of working together with four hundred property owners and their maze-like neighbourhood to reenvision an advanced sustainable environment’ (in Nanjo et al. 2004, 159). The sense of loss is curtailed by consensual euphoria, as a website review of the opening of Roppongi Hills enthused: ‘everything is new. Everything is perfect’ (DB 2003). Garden spaces are a feature of Roppongi Hills. The Mohri Garden in traditional Japanese style is contrasted elsewhere by European style gardens. Rice paddies are reported to be growing on the roof of at least one of the accommodation towers. Much is made of the gardens although they seem quite small and insignificant in the overall make-up of the space. To the left of the Mohri Garden (from Azabu Juban side) is the glass-walled Asahi TV office building that gives prime-time viewing into meeting spaces within the workplace. Opposite is the Hillside Keyakizaka shopping complex enclosed in sandstone. The normal polarities of display that are associated with each space are reversed here; the workspace (at least for less important staff) is visible; from Hillside, we can see people hard at work. Their long hours and workplace decorum is witnessed and enforced by our witness. Meanwhile, the shopping space is private and excusive, the domain of the rich and those ‘in the know’. In the Roppongi Hills Arena between TV Asahi and the Keyakizaka Complex is an open plaza. A large video screen sometimes shows unusual graphic effects; mostly the screen shows promotional clips for Asahi TV and their sponsors. In the background is Louis Vuitton’s signature store and above is a residence complex. The smooth time effect of the space overall is interrupted, however, by the ugly functional surveillance and communications poles placed throughout the space. This is a media space – hooked into the information domains of Asahi TV who have their offices alongside the shopping areas that their commercials promote (Plate 15). A central focus of the space is the large arena for regular live concerts, broadcasting opportunities and corporate functions. Companies often rent this space for product promotions and TV tie-ins. One day Guinness beer, then next a new chocolate. Adding to this is the vista of open offices seen through the wall of glass – from Hillside, we can watch Asahi TV employees hold meetings and drink coffee. They appear like actors in a play about media, work and the information economy. In reality, this is a controlled and policed space – one is encouraged to regulate one’s behaviour according to the euphoric norms of the site – surveillance and objects of consumption mediate all experience (Plate 16). ‘Where once one necessarily entered the city by means of a


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physical gateway, now one passes through an audiovisual protocol in which the methods of audience and surveillance have transformed even the forms of public greeting and daily reception’ (Virilio 2002, 443).

We might begin to think conceptually about Roppongi Hills in terms of what Bauman (2002, 18) calls ‘a space of flows’. Globalization, as the spaces of flows, he argues, reconfigures time and space – ‘the Great War of Independence from Space . . . . In the post-space-war world, mobility has become the most powerful and coveted stratifying factor; the stuff of which the new, increasingly world-wide, social, political, economic and cultural hierarchies are daily built and rebuilt’ (Bauman 1998, 8–9). In Roppongi Hills, the question of mobility is stratified and linked to these cultural hierarchies – those who can afford to live in the centre escape from the mundane reality of commutation. They have time to enjoy cultural pursuits. As Bauman notes, ‘distance is a social product’ (Bauman 1998, 12). By the turning, twisting, pastiche of the aesthetics of the site, and by the Mori rhetoric of deflecting all questions of occupation and ownership into a euphoric cultural ideal, the space is made liminal and insubstantial – a consensual euphoria, or a space where ‘everything may happen but nothing can be done’ (Bauman 1998, 18). CONSENSUAL EUPHORIA: ENDLESS PEACE, PROSPERITY AND HAPPINESS

Roppongi Hills is playful, the layout and inclusion of public artworks, the post-Benjamin arcades of glass and fashion, and the act of visiting are all performative and stress play and fantasy. Entering the shopping area, the floor space is given to fashion shops – above is a floor with many restaurants. Space seems to fold into itself and remains private despite the mass scale of the site. The surfaces of the buildings are playful. Although architecturally it seems to be trying to hide itself, Roppongi Hills is a labyrinth of narrow pathways, fake stone surfaces and small intimate spaces where a sense of the wider spatial geography is lost. People get lost in these Murakami Haruki-like endless passages and parallel worlds. On the opening weekend, huge crowds spend much of their time lost and exchanging advice about directions. It is ironic that one of the souvenirs available for purchase as omiyage is a special Roppongi Hills Monopoly set. Both the sense of mapping the space and its literal monopoly as a capitalist site are cleverly referenced here. The gap between public art and shop design is blurred at Roppongi Hills. Some of the most dynamic constructions are displays for products, or shop fronts. We see a large floor space dominated by only a few items hanging on a kind of industrial hanging system. The space and its design are contemporary, even avant-garde (Plate 17). Roppongi Hills is cosmopolitan and global in its sense of spatial-corporate unity. International stores, restaurants from around the world, visiting celebrity chefs and

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models define a superficial cosmopolitanism constructed from various performative modes of consumption: the perfect Italian pizza, the perfect Spanish paella, the tofu emporium, the handmade chocolate shop, the authentic Peking Duck, and so on. The need to produce new events, new performances and displays is a kind of dramaturgical logic, an organizing principle of the site. In the interior spaces of the Keyakizaka complex, an implosion of space and time and a profound sense of distortion is evident as the floor levels and shapes of the building Escher-like seem to fold in. A collapse of distance and a new ‘technological spacetime’ (Virilio 2002, 442) is the resulting effect. Railway advertising: Everything is new, everything is pink! Roppongi Hills as Heaven. The posters advertising Roppongi Hills are coloured slides, they are illuminated and transparent.

At Roppongi Hills, images of prosperity and happiness dominate the visual and spatial plane. Extending this theme was the opening exhibition at the MAC, an impressive and diverse display of traditional, modern and contemporary arts from around the world reflecting on the notion of happiness. MORI, MURAKAMI AND ‘HAPPINESS’ ‘A highly responsive space for intellectual relaxation’ (Floor 49 MAC; see website).

Key to the Mori rhetoric of a new human cultural epoch is the MAC and Tokyo observation tower ranging over two upper floors of the Mori Tower. Mori has installed the renowned curator David Elliot as MAC director and for their opening exhibition, guest curator Pier Luigi Tazzi was also employed. The blockbuster exhibition that opened MAC and announced Roppongi Hills to the art world was called ‘Happiness: a survival guide for art and life’. In introducing the exhibition, Mori suggests that ‘Happiness’ explores ‘a deep concern with the relationship between art and life and the quality of both’ (Mori writing in the introduction of the ‘Happiness’ exhibition catalogue, see MAC 2003.) In the director’s introduction, David Elliot explored a Utopian connectivity between selfhood individualism and new communities, leading to new possible worlds. Thus, Elliot writes, ‘the notion of happiness lies in a theoretical space in which the public and the private, politics and morality converge’ (MAC 2003, 26). In one of the accompanying catalogue essays, John C. Jay’s piece ‘The Alter of Desire’ (MAC 2003, 235–240) – with not a skerrick of resistance to the new desire of consumption – notes how the museum is presaged by ‘seventy new restaurants and a hundred and twenty retail stores, each creating and representing its own message of desire. . .. This is neither a


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surprise or a secret’ (MAC 2003, 235). Jay’s Utopian celebratory stance that equates desire and happiness with consumption perhaps speaks to the core values of the ‘Happiness’ exhibition, which a friend described as a supermarket of art. ‘Happiness’ featured one of everything, but had no space around or between objects in this most crowded of art shows. It is true that the exhibition was impressive, and featured excellent works from around the world: from Buddhism to Joseph Beuys, via Yoko Ono and Tracey Emin. Assiduously East-West/past-present in its conception, ‘Happiness’ was a veritable Noah’s Ark of one-off representations exploring the euphoric senses. But with little or no space around or between them, the works merged. The work ‘Free Shop’ by the Superflex collective, which was especially commissioned for the exhibition, was an ironic play on the exhibition site. The display included a replica of a convenience store and playback monitors displayed real-life interactions between convenience store employees and customers. Signs announced that at various times during the exhibition selected convenience stores in the neighbourhood would suddenly not charge customers for their purchases. To quote from the catalogue, ‘any merchandise the customer will purchase is free: FREE SHOP will take place periodically during the exhibition ‘Happiness’ in Tokyo’ (MAC 2003, 202). Two things come to mind about this extension of the readymade idea into a corporate commentary. Did the free shop actually take place? I almost hope that it did not and that it was an elaborate performative hoax. For if it did, it seems to be symbolic of both the overriding confidence of capitalism and a demonstration of how economy replaces ideology in the field of art. Indeed, Simon Njami hints at this in his response to ‘Happiness’ when he writes about the lack of ideology in art and therefore the lack of any possibility of alternatives. ‘Ideology has been the basis of all revolutions,’ he writes; as direct consequence, there will be no revolutionary transformation in the space of flows (in MAC 2003, 268). Murakami Takashi painted his signature figure smiling flowers on the ground at the base of Mori Tower, tracing a path to the entrance for MAC. Murakami’s designs were also used in saturation advertising for Roppongi Hills. The distinction between the gallery and the wider site were notably blurred.

If we can ascribe a gap between the rhetoric of happiness and the performance of ideology in ‘Happiness’, however, it surely must lie in the saturation of images by visual artist Murakami Takashi. Murakami’s ‘Cosmos’ – cartoon smiling flower images were displayed throughout the site: in a special room of the exhibition proper, on the floor leading to the exhibition,

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on video screens, in his own mini-gallery shop, and on posters advertising Roppongi Hills that were placed throughout the whole city. Any sense of balance or commentary between works in the exhibition was completely thrown by Murakami’s intense patterning of superflat imagery through extensively reproduced and circulated designs. Alongside gallery shops for MAC, Murakami had installed his own personal museum and shop. One could purchase the sculptural figures on display. I counted four shops for the MAC that one passed on exiting the exhibition. The ‘Happiness’ exhibition also coincided with the release of a special Murakami edition of the Louis Vuitton bag. Ironically, Murakami’s own capacities for reproducing the smiling flower images were rapidly exceeded as bootleg copies of the Murakami bag flooded the street stalls of late-night Tokyo.

CONCLUSION: EUPHORIA IN THE AGE OF ‘SUPERFLAT’

Murakami seems to saturate Mori projects and we can relate Mori’s world to Murakami’s theory of the superflat. The power of the superflat comes to represent the banality of power in its contemporary representational forms. This might be an overriding formation or idea representing certain globalizing trends in Japanese society and culture. According to Murakami, ‘society, customs, art [and] culture all are extremely two dimensional’ (in Brehm 2002, 36). The superflat aesthetic is described as being ‘devoid of perspective and devoid of hierarchy, all existing equally and simultaneously’ (BT 2000). On a large dot matrix screen overhanging the Roppongi Hat subway entrance, Murakami’s cosmos figures were blown-up and reproduced like some LSD happiness hallucination; a moment of superflat intensive. To achieve a sense of ‘interface’ with the space is the aim here and an ‘electronic audience system’ (Virilio 2002, 441) monitors and regulates entry (Plate 18).

We might read into Murakami’s large-scale images of cartoon figures, and the intense replication of the happy flowers around Roppongi Hills, the suggestion that power is euphoric and yet embedded in everyday forms of representation, production and consumption. Accordingly, obligation to power has become everyday, just as the privatized city space is normalized by the theme of happiness in Mori’s artworks. This is ecstasy culture. Even if it feels not quite right, people always have the superflat to divert attention away from the anxieties of the world. After all, we can always visit Roppongi Hills, bathe in the art, take in a meal, go shopping and feel warm and fuzzy. To show another perspective, however, we might give thought to Miyajima Tatsuo’s fin de siècle contribution to Roppongi Hills, an art work called ‘Countervoid’ that projects large digitized numbers onto an opaque glass surface at street level. ‘Countervoid’ is placed at the edge of


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Roppongi Hills, at the line where Mori’s world meets the regular street. It is a beautiful and haunting work showing an endless countdown to no end, regulating, repeating and smooth. Perhaps there is an alternative commentary on the function of art at Roppongi Hills explored in this work. As stated in the name, Miyajima’s work fills in the space and counters the void. Counters, that is to say, just as long as we are smiling as we cross the border and enter Mori’s euphoric world. NOTES 1 Numerous works have explored 1960s angura and the political situation (see Eckersall 2006; Goodman 1998; Senda 1997; Suga 2003). 2 For an analysis of contemporary Japanese performance in the Australian setting see Eckersall (2004). REFERENCES Asada, Akira. 1989. Infantile capitalism and Japan’s postmodernism: A fairy tale. In Postmodernism and Japan, edited by Masao Miyoshi and Harry D Harootunian. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Benjamin, Walter. 2002. from The Arcades Project. In The Blackwell cities reader, edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: The human consequences. Columbia: Columbia University Press. ——. 2002. Society under siege. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bestor, Ted. 1989. Neighborhood Tokyo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bial, Henry, ed. 2004. The performance studies reader. London and New York: Routledge. Brehm, Margrit, ed. 2002. The Japanese experience – Inevitable. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hartje Cantz Verlag. BT. 2000. BT Monthly Art Magazine, Japan. Issue 5: May. Clammer, John. 1997. Contemporary urban Japan: Society of consumption. Oxford: Blackwell DB. 2003. www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/roppongi.html accessed 24/4/06. de Certeau, Michel. 2000. Walking the city. In The Certeau reader, edited by Graham Ward. Oxford: Blackwell. Deluze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Eckersall, Peter. 2004. Trendiness and appropriation? On Australia-Japan contemporary theatre exchange. In Alternatives: Debating theatre culture in the age of

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confusion, edited by Peter Eckersall, Uchino Tadashi and Moriyama Naoto. Brussels: PIE Lang. ——. 2006 Theorizing the Angura Space: Avant-garde performance and politics in Japan 1960–2000. Leiden: Brill. Eckersall, Peter and Rachel Fensham, et al. 2001. Tokyo diary. Performance Research. 6(1): 71–86. Gibson, William. 1984. Neuromancer. London: Gollancz. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Goodman, David. 1988. Drama and Japanese culture in the 1960s: The return of the Gods. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe. Grosz, Elizabeth. 2000. Bodies-Cities. In The Blackwell city reader, edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Hamilton, Clive. 2003. Growth fetish. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Kara, Jūrō. 1997. Tokkenteki nikutairon (The theory of the privileged body). Tokyo: Hakusuisha. Marker, Chris. 1982, 1993. Sunless (Sans soleil), video recording. London: Connoisseur Academy Video. Mori Art Centre (MAC). 2003. Happiness: A survival guide for art and life. Tokyo: Mori Art Museum. Mori, Minoru. 2003a. Mori’s magnificent mall. Journal of Property Management. 68(5) Sept-Oct: 10. ——. 2003b. Time International. 11 August: 34. Mouer, Ross and Sugimoto, Yoshio. 1986. Images of Japanese society: A study in the structure of social reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Nanjo, Fumio, Ogita Asako and Machino Kayoko, eds. 2004. Art, design and the City Roppongi Hills Public Art Project 1. Tokyo: Mori Building Company and Mori Art Museum. Rolf, Robert. 1992. Japanese theatre from the 1980s: The Ludic Conspiracy. Modern Drama. 34(1): 127–136. Sawara, Yukiko. 1970. The University Struggles. In Zengakuren: Japan’s revolutionary students, edited by Stuart J. Dowsey. Berkeley, The Ishi Press: 136–192. Schechner, Richard. 1993. The future of ritual: Writings on culture and performance. New York and London: Routledge. Senda, Akihiko. 1997. The voyage of contemporary Japanese theatre. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Suga, Hidemi. 2003. Kakumei teki na, amari ni kakumei teki na: ‘1968 Nen no Kakumei’ Shiron (Revolutionary or not: A theoretical history of the ‘1968 Revolution’). Tokyo: Sakuhin Sha.


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Uchino, Tadashi. 2004. After 9.11. In Alternatives: Debating theatre culture in the age of confusion, edited by Peter Eckersall, Uchino Tadashi and Moriyama Naoto. Brussels: PIE Peter Lang. ——. 2006. Mapping/zapping ‘J’ Theatre at the moment. Performance Paradigm. 2. www.performanceparadigm.net. Virilio, Paul. 2002. The Overexposed City. In The Blackwell city reader, edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

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Performing Identity in Yaeyama: The Case of the Sash Amanda Mayer Stinchecum

❖ INTRODUCTION

any peoples have appropriated textiles and clothing as identity markers. Items made of cloth often come to transcend their primary protective and decorative functions. The kimono represents the Japanese people, in spite of the waning use of that graceful garment even for ceremonial occasions. The appliquéd and embroidered elm-bast attush robe of the Utari (Ainu) people persists as a symbol of their identity, even though the concrete existence of both is tenuous. The kimono (called kosode before the Meiji era) and the attush have clothed people in these cultures for centuries. In this chapter, I will examine a different kind of tradition, an invented tradition, that has been created and then used to symbolize a people in their own public presentation of themselves. That is, in the performance of their identity. My investigation of an unassuming sash from the Yaeyama island group of Okinawa, at Japan’s southernmost periphery, shows why and how new ethnic and regional identities are created. In particular, I discuss when and why the construction of a new regional identity became necessary to the people of Yaeyama, and how this process took place. A single object of cloth, and the legend built around it, embody newly invented traditions and the quest for authenticity as a basis for identity. Richard Schechner defines performance as ‘an activity done by an individual or a group in the presence of and for another individual or group’ (Schechner 2003, 22). Although not always the case, in present-day Yaeyama, wearing this sash – in religious festivals, ceremonies, stage performances, and specially arranged appearances – has become a performance of that identity.

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Following a description of the legend and the sash, a brief discussion of tradition, identity and authenticity establishes a theoretical context for my investigation. My narrative then locates the sash in space and time, beginning with the annexation of the Ryūkyū kingdom by Japan and the creation of Okinawa prefecture in 1879. It transitions to the post-Second World War period in Okinawa, when tourism development (to which the sash is closely tied today) began in the prefecture. I then examine the historical basis for the legend of the sash, discover that there is none, and establish its status as an invented tradition. The penultimate section describes the use of the sash today and the process by which the people of Yaeyama constructed a cultural identity in the postwar years, when the sash took on its role as a local symbol in the performance of regional identity. Finally, I look at the conditions in Yaeyama today that have necessitated the creation of a new identity, and an invented tradition to authenticate it. THE LEGEND, THE SASH AND THE AUTHENTICITY OF A TRADITION

According to local legend, for 300 years the women of Yaeyama have woven indigo-dyed, narrow cotton sashes, known as minsā, incorporating in their warp-ikat design a combination of motifs read as a rebus, meaning ‘yours forever more’ (Plate 19). Each woman gave a sash to her prospective husband as a love token, either as a proposal of marriage or in response to such a proposal (Uesedo 1976, 122). Today, the ikat-patterned sash has been standardized to nine centimeters in width. Wrapped around the waist three times and tied in a small bow, the sash functions as a belt and decorative accent on clothing associated with traditional island life. In particular, it is often worn with robes of golden-tan fibre-banana cloth on Ishigaki and Taketomi islands (Plates 20, 21), and with the white, blue and black checked garment, called dutatii, formerly worn for manual labour on Yonaguni island. Both of these garments are today associated with the idea of the common people of Yaeyama. Minsā figures in recent accounts of Yaeyama society, and weavers, designers, architects and others have appropriated the minsā motif for use on tourist goods and promotional materials, and in official and non-official spaces. Local textile cooperatives, district governments and island officials promote the minsā legend (Yaeyama Minsā Kiroku Shi oyobi Kiroku Fuirumu Sakusei Iinkai 1993, 27–28). Islanders have also appropriated it as an identity marker, asserting and enriching their own identities as ‘simple island people’.

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Women continue to weave these sashes on five of Yaeyama’s nine inhabited islands: Iriomote, Ishigaki, Kohama, Taketomi, and Yonaguni. Women and men wear minsā sashes in ritual and secular performances of dance and drama, in which islanders portray themselves (Stinchecum 2002); and for congregant participation in religious ceremonial. The pairing of a minsā sash with a fibre-banana or checked robe have come to be seen as island costumes, put on for special occasions when local identity assumes a central role. Religious festivals, often associated with the agricultural cycle even on islands where the cultivation of rice and millet has largely been abandoned, feature offeratory performances of dance and drama in which participants wear this costume. These include Tanedorisai (festival of first grain shoots) on Taketomi, Hōnen-sai (harvest festival) on Kohama and Ishigaki, Kitsugan-sai (fulfilment of prayer) on Kohama, Shichi-matsuri (festival of prayers for prosperity) on Iriomote, and Machiri (village festival) on Yonaguni. In other religious ceremonies, such as Yunkai (welcoming the gods who bring prosperity from across the sea) on Taketomi, villagers wearing island costume, performing their personae as villagers, welcome a procession of priestesses who have completed the main part of the ritual. The annual Tanedori festival takes place on Taketomi island over a period of ten days in autumn, culminating in two full days of dramas and dances. Often at the expense of regular jobs, the preceding month, or even longer, is dedicated to rehearsing to the near-professional perfection for which Taketomi is famous. Designated in 1977 by the Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō) as an Important Intangible Ethnic Cultural Property (Jūyō mukei minzoku bunkazai), Taketomi’s most important festival now attracts thousands of visitors every year to this tiny island (population 350): tourists; anthropologists and scholars of religion, history, literature and performing arts; press photographers and film-makers; family members who have settled away from Taketomi; and former employees of local bed-and-breakfast establishments who have returned home to the mainland. In the group of dances and dramas that form the core of Tanedori, both men and women performing as simple, hardworking islanders, members of the commoner class of an earlier era, wear minsā sashes. The role of minsā in performances that are part of religious festivals is not limited to its primary function, that of a sash worn by a person. In ‘Yūhiki’ (‘bringing in the fruits of the harvest’), one of the five core dramas related to the agricultural cycle, young village men pull onstage a miniature cart overflowing with red and white yams and millet.1 These represent the ‘five grains’ (gokoku), an expression that means ‘basic


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foodstuffs’, and may include rice, barley, soybeans and the three types of millet found in the Japan archipelago (Shimanaka Yoshinobu, personal communication, 8 November 2005).2 Long bands of minsā tape, each the length of two sashes, take the place of cords to draw the cart. As in the other four dramas central to the Tanedori festival in which young men take part in actions representing the labour of the common people, they wear white trousers and jackets with minsā sashes (actors who represent government officials or other members of the gentry class wear different clothing). In addition to these five agricultural dramas, women perform a fixed repertoire of dances. Karimata Keiichi has noted that these dances, performed every year as offerings to the shrine deity during the festival, fulfil a special function. The songs to which these dances are performed celebrate the island’s historical legends, reconfirm Taketomi’s history, and reaffirm the islanders’ consciousness of participation in a collaborative community (Karimata 1999, 140–141). For those dances in which the women perform the role of simple folk, they wear the sash. My fieldwork and archival research, conducted primarily in Yaeyama over a period of fourteen months from 1999 to 2002, examined multifaceted aspects of this single artifact to reveal the history and social relations of those who made and used it. I have focused on the transformation of this simple sash from an apparently insignificant utilitarian object made and used by the gentry class in the later nineteenth century to a symbol of regional identity, supported by tradition and claimed by ordinary islanders today. Analysing one object by employing methodologies based in history, anthropology, archaeology, and art history, I show how shifts in use and meaning over time demonstrate the fluidity of the concepts of tradition, authenticity and identity. Handler (1986, 3) describes authenticity in terms of ‘self ’ and ‘other’: ‘the idea of the part, unit, or individual asserting itself against the rest of the world as a locus of ultimate meaning and reality underlies modern notions of authenticity’. It is precisely from this consciousness of self and ‘other’ that a sense of identity emerges. Thus, the concepts of authenticity and identity are closely tied. As a quality sought by anthropologists in the communities they study, authenticity encompasses meanings of the ‘unspoiled, pristine, genuine, untouched and traditional’ (Handler 1986, 1). Groups constructing their own identities seek, and create, the same qualities in their own cultures, as Linnekin (1991, 447) implies. Their search for the authentic is self-reflexive. The Japanese kimono and the Ainu attush attained identity marker status when those cultures were threatened by the incursion of an ‘other’: in the former by the introduction of Euro-American culture, and in

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the latter by the efforts of the Japanese nation-state to eliminate their culture. The invention of a tradition, or cultural invention, becomes necessary to form a new group identity vis-à-vis the ‘other’. This new identity may form around a tradition or set of traditions that crystallize in a symbolic object (or a charismatic personage). In Hobsbawm and Ranger’s seminal volume, The Invention of Tradition, Trevor-Roper’s debunking of the Scottish kilt as Highland tradition takes as its subtext the creation of Scottish identity (Trevor-Roper 1983, 15–41). Many of the essays in Vlastos’s Mirror of Modernity (1998), which both expands and critiques Hobsbawm’s (1983) concept, deal with issues of identity under the label of ‘invented traditions’. In examining the sash from the viewpoint of identity, authenticity and invented tradition, I hope to offer a more nuanced interpretation of Hobsbawm’s concept. He defines tradition as unvarying and creates an obfuscating dichotomy between ‘real’ and ‘invented’ traditions (Hobsbawm 1983, 2). Hanson (1991) and Linnekin (1991) defend the concept of ‘culture invention’ and the importance of analysing the process. At the same time, they admit that making such analysis public may have divisive political overtones. Hanson even recommends dropping the word ‘invention’, to avoid offence, but offers no substitute (1991, 450). Vlastos (1998, 5) states in his critique of Hobsbawm’s concept that its value lies in problematizing assumptions about the formation of culture. The examination of particular ‘invented traditions’, Vlastos affirms, illuminates the historical, political, and social circumstances of their creation and the societies that create them (1998, 5). The importance of analysing ‘culture invention’ (a broader term that includes the invention of tradition), Hanson asserts (1991, 449), is to see how the process works, how and why particular forms are chosen and developed. For Yaeyama islanders, minsā embodies the authenticity of their existence as a group, distinct from–and opposed to–their marginal position in relation to Okinawa prefecture and to Japan. My research suggests that inhabitants of Taketomi believe that what they present is ‘authentic’ (the minsā legend, for example, or the contents of the annual festival of first grain shoots, Tanedori-sai). Not only that these are authentic traditions, but that they represent something essential about their society. While freely acknowledging change and invention, at the same time they assert an unchanging core to an essentialized Taketomi identity. Yaeyama is the southernmost island-group of Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture, and part of the Ryūkyū archipelago. On the farthest periphery of Ryūkyūan cultural influence, these subtropical, coral islands


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lie closer to Taiwan and the Philippines than to Kyoto or Tokyo. From 1429 until Japan annexed them by force in 1879, the Ryūkyū islands constituted an autonomous or semi-autonomous kingdom.3 A tributary relationship with Ming China offered legitimation to the Ryūkyū monarchy and an extensive network of maritime trade with East and South East Asia. Invaded by the armed forces of the Japanese domain of Satsuma in 1609, Ryūkyū remained in a kind of dual subjugation to China and Japan until the 1879 annexation by Japan. The monarchy paid tribute exacted by Satsuma after 1609 in part by levying a poll tax, to be paid in grain and cloth, on some outlying island groups, including Yaeyama, but not on the main island of Okinawa. The harsh administration of this poll tax, the concentration of the gentry class in the town of Ishigaki, and distance from the main island contributed to Yaeyama’s marginal status. At the time of annexation in 1879, most of the Ryūkyū islands were consolidated as Okinawa prefecture (the northernmost islands were incorporated into Kagoshima prefecture). After the devastating Battle of Okinawa and Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces in 1945, the Ryūkyū islands were held as a US occupied territory until reversion to Japan in 1972, twenty years longer than the rest of Japan. Yaeyama has remained distinct from the political centre of the archipelago on Okinawa island, some 300 miles to the north. Although Yaeyama is tied in many ways to central Ryūkyūan culture, its separateness has been insured by geographic, linguistic, religious, social, economic, political and ethnic factors. THE NEW PREFECTURE, REGIONAL IDENTITY AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

Due to Ryūkyū’s ambiguous relationships to China and Japan, Ryūkyūan identity was contested long before the Meiji government’s annexation of the monarchy in 1879 (Smits 1999). Howell points out that before such policies were put in place, ‘ethnic boundaries drawn in the seventeenth century between the Japanese and the peoples on their geographical and social peripheries . . . bracketed the identity of the Japanese and held it in place’ (1994, 92). Aggressive policies directed towards the Ryūkyūan people after annexation and the creation of Okinawa prefecture in 1879, however, provoked a crisis of identity that affected even those on the lowest rungs of the social ladder. The islands’ newly defined status as part of Japan challenged the very existence of Ryūkyū/Okinawa as a distinct entity. Not only did the Meiji government and other Japanese observers seek to incorporate Okinawa into the Japanese nation-state as rapidly as possible, but many citizens of the new prefecture also actively pursued this goal.

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Beginning as early as the eighteenth century, the strategies employed by Japan toward the Ainu or Utari people of Hokkaidō were arguably more oppressive, and demonstrably more effective, than later policies in Okinawa, for they succeeded in the near-extinction of the Ainu (Howell 1994, 91–92; Morris-Suzuki 1998, 20–26). Japan’s efforts to transform Okinawans into citizens of the nation-state, however, resembled more closely the subsequent colonization of Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1910 (Christy 1993). Questions of Ryūkyūan/Okinawan identity were reflected in claims of common origins of Ryūkyūan and Japanese peoples and languages (Ōta 1991, 90–93). Assimilation policies in Okinawa, based on these claims of common roots, culminated in the so-called ‘language dispute’ of 1940 (Smits 2002). Although Smits and Christy discuss Japanese efforts at assimilation, their analyses do not extend to Okinawan (or more local) assertions of identity. While Christy’s article, in particular, would seem to raise the question of Okinawans’ expressions of their own identity, he slides by this issue without comment. Once Okinawa’s position within Japan was reconfirmed by reversion to Japan in 1972, Okinawans began to assert identities defined not in terms of Japan but, increasingly, in terms of Ryūkyū’s relation to other Asian nations and its history as an independent kingdom. This has been part of a wider trend to revise Japan’s self-promoted reputation as a homogeneous culture. During the past decade, scholars in Japan and in the West have begun to look at how people assert regional identity and multivalent ethnicities within Japan, and, in particular, how they manifest this on the nation’s peripheries (e.g. Allen 2002; Christy 1993; Howell 1994; MorrisSuzuki 1998; 2001; Ōta 1998; Smits 2002). On the whole, these studies focus on the role of regional identities in the formation of the Meiji nationstate or Japanese national identity, but few attempt to look at the issue from the regional point of view. In areas closer to Japan’s centre, where the people were considered indisputably Japanese, other, less coercive and discriminatory incentives for regionalism developed in the late nineteenth century. Wigen (1998, 237) characterizes the Meiji government’s creation of new ‘traditional’ regions, divorced from earlier provincial and domainal boundaries, as a strategy to induce loyalty to the state, first of all by neutralizing domain-based regionalism, and by encouraging loyalty to local governments as part of the larger nation-state. In discussing Yaeyama, rather than Ryūkyū or Okinawa as a whole, I refer to regional identity as more than a stage in the process of building the Japanese nation-state (Jorgensen 1996, 190; Wigen 1998). I define group identity as the shared consciousness of a common history, place and culture, and the manifestations of that consciousness in the present. While


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nation-building in Ryūkyū and Japan played a role in past issues of Ryūkyūan and Yaeyama identities, today we cannot discuss Yaeyama without reference to Okinawa, Asia and the United States. Development of tourism in Okinawa, aimed primarily at mainland Japanese travellers, has played conflicting roles in the oppositional nature of contemporary Okinawan identity politics during the past twenty years. The construction of monolithic, deracinated resort hotels along Okinawa’s west coast, and more recently on the smaller and more remote islands of Kumejima, Miyako and Yaeyama, has been accompanied by promotions depicting Okinawa as an ahistorical, a-cultural, ‘tropical island paradise’ (Figal 2003). Most of these resorts are built with mainland Japanese capital; some, equally sterile, are locally owned. Both mainland and local tourism promotions feature images of palm trees (not indigenous to the islands) and scantily clad girls in bikinis and leis (not indigenous to the islands). Opposition to these representations of a timeless, denatured Okinawa has fed new assertions of Okinawan identity. These include the ‘Ryūkyū kingdom boom’ exemplified by the Japanese government’s reconstruction of Shuri Castle in 1992 and the 1994 screening on national television of the historical drama series, ‘Ryūkyū no kaze’ (Winds of Ryūkyū).4 A different kind of impetus for asserting the value of Ryūkyūan/Okinawan history and culture has been the indifference, disregard and hostility towards Okinawans manifested in violent crimes against local civilians committed by members of the US military stationed on Okinawa island. The gang-rape of a twelve-year-old Okinawan girl by two US Marines and a sailor in September 1995 drew protests from tens of thousands of Okinawans (Johnson 2001, 375–376). This is only the most widely known of many such incidents of violence perpetrated by members of the US military on Okinawan civilians (New York Times 2003). Problems of identity and tourism, and their relation to each other, affect not only Okinawa as a whole or the centre of ‘Okinawan culture’ on Okinawa island. They are perhaps even more critical for the prefecture’s smaller islands. New crops, notably tropical fruits and cut flowers, are slowly making inroads into island economies on a limited scale. But the decline of the sugar industry and, more recently, of large-scale pineapple production have eliminated agriculture as a viable way of life for most inhabitants of these smaller islands (Hara 2000, 183). Tourism development is widely perceived as the only way to prevent complete depopulation, particularly of outlying island groups such as Yaeyama. Removed from the centre of Okinawa, at the farthest margins of Japan’s most peripheral prefecture, ‘Yaeyama culture’ has experienced a small boom parallel to the Ryūkyū boom of the main island. Several external factors contributed

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to this. In 1986, the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachō) designated Taketomi island as a ‘Historical Landmark Preservation District’ (Dentōteki Kenzōbutsu-gun Hozon Chiku). The recent production and broadcast on national television of a second Okinawa-based series, ‘Chūrasan’, a contemporary melodrama set on Kohama island, served to acquaint a broader Japanese audience with the tropes of Yaeyama tourism. Yaeyama has been incorporated into an idealized world far from that created in ‘Ryūkyū no kaze’ (Hara 2000). Sanitized versions of the past, and, in particular, visual images reflecting them, constitute sources of local pride around which sentiments of regional identity cluster. The link between expressions of regional identity and tourism development has been exploited by local and national governments from the Highlands of Scotland (Devine 2000) to Vietnam (Salemink 2003). These processes are manifest in Yaeyama. Ōta Yoshinobu analyses tourism in terms of power, as a framework within which the superior (the tourist) observes the inferior (the objectified community), and also constructs an identity for the object of its gaze (1998, 89). On the other hand, tourism can also become a context that provides a positive opportunity for that community not only to assert its own identity, but, particularly for marginalized societies, to construct a new identity that can survive in the fragmented world of the twenty-first century (Ōta 1998, 89). A NEW IDENTITY: WHEN AND WHY?

Why and when did the invention of Yaeyama tradition and a new identity become necessary? In Handler’s analysis, the emergence of the individual (in the sense of the part versus the whole) accompanies dissolution of an established social order (1986, 3). This individuality underlies authenticity. Changes in Yaeyama that began even before the abolition of the Ryūkyū monarchy in 1879 led to the construction of a new Yaeyama identity. This became especially significant during the post-Second World War years, when a diffusion of village or island ways led to the formation of a broader based Yaeyama identity. Several factors contributed to a decline in the sense of community that had bound the inhabitants of individual villages, and, probably to a much lesser extent, of each island. The increasing urbanization of Japan, the decline of the sugar industry in Okinawa, and the 1972 reversion to Japan after the Occupation, which made travel to mainland Japan a simple matter, brought about the gradual depopulation of Okinawa’s smaller islands (like small islands worldwide). Children were and still are sent to Naha, or to relatives in Osaka and Tokyo after


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elementary school, to attend high schools with higher academic standards. Sometimes they were accompanied by their mothers, decreasing the number not only of young people, but also of women, the guardians and facilitators of social and religious practices in island villages. In particular, tsukasa, local priestesses of the indigenous Ryūkyūan religion, play an important role in continuing island traditions and maintaining cohesion of small communities. As postwar children travelled beyond Yaeyama to attend high school and college, through disuse and fear of stigma local languages were forgotten, avoided or never learned. Although many people in Yaeyama still speak local languages and dialects in domestic situations, increasingly their more public or formal activities are conducted in Japanese. The loss of population, particularly that of women and young people, and of the local languages and dialects, has meant fewer candidates for the religious duties of the tsukasa, one of which is offering prayers in the local language. On Yonaguni, where shrine ritual traditionally requires twelve priestesses, there is now only one. Throughout Yaeyama the ubiquity of television, faster and more frequent ferries, improved road systems, direct flights to the mainland, and the proliferation of mobile phones accelerated communication among the islands, between Yaeyama and mainland Japan, and with the rest of the world. In the past ten years, mainlanders looking for a fresh start in this tropical paradise and the adult children of islanders making a ‘u-turn’ to return to their roots have contributed to the weakening of local bonds. On Taketomi, for example, changes in local customs over the past fifty years include the end of uxorilocal marriages, the abandonment of Ryūkyū-style clothing for everyday wear, reduced usage of the local language, and the adoption of the reed for weaving minsā. More recently, innovations such as the elimination of a number of regular rituals from the island’s calendar, the substitution of robes made of imitation, in place of real, fibre-banana cloth for use at festivals and in ritual contexts, the presence on the island of dogs and bars, and the proliferation of privately owned cars have altered the face of Taketomi. The onslaught of outside stimuli, combined with the loosening of community ties, have contested multiple identities that had been forged in Yaeyama villages since the seventeenth century. On Taketomi, this attenuation of the past has resulted in a need to reinforce perceived Taketomi ‘traditions’. Minsā is the material embodiment of these ‘traditions’. At the same time, the fading of old, village-level identities has created room for a new, Yaeyama-wide, identity. This, too, has come to be symbolized by minsā.

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The Yaeyama island of Taketomi (and, to a lesser extent, Ishigaki) has had considerable success in constructing a new identity and an ‘authentic’ setting for tourism development. A key element in this new identity is the minsā sash and the legend associated with it. Today, narrow, indigo-dyed ikat-patterned, warp-faced cotton sashes are woven and worn on five of the islands. Ikat (kasuri) is a technique of yarn-resist dyeing, and the resulting cloth. Selected warp and/or weft yarns are tightly bound before dyeing according to a pre-determined pattern; the dye does not penetrate the bound segments. When warp and weft are woven together, these undyed segments form a blurry pattern. Weaving on a loom without a reed (a comb-like part that maintains the even spacing of the warp yarns) readily results in a warp-faced fabric, in which the density of warp yarns completely conceals the weft. Such fabrics, produced on body-tension looms, are characteristic of some parts of South East Asia as well as Central and South America. Yet, sashes with the particular constellation of characteristics found in Yaeyama minsā are unique to this area within Okinawa and Japan (I have yet to discover a prototype in South East Asia, technologically the most obvious source).5 On the other hand, transposing a pattern from one decorative technique to another (for example, from a woven pattern to a printed pattern) is a common phenomenon in the history of textiles. This may account for the absence of a prototype among ikat textiles beyond the shores of Okinawa. The traditions of minsā today are associated most strongly with Taketomi, perhaps because ‘tradition’ has been more carefully cultivated and marketed on this tiny island than on others with greater resources for agricultural and other development. The three main features of the Taketomi minsā tradition, attributed to an indefinite past (sometimes said to be ‘300 years ago’), are: (1) All Taketomi girls/women learned to make minsā sashes. (2) Each young woman wove a minsā sash, to present to the man she hoped would become her husband. If the woman’s beloved felt the same, he would wear it as a publicly visible emblem of their love and as a protective token. The decoration of the sash consisted of two main elements – an ikat pattern made up of alternating units of four and five white rectangles, and a tooth-like border. The ikat pattern, read as a rebus, signifies, ‘Itsu [itsu=itsutsu = five] no yo [yo=yon=four] made mo’ (‘yours forever more’). The border pattern is interpreted as the innumerable legs of the centipede, reflecting the


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woman’s wish that her lover or husband visit her with enthusiastic frequency. Islanders of Taketomi, Ishigaki and Kohama explain this as a practice belonging to the days of kayoi kekkon, a form of uxorilocal marriage in which women remained in their parents’ houses after the union of the couple; their husbands visited them at night. On Taketomi, after the birth of two or three children the couple married and moved into their own home. This practice continued on Taketomi and Aragusuku, another Yaeyama island, into the 1960s. 6 (3) The minsā sash belongs to the people of the islands, the common people, as opposed to the gentry or aristocracy. In my interviews with women and men on Taketomi, Ishigaki and Kohama, as well as archival research and examination of over one hundred minsā sashes, I was not able to confirm the historicity of any aspect of this tradition. It became clear that in the first half of the twentieth century only some women were able to weave minsā. Women of especially low or high social status did not have the leisure or incentive to do so. The late Ōyama Sadao (1902–2006) stated that his unmarried mother had been barely able to support her eight children and had had no time to learn more than the most basic weaving skills to make clothes for them. At the other end of the social scale, educator and writer Miyagi Fumi was born into a family of Ishigaki gentry in 1891. Her account (Miyagi 1972, 100, 102, 276, 363, 400) of life in the town of Ishigaki in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries notes the use of minsā sashes. She herself was not a weaver. Her second son, Miyagi Shinyū, stated that he never saw her weaving the sash, or indeed wearing one. Moreover, not a single informant had personally engaged in the practice of gifting the sash as described above, or recalled hearing that her or his parents or any other particular person had done so. As to the third element in the minsā tradition, that they belong to the common people of the islands, the earliest documentary evidence points to the association of the sash with the gentry in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.7 On the islands of Taketomi and Ishigaki, and to a lesser extent on Kohama and Iriomote, islanders define the tradition of the sash in terms of the ‘yours forever more’ legend. A number of primary sources and artefacts, however, raise doubts about the historical basis for the legend, and for production predating the introduction of machinespun cotton yarn in the later nineteenth century. They indicate a history of some 130 years, rather than the legendary 300. The association of minsā with machine-spun yarn, imported into the Ryūkyū islands from Japan and China, suggests origins outside the islands. The earliest primary

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documentary sources that include the word, minsā (or variants), as well as object-derived data also establish the intimate association of the sash with the gentry class in the later nineteenth century. Under the monarchy, divisions among social classes (commoners, gentry, aristocracy and royalty) were rigidly defined. These early sources contest the association of the ikatpatterned sash we call minsā today with the common people of Yaeyama before the end of the Second World War. Meanwhile, other, slightly later sources provide evidence for the use by commoners of an unpatterned, or undyed, narrow cotton sash also called minsā, indicating a range of meanings not widely acknowledged today (Miyara 1906; Yaeyama Yakusho 1894). Clearly, the minsā legend was an invented tradition, but it appears to have had a literary and possibly even an historical source. It emerged through transformations of diverse historical elements and earlier traditions. Today, appropriation of the sash by the islanders and others as an emblem of Yaeyama identity embraces ambivalent meanings. For the islanders themselves, the ubiquity of minsā shows that they use the sash to validate their own authenticity, that of their communities and of Yaeyama as a regional and cultural entity. Production, use and promotion of the minsā sash, and the geometric motifs derived from it, also contribute to a sense of Yaeyama’s authenticity among others as well, including tourists, researchers and government representatives. Transformations of consumption, class and meaning have marked the changing context of this simple object. From an accessory of dress with auspicious connotations, used by members of the gentry (Dōji 12 nen jikensho 1873), by the early twentieth century the sash had undergone a transition to a utilitarian item of underclothing, to fasten or decorate women’s underskirts and underpants. Recently, Yaeyama islanders have adopted it as an emblematic identity marker reserved for special occasions that demand an assertion of regional or community cohesion. Thus, the sash has transcended class boundaries imposed by the Ryūkyū monarchy. During the past few decades, meanings attributed to the sash and patterns of its consumption have been transformed through the agency of Yaeyama islanders, as well as the efforts of mainland Japanese patrons and members of the Folk Craft Movement (Mingei Undō). Tonomura Kichinosuke (1898–1993), founder of the Kurashiki Folk Craft Museum (Kurashiki Mingeikan), first visited Taketomi and Ishigaki in 1957 (Tonomura 1969). He played a major role in establishing commercial production of minsā sashes on Taketomi in the 1960s. In addition to providing cotton yarn and technical advice to weavers on the island, he helped to create a market for their products by selling them at the museum and bringing groups of mingei enthusiasts to Taketomi.


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Two narratives told by Taketomi women suggest a different constellation of associations from the sash as a token of passionate love. Taketomi minsā weaver, Uchimori Sumi (b. 1926), relates that her father-in-law, Uchimori Kana, received a minsā sash from a woman named Kame Kantsu (1888–1992) sometime before Sumi’s marriage into the Uchimori family in 1941. Kame Kantsu had been Kana’s nanny, a very close relationship in which the older girl is the protector, in a very practical sense, of the young child. The Taketomi word for nanny, mūrufua, means ‘the child who protects’. Kana wore this sash both day and night, folding it in half, and then in half again as it wore out, until it fell apart. By 1941, Sumi said, it was already worn out. Sumi’s story hints at a protective function of the sash, when woven and gifted by a woman to a younger man for whom she was a protective figure. Veteran Taketomi weaver, the late Ōyama Kiku (1914–2005), told of her mother-in-law’s weaving a minsā sash for her husband, Shinsei, when he went to war. When Kiku married into the family in 1937, there was a photo of her father-in-law in uniform with this minsā sash tied to his chest like a rosette. The implication of her story is that he wore it as a kind of protective token. These narratives point to a possible connection with beliefs in the spiritual power and protective role of the sister in Ryūkyūan and other Asian cultures. The literature on this belief is extensive, beginning with the work of Okinawan scholar Iha Fuyū (1973 [1938]). A limited examination of this concept in relation to cloth artifacts will be incorporated into my broader study of the sash. Although the rebus reading of the four/five-element ikat pattern is peculiar to the sash, the sash’s role as a protective token gifted from a woman to a man under her care may have been transferred from another cloth object. Narratives associated with a scarf (tīsāji), sometimes said to have been given by a woman to her lover as a love or protective token, are not confined to Yaeyama, but are widespread in many areas of Okinawa (Ōshiro 1983, 839).8 Surviving scarves typically range in size from 60 to 170 cm in length. The longer ones were worn tied around the head, for example, by priestesses on Kume island, while the shorter ones may have been used as a handkerchief, neck-scarf or decorative accessory. Today, they appear, to my knowledge, solely as part of costumes for traditional dance and drama. Taketomi chronicler and founder of the island’s only Buddhist temple, Uesedo Tōru, noted that the scarf was a private gift and declaration of love (in response to which the man who received it would reply with a gift of a bead necklace). ‘Long ago,’ he writes, ‘this scarf was said to have been dyed with the giver’s menstrual blood’ (1976, 122). Since dried blood stains

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cloth dark brown, red tīsāji could not in fact have been dyed with blood, menstrual or otherwise. Uesedo’s expression indicates not only the emotional but the sexual depth of passion associated with the woman’s gift of the scarf, which, he emphasizes, was a private avowal of her feelings. The minsā sash, presented after the exchange of scarf and beads, was worn openly as a public declaration.9 Several local informants suggested that Uesedo’s introduction of menstrual blood into his narrative was intended metaphorically. A transference of meaning from the scarf to the sash may have been due simply to practical, economic considerations. The revival of minsā weaving on Taketomi in the early 1960s led to the marketing in mainland Japan of what had been a textile made by Yaeyama islanders solely for their own use. The overlapping of meanings associated with the scarf enhanced the marketability of minsā. On the other hand, those men involved in the renewed production and promotion of the sash (Tonomura Kichinosuke, Uesedo Tōru and Taketomi resident Yonakuni Seikai, who organized the early minsā training workshops) may have felt that the female sexuality implicit in the scarf made it unsuitable for public exposure. These two textiles, the sash and the scarf, had no connection to the Shuri monarchy (Shuri was the seat of the royal government of the Ryūkyū kingdom). They played no official role as an item of court or official dress, were not objects of official trade, and, unlike some other Yaeyama textiles, were not used as a form of tax payment. They are almost entirely undocumented. Neither has been of interest to scholars, reflecting a centre/periphery tension in Okinawan studies (and among the people of Okinawa themselves). The historicity of the tīsāji, its use as a love gift and protective token, its association, if any, to beliefs in the spiritual power and protective role of women, and its relation to the gifting of scarves in other parts of Asia, remain subjects for future research. CONSTRUCTING YAEYAMA IDENTITY

Today, the sash itself, and the minsā pattern of four/five ikat elements derived from it, have become a symbol of the ‘simple island people’ of Yaeyama, at least those islands where this version of minsā dominates: Taketomi, Ishigaki, Kohama and Iriomote. Women and men wear the sash in dance and dramatic performances dedicated to local deities at religious festivals (matsuri). Most significantly, the use of minsā in these performances is confined to roles in which men and women portray themselves, and their ancestors, as ‘simple’ villagers, farmers, fishermen, artisans and others doing menial labour. Women also wear the sash in


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other religious rituals (gyōji), in secular performances of dance or drama, and in cultural programmes prepared for a national television audience. In this context, the women of the three villages on Taketomi, for instance, represent themselves as ‘island villagers’ by wearing clothing they associate with an imagined, shared past. In the case of an NHK filming (5 May 2000) of a number of women weaving and singing in the home of one of them, the imagined past, in which women wove communally (something that did not, according to local informants, occur on the island), was projected back onto local residents by the film-makers. Vlastos asserts the power of the ‘performative aspect of invented tradition . . . [which] provides a convincing sensory spectacle of continuity with an “age-old” past’, despite the absence, or at least the thinness, of any such connection (1998, 7–8). In Yaeyama today, the struggle to survive economically and to assert regional identity has blurred the boundary between religious ritual and tourist attraction (Salemink 2003). The performance itself helps to authenticate the tradition it portrays. Thus, it is no accident that the importance of the sash to the people of Taketomi, in particular, manifests itself in the context of performance. In unambiguously commercial contexts, the minsā motif appears in images used to promote Yaeyama tourism and goods manufactured for mainland Japanese consumers. Commercial development of minsā began in 1971, in the town of Ishigaki (Azamiya/Minsā Kōgeikan 1992, 14), the only town of any size in Yaeyama. With their company, Azamiya, Taketomi-born entrepreneurs Ara Kinue and her husband, Ara Tetsuji, introduced the minsā motif to other textile forms. They adopted techniques of mass-production, such as the use of chemical dyes and a floor loom with a reed. Taketomi weavers adapted minsā weaving to a compact floor loom with a reed, in place of the traditional body-tension loom used without a reed, at the time of the first minsā training programme (Ishigaki 1993, 29–31), conducted on Taketomi in 1962, although individual weavers on Taketomi may have used a floor loom before the Second World War. Weaving minsā on a floor loom is faster, requires less skill and takes up less room than the old bodytension loom. Today, all Yaeyama weavers use the floor loom, from which some weavers choose to remove the reed to produce a more ‘traditional’ warp-faced sash, more difficult than using a reed with the floor loom. By her own account, Ara Kinue may have been responsible for the use of the ‘yours forever more’ minsā legend for promotional purposes. The innovations of Ara Kinue and her husband Ara Tetsuji helped to promote the circulation of ‘minsā style’ textiles far beyond the shores of Taketomi, Ishigaki and Kohama. This played a role in the association of minsā with

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Yaeyama as a whole rather than any particular island. Today, the minsā pattern appears on ‘minsā wear’ (accessories such as hats, bags, wallets, shirts, place mats and wall hangings) manufactured in Ishigaki, and sold primarily (but not exclusively) to tourists. It is also used in commercial and private spaces, such as restaurants, souvenir shops and the rooms at Ishigaki’s Club Med (Arai 2000, 10–13). The pattern has been used by the local government in public places frequented primarily by local residents, including the Yaeyama Post Office and the municipal library interiors. It also appears in areas central to tourism, including the paving on Ishigaki Pier and the sidewalk in front of the Chisun (formerly the Ishigaki Grand) Hotel. Shirts decorated with the pattern are reportedly worn by Yaeyama officials on government business in the prefectural capital of Naha. Minsā sashes and other items are also sold as tourist or craft items at souvenir shops, hotel shops, craft stores and museums in mainland Japan as well as in Naha. The sash and its pattern of four and five rectangles have come to represent the people of Yaeyama. They employ these symbols to represent themselves to themselves, and to outsiders (primarily mainland Japanese). In addition, local businesses and governments use them in the same way. Ambiguity remains, however, regarding just whose identity is symbolized by the minsā sash. Certainly, the people of Taketomi think of minsā as a Taketomi island tradition. Three days of performances at the National Theatre in Tokyo in 1976 were followed immediately by designation by the Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs of the island’s festival of first rice shoots, Tanedori-sai, as an Important Ethnic Cultural Property (Jūyō Mukei Minzoku Bunkazai). This formal recognition by the Japanese government of a ‘traditional’ Taketomi emphasized the usefulness of an island costume, which in turn reinforced the association of the minsā sash with Taketomi. These events were followed by the Japanese government’s selection in 1986 of Taketomi as an ‘Important Preservation District for Groups of Historic Buildings’ (Dentō Kenzōbutsu-gun Hozon Chiku). The national attention thus focused on Taketomi in particular has set it apart from the other islands of Yaeyama. Taketomi islanders have come to view their traditions as the basis for development, and striven to sustain and adapt them, to a far greater extent than the people of other Yaeyama islands. On Kohama, resort development effectively shuts out local participation, while the secrecy in which the most important religious festival is conducted has, so far, precluded its exploitation as a tourist attraction. On the other hand, agriculture and fishing are still struggling to remain viable industries there. On Iriomote, eco-tourism is experiencing the growing pains of a new idea. And on Ishigaki island, craft production struggles to


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break the bounds of the past. In the earlier stages of my fieldwork, conducted in 1999–2001, the suspicion among Taketomi inhabitants that I was a spy, come to Taketomi to reveal its secrets to outsiders, attests to the importance of minsā to Taketomi identity Insofar as minsā has been exploited by local government and commercial development, and is worn for festivals and performances on other islands, its force as a symbol transcends a single island and extends to Yaeyama as a whole. Assertions of Yaeyama identity have been directed towards, and acknowledged by, people of Tokyo rather than Okinawa prefecture. Mainland Japanese cognoscenti had been primed to be receptive to an essentialized Yaeyama since before the Second World War. The reports of Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), Tanaka Toshio (1914–53) and other luminaries of the Movement, who visited Yaeyama in 1939–40, and Tonomura Kichinosuke whetted the appetites of mingei enthusiasts in Tokyo. Distinctions between Yaeyama (and other, similarly peripheral, island groups such as Miyako) and Okinawa island would have meant little to mainland Japanese, to whom all of the Ryūkyū islands, under US Occupation from 1945 to 1972, were for Japanese a foreign country until reversion to Japan in 1972. Within Okinawa today, Yaeyama and the other outer islands remain marginalized, as uncivilized territories. While they may be the object of study for specialists in Okinawan universities, the general Okinawan public displays little interest. An appeal by Yaeyama islanders for legitimization to a ready-made mainland audience, on the other hand, could be depended upon to be enthusiastically received due to mainland performances of Yaeyama music and dance, familiarity among mingei followers, ethnologists and a general public attuned to cultural matters such as the designations noted above.10 Yaeyama identity may be negotiated first with the centre of the Japanese state (Tokyo), and – thus authenticated – confront the centre of Okinawa in Naha. CONCLUSIONS

Since the end of the Second World War, changes in the social, economic and political conditions of Okinawa, and within Okinawa, of the Yaeyama island group have necessitated the formation of a new regional identity for those islands at the southern end of the Japanese archipelago. Part of Japan and yet separate, Okinawa is hardly less homogeneous than Japan as a whole. Yaeyama’s history and pre-history, its geography and people set it apart from the islands to the north. Where once village and island formed cohesive communities with their own discrete, though related, identities, a

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loosening of community bonds on the village and island level has begun to dissolve those old selves. I have shown how Yaeyama’s postwar identity has come to be symbolized by a narrow, cotton, indigo-dyed sash. The invented tradition of the minsā legend provides authenticity to the new regional identity. During the years of the Occupation and following Okinawa’s Reversion to Japan, the people of Yaeyama expanded the commercial potential of the sash, transforming it from a utilitarian object once associated with the gentry class to a symbolic identity marker of the islands’ common people. At the same time, they transformed the sash from an object made entirely for personal consumption to a product for outside markets. In this role the sash has come to represent the region’s ‘simple island people’. These transformations may have been accompanied by the transference to the sash of meanings formerly associated with a scarf, another item made of cloth and gifted by women to men: a declaration of sexual passion and a token of protective spiritual power. The minsā legend, as recounted today, reflects the choice of the sash as a means of asserting the authenticity of Yaeyama identity, maintaining its hold on Japan’s southernmost periphery, and resisting assimilation into a broader Okinawan or Japanese entity. The creation of this island tradition demonstrates the fluidity of traditions and identities constructed from them. It contests Hobsbawm’s formulation that some traditions are not invented but genuine and unchanging (1983, 8). The case of Taketomi and Yaeyama gives substance to Linnekin, who broadens the concept of invented tradition to cultural invention and sees culture as an ongoing human construct (1991, 447). The people of Yaeyama have created a new legend, which I have shown to be an invented tradition, a narrative that relates the sash to an imagined past, providing authenticity for their new identity. Wearing the sash, they perform this identity in religious festivals and rituals, secular drama and dance, community celebrations, and in other situations in which they publicly present themselves – to themselves and others – as hard-working, simple and proud islanders, enacting their roles as people of Yaeyama. Since the Second World War, pushed by activists of the mingei movement, the Japanese government and the exigencies of tourism development, they have reinvented this simple sash, with its array of identities and rich histories, to represent themselves to themselves and others, as a symbol of their separateness. In reworked versions of community rituals, in the production and promotion of local products, and in stage performances, newly constructed cultural identities are without doubt being performed throughout Japan. In Yaeyama, these multivalent aspects of performing identity are tied together by a single indigo thread, called minsā.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Support from the Japan Foundation allowed me to pursue my research in Yaeyama for a year from 2000 to 2001; grants from the American Philosophical Society and Asian Cultural Council provided a two-month stay in Yaeyama in 1999, which made the basic research for this study possible. I am greatly indebted to the staff of the Yaeyama Museum, which offered the resources of the museum’s library and a place to work. I wish to offer my heartfelt thanks to the people of Yaeyama, who provided information, stories and opportunities to examine their family treasures. This paper includes material presented in Ishigaki, Okinawa, on 28 January 2001; at the Taketomi Kōminkan on 1 February 2001; at the International Conference on Okinawan Studies, Bonn, on 27 March 2002, and at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington, DC in April 2002. An extended study of the historical sources and brief discussion of identity issues appeared in Japanese (Stinchecum 2001; 2002). NOTES 1 For the full text of ‘Yūhiki’ as well as other core texts of the Tanedori festival, see Zenkoku Taketomi-jima Bunka Kyōkai (2003, 88–95). 2 Awa (setaria italica), kibi (panicum miliaceum), and hie (panicum crusgalli) (Makino 1940, 839, 834, 836). 3 Kerr’s (1958) history remains the most comprehensive and reliable account of the Ryūkyū Islands, although many parts of it have been superseded by more recent research. 4 In tracing the development of tourism on the main island of Okinawa from the 1950s, Gerald Figal emphasizes that the images portraying Okinawa represent a ‘tropical island paradise’, modelled on Hawai‘i and Taiwan by local government officials (Figal 2003). According to his account, it was not until the 1990s, with the reconstruction of the Seiden of Shuri Castle in 1992, that images used to promote tourism included markers of Ryūkyūan identity (15). 5 Narrow cotton sashes, originally woven on body-tension looms without a reed, have been made on the islands of Okinawa (Okinawa Bijutsu Zenshū Kankō Iinkai 1989, Pl. 114, 115) and Amami Ōshima (Ebara 1973, 267–268; Osada 1978, 16–17). (Amami Ōshima was once part of the Ryūkyū kingdom but was incorporated into Kagoshima prefecture when Japan annexed the monarchy.) The element of warp-faced warp ikat, however, occurs only in the Yaeyama sashes. The sashes woven on Okinawa island (made in Yomitan and Ishikawa) feature a pattern that employs a different technology and derives from different sources than ikat (Yanagi 1999).

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6 Interview with Kamei Natsu and the late Kamei Hōbun at their home on Taketomi, 22 January 2001; and Akamatsu Akashi at her home in Sumōnohara, 17 May 2000. 7 Two documents, one dated 1873 and the other 1876, refer to minsā in contexts associated with the gentry of Ishigaki (Dōji 12 nen jikensho 1873; Nosato 1876). We do not know whether the word, minsā, refers to what we know today as Yaeyama minsā (that is, an indigo-dyed, ikat-patterned, warp-faced narrow cotton sash), but a 1904 photograph clearly shows a young girl wearing a narrow, ikat-patterned sash of the Yonaguni type (Stinchecum 2001, Fig. 10). This is the earliest documentary evidence for what we call minsā today: a narrow, ikat-patterned sash. 8 For examples from various islands of Okinawa, see Okinawa Kyōiku Iinkai (1997, nos. 53, 167–168, 176–177, 204, 213, 236–241). 9 Although there are tīsāji in many museum and private collections, the only red ones I have seen are recent re-creations. 10 The first modern performance in Tokyo of Yaeyama music and dance took place on 30 October 1956, at Ōkuma Kōdō, Waseda University (Miyara 1980, 244–245). The president of Waseda University at that time was Ōhama Shingen, who was from Ishigaki. REFERENCES Allen, Matthew. 2002. Identity and resistance in Okinawa. Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield. Arai, Jun’ichi. 2000. Minsā de yume o tsukanda: teshigoto no mirai o mitsumete. Mingei 574: 10–13. Azamiya/Minsā Kōgeikan. 1992. Itsu no yo made mo. Ishigaki: Azamiya/Minsā Kōgeikan. Christy, Alan S. 1993. The making of imperial subjects in Okinawa. Positions 1(3): 607–639. Devine, Thomas M. 2000. Highlandism and Scottish identity. In The Scottish nation 1700–2000, edited by Thomas M. Devine. London: Penguin Books. Dōji 12 nen jikensho. 1873. Toyokawa-ke monjo. Ishigaki: Yaeyama Hakubutsukan. [Catalogued as binder volume 12.] Ebara, Yoshimori. 1973. Amami seikatsu shi. Mito: Mokujisha. Figal, Gerald. 2003. The battle of tropical Ryūkyū Kingdom tourist Okinawa. Paper presented at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, March 2003. Handler, Richard. 1986. Authenticity. Anthropology Today 2(1): 2–4. Hanson, Allan. 1991. Reply to Langdon, Levine, and Linnekin. American Anthropologist, new series; 93(2): 449–450.


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Hara, Tomoaki. 2000. Bōkai sareru aidenteitei: ‘Ryūkyū no kaze’ no seisaku to jūyō o megutte. In Minzoku bunka no genzai: Okinawa/ Yonaguni no ‘minzoku’ e no manazashi, by Hara Tomoaki. Tokyo: Dōseisha. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1983. Introduction: Inventing traditions. In The invention of tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Howell, David. 1994. Ainu ethnicity and boundaries of the early modern Japanese state. Past and Present 142: 69–93. Iha, Fuyū. 1973 [1938]. Onarigami no shima. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Ishigaki, Akiko. 1993. Taketomi minsā o mamorisodateta hitobito. In Yaeyama minsā: Minsā no rekishi to ori/some, edited by Yaeyama Minsā Kirokushi oyobi Kiroku Fuirumu Sakusei Iinkai. Taketomi: Taketomi-chō Orimono Jigyō Kyōdō Kumiai. Johnson, Chalmers. 2001. Okinawa between the United States and Japan. In Ryukyu in world history, edited by Josef Kreiner. Bonn: Bier’sche Verlagsanstalt. Jorgensen, Dan. 1996. Regional history and ethnic identity in the hub of New Guinea: The emergence of the Min. Oceania 66(3): 189–205. Karimata, Keiichi. 1999. Nantō kayō no kenkyū. Fujisawa: Mizuki Shobō. Kerr, George H. 1958. Okinawa: The history of an island people. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle. Linnekin, Jocelyn. 1991. Cultural invention and the dilemma of authenticity. American Anthropologist, new series, 93(2): 446–449. Makino, Tomitarō. 1940. An illustrated flora of Nippon, with the cultivated and naturalized plants. Tokyo: Hokuryūkan. Miyagi, Fumi. 1972. Yaeyama seikatsushi. Naha: Okinawa Taimususha. Miyara, Tōsei. 1906. Hōkoku; ryūshitsuhin torishirabesho. Miyara Dunchi monjo, hitsuyō shoruishū (112–113). Unpublished documents held at Ryūkyū Daigaku Fuzoku Toshokan. Miyara, Tōsō [Miyanaga Masamori]. 1980. Miyara Tōshō zenshū. Vol. 12. Tokyo: Daiichi Shobō. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 1998. Re-inventing Japan: Time, space, nation. London: M. E. Sharpe. ——. 2001. Northern Lights: The making and unmaking of Karafuto identity. The Journal of Asian Studies 60(3): 645–671. New York Times. 2003. Japan: US marine pleads guilty to rape. World Briefing, July 25: A6. Nosato, Niya 1876. Nedoshi sōyokome Hirae Shuri Ufuyaku jōkoku no toki danna onkata e shinjōbutsu kubarichō. In Toyokawa-ke monjo 1, edited by Ishigaki-shi Henshū Iinkai. Ishigaki shishi Yaeyama shiryōshū 2. Ishigaki: Ishigaki-shi.

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Okinawa Bijutsu Zenshū Kankō Iinkai, ed. 1989. Okinawa bijutsu zenshū 3: Senshoku. Naha: Okinawa Taimusu-sha. Okinawa Kyōiku Iinkai, ed. 1997. Okinawa no senshoku (1): Senshokuhin hen. Naha: Okinawa Kenritsu Hakubutsukan Tomonokai. Osada, Suma. 1978. Amami josei shi. Ningen sensho 13. Toyama Gyoson Bunka Kyōkai. Ōshiro, Shizuko. 1983. Tīsāji. In Okinawa daihyakka jiten, chūkan, edited by Okinawa Daihyakka Jiten Henshū Jimukyoku. Naha: Okinawa Taimusu. Ōta, Yoshinobu. 1991. Cultural authenticity as entropic metanarrative: a Case from Ryukyuan studies. Central Issues in Anthropology 9: 87–98. ——. 1998. Bunka no kyakutaika. Part 2 in Toransupojishon no shisō: bunka jinruigaku no saisōzō. Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha. Salemink, Oscar. 2003. Ritual into festival; pilgrimage into tourism: Re-fashioning ritual and tradition in Vietnam. Paper presented at symposium, Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind and Spirit. American Museum of Natural History, New York, March 22–23. Schechner, Richard. 2003. Performance theory. New York: Routledge Classics. Smits, Gregory. 1999. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and ideology in Early-Modern thought and politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i. ——. 2002. The politics of culture in early 20th century Okinawa. Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Okinawan Studies, Bonn University. Stinchecum, Amanda Mayer. 2001. Minsā obi/kagan nu bu: Yaeyama tategasuri momen hoso-obi no zenshi josetsu (jō). Yaeyama Hakubutsukan kiyō 18: 1–19. ——. 2002. Minsā obi/kagan nu bu: Yaeyama tategasuri momen hoso-obi no zenshi josetsu (ge). Yaeyama Hakubutsukan kiyō 19: 1–53. Trevor-Roper, Hugh. 1983. The invention of tradition: The Highland tradition of Scotland. In The invention of tradition, edited by Hobsbawm and Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Uesedo, Tōru. 1976. Taketomi shimashi: Minwa/minzoku hen. Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku. Vlastos, Stephen. 1998. Tradition: Past/present culture and modern Japanese history. In Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wigen, Kären. 1998. Constructing Shinano: The invention of a neo-traditional region. In Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yaeyama Minsā Kiroku Shi oyobi Kiroku Fuirumu Sakusei Iinkai. 1993. Yaeyama minsā: Minsā no rekishi to ori/some. Taketomi: Taketomi-chō Orimono Jigyō Kyōdō Kumiai. Yaeyama Yakusho, comp. Sasamori Gisuke. 1894 [unpublished manuscript]. Okinawa-ken guntō no uchi Yaeyamajima no bu, Ishokujū heijō no jissai ni


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tsuki jōchūge wo kubetsu torishiraburu koto. Kanagawa Daigaku Jōmin Bunka Kenkyūjo. Yanagi, Yoshikuni. 1999. Okinawa de Amami o kangaeru kai. 5 (13 February). Zenkoku Taketomi-jima Bunka Kyōkai, ed. 2003. Geinō no gen fūkei: Okinawaken Taketomi-jima no Tanedori-sai daihon shū. 2nd ed. Fujisawa-shi: Mizuki Shobō.

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Recontextualizing Eisa-: Transformations in Religious, Competition, Festival and Tourism Contexts 1

Henry Johnson

❖ isā is a dance with accompanying music that has a recognized traditional context in an annual Okinawan Buddhist ritual. In many contexts it has dynamic body movements, percussive accompaniment and colourful costuming, which provide a decidedly visible and audible spectacle through performance (Plate 22). Eisā can include lines of drummerdancers who often perform stylized movements in an almost acrobatic way; its drums provide a percussive thundering of sound; its string instruments generate a characteristically Okinawan syncopated soundscape; and its costuming includes bright colours on quasi-traditional attire that is designed to catch the eye. Eisā provides a highly choreographed display of movement, sound and sight with dancer-musicians displaying a distinct emblem of local culture that has captured the local and national imagination. It is not only a dance form through which aspects of Okinawan culture are performed, but also one that represents part of the complexity of Japanese identity. Over the last half century, however, eisā has been recontextualized in competition, festival and tourist contexts. While focusing on these contexts and the processes of cultural transformation, a study of this particular performing art in its traditional and contemporary settings can provide insight into Okinawan identity construction. The specific ethnographic focus of this study is Okinawa, one of Japan’s southwest islands (Ryūkyū rettō or Nansei shotō). The term ‘Okinawa’

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has several identities (Plate 23). It is a Japanese prefecture of 161 subtropical islands;2 it is the largest island of that prefecture; it is a city on that island; and it was once part of the Ryūkyū Kingdom – in this discussion the term ‘Okinawa’ refers primarily to the island unless otherwise indicated. Stretching about 1,320 km from Japan’s largest southwestern island of Kyūshū to very close to Taiwan, the Ryūkyū islands are usually subdivided into four groupings. From northeast to southwest they are Amami Ōshima, Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama. Okinawa prefecture comprises the last three groupings and has a population of around 1.3 million. The Ryūkyū Kingdom was established in the fifteenth century and provided a link between China and Japan (Table 1). It had a close relationship with China, from which much Okinawan culture has been influenced, and from the early seventeenth century experienced turbulent relations with Japan: the Kingdom’s autonomy was challenged in 1609 when the Satsuma clan of Kyūshū invaded; the Meiji government replaced the Kingdom with Okinawa prefecture in 1879; and the United States of America occupied the islands from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until 1972. Okinawa now has a distinct place within the Japanese nation-state in terms of its history, geographic location and culture. Using a paradigm of multicultural Japan (Sugimoto 1997; cf. Dale 1986), Okinawa has many cultural traits that are seen as unique vis-à-vis mainland culture, and is sometimes viewed as a geographic and cultural ‘other’ within the nation-state.3 For example, the Okinawan language is related to Japanese, but is so distinct and unique that most Japanese would not understand it (there are also several dialects within Okinawa itself ); there are many types of cuisine unique to the prefecture; and there are numerous performing arts (old and new) that are specifically located there. Table 1 Periodization of Ryūkyūan/Okinawan History (after Taira 1997, 141) Period

Dates

Prehistory Proto-history Three kingdoms The Ryūkyū kingdom Dual subordination Okinawa prefecture (I) US occupation Okinawa prefecture (II)

40,000 BC – AD 1000 AD 1000–1310 AD 1310–1429 1429–1609 1609–1879 1879–1945 1945–1972 1972 to present

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Now known mainly as a tourist destination, as well as for the US military bases that have been present since the end of US occupation, the islands have a rich cultural heritage that are often celebrated with pride through cultural display within the tourist industry. Okinawa is well positioned as a tourist destination with a subtropical paradise setting, although Okinawans are also linked to minority and human rights issues in that there is a history of discrimination in the wider Japanese social setting (De Vos and Wetherall 1983; see also Allen 2002; Hein and Selden 2003; Smits 1999). Today, Okinawa holds a somewhat paradoxical place in the Japanese nation-state in that its culture is celebrated in a culture of difference, but that difference is also sometimes negated with antipathy. Writing in a special issue of Critical Asian Studies, Hein (2001, 32) noted that ‘the last decade has been an unusually active moment for the reconstruction of Okinawan identity. Nor does that activity seem to be diminishing.’ Indeed, this activity is especially visible in the performing arts where symbols of Okinawan identity have taken on a whole new meaning. As a prefecture on the periphery of the Japanese nation-state (geographically and culturally), Okinawan performing arts hold a unique position: they represent a distinct regional identity, but are sometimes seen as an ‘other’ in the broader context of the Japanese nation. Their study can show how culture can be marginalized yet celebrated within a notion of difference that is both an ‘other’ and part of one’s own national setting. Drawing from field research and secondary sources, I show that in Okinawa there is a heightened awareness of performing identity where traditional modes of performance are transformed and recontextualized in the tourist industry, but also in related spheres that consume Okinawan culture as a kind of ethnic ‘other’. There are, of course, numerous performing arts on Okinawa, old and new, and this discussion focuses on one type, albeit a highly significant one for Okinawans. Studies of touristic sites, to use the notion in its broadest sense, whether ‘away from home’, ‘at home’, ‘virtual’ (DeWitt 1999a, 73), or ‘sonic’ (Taylor 1997, 19), have the potential to identify and understand convergences and tensions between such binary notions as traditional/modern, private/public, authentic/inauthentic, sacred/secular, centre/periphery and local/global. Without dwelling too much on essentialist categories of difference, these dualisms and others do help, for now, to foreground opposite ends of continua that are often found as a result of the influences of tourism, as well as other spheres resulting in the recontextualization and cultural transformation of traditional culture. The increased flows of local and global tourism have had a profound influence on the performing arts, especially music and dance (Gibson and


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Connell 2005). The impact of tourism on the content, context and reception of the performing arts of many cultures is a phenomenon that has received some scholarly attention among researchers in a variety of fields (e.g. Abram 1997; Atkinson 1997; Cohen 1997; Cunningham 1998; DeWitt 1999a, 1999b; Gibson and Connell 2005; International Council for Traditional Music 1988; Rotenstein 1992; Sarkissian 1998; Stokes 1999; Sweet 1981; Talamantes 2004; Tatar 1987; Thornbury 1997; cf. Kirshemblatt-Gimblett 1998; Mendoza 2000; Smith 1989; Smith and Brent 2001; Urry 1990). Nevertheless, scholarly discourse in this area of study is relatively small in comparison to the size of the tourism industry, and does not reflect either the ever-growing sphere of tourism production and consumption, nor the impact tourism has had on creating contexts for the display of real or imagined cultural identity through the performing arts.4 Some of the ideas presented herein also relate to what Schechner (1985) in his study of the anthropology of performance terms ‘restored behaviour’. Some performances, especially those that are typically prevalent in touristic contexts relate very closely with this notion, where ‘the original “truth” or “source” of the behaviour may be lost, ignored or contradicted – even while this truth or source is apparently being honoured and observed’ (Schechner 1985, 35). But with some of the recontextualized spheres of performance the source is not always explicitly acknowledged, but, rather, is implicit as one symbol of Okinawan cultural identity. While building on these and other discourses, this study provides a case study of the transformations of one performing art specific to a distinct local region. Since the 1950s, eisā has been transformed in several ways. For example, it has been recontextualized into a competition context, and even presented in tourist contexts and neo-traditional music. By the 1990s it was described as ‘a traditional Okinawan dance form recently resurging in popularity’ (Okaze 1992, 1). It seems that the changes that took place since the mid1950s were ones that had a profound impact on eisā in many ways. Why, one might ask, has eisā become so popular? Where has it been recontextualized? How have transformations taken place? These questions and others are explored in this discussion with the aim of showing the significance of eisā in the construction of contemporary Okinawan identity. A basic deconstruction of the concept ‘traditional performing arts’ points to a notion vis-à-vis that which is perceived not to be traditional (and vice-versa). This was perhaps epitomized in the early years of ethnographic studies, which so often focused on the traditional as a construct linked to ideas of an authentic culture where the old was usually foregrounded in studies that presented histories and descriptions of a culture and seldom touched on the contemporary. Times have certainly changed,

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but ideas of a perceived traditional culture that acts as a mediator between the past and the present seem to exist in increasing contexts with sitespecific instances of symbols of a real or imagined past acting as forceful signifiers of contemporary cultural practices, seemingly in search of a modern identity. Touristic sites that showcase the performing arts are one example; and eisā is a case in point that is especially visible in one of Japan’s peripheral regions. Before embarking on a study of eisā in its various performance sites, it is necessary to acknowledge two assumptions that underpin this discussion. The first relates to culture change; the second to perceptions of that change. Notions of so-called traditional culture vis-à-vis contemporary culture provide contradistinctions that do much to imply that traditional culture exists in a vacuum with no or very little change. It is important to recognize that culture changes, but people are sometimes not always cognizant of that change, either in terms of its scope or its importance. Cultural artifacts might vary in form across time and gradually or quickly include new elements, but such changes might not be readily acknowledged as differing from early structures. In other words, something that might be called tradition (dentō) could be a recently invented, modified or even transformed tradition (cf. Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Vlastos 1998). This chapter focuses on the context of eisā rather than on its content. It divides into three main areas, each of which looks at a distinct eisā setting. The first focuses on eisā’s traditional ritual context at an annual Buddhist celebration; the second shows two of eisā’s recontextualizations, in competition and festival settings; and the third centres on eisā and tourism, especially the transformation of this performing art for tourists at theme parks. The aim of the discussion is to show the movement of eisā from sacred to secular contexts, and to illustrate how the genre has significance today as a marker of cultural identity for Okinawans and other Japanese alike. RELIGIOUS CONTEXT

The term ‘eisā’ is thought to originate from the vocal utterances (hayashi) that are found in eisā chants (e.g. ‘iya sāsā’), and the dance form is believed to derive from nenbutsu odori (Buddhist dance), which was transmitted to Okinawa from other parts of Japan and still shows some similarities with it (Okaze 1992, 22). Nenbutsu odori was possibly synchronized with the local dances shinugu and usudēku of men and women respectively to form eisā (Okaze 1992, 24), the new form mainly being performed by men. The traditional context in which eisā is found is during the Buddhist Bon festival (also known as O-bon or Urabon; U-bun in Okinawan). While


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Buddhism was introduced to Okinawa towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was not embraced by the ruling class until the seventeenth century (Combs 1980, 22).5 In its religious context, eisā has significance in that it is understood to awaken the deceased ancestors, to console them, and to dispel bad spirits. It is in this sphere that eisā has its ‘source’ or ‘truth’, to reiterate the ideas of Schechner (1985, 35). In this context, as well as this sacred function, it also has secular functions, which ‘run the gamut from themes of daily life, occupations, seasons, male and female relationships, social relationships, as well as recreational activities, and cultural-ethnic identity’ (Combs 1979, 94). An eisā ensemble consists of male and/or female dancers accompanied by several instruments, vocal utterances and whistling (there are women’s groups, men’s groups and mixed gender groups). Also, the group is sometimes accompanied by a comical character (chondarā), and flags and banners might be held by some of the performers. Some performers play ōdaiko (individual double-skin barrel drum) or shimedaiko (individual double-skin frame drum with tension ligature) while dancing, and others perform hand dances (tīmōi). Historically, men usually dominated eisā performance. Changes to the make-up of the groups are the direct result of the Second World War when ‘there were not enough men to perform the flag (zei) dances and the drum (parang-ku [pārankū]) dances which comprise eisa, so the young women were allowed to participate’ (Combs 1980, 21). Other instruments found in eisā settings include yotsudake (castanets), pārankū (single-headed frame drum) and sanshin (three-string lute).6 Some groups use pre-recorded music, or a combination of live and recorded music. Eisā is often classified into several distinct types (Plate 24). In terms of its national connection it is seen as a type of Buddhist ritual known as Bon odori (Bon dance), which in Okinawa is called U-bun udui (see Combs 1979; 1980).7 Bon, which is sometimes referred to as the ‘Festival for the Dead’, is celebrated for three days in the summer on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar and is the time when the souls of ancestors return to the living world.8 It is an especially affecting time of the year and an occasion for family reunion and visits to the tombs of dead ancestors. Historically, Bon was linked to the tanabata star festival, which now falls on 7 July, when living relatives of dead family members visited graves to tidy them up and to let the dead ancestors know that Bon was near (Okaze 1992, 20). Today, the festival in Okinawa is usually celebrated in August due to adoption of the solar calendar. There are many regional varieties of Bon odori all over Japan, each with its own distinct dances (Bon odori), songs (Bon uta, Bon odori uta), rituals and public entertainment, but

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one well-known aspect of it is the dancing around a yagura stage to the sounds of festival music, the musicians of which are often housed on the stage itself. Likewise, there are numerous types of eisā in Okinawa and other Ryūkyū islands (Kobayashi 1984). The first day of the Okinawan Bon festival is known as unkē (welcome). On this day, family members visit the tombs of ancestors. On the next day (naka nē hi), torches or lanterns are usually lit outside the family house and food may be especially prepared and displayed on the family altar. Once the spirits have started to return to their tomb on the first day, eisā is performed for the spirits and for the local community. Communities usually divide into groups to perform eisā while moving from house to house, when the onlookers pay their respects to the dead by making offerings of food and wine (Combs 1980, 18). Eisā festivities normally continue in the evening and might go on through the night. A smaller group might dance in a circle formation, while a larger group might dance in line formation. Likewise, a smaller group might perform for one night only, while a larger group might perform over the three nights. On the last day, which is known as ūkui (sendoff), eisā might be performed in the local community at a sacred place as a public event. In other words, on this occasion the music and dance is for the living rather than the dead. Various songs and dances might be included, such as Okinawan eisā dances, Japanese Bon dances and folk songs, some of which are considered old, others more recent. Those participating in eisā during the Bon festival usually don traditional attire consisting of summer wear such as yukata (cotton kimono), obi (waist sash) and zōri (straw or rubber slippers) or geta (wooden clogs). In Okinawa, there are two main kinds of dance found at the Bon festival: eisā, which is understood as a traditional Okinawan dance, and the Japanese version of it, Bon odori, which is seen as a type of dance that has been borrowed from mainland Japan. (Even so, the term Bon odori is sometimes used to refer broadly to all dances performed at the festival.) Each type of dance has been indigenized, and the dance forms vary considerably across Okinawa. Yet the dances performed at the Bon festival have distinct characteristics that help give them an Okinawan identity vis-à-vis dances at the same festival at other Japanese localities. With regard to eisā, as a dance form that has unique Okinawan characteristics, it is a style that is nowadays often very energetic, requiring considerable physical and emotional strength. While regional identity is reinforced in the categorization of eisā, which is usually prefixed by the name of the region from which the style originates, two broad types are usually differentiated: taiko odori, which consists of dances to drum accompaniment; and teodori, which are hand dances without the drums and known mostly around the northern part of


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Okinawa. Some performance groups perform one type, and others both types. Taiko odori itself divides into two kinds: agi eisā (rural eisā) and katchin eisā (eisā of the Katsuren region). Agi eisā, which includes dances to drum accompaniment and teodori, has its origins in the central part of Okinawa, around Okinawa city (before 1974 it was called Koza), and its accompanying instruments include held ōdaiko and held shimedaiko. Katchin eisā, which is accompanied by the pārankū and/or shimedaiko, is performed especially by the Heshikiya, Henna, Yakena and Akano eisā groups to the east of Okinawa city in the Katsuren region (see further Kobayashi 1984; Okaze 1992, 27–28). The development of eisā might be viewed in three stages: (1) introduction of nenbutsu odori from mainland Japan; (2) merging with local dance forms; and (3) developing its own characteristics while maintaining some of its influences (Okaze 1992, 25; see also Watanabe 1990, 214–215, in Okaze 1992, 25): In modern society, eisā is sometimes performed to the accompaniment of modern versions of the older songs from each period, as well as to new songs which replace the old ones. As eisā developed, the entertainment element became increasingly emphasized while the religious and ritualistic elements often became less important. (Okaze 1992, 25)

What this shows is that eisā is both a traditional and modern form. It has a powerful association with the traditional performing arts in a religious context, but has clearly been influenced by other factors, ones that have moulded its contemporary styles in this same context. One of the interesting ideas underlying the notion of traditional eisā is that it is actually understood to have included new songs after the Meiji Restoration of 1848 (Aoyama 1989, 40, in Okaze 1992, 24–25). The Meiji era (1868–1912) was a time of rapid and quite radical change across many spheres of Japanese society and culture. It was a period of phenomenally quick modernization, industrialization and Westernization, changes that would affect all Japanese in one way or another. COMPETITION

In connection with the roots of the rise in popularity of eisā, political influence of tradition has been of paramount importance. A dramatic change in the performing context of eisā occurred in 1956 with the founding of an eisā competition, which resulted in the recontextualization of the ritual performance into a secular space. The Koza government founded the Okinawa Zentō Eisā Konkūrū (Okinawa Island-Wide Eisā Contest: hereafter

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OIWEC) ‘in order to celebrate the birth of Koza’ (Okaze 1992, 37), which in its first year attracted around 30,000 spectators.9 The founding of an eisā contest was a result of the local government wanting ‘to inspire cultural identity in Okinawan people in order to promote community morale’ (Okaze 1992, 37).10 The contest, which ran each year from 1956 to 1977, was always held after the August Bon festival. In 1977, however, the competition became an annual festival, Okinawa Zentō Eisā Matsuri (Okinawa Island-Wide Eisā Festival: hereafter OIWEF) in response to dissatisfaction regarding the rules and the placement of a folk performing art into a competition context (Okaze 1992, 43).11 Like OIWEC, OIWEF has been an annual event and falls on the first Sunday after Bon. It is held at the City Sports Park (Sōgō Undō Kōen) in Koza and runs from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. At first, the Koza government sponsored the event, but from 1963 the local newspaper, Ryūkyū Shinpō, was the main sponsor of the event. The newspaper helped significantly in publicizing the event and helped it become more popular, and since 1982, OTV (Okinawa Television) became the main sponsor (Okaze 1992, 42–44). Many other sponsors now support OIWEF, which is accompanied by a variety of merchandising and advertising. Such is the popularity of the festival that it is now run concurrently on the same site as the Orion Beer Fest (Orion Bia Fesuta). Most of the groups participating in the festival come from the central part of Okinawa (around Koza), and involvement is by invitation only. The organizing committee selects the groups that will perform, a process not based on audition. About seven groups normally participate each year, some performing regularly, some invited to attend from other parts of Japan, and some from outside Japan.12 Some groups participating in OIWEF perform in the streets outside the City Sports Park in order to create a festival atmosphere, where they showcase their performance of the Bon festival. The performances at the festival are characterized by music, song and vocal utterances, movement, and costume (see Okaze 1992). The eisā troupes performing at the festival will include a range of pieces, which might include instrumental sanshin music, dances with accompanying music that are performed in group formations and folk songs (see Combs 1980, 19). Each group is required to have over fifty members, and must perform for thirty minutes (Okaze 1992, 43). Public eisā performances such as OIWEF usually end with a kachāshī (literally ‘mixing up’) dance, which is improvisatory and usually has audience participation, an aspect that makes the audience performers too. This is a fast impromptu dance that stresses stamping foot movements and hand gestures, and is nowadays performed at all kinds of events all over Okinawa for entertainment. The kachāshī, which has a fast syncopated rhythm, is an


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important part of many Okinawan celebrations and is often performed as a signal to indicate the close of festivities, such as a wedding or even a funeral. It is a standard and expected piece that is used to close OIWEF. The song ‘Tōshindōi’ uses the kachāshī rhythm and is usually performed at the end of this event. In comparison to the ritual event there has clearly been a change in performance practice at OIWEF. As well as regulating the size of the eisā troupe, formation and dance composition were introduced, which saw the contestants developing new dances to fit the rules (Okaze 1992, 40). Modern songs too are part of the event. Even regarding the appearance of the performers, costuming has become more elaborate in the competition over the years (Okaze 1992, 29, 40). ‘The main thrust of eisa is its appeal as a visual performance, via human movement, rhythm, music, colourful costume and staged field formations’ (Combs 1980, 19). The establishment of OIWEC in 1956 and its development into OIWEF helped in the invention of eisā traditions in many parts of the island. Eisā troupes gradually spread to many places. At first, the competition was split into two divisions. One was an all-round event in which any troupe could participate; the other was a well-defined competition. In this division each troupe had to demonstrate a performance plan, costumes and role for each member. It was from this competition that eisā was transformed from a Bon dance over three days in the summer to an event that is now enacted in front of spectators and fans. The OIWEC and OIWEF contexts help divide eisā into a sacred/secular dichotomy, at least in terms of the meaning of the performance. OIWEC and OIWEF have transformed this traditional Okinawan performing art from a religious context to one of secular celebration that has even invented its own traditions. As Okaze has commented, the festival has ‘changed the way eisā is performed today, benefitted the economy of the local area, established and further developed the eisā tradition in central Okinawa, and has given Okinawans an opportunity to learn their culture’ (Okaze 1992, iv). The popularity, growth and significance of the contest, especially among a younger generation of performers, might be viewed as reflecting the importance given to Okinawan heritage by Okinawans. The contest was founded at an appropriate time, one that saw the rebuilding of a local identity during the reconstruction of Japan after the Second World War, and was an important vehicle for young people to express themselves through performance. ‘It seems that the eisā dance as a part of culture plays a significant role in symbolizing the cultural heritage of Okinawa’ (Okaze 1992, 188). Since its foundation in 1956, OIWEC (and later OIWEF) has been pivotal in popularizing eisā in contemporary Okinawan society. Nowadays,

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the festival usually attracts around 200,000 spectators, which represents about one-sixth of Okinawa’s population (Okaze 1992, 1). Since 1987, there has even been a pre-festival event held the day before, which is primarily for groups not participating in the main event. Also, eisā is part of the local educational curriculum, where it is included in physical education. As the Okinawan Prefectural Board of Education (Okinawa-ken Kyōkiku Iinkai) explains, ‘there are two advantages to teaching eisā; it is good exercise, and teaching it helps perpetuate the traditional Okinawan performing arts’ (in Okaze 1992, 29–30). Other changes that are a result of OIWEC and OIWEF include a breakdown in the gender distinctions of particular groups. For example, young men would traditionally play drums while dancing and women would perform hand dances, although such gender distinctions are usually no longer maintained. Eisā was traditionally performed by men as a work dance, but is now showcased in an annual festival. Also, eisā was once considered a dance for older people, but nowadays is a dance of younger people, especially amateur members of youth groups (seinenkai), perhaps relating to the extreme physical requirements that have developed. However, groups such as Yona Eisā and Senbaru Eisā are restricted to women and men respectively. For the performers in Yona Eisā, which comes from Kunigami village in northern Okinawa, women in the village held the authority to oversee religious affairs, and hence maintain the important position of performing eisā during the Bon festival. EISĀ UNDER THE TOURIST GAZE

As a type of performance that has its roots in traditional Okinawan culture, eisā epitomizes some of the ways that the music and dance of this part of Japan have been transformed and recontextualized as a result of tourism and related commercial endeavours. Eisā is simultaneously traditional and modern. It exists in traditional ritualistic contexts, and in contemporary spheres where it has the ability to create culture in the form of its own new traditions. In each of these contexts, eisā is performed as an emblem of Okinawan culture where its existence is contested within a space that maintains tradition on the one hand yet invents it on the other.13 While there are numerous local eisā festivals held throughout July and August, representing the different dates of Bon (either according to the solar or lunar calendar), there are several other eisā festivals that should be noted due to the impact they have had in celebrating and popularizing the dance form in events and recontextualized settings. These, like OIWEC and OIWEF, attract many tourists and have a primary function of display


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and celebration. Such larger events, which are mostly media spectacles established within the last few decades that are widely publicized, include Zenkoku Eisā Fesutibaru (Island-Wide Eisā Festival), Seinen Furusato Eisā Matsuri (Youth Hometown Eisā Festival), Zen-Okinawa Kodomo Eisā Matsuri (Okinawa Island-Wide Children’s Eisā Festival) and Ichiman Eisā (10,000 Eisa Dance Parade).14 Ichiman Eisā, for example, consists of a dynamic and extremely colourful parade along the main commercial street of the capital Naha, Kokusai dōri (‘International street’), and is part of a weeklong event celebrating eisā. The finale is a parade that showcases many eisā styles, old and new, and the performers include an array of young and old, men and women alike. Some modern-day eisā troupes are referred to as festive or creative eisā (sōsaku eisā) in that they often perform on many festive occasions throughout the year in addition to the Bon festival.15 For example, the group Naha Daiko was established as recently as 1997 and has an educational objective of introducing Ryūkyū culture to others. Another group, Kajimai, combines eisā with traditional Okinawan stick weaponry (sai or nunchaku) and includes the lion dance to enhance its performances. The group Naha Kogane Daiko comprises mainly women and uses local drums such as pārankū in its performance. The Sonda group (Sonda Seinen-kai), which includes men and women, is also well known and is based in Okinawa city. It performs regularly at OIWEF with up to ninety performers at one time. Another group, Ryūkyū Koku Matsuri Daiko, which was formed in 1982, was partly responsible for the eisā boom of recent decades. The group includes men and women and each dancer performs with a drum. This group, which has a membership of over 2,000, is well known throughout Japan and even has branches overseas. The group regularly performs internationally, even playing at Carnegie Hall in New York. They have incorporated the lion dance and Western-influenced music into their performances in order to extend their interpretation of eisā. Such is their status in Okinawa they have been invited to perform at OIWEF every year since they formed. In addition to creative eisā, there are other contemporary contexts where eisā has been placed that help show its significance as a traditional Okinawan dance style and emblem of Okinawan cultural identity. The tourist theme park is a place that nowadays uses eisā as a way of showcasing an aspect of Okinawan traditional culture. This context performs Okinawan identity in a commercial setting for visitors (locals, Japanese and others) in order for them to experience an aspect of traditional Okinawan life. In these contexts, identity is often portrayed, traditional cultural images are frequently displayed and consumed, and tourists

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leave with what they believe to be representative examples of traditional culture. There are many sites within the tourist industry where Okinawan performing arts are displayed. As well as hotels, restaurants and shows, there are theme parks. As a space that combines a variety of entertainments, it is a place that is a context of significant tourist consumption. In Okinawa, as in other parts of Japan, there are many theme parks or similar touristic sites that celebrate local culture, including local cultural centres, museums, galleries, castles and hometown halls (furusato kan), as well as larger sites that take on a specific theme. Just like many other places throughout Japan, local cultural centres, or sites for cultural display, usually showcase local culture. Theme parks exist in many guises (Hendry 2000; Raz 1999). There are parks based on such themes as fantasy, history, culture, wildlife and the environment. These and related tourist sites provide physically capable and extremely relevant places to see and attempt to understand how a culture represents itself.16 Most exist as part of an ever-increasing tourist industry, where locals and others participate in a well-defined space in the organized consumption of ancient and/or recent heritage. The performing arts are often placed in these contexts as a way of representing the culture or place in which the theme park is located, and eisā is one example of a traditional Okinawan performing art that has a local significance to be represented in such a context.17 With regard to the larger Okinawan theme parks, several are designed specifically to re-live an Okinawan historical past. For example, Oceanic Culture Hall (Kaiyō Bunkakan) has a Native Okinawan Village (Okinawa Kyōdo Mura) within it, as well as a theatre showcasing songs and drama of the South Pacific. Also, the attraction Murasaki Mura (Murasaki Village) in Yomitan village relives the street atmosphere of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. At the latter there is even a place where visitors can make a tin-can sanshin (kankara sanshin). The theme park Ryūkyū Mura (Ryūkyū Village) in Onna Village has a focus on the traditional arts and crafts of Okinawa. Ryūkyū Mura attempts to recreate an authentic Okinawan village during the time of the Ryūkyū kingdom, and music and dance is showcased throughout the day.18 One theme park that deserves focused discussion is Okinawa Wārudo (Okinawa World), which is also known in English as Culture Kingdom Gyokusendō and Gyokusendō Kingdom Village (hereafter Gyokusendō).19 I will now discuss this theme park within and across two distinct spheres: organization (space); and the onstage performance of identity. Gyokusendō is the largest theme park in Okinawa prefecture. Set in Tamagusuku village at the south of the island, it is a theme park about


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Okinawan culture. One of its main attractions is a large limestone cave discovered in 1967. It is about 5 km in length with spectacular stalagmites and stalactites, but it also has a crafts village, snake museum, many shops selling local produce, restaurant, brewery, pottery, glass blowing and several exhibitions. There are also two contexts where Okinawan performing arts are put on display: one is a small building that houses a sanshin maker within a traditional musical instrument shop; and the other is a place where eisā is performed for the visitors. The instrumentmaker is showcased as a type of performer that is displaying an important part of the local culture. On display at the shop are sanshin, kankara sanshin and several types of local drums (e.g. pārankū). As with many other modern-day theme parks, Gyokusendō controls its environment in terms of what is provided for people to see. This control of space relates to the idea of post-tourism (Feifer 1986; Ritzer and Liska 1997), a place that provides a predictable site and has been modelled on the needs of tourists. Such a context is ‘a space inscribed with meanings enacted by tourists drawing on culturally and socially constituted discourses’ (Bærenholdt et al. 2004, 68). Both the sanshin shop and the eisā display provide points of inbetweenness, something that is staged in a perceived authentic way for the visitor, yet is recontextualized from its acknowledged original setting. Nevertheless, the context itself has actually done much to perpetuate traditional culture as a constructed place that performs symbols of Okinawa, becoming a space where such emblems of cultural identity are expected to be performed. Gyokusendō’s advertising brochures are replete with images of their eisā group, depicted in full costume, playing large drums and in a dynamic performance mode. Indeed, the eisā show is given prominence at the theme park, with four daily performances in a large partly covered performance space, one that is designed to attract onlookers due to the visual appearance of the performers and the dynamic sounds they put on display. This particular show includes eisā, lion dancing (shishi-mai), sanshin, folk songs and sanba (castanets). It is billed as having lively performances, and there are also CDs and videos of the show available for purchase. The eisā show is entitled ‘Sūpā Eisā’ (Super Eisā) and features the group called Mafekaji. As research sites, theme parks are distinct physical spaces that have cultural display at their core. Unlike many theme parks throughout Japan that emphasize international or non-Japanese culture, Gyokusendō portrays the local, albeit it is a local that is somewhat exoticized and showcased in terms of its cultural difference. Gyokusendō recreates a perceived traditional Okinawan lifestyle, and showcases through the performing arts representative examples of music and dance. This theme park is one example where

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two music themes are present that serve to stand for aspects of traditional Okinawa. While quite different in form to the Disney experience, there is fantasy in these theme parks: reliving an idealized historical Okinawan experience. In such an experience a nostalgic longing for the past might be linked to the notion of furusato (hometown) (see Robertson 1989; 1995). As well as a space of leisure and consumption, it is a site of nostalgia for traditional Okinawa – the consumption of one area of traditional Japan. For the visitor, it might be difficult during a short stay on the island to visit a sanshin maker or see an eisā performance, especially since the religious and secular events are held at certain times of the year. Seeing both of these symbols of Okinawan identity at the theme park allows the visitor to enter a (fantasy) world where the experience of Okinawa can be consumed the whole year round. When Hendry (2000, 1–18) talks of ‘going abroad at home’ in connection with travel in Japan, it must be stressed that in the case of Japanese visitors to Okinawa, who are by far the majority of tourists there, consuming Okinawan identity in a theme park is both going abroad and staying at home. Okinawa is one of Japan’s ‘others’, and it is well positioned in the nation-state as an ‘other’ that is both close to home and distant.20 CLOSING THOUGHTS

This study has explored three spheres of eisā performance in Okinawa: at its religious context during the Buddhist Bon festival; at the competition and annual festival; and at theme parks and related touristic sites. While there are other places where eisā might be studied (locally, nationally and internationally), each of the settings discussed here helps to show a distinct place and use of eisā, especially with regard to notions of authenticity, recontextualization and transformation.21 It is in each of these contexts that eisā is displayed as a symbol that represents Okinawan culture. It is not only integral to a localized ritual, but it has an ability to travel across cultural settings, either maintaining or changing form, but transforming meaning. Its propensity to travel shows how it can have intense effect as an emblem of local culture and identity through its display and consumption in many places. As Schechner (1985, 16) points out in connection with changing performances in touristic contexts, one of the things that keep the performances ‘living’ ‘is the changing audience.’ Some eisā performances are connected to the idea of invented tradition, or at least re-invented tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), where ‘performances are invented and presented as traditional when they are not’ (Schechner 1985, 75). Some eisā troupes present their show in terms of a perceived traditional past, when in fact their version of eisā is actually quite


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modern. This is particularly evident in contexts that present an eisā performance that is clearly influenced by contemporary culture. Extending this idea, eisā is linked to notions of authenticity, but, as Schechner asserts, ‘what is “authentic” anyway? Even if “tourist art” is often shoddy and almost always syncretic, does that make it “inauthentic”?’ (Schechner 1985, 77). In this context, eisā occupies a somewhat ambivalent place in contemporary Okinawan culture. It exists simultaneously in different guises: as a form presented authentically in traditional and contemporary settings; and as a form that is easily transformed and recontextualized so as to celebrate and represent traditional Okinawan culture. Eisā has an ability to be used as simulacra in commercial and touristic contexts. In tourism, for instance, it gives the impression that it is presenting an authentic form, one that represents an ideal in a ritual setting. But this nostalgia is presented in a contradictory way, outside the perceived authentic context, out of time and out of place. What makes theme park settings especially interesting is that they are not based on a purely imaginary world, but on a perceived real world that is imagined through simulation. As Baudrillard points out, ‘it is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle’ (1988, 172). While, as Hitchcock, King and Parnwell (1993, 11) stress, ‘touristic culture is very much a part of reality’, when some objects are relocated within a touristic environment their meanings are very different. A hybrid form may represent authentic culture, but it often carries different meaning for the performers, audience and consumers alike. The effects of tourism permeate each of the three spheres of eisā discussed above. Locals and visitors alike view eisā in each of the three contexts, although locals are predominant at local rituals and non-Okinawan tourists at theme parks. While local religious eisā events might be viewed as presenting a traditional context in which the dance is performed, it is important to remember that with regard to purely touristic performances they themselves can become traditional in their own right (Schechner 1985, 75). Indeed, responses to tourism might take several directions: for example, the abandonment of tradition, the strengthening of tradition, or the recontextualization of tradition.22 With regard to eisā, recontextualization has taken place in the form of cultural shows. But these new settings help maintain a sense of tradition, and contribute to the strengthening of local identity.23 It is evident that traditional roles have changed in all of eisā’s contexts, and what might once have been exclusively local entertainment or ritual is now part of the tourist yen. In many Okinawan contexts, nostalgia is on display through the articulation of identity in eisā performance. The cultural staging and representation

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of eisā in any of the contexts discussed are part of a negotiation of performing a tradition and transforming it, and for the viewers too there is a reinterpretation of the display (cf. Carlson 1996, 185–186). As a performing art, eisā is a form through which local identity is celebrated, whether it is for community, ritual, religious or economic purposes. Okinawa is awash with cultural exhibits, sites and shows, and there are many symbols of Okinawan identity and of Okinawa itself, yet eisā has the ability to travel between disparate cultural spheres and still represent traditional culture. This study, therefore, has helped explain eisā in traditional and transformed settings. It has shown how a performing art can capture a local and national imagination, how a dance form can mediate and negotiate between traditional culture and touristic culture, and how culture and identity are expressed through music and dance, whether for religious, entertainment or economic reasons. In each context, Okinawans are performing, and in each they are performing Okinawa. NOTES 1 Field research for this study was undertaken in Okinawa in 2003. I am extremely grateful to the University of Otago for making this possible. The Asian Studies Research Centre and School of Language, Literature and Performing Arts, University of Otago, are gratefully acknowledged for funding attendance at conferences to present papers on this topic (Society for Ethnomusicology in 2005, and Small Island Cultures Research Initiative in 2006). 2 Japan has forty-seven prefectures, each with its own local government. 3 Even though Japan is an island nation of over 3,000 islands, I use the term ‘mainland’ to refer to the dominant and sometime hegemonic culture of Honshū, particularly that of the capital, Tokyo. 4 On performing tourist places see Bærenholdt et al. (2004), who look at the corporeal world of performance. 5 An example of the connection between the ruling class, eisā and religion is apparent in 1609 when the Satsuma authority banned dancing, except for eisā due to its link with the Bon festival. 6 On the music of eisā in Nakijin village see Kobayashi and Kobayashi (1997). The sound box of the sanshin is covered on both sides with snakeskin (sometimes a synthetic material is used nowadays), unlike its relative, the Japanese shamisen, which is covered either by cat skin, dog skin or a synthetic material. 7 Eisā is sometimes referred to as shichigachi eisā (seventh month eisā). 8 The lunar calendar was officially abandoned in 1872 when Japan adopted the solar calendar, although it is still sometimes observed in ritual contexts.


9 10 11

12

13

14

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As a result of adopting the solar calendar, there is about a one-month difference between the two systems. When calculating the date of a festival one of three methods is used: (1) a calendar month is added to the lunar calendar date; (2) the original date is maintained for the festival; (3) the lunar calendar is maintained. Subsequently, Bon is celebrated at different times in different parts of Japan, either in July or August depending on whether the lunar or solar calendar is observed. On the Bon festival in Okinawa and the United States see Combs (1979). The post-Second World War years saw the building of US military bases around Koza, which were important for regional development. See Okaze (1992) for a history of the competition, which includes a detailed study of the 36th Okinawan Island-Wide Eisā Festival of 1991. On the folk performing arts of Japan see Thornbury (1997). See Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai (1989–93) for a study of the song texts and music (including notations) of many Okinawa pieces, including several eisā songs. For a case study of the migration of eisā see Tsukada (2005). Eisā is also popular among the Okinawan diaspora, and in Osaka, for example, it has been pivotal in helping maintain a sense of Okinawan identity (see Terada 2005). There are several studies of eisā, by Okinawans and scholars from mainland Japan (see further Okinawa-shi Kikubu Heiwa Bunka Shinkōka 1998; Okaze 1992). On eisā of Nakijin village see Kobayashi and Kobayashi (1997). Regarding the significance of eisā to the local community, there is an Eisā Hall (Eisā Kaikan) in Okinawa city, which functions as an archive that collects information on eisā. For further comparison of some Okinawan eisā troupes see http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/016/eng/sosa000.html; and http://www. wonder-okinawa.jp/016/eng/movie.html. On music and the Disney theme park experience see Carson (2004) and Nooshin (2004). The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a boom in the leisure industry, and Tokyo Disneyland, for example, attracts over sixteen million visitors a year (see Raz 1999). The success of Tokyo Disneyland helped in the growth of a number of ‘little countries’ all over Japan. From historical fact to contemporary fantasy, there are themes for the mainly domestic tourist to consume in all shapes and sizes. As well as the parks that focus on fantasy, there are even ones that centre on cultural identity of non-Japanese, such as the Canadian World in Hokkaidō, Swiss Village in Tōhoku, Parque España in southern Japan, and a Russian village – there are many others. In connection with such parks, these also include Japan-focused themes including, as Raz (1999, 151) notes, ‘Edo Village in Nikkō, Meiji Village near Nagoya, and Ise Sengoku Jidai Village (with a Ninja Training House and a museum devoted to the era of civil wars)’. There is even a

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Performing Japan German park, Ueno German Culture Village (Ueno Mura Doitsu Bunka Mura), in Okinawa prefecture on Miyako Island. Compare ‘Little Edo’ (Koedo) in Kawagoe near Tokyo, which recreates the lifestyle of Edo (Tokyo) during the Edo period (1600–1868). See www.gyokusendo.co.jp. Using Japanese concepts, it is both inside (uchi) and outside (soto) (see Nakane 1984, 125). There are even many Okinawa shops throughout Japan, and Okinawa is consumed in many ways, from music to tourism. Eisā is also found on mainland Japan, especially in Tokyo and Osaka among Okinawan communities, and even overseas in places such as Hawai‘i and other parts of the USA. Compare Nettl’s (1978) work on responses to Western music by non-Western cultures (see also Kartomi 1981; Kartomi and Blum 1994; Nettl 1983, 345– 354; 1985; 1996). Comparison can be made to other Japanese peripheries. For example, ‘tourism, as in the case of the Ainu in Northern Japan who stage their crafts and customs for the Tokyo gaze, can be manipulated to serve the recovery of cultural identity’ (Wilson and Dissanayake 1996, 9). REFERENCES

Abram, Simone. 1997. Performing for tourists in rural France. In Tourists and tourism: Identifying with people and places, edited by Simone Abram, Jacqueline Waldren and Donald V L Macleod. Oxford: Berg. Allen, Matthew. 2002. Identity and resistance in Okinawa. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Atkinson, Connie Zeanah. 1997. Whose New Orleans? Music’s place in the packaging of New Orleans for Tourism. In Tourists and tourism: Identifying with people and places, edited by Simone Abram, Jacqueline Waldren and Donald V. L. Macleod. Oxford: Berg. Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. Selected writings, edited by Mark Poster. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bærenholdt, Jørgen Ole, Michael Haldrup, Jonas Larsen, and John Urry. 2004. Performing tourist places. Aldershot: Ashgate. Carlson, Marvin. 1996. Performance: A critical introduction. London: Routledge. Carson, Charles. 2004. Whole new worlds: Music and the Disney Theme Park experience. Ethnomusicology Forum 13(2): 228–235. Cohen, Sarah. 1997. More than the Beatles: Popular music, tourism and urban regeneration. In Tourists and tourism: Identifying with people and places, edited by Simone Abram, Jacqueline Waldren and Donald V.L. Macleod. Oxford: Berg.


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Combs, Jo Anne. 1979. The Japanese o-bon festival and bon odori: Symbols in flux. M.A. diss., University of California, Los Angeles. ——. 1980. Okinawan ubung and ubung udui. Association of Graduate Dance Ethnologists UCLA Journal 4: 16–24. Cunningham, Clark E. 1998. The interaction of cultural performances, tourism, and ethnicity: An introduction. Journal of Musicological Research 17(2): 81–85. Dale, Peter N. 1986. The myth of Japanese uniqueness. New York: St Martin’s Press. De Vos, George A. and William O. Wetherall. 1983. Japan’s minorities: Burakumin, Koreans, Ainu and Okinawans, updated by Kaye Stearman. Minority Rights Group, Report No. 3. London: Minority Rights Group. DeWitt, Mark F. 1999a. Heritage, tradition, and travel: Louisiana French culture placed on a California dance floor. The World of Music 41(3): 57–83. ——. 1999b. Preface. The World of Music 41(3): 5–9. Feifer, Maxine. 1986. Tourism in history: From imperial Rome to the present. New York: Stein & Day. Gibson, Chris and John Connell. 2005. Music and tourism: On the road again. Toronto: Channel View Publications. Hein, Laura E. 2001. Introduction: The territory of identity and remembrance in Okinawa. Critical Asian Studies 33(1): 31–36. Hein, Laura E. and Mark Selden, eds. 2003. Islands of discontent: Okinawan responses to Japanese and American power. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Hendry, Joy. 2000. The orient strikes back: A global view of cultural display. Oxford: Berg. Hitchcock, Michael, Victor T. King and Michael J. G. Parnwell, 1993. Tourism in South-East Asia: Introduction. In Tourism in South-East Asia, edited by Michael Hitchcock, Victor T. King and Michael J. G. Parnwell. London: Routledge. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. International Council for Traditional Music. 1988. Come mek me hol’ yu han’: The impact of tourism on traditional music. ICTM Colloquium. Kingston, Jamaica: Memory Bank. Kartomi, Margaret J. 1981. The processes and results of musical culture contact: A discussion of terminology and concepts. Ethnomusicology 25(2): 227–249. Kartomi, Margaret J. and Stephen Blum, eds. 1994. Music-cultures in contact: Convergences and collisions. Sydney: Currency Press. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Theorizing heritage. Ethnomusicology 39(3): 367–380. Kobayashi, Yukio. 1984. Eisā. In Hōgaku hyakka jiten: Gagaku kara min’yō made, edited by Kikkawa Eishi. Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomo Sha.

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Kobayashi, Kimie and Kobayashi, Yukio. 1997. Nakijin no ongaku: Sakiyama, Kaneshi, Imadomari no shiryoka o toshite. Okinawa Geijutsu no Kagaku 9: 71–149. Mendoza, Zoila S. 2000. Shaping society through dance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Nakane Chie. 1984. Japanese society. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Nettl, Bruno. 1978. Some aspects of the history of world music in the twentieth century: Questions, problems, and concepts. Ethnomusicology 22(1): 123–136. ——. 1983. The study of ethnomusicology: Twenty-nine issues and concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ——. 1985. The Western impact on world music: Change, adaptation, and survival. New York: Schirmer Books. ——. 1996. Relating the present to the past. Music and Anthropology 1. www.muspe.unibo.it/period/MA/index/ma_ind.htm. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, ed. 1989–93. Nihon min’yō taikan (Okinawa, Amami). 4 vols: Amami Shotō hen; Miyako Shotō hen; Okinawa Shotō hen; Yaeyama Shotō hen. Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Suppan Kyōkai. Nooshin, Laudan. 2004. Circumnavigation with a difference? Music, representation and the Disney experience: It’s a small, small world. Ethnomusicology Forum 13(2): 236–251. Okaze, Rumiko. 1992. The 36th Okinawa Island-Wide Eisā Festival. MA dissertation, University of Hawai‘i. Okinawa-shi Kikubu Heiwa Bunka Shinkōka, ed. 1998. Eisā 360-do: Rekishi to genzai. Okinawa-shi: Naha Shuppan-sha. Raz, Aviad E. 1999. Riding the black ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center. Ritzer, George and Allan Liska. 1997. ‘McDisneyization’ and ‘post/tourism’: Complementary perspectives on contemporary tourism. In Touring cultures: Transformations of travel and theory, edited by Chris Rojek and John Urry. New York: Routledge. Robertson, J. 1989. Furusato Japan: The culture and politics of nostalgia. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 1(4): 494–518. ——. 1995. Hegemonic nostalgia, tourism, and nation-making in Japan. In Japanese civilization in the modern world IX: Tourism, edited by Umesao Tadao, Harumi Befu and Shuzo Ishimori. Senri Ethnological Studies, No. 38. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. Rotenstein, David S. 1992. The helena blues: Cultural tourism and AfricanAmerican folk music. Southern Folklore 49(2): 133–146. Sarkissian, Margaret. 1998. Tradition, tourism, and the cultural show: Malaysia’s diversity on display. Journal of Musicological Research 17(2): 87–112.


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Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between theatre and anthropology. Forward by Victor Turner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, Valene L. ed. 1989. Hosts and guests: The anthropology of tourism. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, Valene L. and Maryann Brent, eds. 2001. Hosts and guests revisited: Tourism issues of the 21st century. Chico: Department of Anthropology, California State University. Smits, G. 1999. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and ideology in early-modern thought and politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Stokes, Martin. 1999. Music, travel and tourism: An afterword. The World of Music 41(3): 141–155. Sugimoto, Yoshio. 1997. An introduction to Japanese society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sweet, Jill Drayson. 1981. Tewa ceremonial performances: The effects of tourism on an ancient Pueblo Indian dance and music tradition. PhD dissertation, The University of New Mexico. Taira, Koji. 1997. Troubled national identity: The Ryukyuans/Okinawans. In Japan’s minorities: The illusion of homogeneity, edited by M. Weiner. London: Routledge. Talamantes, Maria Sofia. 2004. The cultural politics of performance: Women, dance ritual, and the transnational tourism industry in Bali. PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside. Tatar, Elizabeth. 1987. Strains of change: The impact of tourism on Hawaiian music. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. Taylor, Timothy D. 1997. Global pop: World music, world markets. New York: Routledge. Terada, Yoshitaka. 2005. Okinawan eisa. Film presentation at The 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (16–20 November, Atlanta, USA). Thornbury, Barbara E. 1997. The folk performing arts: Traditional culture in contemporary Japan. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Tsukada, Ken’ichi. 2005. Migration and performing arts: The transplantations of eisa in the Yaeyama Islands (Japan). Paper presented at The 38th World Conference of the ICTM (3–11 August, Sheffield, UK). Urry, John. 1990. The tourist gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies. London: Sage Publications. Vlastos, Stephen, ed. 1998. Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilson, Rob and Wimal Dissanayake. 1996. Introduction. In Global local: Cultural production and the transnational imaginary, edited by Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake. Durham: Duke University Press.

part iii

popular culture, technology and consumerism

10

Local Performance of Global Sound: More than the Musical in Japanese Hardcore Rock Jennifer Milioto Matsue

❖ I love Japan. The Japanese are good at so many things – but one thing they are definitely good at is smoking. Dedicated, loyal and committed puffers – I don’t think any other country smokes better than Japan. At our company, pretty much everyone smokes really well. I’m pretty sure our company’s ‘no smoking’ policy is that you are not allowed to smoke when you are on fire, because it is dangerous. But of course this policy is not enforced . . . I considered smoking – why not join my colleagues, fit in a little better and be part of the group. But with so many people smoking so well, I don’t need to. My passive smoking has become active smoking. (Briggs, 1999) PERFORMING JAPANESE HARDCORE

n Japan in the late 1990s, amongst individuals between the ages of twenty to twenty-nine, approximately 20 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men were considered smokers (Health-net). The opening quotation, from the then well-known free English-weekly-newsletter, Tokyo Notice Board, highlights this Japanese penchant for smoking in the late 1990s, as well as suggesting that the act of smoking itself is one way to ‘fit in a little better’ with one’s colleagues, either through active or passive participation. Regardless of one’s commitment to the art of smoking, it was indeed a mainstay in corporate culture, as well as in many worlds devoted to the pursuit of leisure in late twentieth-century Japan, especially those involving live music-making.

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Based on personal observation of one such world of music-making, described in more detail below as the ‘underground Tokyo hardcore scene,’ the percentage of smokers, for example, jumps to perhaps 40–50 per cent of women and 80–90 per cent of men, as one had to cut through the smoke in the small performance spaces to even find the stage. A surprisingly large number of vocalists smoked as well, enhancing the husky vocal quality that was so greatly appreciated in this scene. Thus, the act of smoking itself, either firsthand or secondhand, was a regular component of participating, suggesting that there is much more involved in the performance of a musical scene than the creation and immediate consumption of the music alone. Such musical scenes do indeed emanate from the performance of a particular type of music though – in this case generally a type of hardcore rock performed by underground bands, here meaning bands without labels, or on local, independent labels. Through intensive participant-observation from 1997 to 1999 of what I came to label the ‘underground Tokyo hardcore scene’, what indeed emerged as most interesting were questions of how this particular scene was performed into existence, both through musical production and beyond, considering the intense social interaction of both the individuals and institutions involved (Jackson 1998; Bennett and Peterson 2004; Milioto Matsue 2001, 2003). Through my field research, I saw literally hundreds of bands, attending one to two live performances a week on average. I ultimately decided to perform as guest vocalist with one band in particular as well – the mixedgender group, Jug – allowing deeper understanding of all aspects of band life in contemporary Japan. Most of these underground bands performed at small ‘livehouses’, establishments that feature ‘live’ music, throughout Tokyo. Such livehouses were usually located in the basements of buildings, held at most 100 to 150 people and were fairly rundown. Yet, most possessed decent sound systems and provided performance equipment such as amplifiers, drum kit (minus the snare) and microphones for the bands. Each band was typically required to sell a certain number of tickets for the livehouse, but most bands usually covered the expense themselves in a ‘pay to play’ system. Live performances took place relatively early in the evening, with most events beginning at 6 or 6:30 p.m., wrapping up by 11 or 11:30 p.m., allowing participants ample time to make the last trains home. The average evening featured a mixture of all-male-bands, girlbands and mixed-gender-bands with four to six groups performing on a given night, playing half hour sets, while audiences remained small, except for a few well-known local acts or visiting acts. At many shows the audience was actually almost entirely comprised of members from other bands

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performing that night – creating a most intimate and personal scene in the impersonal mass that is Tokyo. These basic characteristics of the scene – the ‘pay to play’ system and the limited audiences – may sound similar to any variety of music scenes found globally, from jazz to metal, while other characteristics – the early hours of the livehouse system to accommodate train schedules and the regular mixture of male and female performers on stage – may connect this scene more immediately to the context of Japan, serving to locate this performance of an arguably global sound – hardcore – locally in Tokyo. The sound of hardcore itself, of obvious importance in the scene, is quite nebulous though, with a wide range of variance despite certain shared key characteristics: screaming vocals, churning rhythms, relative absence of drawn-out, melodic guitar solos and moments of increased tension, release and repose creating the general form. It is actually quite difficult to identify the scene, or even the broader culture of origin producing that scene, by the sound alone as the medium involved in the creation of hardcore (the instruments, amplifiers, etc.) is ubiquitous in the modern industrial world, enhancing the read of hardcore as a ‘global’ sound. The sound in any local context, rather, needs to be viewed as one aspect of a broader performance. Indeed, no single performative element embodies the scene – instead all systems together perform the scene – from the ‘pay to play’ structure to the train schedules that affect livehouse hours. As such, the broader view of the concept of ‘performance’, as encompassing all aspects of social practice that bring the musical scene to life (Bial 2004; Schechner 2002; Schechner and Appel 1990; Small 1998; Wong 2004), proves most useful when exploring the distinct nature of this moment in Japan. Returning to the opening commentary from the Tokyo Notice Board, we further see the importance of reading such ‘performance’ in its immediate cultural context, as in this case the practice of smoking may be seen as more problematic outside Japan. More and more cities in the US, for example, are banning smoking in any building, including bars and clubs, and anti-smoking commercials regularly air on television.1 Smoking has long been seen as subversive and rebellious – as something one does when young and then later regrets. The prevalence of the practice in mainstream Japanese culture, however, demands a different interpretation. It is a behaviour common in Japan of the late 1990s, but noteworthy to an outsider. In a similar vein, outsiders are quick to judge various performative elements of Japanese produced hardcore by ‘outside’ standards, misinterpreting the significance of certain elements, or looking for meaning(s) that are just not there. The practice of hardcore in Japan,

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rather, should be evaluated as just that, ‘in Japan’. It is the performance of this scene interpreted in its immediate geographical, spatial and sonic contexts performed by Japanese themselves that is the most significant for understanding how this global sound is performed locally. As such, this chapter seeks to understand not only the musical performance on stage, but also the set of conditions that both informs and allows this performance to occur. With this broad view of performance in place we must necessarily then ask what performative elements are significant to the production of the underground Tokyo hardcore scene. In other words, which elements are central and serve to characterize the local scene, and which stand peripheral? The scene is performed through a variety of expressive media that are indeed central – through the transmission of flyers, newsletters and stickers, or the exchange of demo-tapes, as well as through particular linguistic and social rituals, and of course through the quality of the music itself. Each element, though perhaps also found elsewhere in contemporary Tokyo, or in other scenes globally, performs a certain function, assuming a distinct meaning itself within the imagined boundaries of this particular scene at this particular time. Again, though the performance of hardcore may initially seem very similar around the world, a deeper ethnographic reading of the particular practice of the scene in Tokyo helps us understand just how such global musics are performed locally, in turn highlighting what performative elements provide meaning for the individuals involved. This article thus explores how the underground Tokyo hardcore scene is performed, first through examining several performances of songs by bands encountered in the scene in detail – Sports performing ‘Bird’, Jug performing ‘Swell Head’, and Music from the Mars performing ‘Where it is’. These case studies on the ‘musical performance’ of the scene will introduce specific points related to each individual group. The following comparative discussion further considers the significance of certain performative tropes, especially the use of different languages in lyrics, ultimately solidifying general characteristics of the performance of hardcore, while revealing the individuality of each band in expressing this music. We then turn to consider the ‘extra-musical performance’ of the scene in further detail, considering the additional aural, written and social expressions of the scene, through such varied items as homemade stickers to the constant presence of photographers. Such an approach expands our understanding of the unique nature of the underground Tokyo hardcore scene, considering in detail the most ‘Japanese’ aspect of the scene – how the global sound of hardcore is performed locally.


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PERFORMING THE ‘MUSICAL’ Sports Performing ‘Bird’ (‘Tori’)

Sports were an all-male group from Yokohama I encountered early in the process of research who actually considered their music ‘emotional core’, a subgenre of hardcore. Their performance style was particularly intense as the lead singer, Nishida,2 small in stature compared to the other performers, screamed intensely in Japanese (unusual in that the majority of other bands in the scene sang in a form of English, as will be discussed below). The members of Sports typically took to the stage in baggy pants and T-shirts, with little extra-adornment, barring the occasional wearing of a woven cap or baseball hat by the bassist, Toda. The lead singer, and the drummer, Ōno, were also rather fond of experimenting with various hair dies – blonde, red, etc. – adding a certain ‘alternative’ feel to their appearance. Nishida’s activity on stage – striding about, even jumping, often bending in seeming contortions of pain and exertion – stood rather in contrast with the comparatively stoic appearance of his band mates, particularly Toda on bass and Yamada on guitar, as they hovered closely over their low-slung instruments, rarely engaging directly with the audience. Nishida was often the centre of attention when Sports took to the stage whether at the various livehouses in Tokyo, or in Yokohama, where they also liked to perform. The tense song, ‘Bird’, is a particularly good example of both Sports’ individual style and the sonic components that characterize typical hardcore performance encountered in the scene.3 ‘Bird’ opens with a brief and distinct, though relatively simple, throbbing bass solo, slow and heavy, establishing the feel of the song to come. Nishida’s screaming vocals emerge with the sudden entrance of the full ensemble of bass, guitar and drums. In typical hardcore form, Nishida alternates between emotional screams, whispering and more melodic vocal techniques as the song progresses through a pattern of tension and relative release in the supporting instrumentation. The text of the song, again sung in Japanese, though difficult to discern even by the native speaker in either the live or recorded versions, is somewhat obscure, even dark, with the following stanza opening the piece:4 Original Japanese: コノ⼿デタタクコトゴトク壊シタク⾏クダロウ道ガ気ニハ⼊ラヌカラ嫌ダ今ハ⽔ニ流シテ死ニタクナケレバ切リ開ケ

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Romaji: Kono te de tataku kotogotoku kowashitaku iku darō Michi ga ki ni wa iranu kara iya da ima wa mizu ni nagashite chi ni taku nakereba kirihirake English: Hitting with this hand, willing to destroy everything Disliking the road I am taking, No, now let it flow in water (forget about the past) If you don’t want to die, open your way

The form of the piece is best understood as a series of contrasting sections, alternating between increasing tension, high intensity and repose. Perhaps the most notable point is when Nishida enters in a comparatively calm spoken style with indistinct guitar articulations rounding out the supporting sound. With the almost whispered lyrics, Nishida closes his eyes, hugs the microphone close to his body and places a finger from his free hand into his ear, seemingly in an attempt to concentrate or stay in tune. The ultimate effect is not one of relaxation though, but rather a severe heightening of tension, building through the entire section, only released with the full frontal attack of the whole group as Nishida also releases his body on stage, thrashing about and screaming. Sports’ overall style, including the nondescript clothing with almost an absence of attention to dress, the stoic position of the bassist and guitarist in contrast to the vocalist’s antics on stage, and their general demeanour, performing the typical rituals of introducing songs, themselves, and thanking the audience for their attention in polite Japanese, are common performative elements in the underground Tokyo hardcore scene. The musical language of Sports is also characteristic, with its focus on tension and release in contrastive patterns, a reliance on heavy bass, absence of guitar solo and dominance of strained, even screaming vocal techniques, referred to as ‘sakebi’. In other songs, Nishida is actually known to descend into pure guttural screaming as he bends to the floor or stretches nearly backwards in extreme effort, only then to suddenly curl into himself as he whispers through the next stanza. The form of ‘Bird’ is also representative of certain hardcore pieces, as it spins out through several sections, drawing from previous musical material to build later expression, and again, with a continual emphasis on contrast between adjacent stanzas. Yet, ‘Bird’ is actually somewhat more complicated than the vast majority of hardcore pieces that usually feature only two blatant contrasting sections, as will be seen in the analysis of the two subsequent performances. Sports’ choice to sing in Japanese will also be revealed as a


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rather significant aspect of their performance in the following comparative discussion. Jug Performing ‘Swell Head’

As mentioned above, the primary group I worked with was the mixed-gender band, Jug, with a woman on drums and men on guitar and bass. It was actually remarkably common to see women on stage either in all-girl or mixedgendered bands such as Jug. In fact, it was rare not to have a woman performer on stage on any given night, though female drummers were somewhat unusual.5 As with the all-male Sports though, the members of Jug similarly wore loose, comfortable clothing – jeans, T-shirts and the vocalist/ guitarist in his ubiquitous baseball cap. When on stage, the drummer, Suzuki (Nishimura) Miyuki,6 sported her dark sports bra with the name ‘JUG’ emblazoned in white appliqué only when performing at their ‘home’ livehouse of 20,000volt. At other livehouses she wore the T-shirt and jeans standard among musicians. Just as with Sports, the guitarist and bassist of Jug, Nagatome Yōichirō and Suzuki Shigeru, bent low over their instruments, Nagatome raising his upper body and straining into the microphone when he sang. Unlike Sports, which was organized around Nishida’s intensity, Jug was rather ‘calm’ by comparison: Nishimura pounding away on percussion, though not clearly visible in the rear; Suzuki never raising from his bent position during play; and Nagatome returning to his bent posture whenever not singing. Jug’s overall style of play, though conforming to the general features of hardcore performance, was nonetheless distinct from Sports’. Jug’s song, ‘Swell Head’, further illustrates both these general characteristics of hardcore performance and Jug’s own unique presentation.7 ‘Swell Head’ opens with a distinct bass solo, though heavier than that found in ‘Bird’, which returns throughout the entire song. The tension immediately increases as a churning, ascending guitar emerges and we hear the distinct tinkling of the high-hat on the beat, though there is no strong sense of metre and even a feel of relaxed rhythm. The tension builds as each instrument enters in this rather long introduction, increasing in volume and intensity until crashing into the full ensemble effect. Certain instruments drop out, leaving the bass striking chords to match the guitar and pounding percussion when Nagatome’s somewhat mumbled English vocals enter the mix, introducing the dark text, as evidenced by the chorus – ‘Death, All is meaningless, Burn, Such silly bonds, A rope, Hangs from above, So, I should go somewhere.’8 With ‘Swell Head’ we find a relatively simple passage through three basic sections: the opening stanza in relative stasis, the second stanza increasing

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in tension as Nagatome whines about ‘Death’, and the release found in the repeated screaming of ‘You said it’s a bad wrong.’ Jug couches these lyric driven changes in heavy voicing, again with an even stronger emphasis on bass, obvious chord changes, absence of melodic guitar solo and an intense vocal technique as found in Sports’ ‘Bird’. The lyrics almost feel forced into the cycles with short staccato articulation throughout. Jug’s use of English, as already suggested, becomes another characteristic of much hardcore, as will be discussed below. Music from the Mars Performing ‘Where it is’

The brightness of the young, all-male-trio, Music from the Mars, stands in incredible contrast to the heavy hardcore style preferred by both Sports and Jug. The members of Music from the Mars similarly appear on stage in baggy pants and T-shirts, the lead singer, Fujii Tomonobu, sporting dark framed glasses and a ‘studious’ look. When in the midst of performance Fujii’s glasses have been known to fly off, but he continues to play away, most likely unable to see the audience clearly. Fujii has also been known to incorporate harmonica into his accoutrements, with the Bob Dylanesque neck strap and frame positioning the harmonica before his mouth, leaving his hands free for guitar work, though the harmonica too has been known to slip out of place in mid-performance. Music from the Mars seems to have tremendous fun on stage, though of course still taking their music quite seriously. Perhaps because of this attitude their interpretation of hardcore feels somehow ‘lighter’ than that produced by Jug or Sports. The music of Music from the Mars relies on similar tropes though, such as highlighting the possibilities of contrast, but lacks a certain tension, as demonstrated in the song, ‘Where it is’. This song also opens with a bass solo, but in this instance somehow quieter, with no discernible increase in tension prior to the full ensemble entrance, which simply bombards. Not unexpectedly, we find ourselves once again in common time, but with a forced feeling, providing that certain sense of freedom in the rhythmic patterns. The full ensemble of bass, guitar, percussion and vocals plows through with equally heavy instrumentation, featuring distorted guitar articulating chords, which expand on the harmonic framework supplied by the bass. Fujii’s mumbled, flat, almost whiny vocals, though similarly mumbled, are distinct from either Nishida’s intensity or Nagatome’s murkiness. He produces a slightly more relaxed feel, though the entrance on each word is marked, as he cries out inaudible text. The words themselves are difficult to discern, but clearly in English, particularly when Fujii returns with the hook line, ‘Where it is’.9


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In the following contrasting section, the sound clarifies as the original bass solo is heard again, supported by light percussion and equally light picking of double-stops or full chords on the guitar. This section stands in further contrast with its absence of vocals, as well as finally feeling comfortably in common time – all adding to a sense of lightness or repose. The song continues through alternation of the two main sections, with slight variation at each hearing, until culminating in a final faster replay of the opening material that creates a strong punk-feeling close to the work, quieting to end with mild feedback. Music from the Mars often included more melodic work on the guitar in their pieces, but only in contrasting sections of repose against the more typical churning hardcore voicing. The form of ‘Where it is,’ just as with ‘Swell Head,’ is also typical in its reliance on aligning two distinct sections, with some modified section, either through expansion of material, as in ‘Swell Head,’ or diminution, as in ‘Bird’ or ‘Where it is,’ towards the end. The final ending on feedback as well is common in all three of the pieces described above, as is the tense, often flat vocal styles of the performers, though Nishida is by far the strongest screamer in the group. PERFORMING THE ‘MUSICAL’ Discussion (Japanese, English and ‘Japanglish’)

While there clearly is a great deal of possible variance through these three case studies, we have thus been introduced to the key characteristics that define the performance of hardcore in Tokyo. Simply put, hardcore has to be loud, especially in the live setting, and even when listening to recordings privately to provide the visceral sense of actually being there live. How the musicians actually speak about music, the terms they use to describe musical quality, further reveals what is most significant to identifying the central components of the hardcore performance to the performers themselves. Japanese performers, for example, typically used such expressions as ‘pawā ga ippai’, or ‘full of power’, to compliment a solid song or skilled band and ‘enerugī ga nai’, or ‘there is no energy’, to describe a bad set or weak band, reinforcing the point that the music of hardcore must be loud and powerful above and beyond all else. Hardcore has to have certain instruments – most often percussion, guitar, bass and vocals, though different bands may process the voice to create certain sound effects, or apply various pedals to create distortion, even noise to the guitar and occasionally the bass. The use of keyboard did occur, but was rather rare. Song form typically revolves around some

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alternation of tension and repose, keeping the song moving forward, creating dynamic contrast despite at times a limited musical vocabulary. Screaming, however, is perhaps one of the most common performative elements throughout the scene. Thus, vocal production is also central, though in the context of the undeground Tokyo hardcore scene, understanding what the bands are actually saying is not. Indeed, bands might have something to say, but what they are saying is not always understood by the audience given the characteristic mode of delivery with its focus on screaming or mumbling, whether they sing in English or Japanese. English is certainly central to the language of hardcore though, as most bands did indeed vocalize in some form of English. Sports’ interest in singing in Japanese was the exception rather than the rule. Singing in English may suggest a strong connection, or in the least a desire by the bands to connect with hardcore produced elsewhere, but that relationship is not absolute. Rather, English may be used for sonic reasons – simply because it ‘sounds’ more appropriate for the musical medium. Japanese have long confronted the question of what language is most appropriate to sing in a variety of forms, whether performing rock in the 1960s or hip hop in the 1980s, turning to Japanese when a desire to convey meaning through text dominates, or English for other sonic reasons. It is also important to note that in Japan English is not necessarily a ‘foreign’ language (see Hosokawa 1996 and Miller 1998 for further consideration of the position of ‘Japanglish’, English and Japanese in Japan). English can be found just about everywhere, although often in the form of ‘Japanglish’, a mixture of English words often in nonsensical grammatical formations, or the use of English words in completely inappropriate contexts. Plate 25, which shows the mainstream Japanese band Michelle Gun Elephant, nicely illustrates this point. The poster advertising Michelle Gun Elephant’s new release was proudly displayed in the subways of Tokyo for a short period of time in the 1990s, quickly removed presumably when someone realized what the letters on their helmets actually mean and the cultural taboo associated with this word in native English-speaking countries. The use of English in hardcore of course also stands quite in contrast with the lyrics in ‘J-pop’, or mainstream Japanese popular music, which are typically in clear, singable Japanese with English only in the hookline, if at all. Perhaps many bands’ desire to vocalize in English is also motivated by this fact, choosing to avoid the language of lyrics in J-pop just as they reject the entire musical style – glossy, highly synthesized and often criticized for its ‘cookie-cutter’ production strategies. Ultimately, the use of English in hardcore frees the vocalists from having to convey the literal meaning of


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lyrics, leaving them the freedom to explore the sonic potential of their own voices without any constraint. In fact, Japanese who prefer listening to Western produced popular musics, as opposed to J-Pop, with its emphasis on Japanese lyrics, are quite used to hearing vocals as part of the sonic fabric, rather than as a medium to convey textual content. We may conclude, then, that the quality of the voice, especially an emphasis on screaming, again is central to the local performance of hardcore, but that language choices are more flexible. Clearly, musicians make choices regarding the language of vocals – with the majority again opting for the sonic freedom of English – but this choice may come rather naturally with little conscious deliberation. But hardcore is not performed through the express production of music and lyrics on stage and the activity of actively listening in the audience alone. Rather, this musical moment came to life through performing the extra-musical expressions of the hardcore scene as well that locate the performance of this global sound. While the preceding pages focused primarily on the aural expressions, the sound and lyrics of the music itself, certain ‘extra-musical’ tropes already have emerged, such as the behaviour of musicians on stage, their style of clothing and postures when performing, and the typical forms of greeting, thanks and introduction to songs, which also must be considered part of the local performance of hardcore, and ultimately create a sense of this scene as ‘Japanese’. Thus, just as with the opening discussion of smoking, we find many ‘extra-musical’ elements that bring the scene to life, which must be viewed in the immediate cultural context. The following sections will now take a closer look at these additional expressions, from newsletters to recordings, which facilitate communication between performers, and thus are equally essential to the performance of hardcore in the underground Tokyo hardcore scene. PERFORMING THE ‘EXTRA-MUSICAL’ Stickers, Flyers and Newsletters

Written expressions within the scene include such elements as flyers, posters, newsletters, magazines, monographs and of course a growing number of web sites. The production and distribution of stickers was particularly ubiquitous among bands. Such stickers may take on a variety of forms, as revealed in Plate 26 from the bands Sports and Jug. These stickers are typically small and produced on glossy paper with peel-away backs. Often, other bands within the scene would affix them to their gig-bags, drums or even occasionally their guitars and basses,

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depending on one’s personal taste. Suzuki of Jug, for example, had a few stickers on the back of his bass, deciding to keep the front of his rather expensive and relatively new instrument pristine and clean. These stickers may serve as the meishi or business cards of the band world as I was often handed several upon introducing myself and expressing interest in a new contact. Yet, bands typically distributed such stickers only to closer associates and fans, reflecting that they are relatively expensive to produce, in contrast to true business cards, which continue to be produced and passed around with great frequency in Japan. Flyers and posters, on the other hand, were relatively inexpensive to produce, requiring only a decent home computer and a quick stop at one of the many Kinko’s Copy Centers found throughout Tokyo. The quality and imagery on flyers varied greatly, depending on whether the flyer was produced by the individual band, a group of bands, the livehouse or a label with some form of commercial sponsorship. Flyers ranged from handwritten notes cut from simple white paper to professionally produced, glossy and colourful advertisements on cardstock. A greater number of sponsors, or sponsorship by a larger label, would necessarily result in a more elaborate flyer. However, in contrast, some appear to have been quickly scribbled down in black magic marker and contain no references to any outside sponsors. Both the homemade and professionally produced flyers could be found just about anywhere within the walls of the livehouse – on the hallways and doors at entrances and within the spaces themselves. Even the bathrooms would be wallpapered with a constantly changing pastiche of such advertisements for upcoming events, though the inexpensive Kinko’s copy dominated, as pictured in Plate 27. Following the end of an evening’s events, members of bands often lined the stairs and adjoining street handing out flyers, inviting guests to their next event. While even the smallest of livehouse’s schedules could be found in the weekly entertainment magazine Pia, this ritual of flyer exchange was often the most accurate and convenient method of keeping track of a favourite band’s schedule. Given the importance of these flyers in the scene, it is no surprise that the designs and images themselves were quite interesting and varied, again ranging from the barebones quick, handwritten list to quite impressive pieces of artwork. Many bands would expand on the simplicity of the Berotecs’ example, supplying their own hand drawn graphics, varying in themes from the morbid to the humorous, reflective of the general feel of the music – at times dark, but with a certain humor thrown in for good measure. At the other extreme, images drawn from traditional Japanese arts were also prevalent, as shown in Plate 28.


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The use of such a traditional character, perhaps even of a deity, may seem incongruous considering the general aesthetic associated with hardcore music-making, but was actually fairly common. The kanji to the right of the image (read shinzui) mean essence, soul, core or spirit, perhaps making a reference to Sports’ self-identification as an ‘emo-core’ (emotional core) group. Many flyers and posters could be found that drew from Japanese woodblock style, or ukiyoe, especially images of an erotic nature. Indeed, karma-sutra-like depictions of lovemaking appeared, as did more graphic images of a sexual nature on occasion (some of which I personally found offensive, though no one else ever commented on them). The female body certainly was well represented in flyers, often by female performers themselves. But such flyers only represent a small sampling of the variety that existed and too much should not be made of the few such sexualized images that could be found, as interesting as they may be. Rather, innocent images, often in a graphic style reminiscent of Japanese animation, anime, or comic book, manga, styles of drawing were much more prevalent. Despite the tremendous variety in the quality of flyers and the nature of images, all the bands shared in common the production of some form of flyer regularly; an absolutely essential performative trope of the underground Tokyo hardcore scene, equally important for the life of the bands, the livehouses where they played, and the labels who supported them. Newsletters also served the similarly important function of disseminating information regarding upcoming live schedules, as well as more personal information about the musicians, though not all bands produced them individually. Jug did regularly produce their own newsletter, but usually only distributed this when performing at their ‘home’ livehouse, 20,000volt. Jug’s newsletter, or the ‘Jug information free paper,’ as indicated in the top left corner of Plate 29, was again typically handwritten, featuring their bizarre morbidly humorous graphics, and included information on recent events in their lives, such as the acquisition of a new pet or creation of a new song, in addition to play lists for that night and reference to upcoming events. Production of such newsletters was actually rather rare.10 Livehouses, in contrast, would often produce monthly newsletters with complete schedules and information on events and particular bands they might feature live, in addition to interviews and information on ‘new releases.’ As with flyers, the image and style of newsletters varied greatly ranging from the black-and-white newspaper print to distinct graphics. It is unclear if all livehouses produce such newsletters, but many do, leaving them in stacks near the front counter for customers to peruse or to take home and read at their leisure. They are not produced in the same vast

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numbers as flyers and posters, but serve the similar important function of disseminating essential information for the life of the livehouses. Such advertising media were common throughout clubs and livehouses throughout Japan, regardless of the genre of music, as they are in musicmaking scenes around the world. Within this scene though, the types of images, the themes, and the emphasis on their creation and distribution at the lives themselves was truly remarkable, even unique. Photography

Photography, while only occasionally encountered on flyers and within newsletters, was actually another important practice within the scene. It was in fact not uncommon to find professional photographers at live events, though amateurs, band and audience members, and researchers, such as myself, regularly took photographs. One particular woman was quite famous in hardcore circles, regularly visiting a variety of livehouses to photograph the bands, even publishing a book of her excellent work (see Matsushita 1999). The regular occurrence of photography is no surprise given the prevalence of snapping photos throughout everyday life in Japan. The lack of money-making interests within the underground Tokyo hardcore scene as performed in the small livehouses allowed this action to occur, despite the fact that photography was prohibited at larger livehouses and when certain bands with label representation performed. But within the walls of the many small livehouses, such as 20,000volt, for example, 35mm and digital cameras were a regular feature, as were video cameras on occasion. Many livehouses, in addition, would videotape a band’s performance on stage at their request – one simply had to submit a blank tape to the staff. Documenting the live moment was thus another central expression within the scene. It served the important function of disseminating information about bands, in this case through images of the performers live on stage, while also increasing a sense of solidarity as various associates linedup together to pose for photos, perhaps to be dusted off and viewed with nostalgia in years to come. Recordings

As with photography and videos, the process of producing and sharing recordings served an important solidarity building function within the scene. The professionally produced ‘monthly’, Indies Magazine, is particularly worth note as it included interviews with and photographs of many of the bands that performed in the underground Tokyo hardcore scene,


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complete with a full-length CD-compilation of various recordings by featured artists each month. The CD found in Indies was an inexpensive and convenient introduction to a number of bands with professionally produced recordings. The majority of bands in the scene, however, were without label representation. As such, the most popular means for bands to produce recordings to share was through demo-tapes, recorded in rented studio space, with or without professional assistance mixing. Demo-tapes usually included three or four tracks on a short audiocassette tape. At the time of research, one could easily purchase inexpensive blank tapes in various time increments, ranging from ten minutes to two hours, at any neighbourhood convenience store, facilitating the production of recordings to share. As expected, the recording quality would vary greatly depending upon one’s technical knowledge and the investment in the recording studio. All demo-tapes would be supplemented with inexpensively copied ‘liner notes’, usually with just the name of the band and titles to the songs, though Sports did include lyrics with their demo-tape (perhaps again stressing their importance). Such demo-tapes seemed to function as another meishi of the band world, as I was often handed one of these as well when I expressed interest in a band, and they were readily shared among bands particularly friendly with each other within the scene. Many of the bands without label representation also found themselves recording one or two tracks for smaller label compilations, yet with bands that had little desire to sign with a label or aspirations for larger commercial success, their recording career remained limited to their self-produced demos and the few tracks they might make. The compilation CDs or single-artist albums would be available for purchase at special live events and, of course, within the ‘Indies’ sections of a variety of music shops around the city, offering another means of sharing the sounds of hardcore both within and beyond the underground Tokyo hardcore scene. CONCLUSION

It is clear that much more is involved in the performance of hardcore than the notes alone – from smoking like chimneys, or putting up with the smoke, to performing ritualized greetings, to producing and consuming a variety of flyers, newsletters and recordings via demo-tapes, compilations, or full albums. Yet, what motivates all these expressions – what localizes them in the underground Tokyo hardcore scene – is of course the music performed live on stage. Although such elements of the performance of Tokyo hardcore can be found in other imagined scenes, this hardcore world did indeed feel somehow ‘Japanese’. For example, the majority of bands singing in what is

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commonly referred to as ‘Japanglish’, the mixture of Japanese and English that results in an arguably new linguistic realm, takes on a unique meaning in Japan. Most lyrics, as such, were actually incomprehensible in this underground setting, in turn freeing the vocalist from having to convey literal meaning to allow increased creativity in sound production. In addition, while I do not wish to perpetuate myths about Japanese behaviour, the hardcore world did seem very polite in the Japanese context, with language and body movements revealing the hierarchical relationships between the bands, audience and management systems at play. It was also quite common to find several female or mix-gendered groups performing on any given night, in addition to the women working backstage. Their prominent presence further characterizes this particular scene in the local context. While it is perhaps still difficult to locate this study sonically in Tokyo, as the sound of hardcore music is both hard to define and produced in many local contexts globally, deep ethnographic exploration of performance practice reveals the position of this musical world in contemporary Japanese culture. To argue that hardcore, punk or heavy metal ‘sounds the same’ fails to recognize sophisticated listening of popular musics, which on the surface may sound similar globally, but deeper listening may reveal subtleties of other ‘local’ musical influences. A view of such underground popular music forms that does not take into consideration the processes of transformation that allow these musics to meet with the immediate aesthetic and emotional needs of performers is highly problematic. Screaming, for example, is indeed a trope common to hardcore globally, but such emphasis on expression in the voice is a significant characteristic of Japanese traditional musics as well. Thus, in the case of underground musics in Japan, exchanges with and influences from the broad world of Japanese popular music, which has developed over the past 130 years, or within the centuries of traditional music making must be considered. Thus, further ethnographic studies of such musical moments will prove useful in not only understanding contemporary Japan, but also how global music scenes are performed locally. NOTES 1 Even within Tokyo some areas have begun to limit public smoking, though it remains relatively common in comparison to the US. 2 Only family names were provided by the members of Sports. 3 My description is based on attendance at multiple live performances of this song supported by a studio-mixed version on demo-tape provided by the members of Sports.


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4 A poetic translation of the original lyrics in Japanese that were included in printed form with the demo-tape. 5 See Milioto (1998) for additional consideration of the role of women both in this scene and music in Japan in general. 6 During the time of research Nishimura Miyuki married Jug’s guitarist, Suzuki Shigeru, and changed her name to Suzuki as well. For clarity though, she will be referred to as Nishimura for the remainder of this discussion. 7 My description is based on attendance at multiple live performances of this song supported by a studio-mixed version on demo-tape provided by the members of Jug, as well as my experience performing this song as ‘guest vocalist.’ 8 This text was provided directly by the members of Jug. 9 Lyrics for this song were not provided by the members of Music from the Mars, nor is it possible to determine what is actually being said through listening. 10 This particular example marked my last live performance as guest vocalist with Jug prior to departing for a three-month stay outside of Japan. I would return to Japan later that spring, but I would no longer sing with Jug. REFERENCES Bennett, Andy and Richard A. Peterson. 2004. Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bial, Henry, ed. 2004. The performance studies reader. New York: Routledge. Briggs, Craig. 1999. The world’s best smokers. Tokyo Notice Board, 6 August, 46. Health-net. http://www.health-net.or.jp/tobacco/product/pd100000.html. Hosokawa, Shuhei. 1996. Pidgin-Japanisch: Zur Japano-Amerikanischen sprachmischung in der popmusik. In Musik in Japan: Aufsatze zu aspekten der musik im heutigen Japan, edited by S. Guignard. Munchen: Indicium Verlag. Jackson, Travis. 1998. Performance and musical meaning: Analyzing ‘jazz’ on the New York scene. PhD dissertation, Columbia University. Matsushita, Hiroko. 1999. Hādokoa (Hardcore). Tokyo: Little More. Milioto, Jennifer. 1998. Women in Japanese popular music: Setting the subcultural scene. In Popular music: Intercultural interpretations, edited by Mitsui Toru. Kanazawa: Kanazawa University. Milioto Matsue, Jennifer. 2001. Underground music-making in contemporary Tokyo. The International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 26: 18. _____. 2003. Performing underground sounds: An ethnography of music-making in Tokyo’s hardcore clubs. PhD dissertation: University of Chicago. Miller, Laura. 1998. Wasei eigo: English ‘loanwords’ coined in Japan. In The life of language: Papers in linguistics in honor of William Bright, edited by J. H. Hill, P. J. Mistry and L. Campbell. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Schechner, Richard. 2002. Performance studies: An introduction. New York: Routledge. Schechner, Richard and Willa Appel, eds. 1990. By means of performance: Intercultural studies of theatre and ritual. New York: Cambridge University Press. Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. Wong, Deborah. 2004. Speak it louder: Asian Americans making music. New York: Routledge.

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When is Japanese, Japanese? A Tale of Two Musicians Terence Lancashire

❖ riving down the Hanshin highway that runs from Kobe to the centre of Osaka, I switched on to my favourite radio station FM Cocolo.1 FM Cocolo broadcasts from Nankō, in the deep south of Osaka from the Southern Harbour, and programmes are geared towards resident foreigners as well as Japanese people. The station’s DJs are a mix of professionals and amateurs of various nationalities broadcasting in both their native language and various abilities of Japanese. A core of Japanese DJs adds professional weight to the station, and these DJs dominate the morning slots playing current hits, interviewing Japanese residents overseas and reviewing new albums and singles. On the morning I was listening, a Japanese DJ by the name of Jun was interviewing a music critic about a newly released song by J-pop star Utada Hikaru. The song, ‘Be my Last’, was being compared with those in Utada Hikaru’s first all-English album Exodus, which came out in 2004.2 Although the music was not particularly different in style, ‘Be my last’ had been written in Japanese for the Japanese market, and, according to the music critic, the lyrics expressed were particularly suited to Japanese sensibilities. The music critic spoke of ‘the cultural characteristics’ of the song to define the essence of Utada’s Japanese rendition as if these characteristics went beyond the simple use of the Japanese language. Although his comments were compacted, the sentiments expressed reverberated with those of J-pop’s sociological guru, Ugaya Hiromichi, who produced two books at the beginning of 2005 analysing both J-pop as an industry and J-pop as a sociological phenomenon. In the latter, J poppu no shinshō fūkei (An imagined scenery of J-pop), Ugaya

D

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sets out to elucidate the extra-musical characteristics of selected Japanese performers, Kuwata Keisuke of the Southern All Stars, J-pop idol Hamasaki Ayumi and singer song writer Yumin, amongst others, whose personalities, performance venues and physical presentations are such that particular empathetic bonds are created between them and their Japanese listeners (Ugaya 2005). In contrast to the musical talents that Ugaya chose to demonstrate the empathetic, Utada Hikaru’s style is atypical and perhaps for this reason she was excluded from Ugaya’s discussion. When I first heard Utada Hikaru in the canteen of my university in 1999, it was obvious that she represented something different, at least in a Japanese context. It seemed for the first time that Japan had produced a singer who could possibly compete in the international arena and whose music style and voice projection had put to rest the image of the ‘cute’ (or burikko) – women behaving like young girls – that had hitherto been common to many Japanese female performers. Takemura Mutsushige, author of Utada Hikaru no tsukurikata, had made a similar observation suggesting, sarcastically, that music had hitherto been dominated by the compositions and productions of Komuro Tetsuya, a one-man equivalent to Britain’s Stock, Aitken and Waterman of the 1980s. Komuro intentionally pitched his tunes to ‘polyp-inducing’ high frequencies so that his female protégé definitely left an impression but at the same time they were forced to squeal slightly flat because true pitches were beyond physical reach. Utada Hikaru’s singing at last represented that of a ‘normal’ girl, sung in lower frequencies and therefore in tune (Takemura 1999, 22–29). The sarcastic tone of Takemura is obvious but the ‘normality’ of Utada’s voice did stand in contrast to musical precedents. The reason soon became apparent. I learnt that Hikaru was American born and raised, and despite her Japanese nationality, her residence in Japan has been sporadic. Thus, although not clearly defined, to hear comments on the intrinsic Japanese nature of Hikaru’s Japanese-language songs on Jun’s radio programme challenged perceptions of Hikaru as a North American with a Japanese passport and an Oriental face. Hikaru’s musical activities rekindled an ongoing concern with the significance of identity in a musical context. For the ethnomusicologist, the basis of his/her discipline has been the match between musical activity and the ‘local’ cultural context that influences both on creative and social levels, the generation and support of a given music. Steven Feld has neatly summarized, however, how globalized mediated popular music in particular has long challenged that premise. Timothy Taylor and Ian Condry have respectively provided examples of how popular music and, particularly, popular music in Japan demonstrate the complications of the

When is Japanese, Japanese? A Tale of Two Musicians

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music/culture dynamic when globalization processes are brought into the equation (Condry 1999; Feld 2000,148; Taylor 1997). Yet, despite the possible cultural greying out that globalization may imply, Iwabuchi Koichi reveals that new ‘polymorphic indigenized modernities’ are conversely derived, illustrating that global impacts are not necessarily negative (Iwabuchi 2004, 1–22). Born in America but retaining Japanese citizenship, Utada Hikaru similarly exemplifies the difficulties of matching music to place. The complications of globalization that her music reflects rekindled my personal concerns with the musical activities of a local Japanese acquaintance, Nakajima Kenji, struggling for success as a blues guitarist in an environment that is only marginally responsive to the music he has instinctively selected to perform. I got to know Nakajima Kenji two years after I had come to Japan in the autumn of 1989. He had returned home after spending three years in a high school in Los Angeles and I, in the meantime, had, purely by coincidence, been giving English lessons to his sister who similarly planned to study abroad. Kenji was determined to become a professional guitarist. I heard him playing at his home and knew he was good, but it was only after he had formed a band and began playing in venues in Osaka that his exceptional guitar skills became apparent. He had the technical mastery to rival and surpass, for that matter, many of the guitar greats, but, in a Japanese environment, the dominant question and endless discussions with his family and friends was how he could make use of these talents to secure a musical career in the future. As a long-term resident in Japan, it is easy for me to likewise accept the music of both Nakajima Kenji and Utada Hikaru as simply the creation of two musicians, and to suppose that ethnicity plays little part in the musical processes of creation and performance in which they are individually embroiled. Moreover, their music locates them in territory that falls beyond the boundaries of traditional academic concerns, and so it is similarly easy to cast aside the Japanologist’s cap and exclude their activities from any scholarly concern. Yet, in doing so, a skewed picture of the musical environments of Japan is derived and the musical activities of Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji are academically denied and their ethnicity or, at least the cultural environment that impinges on their musical activity, ignored. Ethnic concerns can, however, be overemphasized and I know what Nakajima Kenji’s response to the significance of ethnic identity on his musical activities would be – a flat denial. His musical inspiration may be North-American derived, but he would not place himself externally outside the source of those inspirations. If great blues guitarists can emerge from

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Britain and succeed, despite tenuous links with African-American musical traditions, Japan too can offer its own share of similarly inspired electric blues guitarists. Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji’s music specifically demonstrate the complications of equating immediate cultural context with any given musical activity. Their own creative activities also challenge the Japanologist’s purview that Japanese people will, in various manifestations, reveal characteristics or forms of behaviour that adhere to certain rules and conditions that are inherently locally derived. Although Japan receives more than its fair share of social and cultural commentary in textbooks that devote much time to defining cultural characteristics, the characteristics described are not necessarily all inclusive. It is difficult to know where Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji, and, for that matter other personal acquaintances, would fit in the equations of cultural analyses proffered. Is Japanology redundant and/or is there a population spectrum where some people are simply more ‘Japanese’ than others, and those at the end of the spectrum are not worthy of comment? Certainly, the scholarly trend has been to extricate the individual from the group and to draw attention to behaviour that can be variable as well as normative. This was the central theme in Ross, Mouer and Sugiomoto’s seminal Images of Japanese Society (1986), and concern with an over emphasis on group behaviour also found earlier expression in Sugimoto and Mouer (1980) and Befu (1980). This chapter focuses on individuals rather than observations on the activities of ‘the group’. By taking Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji as two case studies, I attempt to highlight the presence or absence of culturally derived external factors that impinge on their musical activities. Simply put, this chapter asks the question, is Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji’s ethnicity of any relevance in their music making? In order for the discussion to proceed I shall deal with each musician separately. UTADA HIKARU

Utada Hikaru was born in New York in 1983 to music producer Utada Teruzane and singer Utada Junko. Utada Junko herself is better known by her stage name Fuji Keiko (b. 1951) – an enka singer who achieved almost instantaneous success in 1969 with a hit song ‘Shinjuku no Onna’ (Shinjuku Woman).3 Utada Hikaru’s musical lineage runs deep for her grandfather, Keiko’s father, is Abe Sō, a singer of rōkyoku who performed under the stage name Matsuhira Kunijirō. He was accompanied by Keiko’s mother, Sumiko, on the shamisen.4 Her stage name was Suzuki Sumiko and she was also an adept min’yō5 singer.


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Keiko’s parents made a living travelling around Hokkaidō and the north-east of Japan performing at festivals, tourist resorts, hotels or any other centres where a source of revenue could be derived. Keiko accompanied her parents and at the age of ten she too began to sing before an audience and subsequently contributed to her parents’ musical activities and income. After her initial success in 1969, Fuji Keiko’s musical career continued for ten years, but the high profile existence paid its toll and she quit the business and headed for America for peace of mind. She attempted a brief comeback in 1981 but her marriage in 1982 to New York music producer Utada Teruzane and the birth of Hikaru6 the following year put a halt to her musical activities. Subsequently, she would devote her energies to promoting the music of her daughter. New York would be Hikaru’s home for the first eleven years of her life, but in 1994 she and her parents returned to Tokyo and Hikaru entered a Japanese middle-school in Suganami ward to the west of the throbbing centre of Shinjuku. Links with the United States were not severed, however, as summer holidays would be spent in the family home near Central Park, New York – a home that retained a greater degree of permanency than their rented accommodation in Japan. Moreover, Hikaru’s immersion into an English-speaking environment was resumed with her enrolment in an American high school in Tokyo and subsequent return to the United States as a student at Columbia University in 2000. During this period, Hikaru tested her musical abilities, which would result in the fame that she enjoys today. Here, Hikaru was much aided by the formation of U3 – the three Utadas – an administrative unit that brought together the collaborative music skills of Hikaru’s father and mother. In 1993, U3 produced the album Star, incorporating the creative efforts of all three members of the family.7 This was followed in 1996 with another single, a Hikaru and Keiko duet called ‘Tsumetai Tsuki – Nakanaide’ (A Cold Moon – Don’t Cry). Keiko’s stage name, Fuji Keiko, was revived for commercial familiarity, but Hikaru’s identity remained concealed under the pseudonym Cubic U. Cubic U would also be the name used for Hikaru in her first solo English-language single ‘Close to You’ and album Precious – both released in the United States in 1997 when she was only thirteen. As Cubic U, she also made her first television appearance on NHK’s satellite television programme ‘Mayo Chū no Ōkoku’ (Kingdom of Midnight) on 28 May 1998. Promotion videos and explicit references to Hikaru as the daughter of the erstwhile famous Fuji Keiko generated popular interest from a generation that had hitherto paid little attention to contemporary genres of J-pop. Against this background, Hikaru released her first Japanese single ‘Automatic’ under her own name

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and, the following year, March 1999 saw the debut of her first Japanese album First Love. The impact was explosive. All records for album sales in Japan were broken and, in the early stages of the album’s release, the newspapers tracked her commercial success as sales approached the six million mark. This figure broke the record for all album sales held the previous year by B’z. A single ‘First Love’, taken from the album, was used as a ‘tie-up song’ for the TBS television drama ‘Majo no Jōken’ (Conditions of a Witch) and this only served to heighten exposure and cement public fame. Despite her success, Hikaru maintained a low profile and seldom appeared in public. This may have been a marketing ploy to generate interest or due to Hikaru being sixteen years of age with a demanding study schedule stipulated by university entrance requirements. Hikaru was not only musically talented, but she also had academic ability and skipped a year of high school to enter Columbia University. Her studies in America did not, however, interrupt her musical creativity. In 2001, she released her second album Distance, and subsequent albums Deep River (2002), Single Collection Vol. 1 (2004) and Exodus (2004) were interspersed with a range of hit singles including ‘Can You Keep a Secret’ (2001), ‘Sakura’ (2002), ‘Colours’ (2003) and ‘Be My Last’ (2005) – all except the last were used as theme tunes for television dramas. ‘Be My Last’ was the theme song for the movie ‘Haru no Yuki’ (Spring Snow) a dramatization of Mishima Yukio’s novel of the same name. The demands of music making and marriage at the age of nineteen to photographer and film producer Kiriya Kazuaki (real name Iwashita Kazuhiro) in 2002 put a temporary halt to Hikaru’s education and she left Columbia University in the same year. Born and raised in New York and only minimally exposed to the Japanese education system, what is remarkable in Utada Hikaru’s musical career is that, bar one or two exceptions, her music is aimed not at the country that provided her musical inspiration, but at the Japanese public that has given her the success to sustain her musical activities. Given Hikaru’s North American residential and even, arguably, cultural status, the dominant question is why have the Japanese public accepted her so enthusiastically, and, conversely, why has she not received equivalent attention in the country of her birth. Exodus, released in the United States and aimed at the American public, represented her first major attempt to tackle the ‘home’ market, but, possibly through a lack of sufficient publicity, only made it to 160 in the US billboard charts. The inability to penetrate the American market may seem to rest purely with musical considerations, but ultimately much will depend not only on the quality of the music but also on the language, song content and perceptions of


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ethnic identity – a cocktail of musical and extra-musical factors that determine the potential for musical acceptance or indifference. MUSIC AND LANGUAGE

In the Japanese version of the internet’s highly democratic encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, rhythm and blues – R&B – is defined as an American genre of ‘black music’ that has undergone various metamorphoses from its original mix of blues, jazz and gospel roots through contemporary black music to modern ‘dance based rhythms accompanied by powerful singing’ (Wikipedia 2005).8 Wikipedia then provides a list of representative R&B performers. Topping the list is Ray Charles followed by the more contemporary names of Janet Jackson, TLC, Beyonce and Alicia Keys. The list then continues in the same breath with Japanese performers Wada Akiko, popular in the 1970s but seldom singing today, then Misia and Utada Hikaru. The eclectic list of performers demonstrates the extent to which the preferred acronym R&B has transformed into a contemporary genre incorporating elements from soul and funk, and, from the late 1980s, hip hop. It also demonstrates Wikipedia’s willing acceptance to include definitions representing personal viewpoints whose academic accuracy cannot always be guaranteed but at the same time provide a glimpse, in this instance, of a Japanese perceived parity between the popular music of Japan and its originally African-American inspired musical host. The inclusion of Utada Hikaru, along with her near contemporaries Beyonce and Alicia Keys, also provides some indication of the musical spaces Hikaru inhabits and the inspirational source of her musical activities. Hikaru’s earliest musical forays, however, dominated by the creative and technical expertise of her mother and father, bear little witness to the style of music that she would ultimately choose as the expression of her creative talents. Perhaps imitating the career of her mother, Hikaru began at the age of ten to write and sing her own songs and these were incorporated into a body of songs produced by her parents. According to Teruzane, production of this tape had been triggered by the comments of a certain adviser of Warner Elektra Asylum (now Warner Music Group).9 The adviser had heard an earlier musical example of U3 and commented that the music was ‘beautiful but somehow too Japanese’. He then added that if Teruzane wished to sell his music in the United States, he would have to reduce the Japanese element of his productions and, if that was not possible, U3 should market their music as world music. Teruzane took the advice and endeavoured, in his words, to ‘Americanize’ his music and enlisted the

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musical assistance of a number of top New York based backing musicians. The end product was a collection of over ten tunes that could form the basis of an album. What happened next is not divulged, but some ‘unexpected happening’ forced Teruzane to abandon the project in the final stages and the family left New York to set up house in Tokyo. Here, Teruzane reworked the New York recordings, changed the lyrics from English into Japanese and issued the Album under the title U3 Star in 1993. Musically, U3 Star is of little consequence and features a mix of tunes by Fuji Keiko and two compositions by a ten year old Hikaru. Teruzane may have endeavoured to produce an American sound, but some of the instrumentation follows trends frequently heard in many examples of J-pop, most conspicuous being the incongruous use of a heavy metal style guitar as a background to ‘sweet’ melodic singing. As Utada Hikaru’s biographer Ogata Kunihiko comments, Japanese popular music reflects a ‘Japanese’ penchant for the ballad (Ogata 1999, 148), and yet, despite this and perhaps in an eagerness to display virtuoso skills copied from guitar heroes, guitarists take the opportunity to perform in the styles they have learnt irrespective of the musical content of the piece they accompany. Examples of such instrumental mismatches abound and can be heard in the songs of Jpop idol Hamasaki Ayumi and early versions of Amuro Namie. To emphasize the point, the end result could be likened to an imaginary performance of Stevie Vai accompanying a child’s nursery rhyme – a music incongruity that is not dissimilar to the seeming instrumental independence heard in the musical accompaniment to such traditional performing arts as kabuki. Utada Hikaru’s first all English album Precious was released in the US in 1997 and in Japan in 1998. It was recorded in 1996 when Hikaru was only thirteen and is a major departure from U3 Star. As both composer and lyricist, the result belies her years and sets the pattern for all her subsequent musical productions. Hikaru describes the music as a mix of pop and R&B and the more than conspicuous backing of Stanley ‘Jamal’ Hampton, Olamede Faison, Talib Kareem, amongst others, clearly defines the musical character of the CD. The style of the music also illustrates Hikaru’s musical influences and she lists the names of Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, Mariah Carey and TLC as directly impacting on her musical creativity (Utada 1998). The end result is a CD that is indistinguishable from other North American contemporary musical productions, and Hikaru’s early alter ego, Cubic U, as the named performer, conveniently conceals her ethnic identity. Aimed at the American market, Precious went unnoticed in Japan and it was only with her first Japanese-language single ‘Automatic’, released in 1998, that Hikaru was thrust into the Japanese limelight. The style of her


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music was unchanged, reflecting the influence of her American musical heroines, but the lyrics were sung in Japanese, and Utada’s music, at that time, sounded different from other performers. Toshiba-EMI, whose representatives had approached her in 1996 to find out if she could write songs in Japanese, experimented with her music by airing the flip side to ‘Automatic’, ‘Time will Tell’, unnamed to gauge popular reaction. The response was more than promising and the mystery of Utada Hikaru’s identity only fuelled interest as listeners phoned into radio stations to ask who the singer was. ‘Automatic’ shot to number one as did Hikaru’s first Japanese-language Album First Love the following year. These musical productions marked the beginning of Hikaru’s Japanese career and, although returning frequently to the United States, she was able to maintain a high musical profile in Japan while, in her alternative existence, she could walk the streets of New York unnoticed. The Japanese language would be the sole medium of her lyrical expression for the next few years and only in October 2004 and October 2005 did she attempt once again to challenge the American and United Kingdom music markets respectively with her English-language album Exodus. Utada Hikaru’s music remains, as the promotion for her 2005 UK release by Island Records states, an ‘enigmatic fusion of alternative, pop, dance and funk grooves’ and, in this respect, the music’s North American derivation is clearly defined.10 When her songs are sung in English, the cultural equation is completed. When sung in Japanese, Hikaru’s creations arguably enter a different dimension of cultural acceptability where, to an English-language listener, musical familiarity is compromised by lyrical incomprehension. Utada Hikaru is bilingual, but her relation to the Japanese language has been complicated by her New York upbringing. According to Ogata Kunihiko (1999, 60), Hikaru’s early language exposure was, up to around the age of seven, predominantly English, and her parents, worrying about a lack of Japanese-language ability, introduced her to Japanese manga which they thought would be useful as a form of Japanese-language acquisition. Returning to Japan in 1994 and spending three years in a Japanese middle school secured fluency, but, following success, critics of Hikaru complained of the lack of finesse in her spoken Japanese, or more precisely, the absence of polite language forms. Ogata describes Hikaru’s spoken Japanese as tame guchi, an expression originating from the world of gambling but now used to refer to the spoken word of young people when talking amongst themselves (Ogata 1999, 68–73). The problem was that this remained her spoken style in early radio interviews and television presentations. To demonstrate this, Ogata goes as far as to provide a transcript

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of her dialogue with a DJ recorded in 1999 on Tokyo’s ‘Bay FM’ emphasizing that, despite the DJ being her senior, Hikaru’s language displayed a degree of familiarity that would not normally be culturally acceptable. The point is further reinforced with Ogata noting a remark made by Kimura Takuya, member of Japan’s infamous J-pop band SMAP, who, being a fan of Hikaru’s music, phoned in to the same radio programme. Surprised by Kimura’s call, Hikaru’s response was enthusiastic, but again too familiar considering both Kimura’s fame and relative age difference. Kimura instantly admonished Hikaru ordering her to use the polite language forms of keigo. Despite the fact that, in 1999, Hikaru was sixteen years old, Ogata’s continued emphasis on Hikaru’s tame guchi vernacular, and Kimura’s equally strong admonition ‘ome- keigo o tsukae yo!’ (literally, ‘You! Use honorifics’) demonstrate that in the public eye allowances are not made for age. Hikaru’s ‘problem’ with spoken Japanese was equalled by an arguably unorthodox approach to matching her lyrics to the music. Hikaru herself describes how her Japanese-language songs can, at times, be difficult to understand because of the way she sometimes splits the syllables of the words. She explains: ‘I would manipulate the Japanese language in a way that was not expected – I would split up words in the middle and really kind of ignore the general rules of how you connect syllables and stuff like that’ (in Rhodes 2005). Ogata believes this to be the result of adapting the Japanese language to the vocal projection of a hip hop influenced R&B singing style where the breath points in the singing add to the rhythmical complexities of the music. To illustrate the point, Ogata takes a line from her first Japanese single, ‘Automatic’, and shows that breath points in the song, given as commas here, come not only at the end of words but between syllables, as in ‘nana, kai me nobe, ru de, ju, waki o’. Here, a breath splits both the words ‘noberu’ (‘say’), and ‘juwaki’ (‘telephone receiver’). Ogata then claims that this is the first time that any Japanese has employed such singing techniques (Ogata 1999, 138). To add to the disturbance of the intrinsic rhythms of the Japanese language, Hikaru also embellishes her lyrics with English phrasing complementing the sentiment of the song in both English and Japanese as is evident in the following verse from the hit song ‘First Love’: You are always gonna to be my love Itsumo dareka to mata koi ni ochitemo I’ll remember to love You taught me how You are always gonna be the one


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Ima wa mata kanashii love song Atarashii uta utaeru made

The mix of Japanese and English in Japanese pop songs is not, however, new, and many precedents do exist such as Kobayashi Akiko’s 1985 hit single ‘Koi ni Ochite,’ also titled ‘Fall in Love’, where the song proceeds through an alternation of Japanese and English verses. Moreover, with the influence of hip hop, the mix of English and Japanese has become common place in hip hop influenced songs of nearly all Japanese performers today. On a creative level, a distinctive use of the language, as stipulated by Ogata, may have subtly distinguished Hikaru from her Japanese contemporaries, but the content of her earlier songs made an easy connection with teenage girls the same age. Love and romance were the dominating themes reflecting the dreams of a teenage girl. All this changed, however, with the release of Hikaru’s Exodus. No longer a teenager and already married, the songs are adult and occasionally sexually oriented, and, in their creation Hikaru was consciously aware of her Western audience. She confirms: ‘For years I was known as a very academic girl who did all her own writing, the good girl. But in English, you can be sexy but without lowering yourself. The language allows more room for a sense of humour and a playfulness with things’ (in Rhodes 2005). Likewise, in an interview for the New York Post, Hikaru describes the Japanese reaction to the album that was sold in Japan a month prior to its October release in the United States: ‘People are like “Oh my God what’s happened to her?” In Japan, people don’t really sing about sexual content’ (Shen 2004). With lyrics like: I was dancing with a dirty blond Texan Charming accent but the playing was too loud So I showed him how people in the Far East get down Push it up, push it down Pull it up, pull it down Keep it up, keep it down Now put me down What a workout

and, the song ‘Hotel Lobby’, describing the plight of a prostitute, Hikaru was touching on themes that had hitherto remained taboo in the context of modern Japanese popular song.11 A different cultural environment and the freedom to express in English allowed for the exposure of sentiments deemed unmarketable in a domestic Japanese context dominated by songs dealing primarily with boy and girl love and positive attitudes towards the future.

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Whether inspired by Hikaru’s Western adventures or not, Exodus marked the beginning of a sporadic appearance of similarly charged songs that found their way into the Japanese charts in 2005. In this respect, they were even more challenging than Hikaru’s album. Though successful in Japan, Exodus was not originally intended for domestic ears, whereas Amuro Namie and Koda Kumi with ‘Want me Want me’ and ‘Hot Stuff’ have respectively thrown down the gauntlet with lyrics that are similarly graphic as the following extract from Amuro Namie’s ‘Want me Want me’ demonstrates:12 Want me want me hajike tobu Mune no botan aserisugite [you are too quick with the ‘button’ of my breast] wait a minute chotto matta [wait a minute] Te kozuru hito wa [the guy rubbing with his hand] Demo wasurenaide neTrajan [But I won’t forget Trojan] I am oochie, la la poppin coochie Osaekirezu ni [Without stopping the pressure] want me baby Oh boy, you are so hot Konna kibun wa hisashiburi mō nando mo [It’s been a long time since I’ve had this feeling, many, many times] Ah, Oh I can do you Yeah, yeah you can do me Anything you want me to do I can do you Sumi kara sumi made ura kara [from corner to corner, from behind] Omote made doko mo kashiko mo [up to the surface, anywhere is good]

Against a continuing musical environment dominated by innocent boy/girl love songs, Amuro Namie and Koda Kumi’s creations seem almost culturally misplaced, and, perhaps for this reason, though gaining chart entry, the songs did not enter the top ten. Significantly, in contrast to nearly all CD releases in Japan, the lyrics of Amuro Namie’s CD Queen of Hip Hop in which ‘Want me, Want me’ is included, have been omitted from the liner notes. Given Amuro Namie and Koda Kumi’s explicitly North American style, Utada Hikaru’s position as a conduit directly linking New York and Tokyo is challenged. Hikaru’s sole distinction, though still an important one, is reduced to her bilingual ability and the possibilities that this avails her of entering both American and European music markets. Amuro Namie and


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Koda Kumi are unlikely in their musical careers to produce all English albums let alone sign a contract with a non-Japanese record company. The success of Exodus in the United Kingdom is, however, yet to be tested, and the American response was not even lukewarm. Consequently, Hikaru’s music and even her existence has been of much greater significance to her Japanese public than any American counterpart, and it is here, in the Japanese perceptions of Hikaru and the creation of a Japanese persona, that Hikaru’s musical activities are of greatest interest. HIKARU IN JAPAN

Takemura Mitsushige (1999, 12) describes his first encounter with the music of Hikaru as that of a girl with an interesting vibrato embellishing the melodies of simple tunes. Takemura was not impressed. Why, then, had Hikaru received so much attention and praise in Japan? This is the question that Takemura poses in his book Utada Hikaru no tsukurikata (The making of Utada Hikaru). According to Takemura, Hikaru’s appeal lies not only in the quality of the music, but in the cultural nerves she touches when singing for a Japanese audience. The end result reveals, quoting Takemura: The lamentable [weak] points of the Japanese people. Japanese people are weak at English. Japanese people are weak at rhythm. Japanese people are weak when it comes to blood lineage. Japanese people are weak for child prodigies. All these complexes which many Japanese people embrace, are absent in Utada Hikaru (Takemura 1999, 15).

Hikaru is Japanese, fulfilling the requirements of blood lineage, but personifies the ideal of an individual free of the anxieties that trouble Japanese people most when the spectre of kokusaika (internationalization) looms large. Takemura continues to hammer the point. He claims that the principal difference between Hikaru’s first English-language album Precious and albums produced by J-pop performers is that she has employed black musicians. He continues: Japanese vocalists, who admire black performers, would never do such a thing. If they were compared [to black singers] and the listeners were moved by the songs of black musicians, their own existence would pale into insignificance. That is, no matter how well they can sing in English, they have a complex [about it]. In the history of Japanese artists, this has never happened, in fact they avoid it. (Takemura 1999, 16–17)

By contrast, Hikaru ‘has done it (worked with ‘black’ musicians) without giving any thought to it. And we can see from this that she does not have

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the complexes peculiar to Japanese people. This is why she is amazing (sugoi)’ (Takemura 1999, 16–17). Takemura, focuses on the Japanese complexes that Hikaru has never experienced. Others too have similarly aggrandized her achievements, viewing her in the role of an Elvis Presley, providing a bridge between two musical styles. Through her birth in New York, Hikaru is imagined to be naturally endowed with the qualities of ‘African-American musicians’, and, as a further radio review in connection with ‘Be my Last’ reported in September 2005, she has consequently acquired ‘vocal techniques which no Japanese singer could ever produce’ (FM Cocolo broadcast 28 September 2005). The myth is further reinforced with the publication of Utada Hikaru to burakku myūjikku (Utada Hikaru and black music) (Halleluiah Market 2000). Here, a list of positive comments made by Hikaru about a number of African-American performers is given as proof that their music had direct influence on her (Halleluiah Market 2000). An imagined production of African-American vocal styles and Englishlanguage ability seems to locate Hikaru in the realm of the ‘other’, and her identity becomes a confused mix of the native and the foreign. Critics may lament her familiar use of the Japanese language, but others put this down to her ‘being half American’ (Ogata 1999, 70). Hikaru too was conscious of the criticisms, and in her own defence claimed that she used keigo (honorifics), but only towards people she disliked. If she could, she tried to avoid polite language as much as possible as familiarity meant being friendly (Ogata 1999, 68). Critics saw this as yet further evidence of her American mentality. However, an aversion to keigo and a preference for a vernacular that is friendly is not uncommon. My own students have made similar comments and they have yet to venture beyond the boundaries of the Kansai area let alone experience the verbal egalitarianism of New York. As Ogata suggests, verbal familiarity would have conversely endeared her to her own peer group and added to her appeal. Musically and linguistically, Utada Hikaru may be exceptional in the literal sense of the word. What may be novel and appealing to a Japanese audience, however, be it the music itself, the absence of Takemura’s ascribed Japanese complexes or a mixture of both, is of no great consequence when the context shifts to North America or the United Kingdom. Hikaru may possess the mentality of a New Yorker where she lives, but she remains physically Oriental. Hikaru is all too aware of the complicated cultural spaces she has to negotiate. Although born in New York, she seemed to deny her cultural influences and geographical roots in press interviews prior to the release of Exodus. She explained to the Autumn edition of America Magazine: ‘Being a foreigner is kind of like being a permanent


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outsider when you go to a new place’ (Daniels 2004). Despite her recordbreaking fame in Japan, and Japanese perceptions of her African-American musical style, Hikaru and her music are seen as ‘other’ in an American context. In the same article, she is described as being ‘on the verge of breaking down musical barriers in the United States’ as if she imports a ‘foreign’ musical form unrelated to the New York environment that originally inspired her. The prejudice that because she looks different, her thinking, actions and creativity must somehow be different is still pervasive, and the reality of her background and upbringing are conveniently denied A similar approach reinforcing the image of Hikaru as an American nonnational was also adopted by <MTV.com> news. In its report on the release of Exodus it states: ‘An old cliché says that it’s easy for American artists to be ‘big in Japan.’ So can the opposite hold true for an attractive young Japanese pop star trying to infiltrate the US music scene’ (Rashbaum 2004). The article continued with Hikaru expressing her own concerns about her identity, denying the easy assimilation into the American mainstream that her Japanese audience conversely assumes. She confesses ‘people . . . ask me if I can make it in the States, . . . I don’t think it’s the music that I’m concerned about. It’s obvious that I look really different and there really aren’t any completely Asian people [who are popular singers in the US] right now’ (Rashbaum 2004).13 Utada Hikaru endeavours to negate barriers, be they cultural or racial, to have her music accepted purely on its own merits. In ‘Animato’, one of the many autobiographically inspired songs on Exodus, she sings: ‘This is something new and interesting/Why are you trying to classify it/This is music for all humanity’ (Rashbaum 2004). And, from the final lines of the same song, ‘DVDs of Elvis Presley/BBC Sessions of Led Zeppelin/Singing along to F. Mercury/Wishing he was still performing’, we learn of the musical soundscapes that in the past enveloped her, negating American Magazines portrayal of Hikaru as a musical ‘other’, Yet, despite the negations, Hikaru’s own references to her ‘Japanese’ identity surface in a number of songs, whether it be the pop song style of ‘Easy Breezy’ (‘I’m Japaneesy and you’re Easy Breezy’), the sexually explicit ‘The Workout’ (‘so I showed him how people in the Far East get down’) or the equally sexual ‘Let me give you my Love’ (‘Can you and I start mixing gene pools/Eastern, Western people/Get naughty multi-lingual’). Finally, there is the liminal ‘Exodus 04’, which gives the album its title. Hikaru’s career from 1998 to 2004 had been dominated by a period of music created solely for the Japanese market. Her contract with the Island Def Jam label in 2003, which led to Exodus, marked the beginning of a dual existence. ‘Exodus 04’, as the title denotes, relates her exodus in 2004 from her prior musical life in Japan:

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Now home feels so foreign . . . Now I am ready, Daddy don’t be mad that I’m leaving Please let me worry about me Mama don’t you worry about me This is my story Through mountains high and valleys low The ocean, through the desert, snow We’ll say goodbye to the friends we know This our Exodus ’04 Through traffic jams in Tokyo New music on the radio We’ll say goodbye to the world we know This is our Exodus ’04

Just as the duality of Hikaru’s musical existence becomes a reality, a dual persona also takes form in the contractual obligations to the two record companies that negotiate her music with the ‘two’ publics she serves. ToshibaEMI produces her CDs for the Japanese market, and Island Def Jam handles her English-language versions. The differing expectations of her two audiences become subtly manifest in the separate internet home pages that the two companies have independently created for her. Hikaru wrote her own bio page and provided detailed historical background beginning with her birth in Manhattan, reference to her mother as a singer of ‘traditional Japanese music’, her early musical activities, successes in Japan and thoughts about her musical creations. In the corresponding profile section for a Japanese public that Toshiba-EMI provides, we learn the customary information on her date of birth, height, blood type, hobbies and future dreams. This information on hobbies and dreams would be seen as irrelevant, perhaps even childish, in an American context, and description of blood type would be meaningless (Island Def Jam Records 2005; Toshiba-EMI 2005). The two companies were also promoting two separate singles by Hikaru at virtually the same time. In September 2005, Island Records web page announced the release for the UK market of ‘You make me want to be a man’ taken from the Exodus album, and Toshiba-EMI was simultaneously promoting ‘Be my Last’. Both were released within a week each of other. The build up to ‘Be my Last’ saw its pre-release broadcast on a number of popular music radio stations and the interview between Jun and the music critic on radio FM Cocolo was just one of many. As noted, the critic alluded to Japanese sentiments in the song contrasting these with those


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expressed in Hikaru’s English-language creations as if to imply that each was the product of two separate culturally induced mental states. The song is auto-biographical and bears no relation to the content of the Mishima Yukio based ‘Haru no Yuki’, hence it was marketed without overt reference to the film. The lyrics of the song convey feelings rather than precise meaning, rendering an English translation problematic. For this reason, the song has been the subject of internet blogs by Japanese fans requesting interpretations as to what the lyrics are meant to convey. Yet, despite the poetic style, it is evident that it alludes to the relationship between Hikaru and her mother, the difficulties of her mother living in another land, and the marriage problems of Hikaru’s parents. What the music critic saw as an expression of particularly Japanese sentiments is difficult to determine, but, while perhaps more obscure than previous Japanese releases, the subject matter follows a pattern of previous Japanese-language songs. The song deals with immediate human relationships and immediate concerns – what I like to call ‘kimi songs’, songs about kimi (you) – a theme common to nearly all J-pop songs whether they be boy/girl relationships or those with immediate relatives. In this respect ‘Be my Last’ and previous Japanese-language songs are arguably different from Hikaru’s English-language creations in that, in the former, any reference to a third party, even in the abstract, is seldom, if ever, made. From the standpoint of J-pop, what is remarkable about ‘Hotel Lobby’ in Exodus, for example, is not only that it is about a prostitute – subject matter that is difficult to imagine any lyricist writing in Japanese ever contemplating – but that the subject is about a third person, an individual totally unconnected to Hikaru herself. Even references to Freddy Mercury and Led Zepplin in ‘Animato’, or Hikaru’s sophisticated working of the lyrics in ‘Kremlin Dusk’ the lines: All along I was searching for my Lenore, in the words of Mr Edgar Alan Poe Now I am sober and ‘Nevermore’ Will the Raven come to bother me at home

are conspicuous simply because they introduce the names of figures that extend beyond the all dominating ‘you’ and ‘I’ of J-pop. It is difficult to imagine a casual reference to Natsume Sōseki or Kawabata Yasunari in Japanese popular songs even if the lyricist has an affinity with these authors. Of a total of over one hundred J-pop songs I have examined, equivalent third person references are rare. Utada Hikaru the Japanese lyricist and Utada Hikaru the English lyricist seem to represent two different personae – a duality similarly manifest

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in dual geographical existences as well as her business obligations to two different record companies. But it is in the duality of language that the Japanology or, alternatively, the Americanology – the converse must also be possible – of Utada Hikaru is at its most interesting. Are Sapir-Whorfian theories that different languages produce different mental states valid? (Barnard 2000, 108). For any bilingual speaker who functions in two languages on a daily basis the parameters of language from a structural view and a cultural view are well understood. As Alan Barnard (2000) demonstrates in a denial of Sapir-Whorf, the correlation between the ‘limitations’ of language determining thought process are overridden by cultural factors and it is these that determine what will be uttered and what will not. More precisely, the Japanese language can be used in any way a speaker wishes to use it, but whether it will be culturally Japanese is a different matter. The novice speaker can always be distinguished from the native in the way the language is worked, even though the novice may be grammatically correct. The song lyrics take the problem a stage further, for it is not the use of the language itself, but rather the content of the lyrics that take on cultural bearings. At this level, what language is used is immaterial in determining content. Utada Hikaru mentioned a greater freedom in the use of the English language, a greater potential for ‘humour’ and ‘playfulness’, but it is more likely that the cultural panorama of lifestyles encountered in New York allowed for the treatment of themes – such as those of ‘Hotel Lobby’ – which in a Japanese context would not bear consideration. Hikaru’s own perceptions of Tokyo paint a picture of limitations. She states that in comparison with New York ‘Tokyo is so unified. There really isn’t much of a gap between people in terms of money status. They all look like they have an adequate amount of money to live on and seem to be able to buy stuff they want’ (in Rhodes 2005). The temptation here is to extrapolate Hikaru’s comments and suggest that the ‘unified’ nature of Tokyo extends to an avoidance of the controversial in social interaction. Certainly, there would be no difficulty in locating journalistic observations amongst members of ex-patriot communities to support the contention, or include a series of similarly supporting anecdotes derived from personal experience. The comments of a former Japanese colleague at my university who asked me ‘don’t you think Japanese conversation is shallow’ would be a case in point and could be used to explain the absence of ‘difficult’ themes in Japanese song.14 But, conversely, the current popularity of prime-time television discussion programmes dealing with controversial issues such as Japanese nationalism, Sino-Japanese relations or the continuing reverberations of the Second World War could be used to counter this argument.15


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The absence of the ‘difficult’ in Japanese song is not necessarily a reflection of a ‘larger’ cultural picture, but rather one characteristic of a predetermined aesthetic of Japanese popular song. As one of my students phrased it in response to a music questionnaire, J-pop is not the proper medium for the expression of the ‘difficult’. Instead, ‘difficult’ topics find their outlet in the media of literature and the theatre. Straddling two linguistic zones, any bilingual speaker learns to make the mental adjustment to convey ideas or thoughts that will garner a response from his or her listener. In addition to the music, Hikaru’s success in Japan must also be due to the art of her lyricism that has created an affinity with her Japanese public. Coming to Japan whilst still a youngster, it is difficult to gauge to what extent the mental adjustment was learnt or came as a natural adaptation to life in Japan. As an adult, her comments about the use of the English language in her lyrics and the differing range of topics that can be dealt with demonstrate that the process of ‘appropriate’ lyric selection has become conscious rather than instinctive. Utada Hikaru can make such mental adjustments, but the dilemma of the dual identity with its concomitant complications remains a constant. This finds its expression in the English lyrics of her album Exodus, but significantly is omitted in the lyrics of her Japanese songs. The ‘aesthetic’ of J-pop appears to dictate the treatment of other subject matter. Utada Hikaru has achieved unparalleled success in Japan and the dual identity has worked to her advantage. She explains: ‘the whole thing was very surreal. Part of it was that there wasn’t anyone like me around at the time in Japan. It was a pretty big deal that I was born in New York and that I was bilingual’ (in Rhodes 2005). But, despite the dual identity, success in the West has yet to be achieved and, as she fears, the key to that may rest not with her musical abilities but with her own physicality. NAKAJIMA KENJI

Buddy Guy launched himself onto the stage to a ferment of wild applause as the crowd suddenly lunged forward in one massive wave of humanity. Jimmy Vaughn and a dubious Peter Green had respectively warmed the audience up with a mixture of Texas-style blues and rock, and classics from an early incarnation of Fleetwood Mac. The crowd was warm but polite. All changed when Buddy Guy made his entrance. Buddy Guy was hot. For me, an hour of unrivalled entertainment followed as the applause reached fever pitch and people began standing on their seats beating the air with their arms. Something special was happening and individuals in the audience phoned friends on mobiles, portables or keitai – depending on their

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geographical origins – and pointed the earpiece in the direction of the stage. Such was the scene in a one-day blues festival held not in the American Mid-West but in Chicago’s sister city Osaka. The people of Osaka have a reputation for irreverent and loud behaviour and this unnerves their fellow countrymen in Tokyo. The famous onnagata16 kabuki actor Bandō Tamasaburō, who achieved international, though selected fame through an accompanying dance rendition of Bach’s fifth cello suite performed by Yo-yo Ma, once remarked that if Osaka perished that would be the end of the true Japan. However, Buddy Guy’s concert was in Japan and the officials for the Osaka Castle outdoor auditorium were bound by time constraints and, in a display of Japanese efficiency, endeavoured to get Buddy Guy to stop on time. Buddy Guy was not having it. He wanted to play and a heated argument broke out between him and the Japanese officials in the wings of the stage. Buddy Guy stormed off and the confused musicians in the band brought the concert to a close. Buddy Guy has not been back since. If you are a budding – no pun intended – blues performer in Japan and cannot get a visa to stay for any length of time in the United States or simply cannot afford the flight out, this will be the closest you will get to the source of your inspiration. Buddy Guy, B. B. King and other African-American blues performers have come more than once to Osaka. Then, there are the performances of Anglo-Saxon exponents with Eric Clapton, a frequent visitor topping the list followed by Jeff Beck with his more eclectic musical renditions. When he was alive, Stevie Ray Vaughn too once made the trip and a pirated video of a Tokyo concert is the sole aural and visual legacy of his Far Eastern performance. The Blues is an oral music tradition and, in the days of B. B. King and early Buddy Guy, musical knowledge was obtained through direct interaction with an older or contemporary generation of African-American performers where musical ideas could be exchanged, licks borrowed and tunes reworked. In the words of Walter Ong (1982, 136), this is an example of ‘primary orality’. Eric Clapton’s original musical acquisition was, by contrast, impersonal – a textbook case of Walter Ong’s technologically dependent ‘secondary-orality’. Walter Ong writes: ‘telephone, radio, television and various kinds of sound tape, electronic technology has brought us into the age of ‘secondary orality’ . . . [and] this orality has striking resemblances to the old in . . . its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas’ (Ong 1982, 136). Kurt Blaukopf elaborated, adding that the ‘distinctive feature of secondary orality is the replacement of face-to-face communication by media communication’ and that ‘musics, communicated by electronic means have become ‘placeless’ (Blaukopf 1992, 20).


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The numerous videos one can buy of Eric Clapton and Cream repeat the story of Clapton shutting himself in his room and spending hours on end listening to records and copying the guitar riffs of heroes like B. B. King, Freddie King, Albert King and, the pioneer of them all, Robert Johnson. Temporary residence in John Mayall’s flat also permitted access to what Mayall (1991) in his video documentary described as his ‘pretty hefty collection’ of blues records. Through repeated listening and imitation, Clapton acquired a mental library of blues ‘formulae’ to recreate in his own distinctive style of playing. Though never initially directly exposed to the playing of AfricanAmerican blues players, Clapton’s synthesis of the music obtained demonstrated not only how ‘secondary orality’ can play a significant role in the transmission and acquisition of music, but also that this impersonal, ‘placeless’ form of music acquisition allowed him to become, borrowing Marshal McLuhan’s term, a member of a ‘global village’, in this case of blues musicians around the world (see Ong 1982, 136). Clapton would perform with B. B. King, Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy despite the fact that the orality of these musicians differed – primary for B. B. King and others. Nakajima Kenji is also a part of the same ‘global village’, and as a diasporic member of that village, his music acquisition, like Clapton’s, is the product of secondary orality. Nakajima Kenji is not famous, but to people who have heard him he is an exceptional electric guitar player. He knows it too. In brighter days, Kenji, his then drummer and bass player in a format known as ‘Funny Bone’ used to be regular performers at Southside Blues, a basement bar run by a Japanese–Korean in the centre of Osaka’s second hub, Namba. Umemoto, the bar’s owner, had a ‘wide face’ – a Japanese expression that refers to his broad social circle and contacts with people, in particular people in the music business. Professional musicians would sometimes drop into his bar after performing at Osaka’s Blue Note located a few kilometres to the north on Route 2, the old main road from Osaka to Kobe. Foreign performers were also amongst the group of visitors and, when Kenji was playing, Umemoto arranged for two of these, Nile Rodgers of Chic and Jerry Velez to drop in. Jerry Velez’s claim to fame is as percussionist in Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, a group formed by Jimmy Hendrix after the break up of the Jimmy Hendrix Experience in June 1969 and immortalized in the film version of their Woodstock performance of the same year. On the separate occasions that Nile Rodgers and Jerry Velez came, they, and members of their respective bands, were excited by Kenji’s renditions of funk and blues classics and jammed along. Jerry Velez was impressed. He gave Kenji his New York home phone number and asked him to send a

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demo tape. However a lack of professional guidance combined possibly with different cultural expectations may have emerged. What Velez wanted and what Kenji thought Velez would like to hear were two different things and, sadly, the encounter came to nothing. Umemoto remained excited about Kenji’s playing and offered his bar as a regular venue for performances. In so doing, he also introduced Kenji to a group of professional and semi-professional performers who made a living working bars and clubs around the country. Most of them were at least twice Kenji’s age and veterans in the music business. These included Kyoto-based guitarist Shiotsugu Shinji and blues harpist Weeping Heart Senoh (Senō Ryūichirō 2005). Shiotsugu is credited with sparking a blues guitar boom in Japan having gained credibility by being the opening act for B. B. King’s first Osaka performance in 1972 (Shiotsugu 2005). Umemoto was the linchpin and provided access to a group of musicians who socialized in drinking sessions that inevitably followed performances. However, Umemoto’s ‘wide face’ meant that he also had connections in the underworld (yami no sekai), and Kenji, believing that some of these included members of the yakuza, became frightened and ended connections with Umemoto at the social level but continued to play at Southside Blues. Personal relations, however, became strained between the two and Umemoto in the end accused Kenji of petty theft. These difficulties were compounded by the effects of the Japanese economic recession that hit Osaka badly. Southside Blues eventually collapsed and Kenji in a variety of band formats sought alternative venues, but these too, like Southside Blues, followed a similar pattern of bankruptcy. Ultimately, Kenji’s own family would become victims of the recession. Kenji’s father owned two restaurants, but from the late 1990s the business had continued beyond financial breaking point and both Kenji and his mother began working in the restaurants without payment. In 2002, the financial crisis came to a head when the family home was literally abandoned – yo nige (night flee) and the family disintegrated. Three years later, in 2005, Kenji and his mother eventually ended up in a two-room apartment behind the shinkansen tracks towards the east of the Osaka city – supporting themselves with part time jobs. KENJI’S MUSIC

Despite domestic difficulties, music has remained central to Kenji’s being and provided him with focus. He has never ceased to practise and learn. Musically, on an instrumental level, Kenji’s ethnicity is irrelevant, but, his location, removed from his musical source, means that he is dependent on


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secondary sources for his inspiration. Kenji lives in a world of secondary orality – in a sonic environment where the music has, reiterating Blaukopf (1992), become ‘placeless’. Artistically, however, the implication of placeless music conveyed technologically is considerable. Like primary orality, the process of musical recreation remains essentially the same, the recombining of musical formulae into a musical whole. In this respect, whether it be the blues or jazz or even the primary orality of Gregorian chant as analysed by Harold Powers, melodic segments are worked and combined in the fashion of formulae, as conceptually inspired by Lord and Parry, to create a musical whole (Treitler 1974, 353). However, in secondary orality the library of cognitive musical elements obtained in this process vastly exceeds that which would be possible through primary means. Kenji, or any other blues, jazz or rock musician, whether he or she is in Osaka, Japan, or Austin, Texas, can potentially be exposed to and absorb a vast array of musical sonorities and this becomes an integral part of his or her music making. Kenji works with pre-planned musical themes – the melodic identity of the song provides him with that, but much else is improvised, drawing on his mental library of musical elements and phrases to let the music take him to where it wants to go. Kenji confessed that during performance; he seldom knew what he was doing. Occasionally, the mental library would present him with an over abundance of choices and, in long solos, the music could travel in directions that were not always predictable. Alternatively, the ‘library’ also allowed him to perform in a variety of musical styles and, if required, he could work the predictable patterns of enka accompaniment. But, like most people from their forties down, Kenji hates enka and a ‘redress’ to the traditional would only come as a playful party piece in the confines of his home. Kenji’s music making may be the product of ‘placeless’ sonorities, but this does not mean that it is completely devoid of cultural ramifications. In the early days of Funny Bone, the sudden withdrawal of a lead singer due to personality frictions meant that Kenji had to sing as well as play. In comparison to most musicians in Japan, whether they be aspiring amateurs or professional, Kenji is lucky in that his three years spent in the United States at a young age allowed him to acquire a natural American pronunciation. Unlike melody and rhythm that has achieved ‘placeless’ status through the development of technological means, language, at least in a Japanese context, has not become borderless. In the genre that Kenji chooses to perform, English predominates. For other musicians who have made a similar choice but have not had the luxury of residence in an Englishspeaking country, Japanese identity becomes apparent in the juxtaposition of an instrumentation that works but a vocal delivery that does not.

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Admirable instrumental skills are compromised by the pronunciation of words that to the Japanese listener may appear to be, in the words of my students, kakko ii (really cool), but to the native speaker, or at least to me, sound not only inauthentic but, at times, painful. It is here, in the qualitative mismatch between the vocal and the instrumental that Blaukopf ’s ‘placeless’ music finds its place and the original identity of the music as North American is reconfirmed not through performances that succeed, but rather through performances that fail. No matter how much the nonnative speaker perfects a slurred drawl in the belief that this approximates an authentic blues delivery, the final vocal product becomes a caricature of the original and conspicuously fails because it is that – a caricature. The music is manifestly not North American and finds its place elsewhere. Kenji was adamant that blues and related genres should be sung in English and that the Japanese language was not only culturally inappropriate, but, due to its syllabic structure, rhythmically unsuited. When he tried to create his own compositions, he asked me to write English lyrics, which he could set the music to. For Kenji, rendition of the words in sung form presented no difficulties. However, for singers who were asked to join his band the problem of pronunciation remained. I occasionally suggested that songs sung in Japanese were preferable, not only because the difficulties of pronunciation were avoided, but more importantly a sense of ‘heart’ (direct identification with the content of the song on the part of the singer) could be keenly felt. That feeling was always absent in English-language performances with vocal renditions approximating classroom pronunciation exercises. The dilemma for the Japanese blues singer, attempting to retain the authenticity of a song, is, therefore, acute. Even high profile performers who were singing at a bar called Point After, where Kenji was playing in a recent performance I attended, had their difficulties. Kaneko Mari – ‘the Janis Joplin of Shimokitazawa’, began her musical career as one of the founding members of the ‘legendary’ Smokey Medicine, a band that was formed in 1973 with arguably the best known blues-based rock guitarist in Japan today, Takenaka Hisato, alias Char (Takenaka 2005; Kaneko 2005). With a white handbag hanging from her right arm and a cigarette permanently stuck to the fingers of her left hand, Mariko looked older than her fifty-two years and was convincing as a blues singer who has lived. Her singing made it evident why she had received her nickname, but it was not the English-language songs that left an impression, rather her own songs in the Japanese language. The audience too was correspondingly empathetic as they could at last understand what she was saying. The same was also true for other singers on that night. The result was that the bond between


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audience and performer was more than palpable and, even though the music was North-American inspired, through the Japanese language and resulting audience empathy, the performance had claimed its own local identity – an identity that placed the small foreign contingent of AfricanAmerican musicians from being active participants, when standard English-language numbers were performed, to peripheral observers. They were excluded from that close-knit bond that had been generated between (Japanese) performer and (Japanese) listener. When music is instrumental the cultural identity of the performer is largely irrelevant. When song is introduced, performances can, depending on individual capabilities, be compromised by the cultural specifics of language. The performer is confronted with a choice of two authenticities – a choice between fidelity to the authenticity of the song respecting both music and language content, or a fidelity to the authenticity of the performer’s ‘soul’. In the latter, the language of the original is sacrificed and replaced with Japanese, but, alternatively, a new form of performance is achieved that obtains its own authenticity through the establishment of a new local identity – a local identity which, by virtue of its own new found authenticity, cannot, in turn, be translated back to the source of its inspiration in a North-American context. Kenji, as well as the musicians he has worked with, more often than not select fidelity to the authenticity of the song. In a Japanese context before a Japanese audience, the intricacies of English-language pronunciation are often not detected and a bad language performance may go unnoticed – the qualms that I personally feel are irrelevant. However, in touching empathetic nerves, the Japanese language will inevitably work best in a Japanese context. Toshiba-EMI knew this, and this is why their first question to Utada Hikaru was ‘Can you write in Japanese?’17 Kenji’s success on a music level may rest with a willingness to acknowledge his own Japanese identity rather than emulating performances of Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughn. His three-year stay in Los Angeles obviously had a considerable influence on him, and for a considerable period he would insist on introducing his songs in English for the token member of the ex-patriot community who may have wandered into his bar. Given Kenji’s stated preference to live in Japan, his cultural choices remain complicated. THE JAPANOLOGY OF KENJI

Being in Japan at a time of economic uncertainty has had a direct impact on Kenji’s life, and he has suffered more than others through the loss of his

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home and the collapse of performance venues. Likewise, the inadequacies of a social welfare system, also a reflection of cultural priorities, means that his mother is dependent on him in order to provide financial assistance for rent and food. The relationship between the two has always been a close one and a good one, but Kenji no longer has the freedom to move independently without worrying about the repercussions on his mother. When I have talked with friends about the possibilities for Kenji in the future, the conversation often turns to the past and to whether opportunities were missed or not. It is clear that the rules of social interaction (tsukiai) could have worked in Kenji’s favour, but these were superseded by circumstances determining alternative courses of action. Umemoto, of Southside Blues, provided Kenji with access to a local community of musicians, but with the dubious figure of Umemoto at the centre of those links, social interactions were severed because Kenji felt apprehensive about the alternative, possibly criminal circle of individuals Umemoto was moving in. Had an alternative, ‘safer’ figure provided the connections, Kenji could possibly have been a member of an inner circle of performers, like Shiotsugu Shinji and Weeping Heart Senoh who jammed with Kaneko Mari at Point After. Outside the comparatively rigid framework of corporate life, terms like senpai (one’s senior) and kōhai (one’s junior) are probably irrelevant in the social environment in which Kenji has located himself. However, a possible recourse to an alternative etiquette, the etiquette of wrapping defined by Joy Hendry (1995), may have complicated his thinking when he was asked to present a demonstration tape for Jerry Velez. Like the photographic snapshot of parties and functions that occasionally find their way into my mail box at university as a reminder of happy instantaneous moments, Kenji sent a tape that not only demonstrated his own guitar skills but also included a recording he had made of Jerry Velez and himself jamming together in the Southside Blues. The ‘snapshot’ of the musical moment and the imagined ‘good feeling’ derived thereof was perhaps intended to sway Velez in Kenji’s favour. Extending Hendry’s concept of wrapping, an integral part of zōtei bunka (the culture of gift giving), where social transactions may be defined by the actual wrapping of a gift or the wrapping of verbal communication with polite language, Kenji’s own transaction may be seen as an extension of the wrapping concept. In his demonstration tape to Velez, a display of guitar skills was the content of the packaging, the recording at Southside Blues with Jerry Velez was the packaging itself, an anticipated endearing form of wrapping. Senpai, kōhai, tsukiai and zōtei bunka are just some of a number of terms in the Japanese language that have currency and can determine or


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define social interaction between individuals. But their manifestation is also highly situational and the presence or absence of such characteristics is determined by the social environment in which an individual is located. Where it mattered most, Kenji’s initial environment of social contacts revolving around the Southside Blues bar proved too problematic and an adherence to rules of social convention became immaterial. An alternative environment has, instead, evolved where Kenji is one of a growing generation of furīta (free arubaito) drifting from occupation to occupation while pursuing other goals – a trend that Hendry has seen worthy of comment in her third edition of Understanding Japanese Society (Hendry 2003). As a specialist in a music that is not bound by the comparatively rigid conventions of traditional Japanese forms, Kenji belongs to a loose social network of musicians who seek venues and musical partners in order to sustain musical activity and supplement alternative forms of income. Like any rock or pop group in the United States or the United Kingdom, performers tend to be attracted to other musicians of equivalent age and, even though Kenji plays guitar in a variety of band and jazzbased combinations, the age range of performers is roughly equivalent to his own. The complications arising from age differences are, therefore, naturally avoided.18 However, should age ranges be broader, it is difficult to gauge to what extent the dynamics of social convention play in the floating world of blues and rock musicians.19 On a daily basis it is more than possible to function without being ‘troubled’ by the regulations that words like kōhai and senpai imply. The rigid codes of vertically-structured behaviour, which are blatantly followed by young students engaged in club activities on the campus of Osaka University, for example, would, though recognizable to Kenji, alienate him as it would the first-time American tourist who has just stepped off the aeroplane at Kansai International Airport. Apart from part-time jobs in restaurants, which by their nature demand a degree of vertical social display, Kenji is free of the social restraints in the social environment that really matter to him – his current musical environment. Should that environment come to include more senior musicians like Shiotsugu Shinji, Kaneko Mari, Weeping Heart Senoh or even Char, to whom Umemoto attempted to effect a connection, the social conventions, which have become part of the Japanologist’s lore, may come into contention. I am not sure why Umemoto was not bypassed and independent connections with the people who really mattered more were not cultivated. It would be impertinent of me to ask. I suspect this has more to do with Kenji’s personal temperament rather than the imposition of

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external cultural controls. For in such a discussion what is of greater importance here is not the culture of Japan but rather the culture of Kenji. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji inhabit different musical worlds in that one has achieved considerable success and the other has not. However, they also share points in common. Both have experienced various lengths of residence in the United States, and this has, in part, determined the art they have chosen to express. Being Japanese, they are also confronted by the dilemma of how to sell their art to an audience whose affinity to the music they perform is undefined. Toshiba-EMI gave Utada Hikaru wise counsel and maintained that all Japanese compositions should be written in the Japanese language for her Japanese public to ensure audience accessibility. The style of the music may appear to her biographers to diverge from precedents, but use of the Japanese language has imprinted a Japanese stamp on her works as has the content of the lyrics. Kenji’s music, on the other hand, bears no Japanese stamp. When he does sing, his songs will invariably be in English and the predominantly Japanese audience, for whom he plays, is left wondering about the content of the songs. Kenji’s stated goal is to use Japan as a base and work overseas. The potential for easy music acceptance in the United States is possibly greater for Kenji than it is for Utada Hikaru. She composes her own songs and lyrics; Kenji does not. Instead, he includes standard blues numbers that make an immediate connection with the ex-patriot community. However, for a Japanese audience, the music will be peripheral, finding support from a comparatively small minority of blues aficionados. It is difficult to see how Kenji can break onto the international stage if he insists on establishing a Japanese base first. The possibility is to follow the road of predecessors, like blues singer and guitarist Kondō Fusanosuke or jazz pianist and singer Ayado Chie and cross over to the United States – both eventually retraced their steps back to Japan. Kenji too has occasionally made the trip and joined American bands as well as touring briefly, but, without the support of a backing organization, stays have only been as long as his tourist visas have allowed. Framing the difference between these two musicians in the context of the central theme of this book, Hikaru’s music has succeeded because her music – or more precisely the lyrics and contents of the song – have been culturally bounded. In so doing, Hikaru has in her way been performing Japan or, to borrow Iwabuchi Koichi’s (2004) neologism, her music has been ‘glocalized’ – the global has been localized. Kenji has conversely


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refused to perform Japan musically. If doing so means creating music that imitates the style of successful J-pop bands – a form of music that he has, in bolder days, openly despised – he will have nothing of it. That said, after the collapse of Southside Blues, Kenji was invited to join a J-pop band to add some guitar weight to the music. With Kenji’s occasional tendencies to drift back into a blues mode there would occasionally be a mismatch of musical scales between song and musical interlude. The manager was also worried that Kenji would extemporize too much in instrumental sections and Kenji told me that he was frequently warned to perform within time restrictions. Kenji’s experience of performing the J-pop version of Japan, however, was short lived as band members became dissatisfied with the manager’s distribution of financial proceeds. The band broke up and members went their own way or occasionally re-grouped in various combinations to support Kenji when he was leading his own band or Kenji would occasionally support the lead singer. Kenji does not want to perform Japan, wishing on a gut level to be accepted like any other musician regardless of his residential status. Through his guitar playing, he made friends at his high school in Los Angeles and this experience has shaped his thinking that his ethnicity is of little consequence in his music making. Hikaru, however, has and continues to make adjustments, performing Japan for her Japanese audience. In so doing she has become successful and acquired the musical standing to obtain financial backing and organizational support from Island Records. Her challenge now is to ‘perform America’. But, even with the muscle of Island Records behind her, the chances of success are not guaranteed. As she stated, what concerns her is not whether, in a Western context, she can succeed as a musician but rather whether she can succeed as a Japanese musician. To quote her again: ‘It’s obvious that I look really different and there really aren’t any completely Asian people right now.’ Both Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji are caught in the dilemma of contradictory perceptions. Because of English-language ability and a perceived African-American style, Hikaru possess qualities that from a Japanese standpoint are imagined to be a passport to the American stage. Yet, the success of that challenge will ultimately rest with Western perceptions of both Hikaru and Kenji, and whether the acceptance of ‘Asian people’ – of Kenji playing the blues is sufficient to sustain commercial viability. The visual match of the body and the music forms part of an ethnic whole – a dimension that could be added to concerns with the physical body as raised by John Blacking (1977). Hikaru’s and Kenji’s challenges are part of a longer story of assimilation. In an earlier history of the blues, similar dilemmas were faced by the Rolling

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Stones and Eric Clapton, and both recall the initial anxieties of confronting the sources of their own inspirations whether it be the first visit to Chess Records in Chicago by the Rolling Stones in 1964 or as a member of the Yardbirds with Eric Clapton’s performance with Sonny Boy Williamson in 1966. In this respect, the ‘cultural crossovers’ that Utada Hikaru is conscious of, though denies in her song ‘Crossover Interlude’ from her Exodus album, has its earlier precedents, precedents that ultimately found success, not only in their own home environment but in the environment that originally provided them with the material for their musical creations. In a discussion of the relationship between Japanese musicians and jazz and blues, E. Taylor Atkins makes the important conclusion that an obsession with authenticity, the belief that only African-Americans have the right to perform blues music and its derivatives, ‘renders the idea of jazz as “universal language” into a meaningless cliché’ (Atkins 2000, 54). If the universality of the language is true, then the successes of Hikaru and Kenji on a foreign platform remain to be seen. From the Japanologist’s point of view, the varied lifestyles that Hikaru and Kenji lead and, more importantly, the seamless articulations that transcend geographical boundaries and dominate their creative activities, weakens the significance of the domestic, rendering the impingement of local ‘cultural’ concerns problematic. Although, having to contend with identification, language choice and cultural acceptability of their art, whether it be at home or overseas, the problems encountered are not uniquely theirs and are confronted by any other diasporic exponents of musics whose origins are externally derived. When in Japan, Utada Hikaru and Nakajima Kenji confront the social conventions that have become part of the Japanologists’ lore. But the significance of these conventions on activities that are really important to them is doubtful. Sugimoto and Mouer (1980), Befu (1980) and, more recently, Bachnik (1998) have expressed concern about ‘the excessively holistic and unified representation of Japanese society via the group or the group model; it virtually leaves the individual out of the account’ (Bachnik 1998, 94). Yet, despite the caveat, a relapse to Aristotelian syllogisms, which are implicit in the word Japan and its adjectival forms, persists. Even in contemporary writings, the retention of an undefined and worrisome ‘the average Japanese’ still evades editorial censorship.20 No doubt anthropological treatises aimed at extracting social models are easier to proffer when the ‘object’ of study remains a collection of unnamed individuals. If, indeed, such a mythical being as ‘the average Japanese’ does exist, it would be difficult to know how Nakajima Kenji and Utada Hikaru would compare with that being. Moreover, the likelihood is that the lifestyles of Nakajima Kenji and


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Utada Hikaru would become hidden from the Japanaologist’s gaze. In classes on Nihon bunkaron (Japanese Studies), I would occasionally introduce ‘foreign’ textbook observations on Japanese societies in Japanese translations of English-language textbooks to my students. Perhaps the most pertinent response from one student was nihonjin wa baka ni sarete iru (Japanese are made to appear stupid). Since then I have always preferred to refer to people who live in Japan rather than ‘the Japanese’. In deference to my student, perhaps the best response to the title ‘When is Japanese, Japanese?’ is the answer, following Utada Hikaru’s apprehensions, when Japanese are not in Japan. As Brian Moeran asserts, Japanism always was a Western construct (Moeran 1990, 1–2). NOTES 1 Cocolo as it is read means ‘heart’, although the romanization would normally be kokoro. 2 Exodus is advertised as Utada Hikaru’s first all-English album, but she also released the album Precious under the pseudonym Cubic U in 1997. 3 Enka is a form of Japanese popular song, which, in its present form, emerged after the Second World War. It retains a distinctive Japanese flavour through its use of a pentatonic scale, which, in its major form, resembles traditional folk songs, or, in its minor form, is similar to the urban music of the Edo period. 4 Rōkyoku, also known as naniwa bushi, is a form of vocal narrative with limited melodic movement ‘sung’ to the accompaniment of the shamisen. Rōkyoku emerged at the end of the Edo period (1600–1868) but developed and became popular particularly during the Meiji era (1868–1912). Originating as an entertainment in shrine or temple contexts, performance in theatres with rakugo (comic narration) and kōdan (story telling) heightened its popularity. This popularity was also briefly revived in the postwar years with radio broadcasts of rōkyoku taikai (rōkyoku grand meetings) held at such venues as the Asakasa Kokusai Gekijō and Meiji-za in Tokyo. 5 Min’yō is traditional Japanese folk song distinguishable from urban vocal forms primarily because of its folk song (min’yō) scale to which its songs are sung. 6 To distinguish the three members of the Utada family, I shall subsequently refer to Hikaru by her given name. 7 A 1996 issue of Star is available under the Century label. 8 All quotes that appear in the text have been translated by the author. 9 Teruzane gives the name of the adviser, but only in Japanese kana so I cannot confirm the name. A possible romanization would be Ruby Marcian. 10 See http://www6.islandrecords.com/utada.

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11 Both the English original and Japanese translations are provided in the sleeve notes of Japanese editions of Exodus. 12 As the lyrics are not provided in Amuro Namie’s CD, these are taken from the subtitles provided in the broadcast of her video version of the song broadcast on Space Shower TV. 13 The added wording in the square brackets is MTV’s addition. 14 ‘Difficult’ (muzukashii) is a word commonly used when conversations drift towards the controversial or the uncomfortable. 15 Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle (Asahi TV Mondays 9:00 p.m.) chaired by Beat Takeshi, who is best known outside Japan as the director of such films as ‘Battle Royale’ and ‘Zatoichi’, and Takajin no Soko Made Itte Iinkai (Yomiuri TV Sundays 1:30 p.m.) are two examples. Despite dealing with controversial themes, they could be criticized for treating serious matters in a light-hearted way in order to garner cheap laughs. 16 Onnagata are female roles played by men in kabuki. 17 See http://www6.islandrecords.com/utada/site/utada_bio.php. 18 Age range is not always a social determinant for social behaviour and can be superseded by company ranking or other positions of rank in an enclosed structured environment. 19 As a student at Osaka University, the rigid social behaviour of students involved particularly in club activities never ceased to surprise me. Even today when I make the occasional trip to Osaka University, the rigid adherence to vertical relationships with the strict recognition of codes with senpai and kōhai seems extreme. 20 See, for example, Lewis (1998, 195). REFERENCES Atkins, E. Taylor. 2000. Can Japanese sing the blues: ‘Japanese jazz’ and the problem of authenticity. In Japan pop! Inside the world of Japanese popular culture, edited by Timothy J. Craig. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe. Bachnik, Jane M. 1998. Time, space and person in Japanese relationships. In Interpreting Japanese Society, edited by Joy Hendry. London: Routledge. Barnard, Alan. 2000. History and theory in anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blacking, John, ed. 1977. The anthropology of the body. London: Academic Press. Blaukopf, Kurt. 1992. Mediamorphosis and secondary orality: A challenge to cultural policy. In World music, musics of the world: Aspects of documentation, mass media and acculturation, edited by Max Peter Baumann. Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel. Befu, Harumi. 1980. A critique of the group model of Japanese society. Social Analysis. 5/6: 29–43.


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Condry, Ian. 1999. Japanese rap music: An ethnography of globalization in popular culture. PhD dissertation, Yale University. Daniels, Karu F. 2004. Utada pop star. America Magazine (Fall edition). http://www4.islanddefjam.com/media/utada/press/americafall04.jpg. Feld, Steven. 2000. A sweet lullaby for world music. In Globalization, edited by Arjun Appadurai. Durham: Duke University Press. Halleluiah Market. 2000. Utada hikara to burakkumyūjikku. Tokyo: Cosmic International. Hendry, Joy. 1995. Wrapping culture: Politeness, presentation, and power in Japan and other societies. London: Clarendon Press. ——. 2003. Understanding Japanese Society. 3rd edn. London: Routledge. Island Records. 2005. Utada. http://www6.islandrecords.com/utada/site/home.php. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2004. Feeling Asian modernities: Transnational consumption of Japanese TV dramas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kaneko, Mari. 2005. http://www5b.biglobe.ne.jp/~mari_san. Lewis, David C. 1998. ‘Years of calamity’: Yakudoshi observances in urban Japan. In Interpreting Japanese society, edited by Joy Hendry. London: Routledge. Mayall, John. 1991. Strange Brew. Atlantic/Wea. Moeran, Brian. 1990. Introduction: Rapt discourses: anthropology, Japanism, and Japan. In Unwrapping Japan: Society and culture in anthropological perspective, edited by Eyal Ben-Ari, Brian Moeran and James Valentine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ogata, Kunihiko. 1999. Utada Hikaru seiki matsu no uta. Tokyo: Shugeisha. ——. 2002. Utada Hikaru densetsu. Tokyo: Chōbunsha. Ong, Walter. 1982. Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen. Rhodes, Nick. 2005. http://www.jpopmusic.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=54872. Rashbaum, Alyssa. 2004. http://www.mtv.com/news/yhif/utada. Senō Ryūichirō. 2005. http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~blowharp/weep.htm. Shen, Maxine. 2004. Rising Star. New York Post, 19 September. Shiotsugu, Shinji. 2005. http://www.ss335.com/index.html. Sugimoto, Yoshio and Ross Mouer. 1980. Reappraising images of Japanese society. Social Analysis 5/6: 5–19. Takemura, Mitsushige. 1999. Utada Hikaru no tsukurikata. Tokyo: Takarajima-sha. Takenaka, Hisato (Char). 2005. http://www.char-net.com. Taylor, Timothy D. 1997. Global pop: World music, world markets. New York: Routledge. Toshiba-EMI. 2005. Hikki’s Website. http://www.toshiba-emi.co.jp/hikki/ index_n.htm. Treitler, Leo. 1974. Homer and Gregory: The transmission of epic poetry and plain chant. The Musical Quarterly 60(3): 333–372.

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Ugaya, Hiromichi. 2005. J poppu no shinshō fūkei. Tokyo: Bungei shunshinsho Wikipedia (Japanese version). 2005. R&B. http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki. DISCOGRAPHY U3. 1996. Star, Century CECC 10307. Utada, Hikaru (Cubic U). 1998. Precious, Toshiba-EMI TOCT 10668. ——. 1998. Automatic/Time will tell, Toshiba-EMI TOCT 4127. ——. 1999. First Love, Toshiba-EMI TOCT 24067. ——. 2001. Distance, Toshiba-EMI TOCT 24601. ——. 2001. ‘Can You Keep a Secret,’ TOCT-4301. ——. 2002. Deep River, Toshiba-EMI TOCT 24819. ——. 2002 ‘Sakura,’ TOCT-4381. ——. 2003. ‘Colors,’ TOCT-4455. ——. 2004. Utada Hikaru Single Collection vol. 1, Toshiba-EMI TOCT 25300. ——. 2004. Exodus, Island Records / Universal Music UICL-1046. ——. 2003. Be my Last, Toshibe-EMI Ltd TOCT-5001.

12

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

1

Yuji Sone

❖ ontemporary Japan is often described in terms of its high-tech industries and advanced technologies: that is, a Gibsonian image of ‘exotic’ Japanese technoculture. However, up until the late-1990s, Japan lagged behind in many areas of digital services and commodities such as the use of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) or the Internet, which had become the norm in other developed countries. One may think that the surface image and the local reality do not match, but the Japanese themselves are oblivious to gaps observed by non-Japanese. What this suggests is that there is no single logic or pathway for the ‘digital transformation’ of any given modern society. Importantly, as this essay will stress, such transformative processes are not uniform, and are subject to culturally specific negotiations – and contestations – that can best be understood as performative. In this sense, it is possible to say that the Japanese are ‘performing Japan’. I would, however, like to stress that such performance is a contingent cultural operation, which affects cultural renewals by transforming or appropriating tradition and current practice. This does not mean that older Japanese traditions – as discussed, for example, by Benedict (1946) – have disappeared completely, but that traditional or accepted cultural traits may manifest themselves in different or new modes and contexts. Through this transformative interaction of contemporary Japanese culture and digital technology, manifestations of theses traits can be located in particular

C

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everyday responses and attitudes towards such technology. This essay, therefore, seeks in part to examine Japanese reactions to technological change that may appear peculiar to non-Japanese observers. As emblematic of digital technology that constitutes what I will call a ‘digital living condition’, this chapter focuses on the popular phenomenon of keitai (the Japanese term for mobile phone), highlighting users’ inextricable relationship to the technology.2 When cultural commentators discuss the social phenomena of the digital transformation and its impact on the Japanese people, the behaviour of Japanese consumers is often cited, and, for many critics, the particular use of keitai exemplifies their passivity. This essay sees the presumed submissiveness of the Japanese consumer differently. My focus is on what the consumers make or do – a functional approach derived from de Certeau (1984) – and how their everyday life reinvents itself. Daily performance is the key concept for understanding how domestic electronic technology, exemplified by keitai, is absorbed into everyday life in the urban Japanese environment. This daily performance, which is, as I will explain, a bodily performance, neutralizes the otherness of technology through iterative use. In fact, the frequent use of portable communication technology has made the device ‘transparent’ for many Japanese people, especially for the young, in their everyday urban pursuits. To add a different perspective to current sociological and ethnological analyses of the particularity of keitai use, I will discuss contemporary Japanese performance/media art works that deal with issues relating to an increasingly media-saturated urban environment. In particular, I will examine different artistic strategies that explicitly treat the condition of digital living. Concerns expressed by Japanese contemporary media artists seem to suggest that many of them are interested in finding a new way to deal with the digital environment in which they live. Interestingly, the younger generation of artists appears to ‘internalize’ the digital environment through a process of accommodation. This essay wishes to read the performance work of Dumb Type, a renowned Japanese artists’ collective, as a response to the Japanese digital environment, and as a vehicle for investigating an intermediated mode of expression generated between the performing body and technology (Plates 30, 31). Through performed interaction, the bodies of Dumb Type’s performers, which appear to be thrown into audio-visual streams, somehow create a space for existence in the digital environment. The audience can observe both the performers’ congruence with technological streams, and their bodies’ resistance to them and transformation by them. I argue here that this ambivalent relationship between the performing body and the digital environment in an art context parallels the contemporary Japanese urban

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environment and resonates with the daily ‘performance’ of ordinary Japanese people. On one hand, people appear to be driven by the technological environment, their social behaviour a reaction to it. On the other hand, there is something more than passivity expressed through their accommodation of the environment’s demands on them. Through an interdisciplinary approach – a mixture of art discourse (media/performance studies) and cultural analysis (Japanese/communication studies) – this chapter discusses a culturally specific relationship between the keitai and its Japanese consumers, who enact technology and simultaneously are enacted by it. This double binding is the key to understanding the everyday performance of keitai users. I will illustrate how this reciprocal relationship relates to the performance of everyday digital living in contemporary Japan, with reference to classics such as Goffman’s thesis on the performance of everyday social interaction (1959) and Turkle’s study on the performed self on the Internet (1996). I will use the Japanese terms kansei (sensuousness, sensibility or sensitivity) and kata (model, mould, form, shape or pattern) to show that the Japanese relation to technology operates much like the traditional Japanese relation of ‘man’ to ‘nature’. In the following sections, I will begin by discussing the social and historical background to the success of keitai and its particular use. The second section examines a shift in critical debates on the mobile phone towards attention to the daily performance of users, through the mediation of keitai. In order to develop the discussion of human interaction with the digital environment in Japan, I will examine, in the subsequent section, Japanese media artists’ responses in the age of keitai. This aims to reveal the hidden influence of the traditional notion of nature upon contemporary new media art works, which will assist us to understand the particular way that keitai users accommodate digital technology. I will then examine a performance expression inseparable from the mediation of digital technology, using Dumb Type as a case study. Dumb Type offers a useful ‘test case’ to study the complex relationship between the body and technology in relation to kansei and kata. SOCIO-HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF THE SUCCESS OF KEITAI

Despite the corporate and popular images of Japan through representations of Japanese electronic firms and techno-kitsch manga, the computerization of Japanese society in the 1990s lagged well behind Euro-American countries. Among the essential ingredients of a digital society, it was in the general use of the Internet that Japan fell behind other industrialized nations.3 However, the successful introduction in 1999 of the

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mobile-phone-based Internet service known as i-mode by DoCoMo, a subsidiary of NTT (Japan Telegraph and Telephone Company), has established, according to Coates and Holroyd (2003, 89), ‘a new technological platform for the Internet in Japan’. The mobile Internet is designed for users on the go who spend an average of two minutes online (Coates and Holroyd 2003, 74).4 Because of its accessibility, portability and simplicity, by the early years of the twenty-first century, mobile Internet technology had become a more popular option for accessing the Internet than access via personal computer at home. The introduction of i-mode catalysed interest in the keitai. Significantly, Coates and Holroyd attribute the success of the keitai with i-mode to the specificities of Japanese living and the urban environment in Japan. For the average small Japanese household, it is hard to find space for a desktop computer. Long commuting and working hours allow limited time for Internet surfing at home. In contrast, i-mode is accessible anywhere and any time: For commuters, the Internet is accessible from the train or bus, while walking or even riding a bike. Students waiting for classes, in the library or the cafeteria, salarymen walking to work, office ladies planning to meet friends for dinner, young couples searching for a movie, business people in urgent need of financial information, and countless others quickly recognized the value of the mobile Internet. (Coates and Holroyd 2003, 73)

The mobile directional GPS service (global positioning system) for urban navigation, another service available with i-mode on the keitai, has become widely accepted for finding one’s way in the maze-like, densely populated Japanese metropolis. A prominent aspect of the keitai phenomenon is that the device is more often used as a textual and pictorial transmission device than as a phone. Text messaging is popular, and not just because it is relatively cheap. This particular use can be explained with reference to cultural factors. Because of the noise and the supposed effects of electromagnetic waves on passengers with pacemakers, keitai users in crowded and enclosed public spaces, such as inside a train or a bus, tend to use the device only for text and picture exchanges (Okabe and Ito 2005). A collective social etiquette, keitai ‘manners’ have evolved to address new social expectations, such as the expectation that the person who has been contacted should reply immediately.5 Text messages can be sent even when a voice message is inappropriate (Ito and Okabe 2005). In relation to the history of computer use in Japan, Nishigaki (2001), a Japanese media theorist, points out that Japanese people in general are still unaccustomed to the keyboard because the typewriter was


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not widely used by the general public, which may explain why the Japanese turned away from Internet access via home computer. Alternatively, it is possible to say of Western countries that because the typewriter was used much earlier, the following generation naturally accepted the word processor. For a quick exchange of short personal messages, the simplicity of the keitai keypad is more user-friendly than the complicated computer keyboard. (Some youths are so skilled at punching the keitai keypad that they are referred as oyayubi-zoku, ‘the thumb tribe’). Similarly, Okada (2002, 30) suggests that the popularity of the pager or the beeper for personal communication amongst the youth population in the 1990s in Japan laid the foundation for keitai’s wide acceptance. Young people invented their own coded shorthand (poke kotoba) for messaging.6 Because of this new use, manufacturers of pagers added a function to change numbers to katakana, one of the Japanese phonetic writing systems (Okada 2002, 35). Keitai companies now offer popular services, such as downloading ring tones (chakumero) – a popular song or familiar jingle – and cute (kawaii) symbols and characters, such as Hello Kitty. These functions help to personalize and familiarize the technology for users. Messaging often includes forms of visual communication. Interestingly, Fujimoto (2005, 89) suggests that there is a relationship between the Japanese aesthetic form of pictorial and textual presentation as manifested in Genji Monogatari Emaki (the Tale of Genji Picture Scroll ) or in ukiyoe (woodblock print originally used as book illustrations) and recent multimedia messaging. Fujimoto argues that, through the earlier tradition, multimedia functions are quickly assimilated to play a significant role in keitai communication. Matsuda (2005, 36) points out that the use of emoji (pictorial icons) to signify cuteness or friendliness allows the user to convey feelings that cannot be expressed otherwise. THE MEDIATION OF KEITAI

It has been discussed that keitai does not assist users to develop skills sufficient to enable the technological transformation of Japanese society. For this reason, Mizukoshi (2005, 165), a socio-media theorist, encourages the Japanese to develop ‘media literacy’. He defines the term ‘media literacy’ as the ability to use media devices, a critical awareness of the function and performance of mass media, and the ability to express one’s opinions through media. Most keitai users, Mizukoshi states, are simply exchanging mails and receiving ‘m’ (mobile)-commerce advertisements. This presumed passivity of the Japanese consumer is often cited as an obstacle to the full achievement of an IT revolution in Japan. Mizukoshi (2005, 36) indicates that the prevailing power of centralized Japanese mass media, which

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distributes uniform messages to targeted audiences, allows only for a public in the role of receiver of the mass media companies’ products (i.e. consumer information). Japanese media theorists such as Mizukoshi (2005) and Nishigaki (2001) argue that, via the technology of the Internet, the public could become a distributor of information, which, if widely used, could reshape Japanese society so that the mass media no longer controls the flow of information. The Internet can facilitate people meeting and exchanging information, thus supporting activism and communication within minority groups in Japan (Cullinane 2003; Onosaka 2003). I argue, however, that this view of Internet use as activism both over-determines outcomes of keitai usage and sets up a dichotomy in which activist users are contrasted with those whose non-activist use labels them passive consumers. This construction of the passive consumer disallows consideration of users’ transformative adaptation to technology within existing socio-cultural structures in Japan. Interestingly, both Mizukoshi and Nishigaki see that arts can play an important role in a broader ‘digital transformation’ of Japanese society. Referring to Iwai Toshio, a media artist who is internationally known for his appropriation of the principles of the zoetrope (an animation archetype) and other pre-cinema imaging devices in his interactive installation works, Mizukoshi (2005) suggests that (media) arts can make people rethink the way in which they use media technology. (I will discuss Iwai’s work in more detail in the following section.) This theorist sees Iwai’s playful and creative attitude to media technology as an alternative to what he, similar to other theorists’ views already discussed, sees as Japanese passivity. In a similar manner, Nishigaki (1994, 206-207) argues for a space of ‘multimedia dramaturgy’ to disrupt the ‘homogeneous space’ of a digital environment that is designed to be uniformly applicable to everyone, anytime. Using the metaphor of theatre, Nishigaki encourages more creatively engaged digital communication between people by appealing to kansei. Kansei is the term often used in Japanese discussion of the digital revolution. It is an ambiguous term in the Japanese language, and is probably untranslatable. English words such as feeling, sensibility, sense, emotion, comfort, heart and sensitivity can be associated with kansei, but none of them can be used as a word-for-word translation (Tokō 2004, 11). It is not, however, wrong to say that the Japanese word kansei can be used to describe sense perception in a holistic manner. It is the opposite of the logical and linear, indicating instead a relation between humans and technology that is intuitive, sensuous and humane. Kansei kōgaku is an area of commercial design and engineering in Japan, in which cultural and aesthetic values are considered in developing new products. According


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to Mitsui (2002, 195), it used to be translated as ‘human engineering’ or ‘ergonomic engineering’. Nishigaki (1994, 71) uses this notion of kansei to connect the body and machine in his argument for establishing a humanized relationship with information technology. Mizukoshi (2005, 186) also argues for the importance of bodily and primordial communication experiences involving all human senses, not just vision and audition, in discussion of the digital revolution. While both theorists argue for the importance of highlighting one’s bodily involvement when interacting with digital technology, they overlook the physical and emotional closeness of keitai to its users, which already exists as a social phenomenon: a keitai lifestyle. Ito (2005, 1) aptly summarizes the key characteristic of keitai use: ‘A keitai is not so much about a new technical capability or freedom of motion but about a snug and intimate technological tethering, a personal device supporting communications that are a constant, lightweight, and mundane presence in everyday life.’ Taking my cue from Ito, I would like to reconsider the keitai phenomenon in terms of performance, in order to re-examine this bodily relation to its users. Okada (2002, 28) points out, tracing the history of personal telecommunication devices in Japan, that the more affordable telecommunication devices become, the more personal they become. As they become more personal, they are placed physically closer. The landline telephone was initially placed near the entrance of the Japanese home. The telephone moved into a living room as the technology became popular. Later, the plural phone system was introduced, where separate telephones, which are still on a landline, could be installed in children’s rooms. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for each household member to have a separate mobile phone. Nishigaki (2001, 95) refers to this as the change from ‘home electronics’ to ‘personal electronics’. The more accessible and convenient that keitai becomes, the more frequently it is that people use it. When people use it more frequently, they become even more attached to it. The attachment to keitai can be discussed as a contemporary Japanese social characteristic. Habuchi (2002) illustrates how, for some young people, life revolves around keitai. Friendships (meru tomo, mail friend) are formed through the keitai network in this context. It is a prerequisite to have a keitai for friendship because the possession of the machine indicates that you are contactable. Hence, young people can become extremely uncertain about themselves when they do not receive any mail from others. A group of people forming a virtual community, usually based around a common interest, can be said to function on the basis of sameness and assimilation, just as in the traditional Japanese social system. In the case of

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deai-kei saito (Internet dating site), Wakabayashi (2002, 249) points out that people become very close in a relatively short period of time because the indirect communication of Internet dating allows the users to be more open and direct. Wakabayashi also points out that a similar effect can be observed with regard to the telephone. Despite physical distance between people, a person on the phone may feel close to the person at the other end. Because the traditional phone is sound only, one might feel more relaxed when talking to someone on the phone without the necessity to maintain appropriate visual presentation. Keitai identity becomes more important for some, according to Okada (2002, 90), because it is believed to be closer to one’s hidden but true self, unlike the social identities that people are expected to perform in ‘normal’ Japanese socio-cultural life.7 As keitai is so closely involved in one’s life, one cannot think of oneself without the mediation of keitai, which, in extreme cases, is described as keitai izon (mobile phone addiction).8 McVeigh (2003, 20), on the other hand, points out from his survey of young Japanese university students that emailing and Web surfing with accessory-commodities available on keitai enhances ‘a sense of interiority (e.g. personality, personal traits, distinctiveness)’. These students express their individuality, which is felt as a hidden and personal virtual space, by personalizing keitai consumer goods, a gesture which is not paradoxical but can be understood as consistent with the terms of Japanese society, where social uniformity is often stressed. This mediation facilitated by keitai is also evident in the world outside of the home. It can be said that keitai is a necessary tool for life in the ‘concrete jungle’ of Japanese cities, not simply as a tool for navigation, but to ‘connect’ with others, generating a feeling of ‘augmented’ co-presence (Ito and Okabe 2005, 270). The keitai communication creates a personalized space in the city, which can be seen as a recontextualization of the urban environment – the nexus of physical and virtual space. As we’ve seen, through the daily usage of keitai, users develop a close relationship to the device, which mediates and structures social relationships and a complex selfhood that is inextricably intertwined with urban networks. The keitai, in a real sense, is emblematic of the ‘digital living condition’ of contemporary Japanese life. How can we say this condition is specific to or particularly characteristic of Japanese culture? I wish to address this question through a consideration of Japanese new media art works. Such works explicitly stage human interaction with the digital environment in contemporary urban Japan, bringing implicit relationships to the fore. More explicitly, this is to say that contemporary Japanese new media art works tend to play out a relation to technology that can be likened to the Japanese attitude towards nature in its traditional


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understanding. I will discuss, in relation to kansei and kata, this view of nature and the manner in which it informs contemporary Japanese new media art work, and read them back into the discussion of the complexities of ‘digital life’ emblematized by keitai for Japanese users. ARTISTIC RESPONSES IN THE AGE OF KEITAI

While many Japanese contemporary media artists appear to make work that treats as its theme this very coming to terms with the digital environment in which they live, rather than focusing on social and political themes, there seem to be subtle differences in the treatment of this theme between generations of artists. For example, Iwai Toshio, who has been working in electronic media since the early 1980s, is interested in the mechanical aspects of media systems and devices, appropriating these systems to generate new/different media effects in his art work. This separation of artistic ‘self ’ from the media manipulations of the art work is characteristic of Iwai’s generation of Japanese media artists. The younger artists instead consider the terms through which they might ‘internalize’ the digital environment. (I will discuss this aspect of accommodation in relation to the Japanese performance group Dumb Type shortly.) Drawing upon his experiences with animation, Iwai (2000) explored in his early works of the 1980s various ways of generating moving images, applying the principles of pre-cinematic forms such as the flipbook, phenakistiscope and zoetrope with modern media devices such as the TV monitor and video projector. The typical works of this period include ‘Time Stratum I, II’ (1985) and ‘Time Stratum III’ (1989). Later, in the 1990s, Iwai became interested in interactive works and his project became more technologically complex with the aid of a computer. A typical aspect of Iwai’s work during this period was the exploration of the relationship between light and sound, and image and music. The work that best exemplifies this exploration is called ‘Piano – As Image Media’. The original work was produced at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1995. Later, in 1996, Iwai used this work in ‘Music Plays Images X Images Play Music’, a live performance in collaboration with Sakamoto Ryūichi, an acclaimed musician/composer (Iwai 2000, 76). The user triggers a flow of projected images arranged on a horizontal screen as if they constitute a musical score; this ‘sheet’ feeds into a piano (Iwai 2000, 73). When the flow of images reaches the piano’s keys, the keyboard is automatically depressed, which releases sound, and the movement of an array of brightly coloured abstract shapes that seem to burst upward on a vertical screen attached to the piano. The effect is one of a transformation of visual pattern into sound, which is

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immediately ‘transformed’ back into a visual display as soon as it is heard. Here, a connection is forged between an old technology, piano, and a new one, digital images and sound. Iwai describes his interest in mixing technologies in his work: As some of the generation of Japanese [who grew up in the 1970s], I have experienced the transition from analogue technology to the digital one. I am interested in digital technology, but I see it from the perspective of analogue technology. I see the digital phenomenon on the basis of my own childhood analogue experiences such as flipbooks. (Iwai interviewed by Uchiyama 2001, 10; my translation)

This explains why Iwai is dissatisfied with more recent computer technology that does not have analogue sensitivities. Iwai creates art work as a ‘super user’ of media technology, combining analogue knowledge with digital technology (Uchiyama 2001, 10). Significantly, Hatanaka (2004, 14) points out that Iwai’s leaning towards ‘the material “thing” side of media’ seems to be common to others of this older generation of Japanese new media artists, such as Hachiya Kazuhiko, ‘inventor artist’, and Kuwakubo Ryōta, ‘device artist’. Iwai’s machine/technology-focused way of working contrasts with the works of younger new media artists of the post-bubble era in Japan, such as those exhibited in 2004 at ICC, an established new media arts venue in Tokyo. Like Iwai, the later generation of artists is very much aware of the incursion of the digitally mediated environment into daily life, but their relationship to it can instead be characterized as ‘a kind of everyday speech’ (Shimizu 2004, 26). For example, Yamamoto’s work consists of video recorded images of its viewers, in a manner which encourages ‘us viewers to apprehend ourselves as we exist, configured simultaneously in both the real world and virtual digital worlds’ (Shimizu 2004, 26). Instead of exploring the new operability of digital devices in terms of interfaces to their works in spectacular ways, as does Iwai, these artists of the keitai generation seem to be interested in conveying a kansei relationship to a sense of the ‘digital atmosphere’ of everyday living, an internalized sensuousness that arises through daily interaction with the digital environment. Shikata Yukiko, a curator of the ICC exhibition, suggests a political reading of the works of these younger artists. As is often the case for many Japanese new media artists, direct expression of strong political concerns regarding digital culture is rare, in contrast to their Western counterparts. Shikata argues, however, that these younger artists nuance their political, social and artistic concerns in a manner that is typically Japanese. She states that she finds ‘Japanese sensibilities freely at play (hacking) with various


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media, finding diversion by intuitively subverting them so as to slant “micro-criticism” at the more pervasive yet invisible politics of technology, perception, body and city’ (2004, 22). I argue, however, that this particular political reading of Japanese media works as engaging in ‘microcriticism’ may miss the specificity of the works’ treatment of the digital and the everyday, obscuring, in its emphasis on critical agency, the nature of a particular Japanese approach that demands further examination. Shikata (2004, 22) claims that the manner of expression of these artists is ‘uniquely rooted in the cultural and technological grounds of Japan’, even though their works can be said to have grown out of the global culture of computer games and the Internet. Taking this point about a ‘sensibility’ that is Japanese, I suggest that cultural specificity of these digital works is directly related to the Japanese relationship to the natural environment, which, I will argue, provides a template for the Japanese engagement with technology. The Japanese traditional notion shizen tono chōwa (harmony with nature), as expressed through, for example, bonsai and ikebana, reveals a relation to harmony through the appreciation of cultivated and domesticated forms of nature. In Japanese society, the notion of kata plays a dominant role at various levels and, in fact, bonsai and ikebana are governed by a variety of kata. In bonsai, a tree is made to grow in particular shapes. In ikebana, flowers are represented in arrangements deemed beautiful. In these exercises, nature is moulded into acceptable forms or pruned such that unwanted elements that do not fit within the mould are removed. This view of nature is, then, the product of a particular power relation between the agent of the shaping activity and the material being shaped.9 The more common Japanese understanding of the relationship between man and nature overall is one of harmonious cohabitation in which nature is always felt to be in close proximity to man. However, I would like to point out that while the relationship may be understood as one of harmony and complementarity, there is a hierarchical structure between man and nature separating the two, and that both aspects of this point of view are deeply inscribed in traditional Japanese cultural and aesthetic imaginaries, as seen in highly controlled and organized forms of literature and paintings featuring representations of nature (e.g. haiku poems and kakejiku: Japanese hanging scroll illustrated with Japanese paintings).10 The Japanese term hakoniwa (miniature garden) is often used to convey the essence of the aesthetic of controlled natural forms.11 The complexity of this view is observed by Haraway (1989, 248): ‘Nature [in Japan] is an aesthetic value and understood to require careful tending, arrangement, and rearrangement.’

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This tending activity can also be playful. I suggest that the older generation of Japanese media artists such as Iwai are performing this tradition with the new type of ‘nature’ generated by computer technology.12 Iwai conveys his motivation for creating art work in that his arrangement of material is an interpretive intervention that resists the Japanese urban technological environment: ‘While one may feel overwhelmed and absorbed by the very fast speed of Tokyo, one creates artwork so as to fight against the force of speed’ (Iwai in Asada 1998, 127; my translation). It is possible to say that through his playful technological cultivation Iwai ‘domesticates’ digital experience to make it closer to the more familiar analogue experience; and, more generally, there is a clear division between subject/artist and object/digital technology in the work of the older generation of artists, while the boundaries between artist and art material are not as clear-cut for the younger generation. In contrast, in the works of the younger new media artists, I see in this blurring of boundaries their sense of acceptance and adjustment towards the rapid technological development that characterizes contemporary Japanese urban living, rather than the domestication of technology per se. I suggest that the recent performance works of Dumb Type provide useful material for examining this question of technology-as-nature, helping to understand the complexity of the daily ‘performance’ of ordinary urban Japanese people in their engagement with digital life, particularly their embrace of personal technologies such as the keitai. According to Hood and Gendrich (2003, 19), in Dumb Type’s work, technology is treated as ‘a tangible part of our emotional, spiritual, rhythmic, physical experience; it is linked inextricably with who we have become’. In the next section I will examine Dumb Type’s performance, in relation to the body’s ‘tangible’ ‘experience’ of technology. THE PERFORMING BODY WITHIN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

Dumb Type, founded in 1984, is a Japanese collective of multidisciplinary professionals that includes media artists, visual artists, musicians, architects and choreographers. Their experimental works to date, in the forms of video, music, installation and multi-layered live performance, deal with the issues of gender, HIV AIDS and consumerism within the context of an accelerated information-oriented society. The name ‘Dumb Type’ suggests a society ‘stuffed with information, yet almost empty of understanding’ (Trippi 1996, 30). In their performance works, the problem of the body in relation to technology is foregrounded, and theatre/performance theorists discuss the group’s work in various ways. I will summarize opposing


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opinions on Dumb Type’s recent performances in order to contextualize my view of how Dumb Type dramatizes the body’s relation to technology. I will then suggest how this relation can be understood within the culturally specific understanding of controls applied to nature to achieve appropriate form. Kumakura (2001) points out a shift of focus in Dumb Type’s recent performance making after the death in 1995 of Furuhashi Teiji, who was a leading figure in the group. Unlike their more recent performances, Dumb Type’s works in the early to mid-1990s had expressed strong political concerns. ‘pH’ (1990–95) has been discussed as a comment on the oppressive and dehumanizing effects of technology on the body, and about the social position of women in Japan. ‘S/N’ (1995–96) dealt with the politics of homosexuality, minority identity and HIV, directly influenced by the fact that Furuhashi was HIV positive and an activist. Fujita (2003) argues that ‘S/N’ succeeded, without being too forceful, in performing art/activism for a wider audience. Kumakura critiques the late 1990s works – ‘OR’ (1997–99), ‘Memorandum’ (1999–2002) – for their lack of political criticality while heightening a ‘techno-fetishism’, or a use of technology for its sensational effect. To come to terms with Furuhashi’s death, Dumb Type explored life and death in ‘OR’. The setting was simple and clean/hygienic, featuring three hospital beds in front of a semicircular screen that enclosed the stage, which was filled by flashing light and an electronic beeping noise. The performers on the beds looked like the dying or the recently dead. The interactions between video/computer projections, the movements of the performers, computer-generated music and theatrical lighting pulsed together as if to revive these bodies. The power of high-tech sound and visuals lent the performance ‘an almost violent impact’ (Asada 2002, 66). Towards the end, a video image of a road trip through the Alps was projected on the entire semi-circular screen and also onto a female performer at the centre of the stage. The images moved slowly at first, and speeded up until they were fragmented in an audio crescendo. The image disappeared into a white-light glare and the woman stood motionless. Kumakura (2001, 107) sees this work in terms of an excessive amplification of audio-visual digital signals, and that this tendency continued in the following piece, ‘Memorandum’. In ‘Memorandum’, a large translucent screen was set across the stage. In front of four video projection images side by side, dancers moved very fast before and behind the screen, in accordance with very rapid and almost frantic movements of video images and sound. The flash of video images worked metaphorically to suggest the forgetting and recovering of memories. Kumakura (2001, 111) dismisses this later aesthetic

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direction for Dumb Type as ‘digital fascism’ that only works to eliminate ‘noise’. The notion of noise is the issue here. Kumakura seems to understand ‘digital’ as opposed to ‘noise’: an analogue excess. We might better understand this distinction by looking at Furuhashi’s concept behind ‘S/N’. Apparently, the artist had seen the term ‘s/n’ (signal-to-noise ratio) on a concert music tape and found that the term indicates the noise ratio in the sound recorded. From this information, Furuhashi developed an artistic view on the notion of noise: On records, there is lots of noise, but on CDs, there is no noise. Concerts have noise but DAT tape doesn’t have noise. Everything is moving toward cutting noise – how to digitalize everything, how to signalize anything. I wanted to look at that noise carefully. That kind of ‘cutting noise’ seemed to me like cutting everything people don’t want to see. (Furuhashi quoted in Trippi 1996, 31)

I suspect that Kumakura relates to Furuhashi’s notion of noise literally and therefore he praises ‘S/N’ for dealing with issues concerning disadvantaged people who are treated as a kind of ‘noise’ in society – an unassimilable excess. In contrast, Gendrich and Hood (2001, 9) regard Dumb Type’s recent performances as ‘ambient performance art’. In these works, high-speed, repetitive aural and visual environments were created using mundane sound/noise and images, referring to the sensory-sphere of everyday life. Gendrich and Hood (2001, 9) suggest that in Dumb Type’s work ‘[t]he audience is asked to contemplate, not merely acknowledge, what they experience’. The audience is directed to focus on and feel the waves of effects generated by the movements of aural and visual stimuli. Such a view about appropriate spectatorship for Dumb Type’s work opposes that of the political reading (i.e. to ‘read’ the works solely as an illustration of a political message). The ambient performance art of Dumb Type instead highlights the digital phenomena of contemporary living in which physical reality and mediated reality intertwine. However, this linkage between the body and technology should not be understood as seamless. I would like to complicate Gendrich and Hood’s understanding of Dumb Type’s presentation of a sensory-sphere that references everyday urban life. The idea that immersion of the body in Dumb Type’s work does not appear to be absolute can be better understood by paying attention to the bodily presence of the performers. The performers appear to struggle to ‘swim’ against the rapid current of information. In ‘Memorandum’, the performers dance and move very quickly


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in front of and behind the screens. They repeat their set of movements for a while and the movements become faster. One starts to see a moment when the performing body and the digital backdrop work together as a performative whole, but it is not a perfect unity. The performers’ bodies remain clumsy and uneven, unlike the much more exact movement and rhythm of computer-generated sound and video image. Asada (2002, 67) describes this disunity in these terms: ‘[a]s if their bodies were resistors thrown into the audio-visual stream-turned-memory superconductor, creating a complex interaction that gives rise to a state transcending the amnesia that comes of information excess’. The performers’ bodies appear to be thrown into audio-visual streams, like a stone in a water stream. This causes changes in the patterns or texture of the digital flow. The body is also an opacity, a thickness that ‘resists’ and transform the flows moving around it. In some instances, the bodies manage to ‘swim’ in the streams, like fish. This generates a strange sense of mismatch of materiality and medium, as occurs when one sees a metal airplane flying in air for the first time. Importantly, in both cases, the bodies appear to negotiate the digital flow as if it were a material environment. There are several points I would like to make about such an extraordinary new artifice. This could be discussed, metaphorically speaking, as a kind of survival metamorphosis, especially for Japanese women. Katherine Mezur’s analysis of the female performers of Dumb Type, who outnumber the men, is especially relevant here. In Dumb Type’s works, while male performers appear to perform as individuals, many sections include female performers in duets or in a group. Mezur (2001, 194) argues that the roles that the Dumb Type women perform are suggestive of Japanese women who take up the challenges of the social and technological urban ‘machine’, but who ‘dance’ with it.13 While these female characters, literally and metaphorically, appear to be moulded into the technological ‘frames’ of the stage sets and into the roles within the performances, according to Mezur (2001, 195), they ‘begin to make their own machine rituals and games’. I suggest that Dumb Type’s women performers can be read in terms of the social accommodation of contemporary Japanese women, as they accept new ‘frames’ created by society as they do other restrictions imposed upon them, such as gender roles; however, that they do so imperfectly, and not without also performing the resistance of the body in the process of accommodation, tells us something further about the nature of accommodation to form itself in Japanese culture. Even though Japanese society is changing, traditional social norms and values can be seen to exist in contemporary Japanese society in this sense

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as the operation of kata, enforcing conformity (De Mente 2003). Importantly, kata can apply not only to objects and nature, but also to people, governing behaviour. This is similar to the sense in which kata is understood in terms of a repertoire of patterned forms within Japanese traditional martial arts and performing arts. Individual artistry is explored within the restricted terms allowed by the forms. Masters of traditional martial arts and performing arts internalize the forms. In this way, form and expression are inextricably linked in these arts practices, and in social practice. In his seminal study The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959) discusses the way Americans present themselves in social performance, pointing out their dichotomous understanding of social behaviour as either the real, sincere and honest, or the false. In Japan, however, the inextricable duality of mask and truth, social face and ‘real’ face – which is often interpreted as honne (real intention) and tatemae (social convention) – can be said to be an essential part of Japanese behavioural language. Haraway (1989, 246) aptly describes this phenomenon: ‘[the dramatic mask is understood as] a figure of the two-sidedness of the structure of life, person and society’. For example, finely defined behavioural etiquette in relation to social hierarchy and gender – how one speaks and holds one’s body – is clearly noticeable, especially in the Japanese corporate environment, as if directly derived from behavioural codes that were developed in traditional feudal society (for a discussion of the Japanese traditional social hierarchy, see Benedict 1946, 43–75). However, contemporary Japanese people are aware that these codes can be deployed opportunistically (i.e. they make it easier to ‘perform’ social roles). Relating kata back to new media artist Iwai Toshio’s approach, we can see kata as an enabling device for order and sense-making within the traditional Japanese relation of man to nature. Using kata, raw materials are pressed into acceptable forms and patterns. In Iwai’s work, the agent of such action is clearly separate from the material acted upon: Iwai’s objects ‘socialize’ technology by conflating forms in unexpected configurations that are both uncanny and playful. But the Dumb Type performers use themselves as their materials. By immersing this material in a performative environment that is suggestive both of the technological and the everyday, it is possible to perform both the shaping of this ‘material’ – the materiality of the body and the individual as a social material – and the opacity of its resistance to shaping: the moment that is both the production of new, acceptable bodies that fit kata, and of an excess that cannot fit within acceptable forms.


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CONCLUSION

An important message from Dumb Type’s performances for this contribution is the body’s extraordinary capacity, adaptability and resilience towards techno-social challenges, which is also a kind of malleability: the performers’ bodies are neither static – as they would be if simply representations of political messages, as Kumakura states – nor are they signalling an impervious toughness that rejects the influences of ‘external’ forces. That they perform a complex negotiation of such pervasive shaping forces – one in which they have limited agency and are themselves the material to be shaped – can be seen to aptly describe what I have earlier referred to as the ‘daily performance’ of ordinary Japanese people. The most active performers are the younger generation of Japanese, including teenage schoolgirls. They are not digital cowboys who are consciously trying to cultivate virtual space, neither are they consciously experimenting with the socio-politics of the augmented self. They are, instead, much like Dumb Type’s performers. Dumb Type allows us a language to describe the kind of digital performance by ordinary Japanese people in which technological restrictions are not obstacles, but instead enable expression that results in the formation of a new performing body. It is, therefore, also possible to see kansei as a conceptual ‘lubricant’ that similarly allows a mode through which people can relate to, and accommodate, technology, just as the technology is designed along the principles of kansei to accommodate users. This essay has introduced traditional Japanese concepts – such as kansei and kata – into discussion on the contemporary cultural phenomenon of keitai. Critics argue that it is possible to say that most of Japan’s young keitai users are passive consumers who appear to accept consumer products and services unquestioningly. I have challenged this view of Japanese users’ passivity by considering this relationship to personal digital technologies, and the digital environment, as performative. Users’ daily activities are imbedded in a negotiated digital reality facilitated by keitai. Keitai are often used to communicate silently with others on the train via text messaging, because, as I have argued, social protocols disallow answering calls and speaking aloud. de Certeau describes how a person walking in the city generates a mobile, personal space that is defined by their traversal of the urban environment (1984, 117). Similarly, this usage of keitai allows the person to claim a temporary personal space that is like a cocoon, shutting out sensory and information overflow. This space is created, paradoxically, for the purpose of communicating with others who share the urban perceptual sphere. By negotiating the forms and limitations of these new technologies, to the degree necessary for their own insertion into new techno-social

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realities, the younger Japanese ‘normalize’ these changes. The traditional work of kata may be viewed here as a useful explanatory term for the way Japanese youth accommodate themselves to new technologies and establish new kansei relationships with them and the environment in which they are experienced. What does not fit the kata is left over, regarded as ‘noise’. Enjoyment of a Zen garden, for example, is predicated upon the understanding that the ‘noise’ is somewhere else, removed from the ordered arrangement that meets the eye. One is supposed to engage with the artificial environment through the recognizable and patterned shapes of trees and landscapes. Importantly, even though there is a division between the natural and the artificial, one is supposed to appreciate a ‘sense’ or ‘essence’ of nature in the garden, that is, a kansei to nature. The contemporary form of this relationship is virtual, incessant and mobile. The ‘artificial’ communication environment of the keitai becomes a platform that extends one’s sense of the living environment. The pattern-making activity of kata is always achieved through a process of shaping through which the body, as a material, pulses as a locus of invigorated potentiality. Kata, in other words, engenders, just as it restricts. Keitai users accept technological parameters and allowances by treating them as kata, and internalizing them through everyday practice. This process is less a domestication of technology, and more a mutual and imperfect adaptation to the new forms of exchange engendered by the new technology, whose transformative outcomes cannot usually be foreseen. This double binding of the body and technology is an important characteristic of the keitai phenomenon with far-reaching implications. Critics predict that technology more convenient and ‘wearable’ than keitai will become available in the near future. Japanese electronics manufacturers continue exploring ‘human’ technology to attract younger consumers. Understanding how this accommodative transformation works should become central to ongoing discussions of Japanese digital technologies. An analysis that sees such accommodative practices as everyday performance provides us with sharper tools than the mere symptomatology suggested by a view of Japanese consumers as passive recipients. They are, instead, simultaneously performers, performances and performed. NOTES 1 I would like to thank Meredith Morse for her critical insights and constructive comments that have greatly assisted the development of this chapter.


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2 Technically, the mobile phones in Japan are operated on two network systems: the cellular phones system and the PHS (Personal Handyphone System). While the former has an independent network for mobile communication, the latter uses the existing landline infrastructure connecting to wireless handsets. The original term, keitai denwa (portable phone), was used to refer to the cellular phone originally developed as a car phone, and was abbreviated to keitai after the technology became common in the late 1990s. In practice, the cellular phone and the PHS are indistinguishable and both are called keitai (Matsuda 2005, 20). 3 A combination of factors might have contributed to this delay. Ken Coates and Carin Holroyd (2003, 45) point out that the Japanese government was slow in embracing Internet technology, due to their priority to maintain a highly regulated telecommunications system. Consequently, telephone charges remained high. Other factors include the dominance of the English language on the web, corporate reluctance to invest in web advertisements, and the slow take-up of home computers (Coates and Holroyd 2003, 49). 4 This usage pattern explains why Enoki Kei’ichi, who was responsible for the development of i-mode, prefers to describe the mobile Internet service through the metaphor of ‘convenience’ stores that display and sell only a small selection of popular goods, and Internet access via personal home computer as similar to department stores that have a wider range of products (Coates and Holroyd 2003, 72). 5 For a discussion of ‘keitai manners’ on Japanese public transport, see Daisuke Okabe and Mizuko Ito (2005). 6 For example, 0840 means ohayō (good morning) and 724106 means nanishiteru (what are you doing?), because these numbers can, respectively, be pronounced to sound like ohayō and nanishiteru. 7 Miles and Tsuruki (2003) make a similar observation in their study on deaikei. The exploration and negotiation of potential selves by Internet users is a common phenomenon globally. Turkle (1996, 263), for example, talks about a student who lost her right leg and who created a one-legged character in a MUD (multi user domain). This student used the virtual character to engage with others on the Net, which helped her to accept the loss of her leg. 8 Fujimoto (2005), on the other hand, discusses keitai in terms of the aesthetics of shikōhin (non-nutritious treats such as alcohol, cigarettes, coffee and tea). Fujimoto (2005, 89) argues that, while shikōhin are ‘narcotics with psychoactive effects’, they generate new aesthetics and cultures around them. 9 This view of nature was observable at The 2005 World Exposition, Aichi, Japan (March-September 2005). Despite its theme ‘nature’s wisdom: nature’s matrix, art of life, development for eco-communities’, it was a showcase

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Performing Japan foregrounding advanced technology with cultivated forms of nature as background decoration. Haiku is a seventeen-syllable literary form developed by Matsuo Bashō (1644–94). It praises the beauty and truthfulness of simple, natural imagery, and must include one word indicating a particular season. Kakejiku is a kind of mounting for Japanese calligraphy (texts of poems) and painting (of landscapes, birds and flowers) that is hung on a wall, or in a tokonoma (alcove). It can be long (e.g. h. 180 cm ⫻ w. 50 cm) or short (e.g. h. 45 cm ⫻ w. 20 cm). Hakoniwa became popular in the Edo period (1600–1868). People created miniature gardens in wooden boxes with ceramic objects (such as figurines, houses, bridges and water-wheels), which represented well-known scenes. On this extended notion of nature, ICC organized the open nature exhibition (April-July 2005) that presented works and projects from the fields of art, design, architecture and industry. The organizers argued that ‘the new type of nature generated inside the computer, involving forms of organization beyond the powers of our stereotyped sensory awareness, presents media art with a new vision’ (NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] 2005, 3). An analogy can be drawn to de Certeau’s discussion on the tactics of the indigenous Indians against the colonial Spanish power: the Indians subverted colonial influences, not by rejecting or opposing them, but by ‘using them with respect to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept’ (1984: xiii). REFERENCES

Asada, Akira. 1998. Kagaku to gējutsu no taiwa (Maruchi media shakai to henyō suru bunka 2). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan. ——. 2002. MemoRandom for memorandum. In dumb type: Voyages, edited by Minoru Hatanaka, Akira Takada and Shunichi Shiba. Tokyo: NTT Publishing. Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Coates, Ken, and Carin Holroyd. 2003. Japan and the internet revolution. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cullinane, Joanne. 2003. ‘Net’-working on the web: Links between Japanese HIV patients in cyberspace. In Japanese Cybercultures, edited by Nanette Gottlieb and Mark McLelland. London and New York: Routledge. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life, translated by Steven Rendall. Berkley: University of California Press. De Mente, Boyé L. 2003. Kata: The key to understanding and dealing with the Japanese! Boston: Tuttle Publishing.


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Fujimoto, Ken’ichi. 2005. The third-stage paradigm: Territory machines from the girls’ pager revolution to mobile aesthetics. In Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life, edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Fujita, Junji. 2003. Damu taipu: Āto to sēji no ryōritsu e. Tagen Bunka, 3(3): 161–173. Gendrich, Cynthia, and Woodrow Hood. 2001. Noise and nudity: Kyoto’s dumb type. Theatre Forum 18 (Winter/Spring): 3–11. Goffman, Erving. 1959 [1956]. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Habuchi, Ichiyo. 2002. Kētai ni utsuru watashi. In Keitai gaku nyūmon: Media komyunikēshon kara yomitoku shakai, edited by Tomoyuki Okada and Misa Matsudua. Tokyo: Yūhikaku. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge. Hatanaka, Minoru. 2004. Toward the n_ext: An overview. In n_ext: New generation of media artists, edited by Minoru Hatanaka, Yūko Fujiyoshi, Shigeki Kimura and Shunichi Shiba. Tokyo: NTT Publishing. Hood, Woodrow and Cynthia Gendrich. 2003. Memories of the future: Technology and the body in dumb type’s memorandum. Performing Arts Journal 73: 7–20. Ito, Mizuko. 2005. Introduction: Personal, portable, pedestrian. In Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life, edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Ito, Mizuko and Daisuke Okabe. 2005. Technosocial situations: Emergent structuring of mobile e-mail use. In Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life, edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Iwai, Toshio. 2000. Artists, designer and director SCAN #7: Iwai Toshio no shigoto to shūhen. Tokyo: Rikuyōsha. Kumakura, Taka’aki. 2001. Futatsu no memorandamu. Bijutsu Techō (BT) (February): 104–111. Matusda, Misa. 2005. Discourses of keitai in Japan. In Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life, edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda. Cambridge: The MIT Press. McVeigh, Brian J. 2003. Individualization, individuality, interiority, and the Internet: Japanese university students and e-mail. In Japanese cybercultures, edited by Nanette Gottlieb and Mark McLelland. New York: Routledge. Mezur, Katherine. 2001. Fleeting moments: The vanishing acts of phantom women in the performance of dumb type. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 12(1): 191–206.

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Miles, Todd Joseph, and Takako Tsuruki. 2003. Deai-kei: Japan’s new culture of encounter. In Japanese cybercultures, edited by Nanette Gottlieb and Mark McLelland. New York: Routledge. Mitsui, Hideki. 2002. Media to gējutsu: Dejitaruka shakai wa āto wo do toraeruka. Tokyo: Shūēsha. Mizukoshi, Shin. 2005. Media biotōpu: Media no sētaikei wo dezain suru. Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten. Nishigaki, Tōru. 1994. Maruchi media. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. _____. 2001. IT Kakumei: Netto shakai no yukue. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]. 2005. open nature, edited by Yukiko Shikata, Shigeki Kimura, Yuri Yoshizumi, and Shunichi Shiba. Tokyo: NTT Publishing. Okabe, Daisuke, and Mizuko Ito. 2005. Keitai in public transportation. In Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life, edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Okada, Tomoyuki. 2002. Media henyōeno apurōchi: Pokeberu kara kētai e. In Keitai gaku nyūmon: Media komyunikēshon kara yomitoku shakai, edited by Tomoyuki Okada and Misa Matsuda. Tokyo: Yūhikaku. Onosaka, Junko R. 2003. Challenging society through the information grid: Japanese women’s activism on the Net. In Japanese cybercultures, edited by Nanette Gottlieb and Mark McLelland. New York: Routledge. Shikata, Yukiko. 2004. Art and beyond – Experiments in open community. In n_ext: New generation of media artists, edited by Minoru Hatanaka, Yūko Fujiyoshi, Shigeki Kimura and Shunichi Shiba. Tokyo: NTT Publishing. Shimizu, Kento. 2004. Media art as everyday speech. In n_ext: New generation of media artists, edited by Minoru Hatanaka, Yūko Fujiyoshi, Shigeki Kimura and Shunichi Shiba, Tokyo: NTT Publishing. Tokō, Kiyoshi. 2004. Kansei no kigen, Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho. Trippi, Laura. 1996. dumb type. World Art (February): 28–33. Turkle, Sherry. 1996 [1995]. Life on the screen: Identity on the age of the internet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Uchiyama, Hiroko. 2001. Media āto no mirai ni mukete: Iwai Toshio si eno intabyū. Collage 3 (November): 7–11. Wakabayashi, Mikio. 2002. Jōhō toshi wa sonzai suruka. In Jōhō toshi ron, edited by Tōru Nishigaki. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan.

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Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan Alison L. Goodrum

❖ he potential for the creation and performance of identities through fashionable clothing is exploited by the fashion industry itself. Certain fashion retailers have become adept at attaching meaningful knowledges to their fashion products, so that through the acts of consuming, purchasing and wearing, consumers may play out particular identities: in many ways ‘dressing a part’ that can be bought ‘off the peg’. The performance of British identity in Japan (and by the Japanese) is examined here through the case of high fashion exports. Two British luxury fashion retailers – Mulberry and Paul Smith – and their practices in the Japanese export market are examined in detail.1 It is argued that these retailers provide ‘identity kits’ (Goffman 1961) for Japanese consumers to draw on in the performances of prescribed Mulberry and Paul Smith corporate lifestyles. In these particular cases the corporate lifestyle being sold is quintessentially British, one that both mobilizes and reinforces a Japanese perception of what Britishness should be (rather than what it actually is).2 It is argued that these performances of an appropriated and imagined sense of Britishness are acts of bricolage, whereby Japanese fashion consumers shop at what Polhemus (1996) terms as ‘the supermarket of style’, picking and mixing from a broad diet of dress and design cues that criss-cross time and space. Guidance, as we shall see, from trade bodies that facilitate fashion exports to Japan and preferences stipulated by buyers, wholesalers and consumers in Japan are geared towards these postmodern performances of identity: they endorse the export of fashion products that

T

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manifest an imagined vision of Britain revolving around class aspiration, perfect manners, eccentricity and high quality. Importantly, it is argued here that these identity kits encompass much more than just the material fashion products themselves (i.e. specific items of Mulberry and Paul Smith clothing). Rather, Mulberry and Paul Smith display remarkable attentiveness in providing the correct staging, props and mythologies against which, and through which, the performance of each material item is able to be at its most convincing. Crucially, the notion of staging is applied here in its broadest sense. It encompasses the ‘design vocabularies’ (Nixon 1997) of the literal consumptive stage of the retail store where the material product is consumed but also the (related) techniques of symbolic production employed by these two retailers in their wider creation of an aura of Britishness: manufacturing, production methods, customer service at the point of sale, PR events, managementstyle and product development. Via this approach, the discussion presented here addresses a gap in existing work on clothed identities in Japan which has tended to focus on front-stage performances by the consumer (in terms of behaviour, bodily manipulation and the institutional codes regulating them) rather than with the manifold backstage practices from, and of, which consumer performances (in this case, performances of Britishness) are engineered (see Aoki 2001; Clammer 1992; McVeigh 1997, 2000; Richie 2003). As Goffman (1959, 128) puts it, ‘it is here [in the backstage] that illusions and impressions are openly constructed.’ It is asserted that the performance of consumer identities in this particular niche of the retail export sector comprises far more than the simple donning of Mulberry and Paul Smith garments. Identities are prescribed, inscribed and reinscribed at manifold points along the length and breadth of a particular commodity’s chain of production. It is argued that through these processes of inscription consumers themselves are not the sole agents involved in the final performance of consumer identities. The cultural intermediaries (including producers, manufacturers, PR officers, marketers, merchandisers, designers, buyers, technologists and wholesalers) inhabiting the commodity chains of the fashion industry are also agents of these same performances. Clothed appearances are, then, it is argued, the sum of many parts and many players. The discussion continues with a look at the links between fashion, identity and performance. This chapter then goes on to examine the performance of identities via fashion products, focusing in particular on Anglo-Japanese export practices. It does this through an examination, first, of export directives issued by national trade organizations, and, second, of the specific practices of the British retailers Mulberry and Paul Smith.

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan 297 THE THEATRE OF FASHION: PERFORMING IDENTITY

Lipovetsky (1994, 26) foregrounds the connection between fashion and performance: ‘fashion shifts overall appearance into the order of theatricality, seduction and enchanted spectacle’. The enchanted spectacle, for the most part, has referred to a specific component of the theatre of fashion: the designer catwalk show (e.g. Clark 2001; Evans 2001; Greg Duggan 2001; Khan 2000). ‘In most cases’ writes Gregg Duggan (2001, 245) ‘they read as mini dramas, complete with characters, specific locations, related musical scores, and recognizable themes. Often, the only element setting fashion shows apart from their theatrical counterparts is their fundamental purpose – to function as a marketing ploy.’ In the spectacular context of the catwalk show, then, the notion of fashion as a mode of performance art is most apparent. However, with fashion, this idea of performance extends beyond the literal show of the catwalk. In the choosing and wearing of clothes daily, we, too, with varying degrees of consciousness, are inextricably involved in ‘dressing a part’. Fashion is a domain that lends itself particularly well to the performance of different social identities. Classic fashion theory is grounded in the notion that fashion is a visual tool able to indulge a modern desire to simultaneously express and disguise the individual self: to both reveal and conceal (e.g. Flügel 1932; Simmel [1904] 1973; Spencer, [1896] 1924; Veblen [1899] 1970). Finkelstein (1991, 128) forwards the argument for our clothed appearance to be a true or immanent projection of our identity. She argues that ‘when we encounter a stranger as initially mysterious and inaccessible, we refer to clothing styles and physical appearance, in the absence of any other means, as a reliable sign of identity’. Entwistle (2000, 120), on the other hand, rejects this idea of the clothed self as the authentic self. Instead, she asserts that ‘fashion serves to protect one from prying eyes and enables one to put distance between the self and other – it is the “armour” of the modern world. It opens up possibilities for disguise, for a construction of a self which is “artificial”.’ This apparent contradiction is part of the ‘strangeness of dress’ (Wilson 1985, 2–3) and underscores the performative nature of fashion and of our fashioned identities. Let us pursue here the self as an artificial construct – one aided through the consumption and wearing of clothing and fashionable dress. Lurie (1981) has, famously, written of the ‘language of clothes’. She develops the idea that clothing serves in the construction of cultural identities. Clothing, she argues, is used as a form of nonverbal communication in the presentation of one’s role(s) on the public stage of daily life. Goffman (1961), too, suggests that clothing (along with other forms of appearance management

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such as bathing and grooming) is a key component in what are termed as role-playing ‘identity kits’. Goffman uses a life-as-theatre analogy, forwarding the idea that the self might be staged as a production or a series of masks that people present to the different audiences they encounter socially. This dramaturgical approach includes the notion that an individual’s performance may take place either on or off stage. As Kaiser (1985, 196) explains ‘changes in clothing are often used to symbolize . . . movement back and forth, between acting and relaxing between roles or performances’. Kaiser cites the example of the police officer and the different acts assumed by the same individual when in uniform (i.e. policing on public duty and therefore being ‘on stage’ – or to use Goffman’s 1959 terminology in the ‘front region’) and when off duty in the private ‘off stage’ sphere (or ‘back region’) of, say, one’s home where there is less concern with one’s appearance and where there is a requisite difference in one’s behaviour. Together, then, clothing (what one wears, and how one wears it) and staging (the physical and symbolic setting in which one performs one’s dressed identity) are key elements in the creation of the social self: of who we are and how we are viewed by others. It is necessary, at this point, to further the argument on the performance of our on-stage roles by introducing the notion of ‘credibility’. Clothing is a crucial prop in enabling a credible performance. Our dressing up needs, to varying degrees, to be convincing – particularly to others. Thus, credibility is pertinent to discussions on the use of clothing in staged productions of the self. As Kaiser (1985, 193) puts it, ‘being cast in a role is facilitated by “looking the part” and dressing in a costume that others have come to expect of a person in that role’. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Japan where ‘everybody is dressed for his or her part’ (Buruma 1983, 70). Indeed, McVeigh (2000) claims that it is in the Japanese cultural context that role playing through dress reaches its apotheosis, such are the codes of regulated appearance at work there. Clammer (1992, 198) concurs with this assertion arguing that ‘the key is appropriateness [of dress]. . . . In Japan, all the world is indeed a stage.’ In the Japanese consumer environment, credibility becomes particularly important. As we shall see with the cases of Mulberry and Paul Smith, value is added to material products dependent upon their degree of authenticity (of being credible). The consumption of a credible product by an individual consumer facilitates a credible performance by that consumer. It is apparent that retailers in the luxury fashion sector go to great lengths to create and construct these seemingly credible products with a coherent history and a prescribed identity. This is part of what is termed ‘lifestyle marketing’. It is readily accepted that, these days, for consumers in this sector, ‘shopping is not merely the acquisition of things: it is the buying of

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identity’ (Clammer 1992, 195; Shields 1992). Consumers may literally go lifestyle shopping in the pursuit of very particular identities with specific dictates on how the social body should be coded and performed (Shields 1992). In the consumer economy we, according to Jackson and Thrift (1995, 227), ‘define ourselves by what we buy’. It is the buying of British products in the export market of Japan with which the argument here is primarily concerned. Exported fashion products from Britain are infused with a commodified set of idealized national values. Therefore, ‘along with the export of British clothing and fashion, we see an accompanying export of British signs, symbols and characteristics, all of which feed and fuel a geographical imagination’ (Goodrum 2001; 2005, 127; see also Crewe and Goodrum 2000; Goodrum 2001). The geographical imagination refers to the idea that popular(ist) images and mythologies of the world are viewed as reality. It is a particularly potent force in the consumer environment where certain products are geared towards the ‘symbolic activation’ (Daniels 1993, 5) of certain geographical regions. With Mulberry and Paul Smith, for example, their products are infused with legends, lores and traditions that allow the attachment of an imaginary version of Britishness. By buying one of their products, consumers of Mulberry and Paul Smith are also able to buy – and take part in – a slice of an imagined British lifestyle. Mulberry and Paul Smith have become adept at exploiting this consumerist imagination and programme their products accordingly. Much of this programming is carried out backstage by the producers, manufacturers, PR officers, marketers, merchandisers, designers, buyers, technologists and wholesalers who are charged with the task of enchanting a material product with imaginary values. A further point to be made here is that the performative nature of fashion allows for an added dimension in this consumption of geographical signs and symbols. Crang (1996) argues that certain consumer brands and products are able to be experienced as lived (rather than as merely imagined or imaginary), thereby increasing their cultural and performative value. This is very much the case with both Mulberry and Paul Smith since the companies take great pains in providing the correct staging in which, and through which, their goods are consumed. The most obvious example of this lived experience comes in the form of their retail stores, which might be posited as corporate theatres from, and through, which to give masterclasses in the deployment of their respective corporate lifestyles. Momentarily, then, in entering into the strictly regulated corporate space of a Mulberry or Paul Smith store, the Japanese consumer is able to indulge, albeit fleetingly, in a constructed British experience – a lived (hyper)reality.

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More broadly, the foregoing discussion underscores the contention that the credibility of on-stage clothed performances (of Britishness) is the product of a variety of backstage practices. It is to a more detailed exploration of these practices that the discussion now turns. THE BUSINESS OF FASHION: ANGLO-JAPANESE EXPORTS

Japanese retailers and Japanese consumers covet British fashion (Crewe and Goodrum 2000; Goodrum 2005). Statistics from the British Apparel and Textile Confederation provide fiscal evidence. Apparel exports from Britain to Japan were valued at £82 million and £70.8 million in 2003 and 2004 respectively, and the United States is the only market worldwide to exceed Japan in apparel exports from Britain. Elsewhere, I have suggested, however, that the motives behind Anglo-Japanese trade should not be viewed solely through the economic imperatives of ‘making good business sense’ (Goodrum 2005). I argue that British fashion is also coveted for its symbolic, cultural and performative values due to its intrinsic Britishness. The importance, then, of the export of symbolic meanings via fashion commodities emerges in the Japanese setting. This is apparent in the following extracts from interviews with a range of cultural intermediaries in the Japanese fashion industry. What is fascinating is the extent to which these intermediaries draw on imaginative geographies of Britain in their business transactions in a case of the cultural guiding the economic. British fashion must satisfy strict criteria of what is imagined by Japanese intermediaries as British style, fit, character, and even monetary value in order for it to be positively received and passed on to the Japanese consumer (Ledgerwood 1997). So, for example: Lower priced merchandise from the UK is not saleable; it conflicts with the Japanese image of the UK. (Japanese department store representative) British fashion is tartan, traditional, hard, classic, not avant-garde. (Japanese manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer) In the past we have imported knitwear from the UK but, as we are targeting the younger woman, Italy is a more suitable supply; the UK is too conservative and is more suitable for men’s knitwear. UK is classic, Italy is fashion. (Japanese trading company) We place great importance on the British image of high quality; we do not want to destroy this image by buying cheap products from the UK, we can get these from China. The spirit is important, British lifestyle, British

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan 301 heritage, British countryside, British High Society. There is no point in simply aiming for a low price; this will not be accepted by the Japanese. China and India are associated with low prices, not Britain. (Japanese manufacturer and importer)

Here, we see how the imaginative geographies of Britishness go a considerable way in influencing the shape and form of British fashion exports from agents within Japan. Indeed, with Anglo-Japanese exports – where geographic distance, slowness of response, as well as high freight costs and duties pose substantial economic barriers – the power of these imaginative geographies forms a crucial part of what are largely culturally-fuelled transactions brokered in terms of their cultural currency and their ability to bestow particular identity-making cues upon the consumer. The mythologies of Britishness inscribed onto fashion exports are prized over and above their basic value for money. The degree of a product’s intrinsic Britishness would seem to be its major appeal. We see this point borne out in advice given by the British Knitting and Clothing Export Council (BKCEC), a national, independent trade association. The BKCEC offers practical help to British exporters and to overseas buyers, agents and press. Potential British fashion exporters are encouraged to niche market their products in order to target and to indulge the Japanese mind-set. It advises its members that ‘quality and design are more important than price, high quality is a necessity in Japan, not a luxury. . . . It is important to take into account the Japanese “mind-set”; certain products and images are associated with certain countries and British manufacturers should use this to their advantage’ (Ledgerwood 1997, 9–13). An exploration of this niche marketing to the Japanese consumer highlights the crucial part that off-stage and/or back-stage programming has to play in the consumption of identity in Japan. As we have already witnessed in the advice given out by the BKCEC (above), manufacturers are told to engineer their products off-stage in order to optimize their front-stage appeal to Japanese consumer demands. One such demand is credibility. British fashion retailers are encouraged to spin authenticating narratives around their products. A BKCEC representative elaborates: Straight [clothing] classics are not enough; there is no reason to import them from the UK, something special is needed. An old established British company with a history, can provide a package, a story behind the product (even if they have to use a bit of poetic licence!), in a way which can appeal to the Japanese buyer and lend itself to promotion to the consumer. . . . The

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Japanese are interested in British lifestyle . . . an idealized picture of the landed gentry. (In Ledgerwood 1997, 13)

In the Japanese market, then, ethnic British clothing – Shetland jumpers and Fairisle knits, Harris tweeds and Blackwatch tartan – are desired and sought after products. They are valued for their realness and for fulfilling what is described as the sartorial pilgrimage after authenticity (Maynard 1999). Encouraged to gaze upon and collect the signs of many cultures, trophy-hunting Japanese consumers view such vernacular British styles as symbols through which to perform their own cosmopolitan sense of self. Thus, we see how Japanese consumer desire for something a little bit different, something infused with cultural cachet, something British, is met, in part, through the adornment and display of fashions from a specific geographical destination. It is important to point out, however, that this consumer experience is not a passive one in which the consumer might be cast as victim or ‘hapless dupe’ lying in wait for the latest lifestyle dictate to be forced unwittingly upon them (Jackson 1995, 1875). Rather, in a postmodern act of bricolage (de Certeau 1984), fashion consumers are able to pick and mix from a range of national styles in the performance of a cosmopolitan sense of self. In so doing, these bricoleurs select from the postmodern supermarket of style (Polhemus 1996) in which different looks are up for grabs and freely juxtaposed in the invention and reinvention of hybrid identity formulations. Significantly, Wigan (in Polhemus 1996, 12) identifies Japan as having a particularly potent fashion landscape in which such techniques of bricolage predominate. Fashionable youths in the dance clubs of Tokyo are viewed by Wigan as style surfers. Wigan elaborates, ‘the clubkids come out to play dressed in clothes that come from Britain, the USA and Europe (as well as from their own designers). In a virtual encyclopaedia of the entire history of Western streetstyle, these Tokyo clubbers cruise both history and geography.’ This style surfing translates to the Japanese luxury fashion sector, a sector inhabited by the likes of Mulberry and Paul Smith. Here, Britishness is reinterpreted at various points along the fashion commodity chain in a consumer surfing across the postmodern surface. The foregoing discussion offers an analysis of the dictates and directives of agents both in Japan and to Japan. It is through this analysis that we begin to see how clothed consumer performances are the sum of many players and how these performances are fluid and open to manipulation. Where does Japanese identity end and British identity begin? These contentions are explored now in more detail through the specific cases, first of Mulberry and second of Paul Smith.

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan 303 MULBERRY IN JAPAN: FACTS AND FIGURES

The luxury fashion brand Mulberry was established in 1971 in the Somerset village of Chilcompton, England, by Roger Saul. Mulberry is most known for its leather accessories – particularly handbags, belts and luggage. The Mulberry brand is favoured among high-income professionals notably in the thirty to forty-four years of age bracket. Four-fifths of its annual turnover now comes from wholesale business in Japan where there are over 200 Mulberry corners (shops in department stores and upper-end mixed label boutiques). According to the results of an extensive consumer research survey commissioned by the company in 1998, Mulberry’s brand image is synonymous with four key characteristics: quality, craftsmanship, timelessness and Englishness (The Added Value Company 1998). One of the most pervasive discourses found across Mulberry’s commodity chains is that of ‘huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ ’, and a nostalgic narration of a glorious bygone age couched in the discourses of class of the English landed gentry. Indeed, Mulberry offers up an identity kit to its Japanese consumers that enables the performance of this idealized notion of the British country squire and a patrician lifestyle. The company achieves this, as we shall see, through the following techniques of inscription. Product design

In playing up its Britishness when exporting to Japan, Mulberry foregrounds several traits long viewed as hallmarks of British style. In particular, eccentricity is a common thread exploited by the organization as a clear reference to British fashion’s enduring record in bohemian design and styling (Breward et al. 2002; de la Haye 1996; McDermott 2002). Indeed, it might be argued that Mulberry’s distinctive style anglais is produced first and foremost for export, its whimsical approach being geared more to indulging overseas and touristic perceptions of Britishness rather than for the British themselves. The founder of Mulberry, Roger Saul (author’s interview, 21 August 1998) explains: ‘I think our success was understanding Englishness from an international perspective, as opposed to understanding it from within England. So it was knowing how to present what the foreigner wanted out of Englishness.’ The British have, according to Samuel (1992, xxxviii–xxxix), elevated ‘muddling through’ to the status of an art and in sartorial terms have acquired a reputation for a quirkiness of design. This projection of eccentricity by Mulberry enables a sense of their being British and is typified in

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the design cues and inspirations found in-house. To give some examples, Mulberry’s Prince of Wales check jackets are teamed with their pinstripe trousers and paisley accessories to create a mismatch that ‘hovers between timelessness and bonkers’ (Brogan 1990, no pagination). Mulberry’s ‘New Eccentrics’ collection was based on a design theme of unorthodox pattern combinations: Rupert Bear checks for women and tartan three-pieces for men. What is imagined as the quintessentially British art of off-beat dressing has therefore been adopted by Mulberry as a core value in its own corporate design ethic. Manufacturing

The Japanese enthusiasm for branded merchandise is widely recognized (Clammer 1992; Davies 1994; Joseph 1994; Ledgerwood 1995; 1997). Clammer (1992, 210) argues that: The desire for brand-name goods, especially French, Italian and British products . . . is a well-known characteristic of Japanese shoppers . . . brand names possess a mystique, a cachet that creates the impression of sophistication, of internationalization and of taste. The almost metaphysical levels that this can reach in Japan seem to transcend those found elsewhere. There is a valuing of the genuine article and the pursuit of authenticity is a consumer preoccupation (Fashion Focus 1997; Ledgerwood 1995; 1997).

Always keen to serve the Japanese market, Mulberry has emphasized its status as a genuinely British company, one borne out of the British Isles. These claims to authenticity are, however, increasingly vexed since Mulberry no longer manufactures all of its products exclusively within Great Britain. The ‘Made in Britain’ label – the very crux of Mulberry’s sales pitch – is therefore fast becoming obsolete. Mulberry, in sourcing abroad, finds itself caught in ‘the trade off between the savings we’re making on cost, compared to the perception of the brand’ (Mulberry marketing director, author’s interview, 30 November 1998). Due to the constraints and dictates of cost effectiveness, then, we find Mulberry looking increasingly to overseas suppliers, and each season, ‘on the grounds of price’ (ready-to-wear design director, author’s interview, 6 August 1998), sees the company shifting production from country to country. In recent years, for example, many of Mulberry’s leather products have been sourced from Turkey, Spain and Italy, whilst Mulberry’s men’s tailoring, along with selected pieces from its womenswear collection, is made in Italy.


What is fascinating is the way in which Mulberry has reacted to these concerns over authenticity and the degree to which the loss of its Made in Britain label has affected its sense of being British. In marketing its way around this problem, Mulberry is keen to reassure its customers that the essence of their products has changed very little and that despite being assembled outside of Britain, Mulberry products still bear all the hallmarks of a fully fledged British ancestry. As the marketing director (author’s interview) explains, Quite simply from a marketing point of view if Made in England is no longer an option, then, for example, one of the things we can do is build a guarantee programme where we are almost saying to the consumer, ‘look, although we may not manufacture in the UK, we still will give you an absolute guarantee’, . . . so what you’re doing to the consumer is shifting their concerns from one thing onto the pluses.

This notion of guarantee tells us that despite globalizing its manufacturing base, Mulberry is still eager to assert the connection between its products and their Britishness. In so doing, we find that Mulberry is also engaged in a process of re-inscription known as ‘double commodity fetishism’. For in playing up the British essence of their products, the company is simultaneously involved in channelling its consumer focus away from what Sack (1992) suggests is the undesirable backstage history of production (i.e. a history that goes against the grain of the established Mulberry identity). This undesirable history is, therefore, virtually obliterated in the final presentation of these products to the Japanese consuming public. In spite of their obligation to overseas sourcing, then, we see that Mulberry is steadfast in manifesting the Britishness of its clothing and accessories, and although there seems to be a hidden geography of production lying heavily masked underneath a marketing veneer, this does little to detract from Mulberry’s insistence that it is a British brand (Lee 1993; Shields 1992). As Skoggard (1998, 58) argues, ‘the successful marketing of fashion lies in divorcing the product from any referent to its actual production’. Point of sale

Clammer (1992) describes the Japanese preoccupation with personal appearance management and the emphasis that is placed upon having the correct appearance and the importance of wearing the right clothes: In Japan, appearance is often more important than comfort, whereas in the UK and America more attention is paid to comfort. Presentation is always of

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the utmost importance in Japan . . . stitching and finish should be of an exceptionally high standard. Pockets and buttonholes must be visibly reinforced, buttons must be stitched on in a particular way and so on. (Ledgerwood 1995, 21)

The Japanese market is particularly demanding when it comes to quality and has high expectations of imported European fashion where attention to detail, the most luxurious of fabrics and trimmings, and the highest standards of fit and cut must be carefully observed. Mulberry is a company that excels in meeting the exacting demands of the Japanese consumer and the company’s uncompromising dedication to quality, in part, explains its record of popularity in Japan. In bearing the hallmarks of British lifestyle, the Mulberry brand name appeals to the Japanese consumer in their search for material markers of taste and sophistication. Mulberry goes to great lengths to reinforce the innate specialness of its products, and, via carefully controlled techniques of enchantment, the company builds up a mystique and cachet around its commodities as a means of enhancing not just their economic but also their cultural value. For example, Mulberry’s immaculately laundered and ironed garments of impeccable quality leave the store in elegant packaging and there are strict corporate guidelines on the folding and wrapping of individual items at the point of sale. Handbags, for instance, must leave the store under a predetermined code where exact numbers of watermarked sheets of tissue are identically pleated for stuffing and packing. When it comes to the actual moment of sale, there are, then, several layers of performance being enacted: from the picking, presenting and purchasing of a product by the consumer (against the corporate backdrop of a Mulberrydesigned stage) through to the theatricals of elaborate gift wrapping by Mulberry personnel (under the gaze of their audience: the Mulberry client). Production methods

This uncompromising attention to detail is also to be found at other points in the company’s commodity chains. The company is keen to play up its painstaking production methods in order to raise its appeal to the Japanese market where standards must be impeccable. The company magazine boasts, for example, how: Mulberry is proud to be a guardian of time-honoured techniques and skills of leather crafting which are increasingly rare in the late twentieth century. These special skills date back through generations of craftsmen; they are painstaking and, by today’s standards, highly labour intensive. One fine

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan 307 example of this labour of love is the gentlemen’s hand-made Sedgemoor brogue, which contains an incredible 1300 individual stitches and 436 brogued indentations. (Mulberry Life 1990/91, 4)

These finely detailed and most painstaking of methods infuse Mulberry products with a special aura. This aura forms a clear contrast to highoutput, low-quality mass-produced items for the mass market. In so doing, it goes some way in satiating the high-end, high value remit granted of British commodities by Japanese cultural intermediaries. Similarly, these artisan, highly individualized methods are used as authenticating devices as recommended by trade bodies such as the BKCEC. It is in many ways, therefore, that Mulberry appears to have been extremely successful in ministering to esoteric demands of the Japanese market. PAUL SMITH IN JAPAN: FACTS AND FIGURES

In 2000, Paul Smith made £6.2 million profit on sales of £48.1 million. Adding the overseas turnover takes the figure to £233 million (Sunday Times 7 April 2002). Paul Smith has a huge international presence and his empire in Japan is remarkable: there are over two hundred shops, including a 3,000 square feet flagship store in Tokyo. In Japan, Smith is considered to be the leading European designer, selling more than his Italian rivals Versace and Armani. He is often mobbed during his visits to the Far East and even fēted as something of a demi-god. Paul Smith began in 1970 in a small shop in Byard Lane on the edge of Nottingham’s Lace Market in the Midlands of England. Widely regarded as bringing the phrase ‘classics with a twist’ into common fashion parlance, the Paul Smith organization is known for a look that is ‘in many ways traditional, but at the same time funky’ (Jones 1995, 74). Smith re-works traditional British design associations in new and directional ways. The identity kit that Smith serves up to his customers in Japan is based very much on the premise that the dominant vision of British style as tailoring and tweeds is one that is overworked and oversimplified. Instead, his style is engineered to be a mix of high and low fashion influences: ‘traditional British tailoring with street style, a mishmash of Monty Python and Paul Weller’ (Jones 1995, 3). Product design

Bored by the sartorial clichés that dominate the export scene, Smith employs all manner of wildly differing design influences in his Japanese

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collections. Smith himself openly denigrates rival British fashion brands for being too export-dependent and for relying on business from overseas consumers hungry for cosy nostalgia and classist, aspirational stylizations of Britishness – where it is promised that ‘you buy a polo shirt and you get a free stately home’ (Smith quoted in Billen 1995, 42). Therefore, whilst many of his peers are busy regurgitating Savile Row and country house tweeds as being the sum total of British fashion, Paul Smith (quoted in Howarth 1993, 46) acknowledges: ‘yes, we have a tremendous tradition of classic tailoring but British fashion also encapsulates punks and mods and street style and weird eccentrics’. Smith is steeped in British sartorial tradition, yet disrupts conventional design aesthetics and scrambles fashion’s signs and symbols. To give some examples of, now iconic, Paul Smith designs: the floral suit, the pistachio-coloured tweeds, the photo-printed budgie waistcoat, the strip-cartoon trousers (Crewe and Goodrum 2000, 27). The design narratives surrounding Smith relate both to the British traditions of conservative dressing and regulated appearance, but also to British subcultures and marginalized, anti-establishment fashions. Moreover, these ‘narratives of ambiguity’ (Pratt 1992, 126) extend beyond Paul Smith’s design ethos. Indeed his emergence as a sartorial authority very much hinges around a contradictory sensibility that is evidenced across the length and breadth of the organization and its systems of provision. For example, dismissive of big business, Paul Smith is at the same time a spokesperson for British design and a cornerstone of the homegrown establishment. The company is at once a symbol of provincial parochiality and an icon of the new metropolitan urban chic. Smith’s style is deeply nostalgic yet also progressive and avant-garde (Crewe and Goodrum 2000). PR events

As we saw with the case of Mulberry, authenticity assumes a key importance in the company’s export strategy. However, this authenticity is engendered by Paul Smith through very different narratives; namely ones of juxtaposition, of satire and of innovation. The most obvious grounding of Paul Smith’s innate Britishness is via Smith himself and most notably via the ‘True Brit’ phenomenon with which he has become so heavily associated. The True Brit catchphrase was first coined by the organization in October 1995 when a Paul Smith exhibition was launched at the Design Museum, London, to celebrate Smith’s quarter-of-a-century in the fashion business. The acclaimed True Brit exhibition set about detailing not purely an organizational history but also offered an insight into the background and


continuing rise of the man-behind-the-label. In foregrounding his own story and in playing up his Nottingham roots, Paul Smith is keen to underscore his status as a true Brit with a place-specific identity. For ‘real-ness’, it is argued, is defined by residence in any one place and the internalization of ‘subjective dispositions’ that this brings (McCrone 1998, 42; Smout 1994). The fact that Paul Smith’s allegiance to Britain is bolstered by his living there, made even better by his longstanding family connections with the specific city of Nottingham, is therefore a powerful device in demonstrating the company’s authenticity to its international followers. Following its debut in London during 1995, the Paul Smith: True Brit exhibition was shipped to Japan as a centrepiece for the Festival UK98 (the biggest ever exposition of British science, sport, art and commerce to be staged in Japan).3 What is interesting, however, is the way in which this exhibition was specially modified for its tour of Japan, being substantially expanded in order to tap directly into the peculiarities of the locale. The tailor-made additions for the Japanese leg of the exhibition reveal just how sensitized Paul Smith has become to the preferences of different cultures and how Smith’s global project is finely tuned to the demands of different cultural groupings. As well as the addition of a Famous People gallery featuring well-known Japanese individuals decked out in Paul Smith garb, another inclusion to tempt the Japanese mind-set was a custom made ‘artcar’ – a Mini sprayed in stripy citrus colours mirroring the Paul Smith Summer 1997 collections and set to serve the Japanese obsession with the miniature as well as the Japanese adoration of ‘Mr Bean’, an infamous Mini owner and one of British television’s most popular exports of recent years. Store design

When it comes to the Japanese market, then, Paul Smith invests a great deal in foregrounding both himself, and by default, his products, as being truly British. Yet this discourse of authenticity is also to be found in many other aspects of the corporate identity. Smith relies heavily on historical and traditional signposts in order to forge nostalgic connections to the older Britain that we have seen dominating the imaginative geographies of fashion exports. In particular, these nostalgic references are apparent in the design aesthetic of Paul Smith’s overseas retail outlets where he goes to tremendous lengths to ensure the authenticity of his shop interiors. Indeed Nixon (1997, 172) argues that Smith was the first contemporary designer to realize the importance of the ‘design vocabularies’ of fashion outlets, ‘the coding of shop space [bringing] to bear specific cultural values and meanings on the garment designs’. Throughout the world, Paul Smith’s

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stores are replicas of his shops in the UK and are fitted out in the style of a traditional English gentleman’s dressing-room or tailors from the 1950s. Mahogany fittings, floorboarding, glass cabinets and entire wooden interiors have been shipped from Britain to Japan. The Kobe shop, for example, was originally a chemist’s dispensary in Sheffield and the Tokyo shop a confectioner’s in Newcastle. Style of management

Paul Smith’s export activities in Japan owe much to the style of management that he deploys there. Smith enjoys an exceptionally close relationship with the Japanese trading house Itochu, which manufactures, wholesales and retails Paul Smith clothing across Japan. Smith personally visits Japan at least twice a year, without fail. This, he says, is one of the key reasons behind his success there. His extraordinary following in Japan has not been an overnight phenomenon. Rather, Smith has had to work hard at getting to know the people, the market, the business and the culture. Paul Smith explains: I often talk at business conferences and one of the first things I’m always asked is how do you break into a lucrative market like Japan? You can almost see them dribbling at the prospect. But it’s not about breaking into a market. It’s about building relationships. . . . A lot of designers like Lauren, Armani, Gianfranco Ferre have got licence agreements but they’ve either never been there or have been there once, travelling from their hotel for a sort of waving ceremony. The difference is that we really work at it. (In Crewe and Goodrum 2000, 63)

From this, it is clear how Smith’s achievements in Japan relate not simply to just a clever packaging of a particular version of traditional Britishness. Rather, his success can be attributed to a tremendous amount of ‘to-ing and fro-ing’; a constant and direct dialogue with his overseas shops and franchises, and to a detailed personal knowledge of the cultures, customs, consumers and systems of economic organization at work there. Smith, for example, makes it a personal priority to understand and develop his export business. He ensures that all of his offices are located above the shops in which his clothes are sold. In this way, Smith very much models himself on the traditional shopkeeper, celebrating a golden age of retailing before the arrival of the mass market giants. This hands-on style of management is to be found across the entire reach of Paul Smith’s worldwide fashion empire with his globalization strategy, for example, exhibiting a remarkable awareness of local variations that are used to great effect. The company’s ability to penetrate the


Japanese market is therefore firmly rooted in Smith’s craft of fashion – in his tailoring skills, fabric selection and attention to detail, values that, as Jones (1995, 11) testifies, are now firmly stamped across the length and breadth of the entire corporate identity, ‘from the keyholes on his shop doors, to the buttons on his boxer shorts. He has expanded with caution, and every new area, each new franchise is researched with enormous care.’ Product development

This meticulous research into the traits of individual markets goes to show how Paul Smith’s global initiative is very much a locally sensitized encounter characterized by hard work and attention to fine detailing. Such an approach is exemplified in Smith’s denim range called ‘Red Ear’, the outcome of his own forty-five fact-finding missions made to Japan. This collection has been developed specifically for the company’s Japanese market, the inspiration for Red Ear stemming from the Paul Smith pursuit of longevity and quality together with the Japanese obsession with detail and excellence. Red Ear jeans, for example, are manufactured from the highest quality denim and rely on the highest standards of dyeing and weaving, on precision cutting and the most scrupulous assembly processes including immaculate finishing techniques with custom rivets, studs and stitching. It is such niche marketing and the careful targeting of selected consumer audiences with the right product that, in part, explain Paul Smith’s formidable rise as the number one selling men’s brand name in Japan. CONCLUSION

The worked examples of Mulberry and Paul Smith confirm that contemporary Japanese consumer culture is indeed a very public stage where there is a heightened awareness of the self and how the self is to be viewed by others. Both retailers and consumers of British fashion in Japan are aware of the ways in which fashion is utilized in the construction, and continual reconstruction, of identities on this stage. Indeed, this discussion posits fashion as perhaps the optimal tool in the self-presentation ‘kit’ since it is mutable and allows the consumer and/or wearer to act out manifold successive roles. At one moment the fashion consumer might dress the part of the British country gent, drawing on the national symbolism invoked through a Mulberry hunting jacket or waterproof overcoat. At another, the same consumer may adopt an outfit from Paul Smith and enact a modern,

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urbane British role. This process of identity construction through the donning of specific dress ways is heightened in Japan where consumers are skilled in the art of bricolage and where the connections between fashion, cultural identity and performances of the self are clearly understood and articulated. This heightened sense of performance is not restricted to the realm of the individual Japanese consumer. It is also a key force in driving the AngloJapanese fashion export business as a whole. In many ways, this export business defies rational, economic, analyses. British fashion products, for example, do not give basic value for money and business dealings between these two far-flung countries are far from cost effective. It is, then, to the performative that we must turn for explanation. For Anglo-Japanese exports seem to be regulated by a framework of cultural values to do with the indulgence and bestowal of identity-making cues. These exported British fashions carry with them a British mythology. Further still, this mythology can be activated as a lived and/or enacted experience due to the theatrical, role-playing essence of fashion. This theatricality is highly prized in the Japanese retail landscape, so much so that transactions are brokered through this cultural, rather than economic, currency. Within this, credibility – of both fashion product and fashion performance – is highly sought after. With Anglo-Japanese fashion exports, the right look is valued over the right price. The argument presented here has attempted, however, to do more than simply provide empirical examples that reinforce an established argument regarding the centrality of aesthetic values in Japanese consumer life and acuteness of social visibility in this particular cultural context. Unlike previous studies, which have tended to focus on identifying and explaining the character of front-stage performances by a range of social actors in Japan, this discussion has attempted to tease out the backstage practices involved in constructing, retailing and exporting Britishness to Japan. It is clear from the cases of Mulberry and Paul Smith that their identity kits play to the demands of a variety of agents across the Japanese fashion industry, from importers through to consumers. The consumer of these corporate identity kits enacts the on-stage performance. However, it has been argued here that this final performance is the negotiation and culmination of a complex system of inscriptions that take place backstage in factories and warehouses and on drawing boards and production lines. A number of cultural intermediaries are, then, involved in the process of supplying and shaping identity kits for the Japanese consumer. Consumers themselves are not the sole agents involved in the final performance of consumer identities.

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan 313 NOTES 1 It is necessary to provide a note, here, on terminology. Polhemus and Procter (1978, 9) point out that ‘in contemporary Western society, the term “fashion” is often used as a synonym of the terms “adornment”, “style” and “dress” ’. While this may be the case in popular culture, academics with an interest in fashion apply the term more specifically. They contend that there is a difference between a widely accepted clothing code – say, a man’s business suit or a school uniform – and clothing that is fashion. For example, design historian, Breward (1995, 5) defines fashion thus: ‘fashion is taken to mean clothing designed primarily for its expressive and decorative qualities, related closely to the current short-term dictates of the market, rather than for work or ceremonial functions’. The case of luxury fashion retailers, as we are dealing with here, muddies the neat definition supplied by Breward. Although they inhabit the upper echelons of the fashion industry and employ high profile designers, these retailers are often quick to set themselves apart from the faddish character of fashion as a short-term, seasonal affair. These companies claim to transcend fashion and take a kind of anti-fashion stance, promoting their products as enduring classics. In many ways then, these luxury retailers span the conceptual dichotomy between fashion and clothing and in so doing provide an example of Wilson’s (1985) ‘strangeness of dress’. 2 In terms of geo-political territory, Great Britain is made up of three nations: England, Scotland and Wales. In the consumer world, however, national boundaries are far more elastic and the terms Britain, British and Britishness are applied fluidly. Mulberry’s marketing director (author’s interview, 30 November 1998) bolsters this vagueness over terminology, relating how Englishness has colonized British identity, not just nationally, but internationally, in the consumer imagination, so that ‘people’s perceptions of Britishness is really Englishness’. Therefore, in fashion, geopolitical definitions of territory are seldom used accurately. The urge for territorial precision holds little sway over the imagination of consumers geared towards a more ‘symbolic activation’ (Daniels 1993, 5) of the national picture. 3 Festival UK98 was the brainchild of ‘Action Japan’, a partnership between the British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and British industry charged with the specific remit to increase exports to, and investment in, Japan. REFERENCES Aoki, Shōiki. 2001. Fruits. London: Phaidon. Billen, Andrew. 1995. The Smith. Observer Life. 1 October, 41–42. Breward, Christopher. 1995. The culture of fashion. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Breward, Christopher, Becky Conekin, and Caroline Cox, eds. 2002. The Englishness of English dress. Oxford: Berg. Brogan, Maggie. 1990. Oh to go a-Mulberrying. Somerset and Avon Life, September: (no pagination). Buruma, Ian. 1983. Behind the mask. New York: Pantheon. Clammer, John. 1992. Aesthetics of the self: Shopping and social being in contemporary urban Japan. In Lifestyle shopping: The subject of consumption, edited by Rob Shields. London: Routledge. Clark, Judith. 2001. A note: Getting the invitation. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 5(3): 343–353. Crang, Phil. 1996. Displacement, consumption, and identity. Environment and Planning A 28: 47–67. Crewe, Louise and Alison Goodrum. 2000. Fashioning new forms of consumption: The case of Paul Smith. In Fashion cultures, edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church-Gibson. London: Routledge. Daniels, Stephen. 1993. Fields of vision: Landscape imagery and national identity in England and the United States. Oxford: Blackwell. Davies, Laurian. 1994. British womenswear in Japan: Rising sun or setting trends? London: British Knitting and Clothing Export Council. de Certeau, Michel, 1984. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. de la Haye, Amy, ed. 1996. The cutting edge: 50 years of British fashion, 1947–1997. London: V&A Publications. Entwistle, Joanne. 2000. The fashioned body: Fashion, dress and modern social theory. Cambridge: Polity. Evans, Caroline. 2001. The enchanted spectacle. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 5(3): 271–310. Fashion Focus. 1997. Issue One available from DTI, Exports to Japan Unit, Kingsgate House, 66-74 Victoria Street, London. Finkelstein, Joanne. 1991. The fashioned self. Cambridge: Polity. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of the self in everyday life. New York: Anchor. ——. 1961. Asylums. New York: Anchor. Goodrum, Alison. 2001. Land of hip and glory: Designing the ‘classic’ fashionable body. In Dressed to impress: Looking the part, edited by William Keenan. Oxford: Berg. ——. 2005. The national fabric: Fashion, Britishness, globalization. Oxford: Berg. Gregg Duggan, Ginger. 2001. The greatest show on earth: A look at contemporary fashion shows and their relationship to performance art. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 5(3): 243–270. Howarth, Peter. 1993. Paul Smith. Arena (May): 46. Jackson, Peter. 1995. Guest Editorial. Environment and Planning A 27: 1875–76.

Rising Sun, Setting Trends: Fashioning Britishness In, and For, Japan 315 Jackson, Peter, and Nigel Thrift. 1995. Geographies of consumption. In Acknowledging consumption: A review of new studies, edited by Daniel Miller. London: Routledge. Jones, Dylan. 1995. Paul Smith: True Brit. London: Design Museum. Joseph, Joe. 1994. The Japanese: Strange but not strangers. London: Penguin. Kaiser, Susan. 1985. The social psychology of clothing: Symbolic appearances in context. New York: Macmillan. Khan, Nathalie. 2000. Catwalk politics. In Fashion cultures: Theories, explorations, analysis, edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church-Gibson. London: Routledge. Ledgerwood, Alison. 1995. British menswear in Japan. London: British Knitting and Clothing Export Council. ——. 1997. The Japanese clothing market: Private label in Japan. London: British Knitting and Clothing Export Council. Lee, Martyn. 1993. Consumer culture reborn: The cultural politics of consumption. London: Routledge. Lipovetsky, Gilles. 1994. The empire of fashion: Dressing modern democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lurie, Alison. 1981. The language of clothes. New York: Random House. Maynard, Margaret. 1999. The red center: The quest for ‘authenticity’ in Australian dress. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 3(2): 175–196. McCrone, David. 1998. The sociology of nationalism: Tomorrow’s ancestors. London: Routledge. McDermott, Catherine. 2002. Made in Britain: Tradition and style in contemporary British fashion. London: Mitchell Beazley. McVeigh, Brian. 1997. Wearing ideology: How uniforms discipline minds and bodies in Japan. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 1(2): 189–214. ——. 2000. Wearing ideology: State, schooling and self-presentation in Japan. Oxford: Berg. Mulberry Life. 1990/1991. Brochure available from Mulberry Press Office, Kilver Court, Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England. Nixon, Sean. 1997. Designs on masculinity: Menswear retailing and the role of retail design. In Back to reality? Social experience and cultural studies, edited by Angela McRobbie. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Polhemus, Ted. 1996. Style surfing: What to wear in the 3rd millenium. London: Thames and Hudson. Polhemus, Ted, and Lynn Procter. 1978. Fashion and anti-fashion: An anthropology of clothing and adornment. London: Thames and Hudson. Pratt, Andy. 1992. Book Review, Laura Ashley: A life by design. Journal of Rural Studies 8(1): 126–127. Richie, Donald. 2003. The image factory: Fads and fashions in Japan. London: Reaktion.

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Sack, Robert. 1992. Place, modernity and the consumer’s world: A relational framework for geographical analysis. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Samuel, Raphael, ed. 1992. Patriotism: The making and unmaking of British national identity. London: Routledge. Shields, Rob. ed. 1992. Lifestyle shopping: The subject of consumption. London: Routledge. Simmel, Georg. [1904] 1973. Fashion. In Fashion marketing, edited by Gordon Wills and David Midgeley. London: Allen and Unwin. Skoggard, Ian. 1998. Transnational commodity flows and the global phenomenon of the brand. In Consuming fashion: Adorning the transnational body, edited by Anne Brydon and Sandra Niessen. Oxford: Berg. Smout, T. C. 1994. Perspectives on Scottish identity. Scottish Affairs 6: 252–278. Spencer, Herbert. [1896] 1924. The principles of sociology. London: Appleton. Sunday Times. The rich list. 7 April 2002. The Added Value Company. 1998. Self-completion postal survey report document. Prepared for Mulberry. Veblen, Thorstein. [1899] 1970. The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of institutions. London: Allen and Unwin. Wilson, Elizabeth. 1985. Adorned in dreams: Fashion and modernity. London: Virago.

Index ❖ Abstract expressionists, 17–18, 20–3, 31–2 Agency for Cultural Affairs, 74, 174, 180, 188 ‘Aki no Kyoku’, 5, 68–92 Anglo-Japanese exports, 296, 300–301, 312 Angura, 128, 158–9, 169 Anne of Green Gables, 140, 143 Arden, Mary, 139, 144, 151 Artaud, Antonin, 127, 132, 134 Asahi TV, 164, 270 Asia Ensemble, 68, 72, 80–5, 88 Audioanimatronics, 142 Authenticity, 47, 143, 145, 147, 172–3, 175–6, 180, 184, 190, 210–11, 262–3, 268, 298, 302, 304–305, 308–309 ‘Autumn Fantasy’ (‘Aki no Kyoku’), 5, 68–92 Avant-garde calligraphers/calligraphy, 17–22, 24–5, 27, 31–2 ‘Banshiki sangun’, 102–104, 109, 112 Bausch, Pina, 128–9 Beatles, The, 141 Bicknell, Julian, 147 Blake, William, 21 Bokubi, 17, 32 Bokujin-kai, 17 Bokuseki, 14, 27, 31 Bōsō Peninsula, 139 Bricolage, 2, 135, 295, 302, 312

Bricoleur, 302 Britain/British, 140–2, 145, 240, 242, 295–313 British Apparel and Textile Confederation, 300 British Knitting and Clothing Export Council, 301 Britishness, 295–313 Buddhism, 15–16, 35, 167, 201 Bugaku hōe, 110, 122 Burakumin, 57–9 Bush of Ghosts, 134 Butoh, 128 Calligraphic brushstroke, 12 Calligraphy and painting, 12–13, 31 Carlyle, Thomas, 20 Cézanne, Paul, 21 Challenge, 62, 86, 110, 136, 177, 197, 240, 242, 247, 250, 267, 287, 289 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 140 Chikyujin, 54, 62 Colonial Williamsburg, 140, 144–5 Common people, 173, 175, 183–4, 190 Commoner, 174, 184 Community, 36, 39–40, 43–9, 51–3, 55–62, 69–70, 78, 83–5, 88, 161–3, 175, 180–1, 184, 190, 202, 204, 212–13, 263–4, 266, 279 Competition, 196, 199–200, 203–205, 210, 213

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Consumer, 2, 5, 40–1, 44, 158, 187, 211, 274–5, 277–8, 280, 284, 289–90, 295–6, 298–306, 308, 310–13 Contemporary culture, viii, 3–4, 6, 42, 200, 211 Copying, 147–8, 259 Cotton, 38, 173, 182–4, 190–2, 202 Craft, 43, 49–50, 58, 141, 148, 184, 188, 208–209, 214, 303, 306, 311 Credibility, 260, 298, 300–301, 312 Credible, 298 Cultural history, 141, 159 Cultural intermediaries, 296, 300, 307, 312 Cultural nationalism, 18, 20, 32, 69, 82, 86 Cultural reconstruction, 140 Culture Kingdom Gyokusendō, 208–210 Curiosity, 150, 152 Dance, viii, 2–4, 17, 27, 38, 63, 95, 99, 109–10, 126, 128–33, 135, 140, 151, 174–5, 185–7, 189–90, 192, 196–214, 245, 247, 258, 285–7, 302 Disabled, 39, 57, 59, 62 de Certeau, Michel, 2, 5, 130, 160–1, 274, 289, 292, 302 Disney, Walt, 142–3, 163, 210, 213 Disneyland, 46, 142–3, 152, 213 Display, 1–2, 4–5, 13, 15, 50, 72, 96, 130–1, 133, 139–42, 145–50, 160, 164–8, 189, 196, 198–9, 202, 206–12, 230, 246, 248, 258, 264–5, 282, 291, 296, 302 Dōgen, Zenji, 11, 28 Drums/drumming, 34–67, 145, 196–217, 222, 225, 227, 231, 259 Dumb Type, 274–5, 281, 284–9 Earth Celebration, 38–9, 47, 50, 54–7, 62–3 East Asian art, 12–13, 16

East Asian calligraphic aesthetic, 13, 20, 32 East Timor, 150 Eco, Umberto, 142 Eisâ, 196–214 Eliot, T. S., 19 Elliot, David, 166 Emotional Core (or emo-core), 225, 233 England/English(ness), 15, 55, 76–7, 80, 83, 126, 139, 141, 143–5, 147, 149, 151, 160, 221, 225, 227–31, 236, 239, 241, 243, 246–9, 251–2, 254–7, 261–3, 266–7, 269–70, 278, 291, 303, 305, 307, 310, 313 Enka, 242, 261, 269 Ensō, 14, 23–4 Entertainment, 3, 40, 52, 151–2, 201, 203–204, 208, 211–12, 232, 257, 269 Experience, 1, 7, 15, 22, 25, 37–8, 48–50, 54–6, 62, 70, 78–9, 81–3, 86–7, 97, 127–8, 131, 140, 143, 147, 151, 160, 163, 164, 179, 197, 207, 210, 213, 237, 252, 256, 259, 266–7, 279, 281–2, 284, 286, 290, 299, 302, 312 Exposition, 121, 149, 159, 162, 291, 309 Expressionism, 13–14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 27, 31–2 Fake, 28, 142–3, 149, 165 Fashion, 2, 7, 165, 295–316 Festival, 36, 38–41, 43–4, 48, 50–3, 55–6, 59–60, 86, 122, 126, 129, 151, 158, 161, 172, 174–6, 181, 186, 188–91, 196, 200–202, 204–207, 210, 212–12, 243, 258, 309, 313 Flyer, 68, 224, 231–5 Folk Craft Movement (Mingei Undō), 184 Freud, Sigmund, 17 Fude, 12 Fuji, Keiko (Utada Junko), 242–3, 246

Index Furīta, 265 Furusato, 48–9, 52–3, 60–2, 207–208, 210 Gagaku, 5, 74, 79, 93–125 Gagaku Dōshi Kyōkai, 95–6 Gagaku Kōen, 94, 99, 100, 122 Gagaku Shigenkai, 97–8, 102, 109 Gagakukyoku, 93, 95 Gaijin, 38, 55–6, 60 Garden, 16, 139, 144–6, 148–9, 151–2, 158, 161, 164, 283 Gaudí architecture, 140 Gentry, 175, 177, 183–4, 190, 192, 302–303 Geographical imagination, 299 Gestural brushstrokes, 13 Gion Matsuri, 40–1, 50–1 Global / globalization / globalism / globality, 50, 53–7, 62–3, 69, 72, 75, 78–80, 82–3, 88, 135, 145–6, 153, 157–9, 161–2, 164–5, 168, 198, 223–4, 231, 236, 240–1, 259, 266, 276, 283, 291, 305, 309–11 Goffman, Erving, 160, 275, 288, 295–8 Graburn, Nelson, 146 Gyokusendō Kingdom Village, 208–10 Haboku, 17 Hakoniwa, 283, 292 Hamasaki, Ayumi, 240, 246 Happiness, 158, 165–8 Hardcore rock, 7, 221–38 Hasegawa, Saburō, 17 Hazelius, Artur, 145 Heritage, 34–5, 37, 41–3, 45–7, 53–4, 56, 59–62, 142, 144–6, 198, 205, 208, 301 Hidai, Nankoku, 17 Hip-hop, 63, 230, 245, 248–50 Hōgaku Chōsa Gakari, 96 Hokkaidō, 56, 140, 178, 213, 243 Holmberg, Ryan, 17, 24–6, 32

319

Honne, 288 Hyperreality, 143, 147 Ibata, Shotei, 26–30, 32 Identity, viii, 1–2, 4–6, 22, 25, 31, 35– 7, 39, 41–7, 49–55, 57–9, 61–3, 69– 72, 74–6, 78, 80–6, 88, 93, 127, 131, 146, 162, 172–82, 184, 187–91, 196, 198, 200–202, 204–205, 207–14, 240–1, 243, 245–7, 252–3, 257, 261–3, 280, 285, 295–9, 301–303, 305, 307, 309, 311–13 Identity kits, 295–6, 298, 312 Ikat, 173, 182, 184–6, 191–2 i-mode, 276, 291 Indigo, 50, 173, 182, 190, 192 Indonesia, 150 Ink Art, 17, 32 Interaction, 3, 6, 18, 30, 43, 60, 81, 85, 151, 158, 160, 167, 222, 256, 258, 264–5, 273–5, 280, 282, 285, 287 Internationalization, 4, 34, 38, 46, 50, 52–5, 57, 63, 69, 74–7, 84, 251, 304 Internet, 245, 254–5, 273, 275–8, 280, 283, 291 Iriomote, 174, 183, 186, 188 Ise, Grand Shrine, 147 Ishigaki, 173–4, 177, 182–4, 186–8, 191–2 Islamic art, 11 Itō, Masami, 151 Iwai, Toshio, 278, 281–2, 284, 288 Izumi, Kyōka, 129–31 Japanglish, 229–30, 236 Japonisme, 18 JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program, 36, 55, 60 Jorvik Viking Centre, 140, 152 J-pop, 230–1, 239–40, 243, 246, 248, 251, 255, 257, 267 Jung, Carl, 13, 17, 31

320

Performing Japan

Kabuki, 5, 63, 129, 134, 152, 246, 258, 270 Kandinsky, Vassily, 19, 21, 25 Kansei, 275, 278–9, 281–2, 289–90 Kansei kōgaku, 278 Kara, Jurō, 128 Kata, 275, 281, 283, 288–90 Keats, John, 15 Keitai, 257, 274–82, 284, 289–91 Kido, Toshirō, 99, 109–10, 118, 120–2 Kline, Franz, 16, 23, 32 Kodō, 37–9, 42–3, 45–6, 49–50, 53–4, 56–7, 61–3 Kōhai, 264–5, 270 Kohama, 174, 180, 183, 186–7 Koike, Hiroshi, 126–36 Kokuritsu Gekijō, 94, 99, 109, 122 Komuro, Tetsuya, 240 Konoe Naomaro, 95–7, 121–2 Koto, 5, 68–9, 71–6, 78–82, 86–8, 112–16, 119, 121 Kunaichō Gakubu, 93, 95, 97, 99–102, 105–109, 116–18, 122 Kuwata, Keisuke, 240 Kyoto school (of philosophy), 20 Landscapes, 44, 47–8, 290, 292 Learning, 36, 40, 44, 95, 98, 148, 151 Leisure, 126, 140, 142, 183, 210, 213, 221, 233 Lifestyle (marketing; shopping), 37, 46–7, 49–50, 159–60, 163, 209, 214, 256, 268, 279, 295, 298–300, 302–303, 306 Livehouse, 222–3, 225, 227, 232–4 Local/localism/localization, 5, 38–40, 45, 47–8, 50–7, 59–60, 75, 78, 129, 132, 135, 139–40, 143, 145, 147, 161–2, 173–4, 178–81, 183, 186–91, 196, 198–200, 202–13, 221–4, 231, 235–6, 240–2, 263, 266, 268, 273, 310–11 Local government, 139, 178, 188–9, 191, 204, 212

MacCannell, Dean, 146, 153 Macdonald, Sharon, 145, 150 Maruyama, 139, 150–3 Matsuo, Bashō, 19, 26, 292 Matsushima, Makoto, 131 Maypole dances, 151 Meiji Sentei-fu, 93, 95, 97, 99, 109, 113 Mexico, 42, 127, 132 Miki, Minoru, 5, 68–88 Min’yō, 74, 96, 242, 269 Minsâ, 173–6, 181–90, 192 Mitate, 148–9, 152 Mobile phone, 181, 257, 274–7, 279–80, 291 Modernity, 4, 19, 24, 43, 46, 146, 153 Mojisei, 19 Mondrian, Piet, 21, 25 Montgomery, L. M., 140 Mori Arts Centre, 160 Mori, Minoru, 159–60, 162–9 Morita, Shiryū, 17, 20, 22–3, 26, 32 Moscow, 141 Mulberry, 295–6, 298–9, 302–13 Munch, Edvard, 14 Munroe, Alexandra, 14–15, 17, 20, 32, 33 Mura, Hiroyuki, 130 Murakami, Takashi, 167–8 Museum, 13, 31, 50, 144–8, 150–2, 163, 166, 168, 184, 188, 191–2, 208–209, 213, 308 Musical performance, 36, 224 Narrative, 82, 129, 157, 173, 185–6, 190, 269, 301, 308 National Theatre, 74, 93–125, 188 Nature, 15, 32, 35, 38–9, 46, 49, 55, 57–8, 61–2, 142, 275, 280–1, 283–5, 287–8, 290–2 New Year, 147 Newsletter, 221, 224, 231, 233–5 Nikkei, 41–2, 53, 63 Nishida, Kitarō, 20 Noh (nō), 5

Index Nosaka, Keiko, 72, 87 Nostalgia, 46–7, 55–6, 61, 81, 120, 146, 157, 210–11, 234, 308 Ogawa, Mariko, 130–1 Okinawa Wârudo, 208 Okinawa, 6, 131, 173, 176–80, 182, 185–6, 189–92, 196–214 Origin, 12, 18, 79, 120, 135, 148, 157, 178, 183, 200, 202–203, 209, 213, 223, 245, 247, 258, 262–3, 268–70, 277, 281, 291, 310 ‘Other’, 5, 68, 71, 78, 85–6, 175–6, 197–8, 210, 252–3 Pappa Café, 132 Pappa TARAHUMARA, 5, 126–36 Parade, 40, 51, 207 Park, 6, 38, 140–7, 149–53, 163, 200, 204, 207–11, 213–14, 243 Paul Smith, 295–6, 298–9, 302, 307–12 Percussion, 42, 49, 51, 53, 61–3, 227–9, 259 Performance, vii-viii, 1–7, 22, 24, 27–31, 36, 40–3, 45–6, 50–5, 58–63, 68–9, 71–2, 74, 77, 80–5, 87–8, 95, 99, 110, 118, 120–1, 127–33, 135–6, 140–1, 156–62, 166–7, 169, 172–4, 186–90, 192, 196, 198–201, 203–12, 221–9, 231, 234–7, 240–1, 246, 258–64, 268–9, 273–5, 277, 279, 281, 284–90, 295–8, 300, 302–303, 306, 312 Performative calligraphy, 24–5, 27 Performing arts, vii, 1, 3–6, 28–9, 79, 107, 128–9, 132, 174, 196–200, 203–206, 208–209, 212–13, 246, 285, 288 Periphery, 37, 50, 172, 176–9, 186, 189–90, 198, 200, 214, 224, 263, 266 Photography, 174, 192, 224, 234, 244, 264

321

Pictograph, 11 Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, 148 Pitt Rivers, General, 152 Place, 2, 4–6, 35, 38–9, 41, 44–57, 70–1, 141, 143–4, 146, 148, 152, 157, 159–60, 162–163, 178, 188, 202, 205, 207–14, 241, 253, 258–9, 261–2, 309 Poetry, 77, 129, 151 Poggioli, Renato, 24 Pollock, Jackson, 16–17, 21–2, 31 Popularize, 30, 52, 93–7, 151, 205–206 Postmodern, 27, 46, 127–8, 131, 142–4, 146, 152–3, 158–62, 295, 302 Priest(ess), 35–6, 97, 110, 122, 174, 181, 185 Prince Edward Island, 140 Pro Musica Nipponia, 68, 72, 75, 82, 86–7 R&B, 245–6, 248, 272 Rebus, 173, 182, 185 Reconstruct, 71, 79, 82, 93–5, 97–9, 103–10, 117–22, 140–7, 149–50, 152–3, 157, 179, 191, 198, 205, 311 Recontextualize, 93, 196, 198–200, 203, 206, 209–11, 280 Record(ing), 6, 12, 27, 32, 74, 77, 79, 87–8, 97–8, 121–2, 156, 201, 225, 229, 231, 234–5, 244, 246–8, 251, 253–4, 256, 259, 264, 267–70, 282, 286, 303, 306 Reigaku, 103, 109–14, 118 Reigakusha, 98, 105–107, 112, 114–15, 122 Religion, 11, 13, 35, 43, 110, 147, 172, 174, 177, 181, 186, 188, 190, 200–201, 203, 205–206, 210–12 Renaissance, 152–3 Repeaters, 151 Replica, 85, 140, 142–3, 148, 151–2, 168, 310

322

Performing Japan

Representation, viii, 5, 12, 16, 19, 21, 24, 29–30, 53, 69, 71, 77, 81–2, 84, 131, 139–41, 143, 150, 156, 167–8, 179, 211, 234–5, 268, 275, 283, 289 Ritual, 3, 11, 14, 24, 26, 34–6, 39, 43– 6, 61, 93–4, 97, 110, 129, 146–7, 174, 181, 187, 190, 196, 200–201, 203, 205–206, 210–12, 224, 226, 232, 235, 287 Rōkyoku, 242, 269 Ronayne, John, 147 Roppongi Hills, 158–69 Benedict, Ruth, 39, 149, 273, 288 Ryūkyū, 173, 176–81, 183–6, 189, 191, 196–7, 202, 204, 207–208 Sado, 37–9, 45–50, 54–6, 61–3 Sakamoto, Seizan, 76 Sakebi, 226 Sash, 6, 172–92, 202 Scarf, 185–6, 190 Scene, vii, 4, 37–8, 59, 72, 78–9, 109, 131, 133, 140, 144, 148, 156–8, 222–6, 230–7, 239, 253, 258, 292, 307 Second World War, 31, 62, 84, 97, 173, 180, 184, 187, 189–90, 197, 201, 205, 213, 256, 269 Seishin, 37, 44–5, 61 Seitz, William, 17 Seiya, Yoshi, 132 Sekiguchi, Makie, 131 Senpai, 264–5, 270 Sesshū, 17 Shakespeare, William, 129, 139–40, 143–4, 146–7, 149–53 Shakuhachi, 5, 54, 68–9, 71–3, 75, 78, 81, 87, 119 Shiba, Sukeyasu, 98, 104–107, 109, 111–14, 116, 122 Shikoku, 71, 141 Shingeki, 128, 158 Shinsen Gakufu, 109 Shintō, 1, 34–6, 43–5, 93, 97, 118, 147

Shōsō-in, 109–14, 116, 118–19, 122 Shunchū, 129 ‘Shūteiga’/Shūteiga, 101, 111, 116, 118, 122 Simulacra, 143, 152, 211 Sino-Japanese (writing, art), 11–13, 16, 19, 21, 256 Smoking, 221–3, 231, 235–6 ‘Sōrō Kadatsu’, 109 Soundscape, 5, 196, 253 Special Olympics, 39, 52, 59 Spring Day, 126–7, 129, 131–2, 135 Stickers, 224, 231–2 Stone Age, 127, 132–3, 135 Stratford-upon-Avon, 147 Sumi, 12 Superflat, 168 Surman, Bronwen, 143 Suzuki, Daisetz T., 14–15, 28, 31 Suzuki, Tadashi, 128, 158 Swayambu, 141 Symbolic production, 296 Taiko, 5, 34–63, 202–203 Takemitsu, Tōru, 69, 71, 94, 101, 103, 106, 111–12, 116, 118 Taketomi, 173–6, 180–92 Tales of the Trojan Wars, 144 Tanedori, 174–6, 188, 191 Tarahumara Indians, 127, 132 Tatemae, 288 Technology, 2, 6, 142, 148–9, 191, 258, 273–80, 282–6, 288–92 Tēma pāku, 141 Terayama, Shūji, 128 Theatre, vii, 2–5, 63, 74, 94–100, 109– 10, 118, 120–2, 126–9, 132–6, 142, 144, 147, 151–3, 158–9, 161, 188, 208, 257, 269, 278, 284–5, 297–9, 306, 312 Theme park, 6, 141–2, 144–6, 149, 151–2, 200, 207–11, 213 Tobey, Mark, 16 Tōhoku, 140, 213

Index Tokonoma, 13, 292 Tōkyō Gakuso, 98, 103–107, 111, 117– 18 Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō, 96, 122 Tonomura, Kichinosuke, 184, 186, 189 Tourism, viii, 5–6, 28, 31, 38–40, 46, 51–2, 61, 71, 140–1, 143, 146, 173– 4, 177, 179–80, 182, 184, 187–91, 196, 198–200, 206–14, 243, 265–6, 303 Tradition, vii-viii, 1–6, 11–14, 16–20, 22–31, 35–6, 39–46, 48–59, 61–3, 68–9, 71–85, 86–8, 93–5, 99, 101– 108, 110–11, 113–14, 116–18, 120– 2, 134–5, 141, 145–6, 158, 162, 164, 166, 172–3, 175–6, 178, 180–5, 187–8, 190, 196, 198–200, 202–203, 205–12, 232–3, 236, 241–2, 246, 254, 258, 265, 269, 273, 275, 277, 279–80, 283, 287–90, 299–300, 307–10 Troilus and Cressida, 144 Tsukiai, 264 Tsukuba, 128 Tsukuri, 148–9

323

Ueda, Sōkyū, 17 Uesedo, Tōru, 173, 185–6 Ukiyoe, 233, 277 Umesao, Tadao, 51, 151 Underground, 158, 222, 224, 226, 231, 233–6 Urry, John, 143, 152, 199 US Occupation (of Okinawa), 180, 189–90, 197–8 Utada, Hikaru, 239–47, 250–7, 263, 266–70 Van Gogh, Vincent, 12 Wedding, 1, 31, 34–6, 43, 205 Winther-Tamaki, Bert, 18, 20, 32 Worlds Fairs, 149 Yaeyama, 172–92, 197 Yama, 148 Yamaguchi, Masao, 148–9, 152 Yonaguni, 173–4, 181, 192 Zen 14–20, 22–32, 130, 148, 290 Zen-ei sho, 11–33

1

. A page from a calligrapher’s handbook, the Dictionary of Five Calligraphic Styles (Gotai jirui). On the left side of the page can be seen all the permutations that the character meaning “wind” and pronounced fū or kaze undergoes on its way from block through cursive (“grass”) to archaic styles. The extremely free treatment of the form of characters in the cursive style shows the ancient roots of avantgarde calligraphy. Photograph by author. PLATE

2

. Ibata-sensei in action ‘dancing’ with a broom-sized brush. Thanks to the Reiki Newsletter for this image.

PLATE

3

PLATE . Ibata-sensei signing a calligraphic work executed with a giant brush. Thanks to the Reiki Newsletter for this image.

4

. The landscape of Sado Island, adopted home of the taiko group Kodo and venue for the Earth Celebration, serves as a metonym for all the islands of the Japanese archipelago. The piwheels in this photo lead into a cave long used by Japanese for mizuko jizo rituals. Photograph by author. 5 PLATE

. A wadaiko (Japanese taiko) group performs as one of the public fringe events during the Earth Celebration on Sado Island in 2006. Photograph by author.

PLATE

6

PLATE . A wadaiko (Japaese taiko) group performs as one of the public fringe events during the Earth Celebration on Sado Island in 2006. Photograph by author.

7

. Dadaiko drum used in the gagaku subgenre komagaku. Photograph by author, Kasuga shrine, Nara.

PLATE

8

PLATE

. Styles of gagaku pieces staged in Kokuritsu Gekijō’s gagaku kōen.

9 PLATE . Spring Day. On stage left, Miura Hiroyuki in his androgynous persona, with Sekiguchi Makie in blue and Ogawa Mariko on the floor. Photograph taken by Oguma Sakae and provided by Pappa TARAHUMARA.

10

.

Spring Day. From front to back, Pappa TARAHUMARA performers Shirai Sachiko, Sekiguchi Makie, Ogawa Mariko, and Miura Hiroyuki. Photograph taken by Oguma Sakae and provided by Pappa TARAHUMARA. PLATE

11

PLATE

. Wax model of Shakespeare. Maruyama. Photograph by author.

12

PLATE

. Reproduction of Shakespeare’s birthplace. Maruyama. Photograph by author.

13

PLATE

. Roppongi Hills as seen from Azabu Japan. Photograph by author.

14

PLATE

. The Glass tower entrance to MAC. Photograph by author.

15

PLATE

. Roppongi Hills Arena between TV Asahi and the Keyakizaka Complex. Photograph by

author.

16

PLATE

. A space of flows. Photograph by author.

17

PLATE

. Louis Vuitton—the gap between public art and shop design is blurred. Photograph by

author. 18

PLATE

. Murakami’s ‘Cosmos’—‘superflat intensive’. Photograph by author.

19

. Minsā sash. Woven by Kuroshima Sumi, c. 1980, Nishi Shūraku, Taketomi Island. Collection Shimanaka Yumi, Taketomi Island, Okinawa. Photograph by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum.

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20

PLATE . Dancers portraying farmers in ‘Kungasha’, Tanedori Festival, Taketomi Island 2002. Photograph by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum.

21

. Women of Nishi Shūraku perform the dance ‘Jitchū’ at the Tanedori Festival, Taketomi Island 2000. ‘Jitchū’ represents the celebration of a poor woman of the island, whose virtue in raising ten children was rewarded by the king of Ryūkyū. When she made clothing for her children to wear for their appearance before the king, because of her poverty she was able to attach only one sleeve to each garment. Photograph by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum.

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22

. Eisā performers at Gyokusendō theme park, Okinawa. Photograph by author, 2003. 23

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. Okinawa island. Source: University of Texas .

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24

Bon odori

Okinawan eisā

Taiko odori

Katchin eisā

PLATE

Japanese Bon odori

Teodori

Agi eisā

. Classification of eisā.

25

PLATE

. Advertisement for Michelle Gun Elephant in a Tokyo subway station.

26

PLATE

.

27

Examples of band

stickers.

PLATE . Entrance to the livehouse, 20,000volt.

28

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. A flyer produced by Sports.

29

PLATE

. Jug’s newsletter.

30

PLATE

2000.

. Dumb Type. Photographed by Fukunaga Kazuo, The Museum of Art, Kōchi, Japan,

31

PLATE

2000.

. Dumb Type. Photographed by Fukunaga Kazuo, The Museum of Art, Kōchi, Japan,

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