Table Of ContentPopular Music in Japan
Popular Music in Japan
Transformation Inspired by the West
Tōru Mitsui
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published in the United States of America 2020
Copyright © Tōru Mitsui, 2020
Cover design: Louise Dugdale
Cover image: 1920s Nipponophone 78 rpm paper sleeve with
‘Arabia-no Uta’ (‘Song of Araby’) displayed through the cut-out.
Courtesy of Hideo Nagai, Yokohama, Japan.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mitsui, Tōru, 1940- author.
Title: Popular music in Japan : transformation inspired by the West / Toru Mitsui.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Summary: “An overview of popular music in
Japan with a focus on the role of western influence”– Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020003312 | ISBN 9781501363863 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781501363887 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501363870 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Popular music–Japan–History and criticism. |
Music–Japan–Western influences.
Classification: LCC ML3501 .M54 2020 | DDC 781.63/1640952–dcundefined
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003312
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-6386-3
ePDF: 978-1-5013-6388-7
eBook: 978-1-5013-6387-0
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Contents
List of figures vii
Preface viii
Notes on names, spelling and translation ix
A note on the cover image x
Transformation inspired by the West (1) 1
1 The French Revolution and the emergence of enka 13
Transformation inspired by the West (2) 21
2 Songs in triple time sung in duple time 25
Transformation inspired by the West (3) 43
3 “Sing Me a Song of Araby” and “My Blue Heaven”: When the
production of hit songs began in the late 1920s 47
Transformation inspired by the West (4) 75
4 Far Western in the Far East: Japanese Country & Western 85
Transformation inspired by the West (5) 105
5 Music and protest in the late 1960s: The rise of underground folk 109
Transformation inspired by the West (6) 125
6 Japan in Japan: Looking for inexpensive potential stars from abroad 131
Transformation inspired by the West (7) 145
7 Nurturing the Japanese version of an American tradition: Music
from the South 149
vi Contents
Transformation inspired by the West (8) 169
8 Domestic exoticism: A trend in the age of ‘world music’ 173
Transformation inspired by the West (9) 185
References 191
Index 207
Figures
2.1 “Kago-no Tori” sung by Shun’yō Tottori and Kyōko Tatsumi 26
2.2 “Heart Song” sung by Shun’yō Tottori 28
2.3 “Kago-no Tori” sung by older people in Neagari 32
2.4 “Kago-no Tori” sung by Shōichi Ozawa 33
2.5 “Kago-no Tori” sung by Chieko Masaki 34
2.6 “Kago-no Tori” sung by Kazuo Yoshida and Mitsue Yoshida 35
2.7 “Manzai Shin Kago-no Tori” sung by Suteji Sunakawa 35
2.8 “Furusato” composed by Teiichi Okano 36
2.9 “Furusato” performed by a male harmonica player and
sung by older women 37
2.10 “Minato” composed by Tarihiko Hatano 38
2.11 “Minato” arranged in duple time by author 39
2.12 “Minato” arranged in duple time by author beginning
with an anacrusis 40
3.1 The first six bars of “Sing Me a Song of Araby”
composed by Fred Fisher and arranged by Paul Van Loan 71
3.2 The first eight bars of “My Blue Heaven” composed
by Walter Donaldson and arranged by Ferde Grofé 72
4.1 “Wagon Master” sung by Kazuya Kosaka 86
4.2 Riff in “Wagon Master” 86
6.1 Portraits of members of Japan by their fans, printed in the
second issue of the fan club’s magazine, Japan (June 1979) 138
Preface
In this book, I see popular music in Japan from an historical perspective with an
emphasis on its transformation inspired by the West since the Meiji era, which
began in the late 1860s.
What I regard, in this book, as popular music in Japan, with popular song
as its mainstay, was preceded by hayari-uta. In a concise overview of ‘Popular
music before the Meiji period’, Gerald Groemer says that ‘From around the
seventeenth century, when the term came into common parlance, most Japanese
differentiated hayari-uta from songs that seemed more resistant to change. […]
Between the peasant’s timeless ditty and the courtier’s time-honoured chant lay
hayari-uta: ephemeral strains and verses often identified with professions or
sectors of society that the country bumpkin could not and the samurai would
not fully know’ (2008: 261). The Meiji era began right after Japanese people were,
as often figuratively described, ‘aroused from their 200-year sleep’, which had
remained undisturbed in the national isolationism. They opened their doors to
Western countries, and hayari-uta began to be transformed, though the word
continued to exist for the time being.
In discussing various phases and topics of popular music in Japan since the
Meiji era, this book serves of its own accord as the first book ever published that
covers those years – not only in English, but also in Japanese. Moreover, as the
title suggests, this book examines popular music in Japan without confining it to
Japanese popular songs or music per se.
The title article, ‘Transformation inspired by the West’, is in nine sections and
weaves its way through the whole book, which consists of eight chapters. These
chapters and the title article are a selection from my contributions to books and
periodicals in overseas countries between 1983 and 2014. I have revised them
for the compilation of this book and amended their titles so that they are more
in line with the contents.
I thank the copyright holders for their permission to reuse the originals
(the details of these are cited at the head of each relevant piece). At the same
time, I also thank the members of Bloomsbury Academic’s publishing board for
unanimously approving the publication of this book – particularly Leah Babb-
Rosenfeld and Amy Martin.
Notes on names, spelling and translation
Throughout this book, Japanese personal names are phonetically transcribed
into the modern English alphabet and appear in the westernized style with given
names followed by surnames. This order is the reverse of standard Japanese
practice.
Titles of books, articles, songs, albums and films are also phonetically
transcribed into the English alphabet in the generally received method, though
well-known proper names such as Tokyo (Tōkyō) and Toshiba (Tōshiba) are left
unchanged and so are spelt internationally without diacritics. English words
such as jazz, folk and rock used in Japanese writings are spelt here as they are in
the original English (the consonants -z and -k are pronounced in Japanese as -zu
and -ku because consonants are invariably combined with a vowel; however, it is
unnecessary to spell them phonetically here as jazu, fōku and rokku).
Titles are translated into English by the author and presented in parentheses;
quotations from materials in the Japanese language have also been translated
into English by the author.
