Citation (1)
Map of Japan
Citation (3)
Books
Resonances of Chindon-Ya by
In this first book-length study of chindon-ya, Marié Abe investigates the intersection of sound, public space, and sociality in contemporary Japan. Chindon-ya, dating back to the 1840s, are ostentatiously costumed street musicians who publicize a business by parading through neighborhood streets. Historically not considered music, but part of the everyday soundscape, this vernacular performing art provides a window into shifting notions of musical labor, the politics of everyday listening and sounding, and street music at social protest in Japan. Against the background of long-term economic downturn, growing social precarity, and the visually and sonically saturated urban streets of Japan, this book examines how this seemingly outdated means of advertisement has recently gained traction as an aesthetic, economic, and political practice after decades of inactivity. Resonances of Chindon-ya challenges Western conceptions of listening that have normalized the way we think about the relationship between sound, space, and listening subjects, and advances a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the ways social fragmentation is experienced and negotiated in post-industrial societies. Hardcover is un-jacketed.
Call Number: ML3917.J3 A24 2018
Hip-Hop Japan by
In this lively ethnography Ian Condry interprets Japan's vibrant hip-hop scene, explaining how a music and culture that originated halfway around the world is appropriated and remade in Tokyo clubs and recording studios. Illuminating different aspects of Japanese hip-hop, Condry chronicles how self-described "yellow B-Boys" express their devotion to "black culture," how they combine the figure of the samurai with American rapping techniques and gangsta imagery, and how underground artists compete with pop icons to define "real" Japanese hip-hop. He discusses how rappers manipulate the Japanese language to achieve rhyme and rhythmic flow and how Japan's female rappers struggle to find a place in a male-dominated genre. Condry pays particular attention to the messages of emcees, considering how their raps take on subjects including Japan's education system, its sex industry, teenage bullying victims turned schoolyard murderers, and even America's handling of the war on terror. Condry attended more than 120 hip-hop performances in clubs in and around Tokyo, sat in on dozens of studio recording sessions, and interviewed rappers, music company executives, music store owners, and journalists. Situating the voices of Japanese artists in the specific nightclubs where hip-hop is performed--what musicians and fans call the genba (actual site) of the scene--he draws attention to the collaborative, improvisatory character of cultural globalization. He contends that it was the pull of grassroots connections and individual performers rather than the push of big media corporations that initially energized and popularized hip-hop in Japan. Zeebra, DJ Krush, Crazy-A, Rhymester, and a host of other artists created Japanese rap, one performance at a time.
Call Number: ML3531 .C66 2006
Music and Words by
Composer Nakayama Shimpei (1887-1952) wrote more than 300 popular songs in his lifetime. Most are still well known and recorded regularly. An entrepreneur, he found ways to create popular songs that powered Japan's nascent recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s. An artist, his combination of Japanese and Western musical styles and tropes appealed to Japanese sentiments in a way that not only reflected the historical and social context, but anticipated and explained those historical changes to his listeners. This book seeks to apply contextual analysis of Nakayama's popular songs to the events that occurred in the context of Japan's development of a record industry and popular music market between 1887 and 1952. The book evaluates Nakayama's positions within the world of musicians, and as a bridge between intellectuals and pure artists, on the one hand, and the Japanese people on the other to understand how popular songs can enrich and deepen our understanding of the history of political and industrial development in modern Japan. The book concludes that Nakayama's uncanny ability to make listening to Western music a comfortable experience for Japanese by adding elements from Japanese musical styles allowed him to be successful financially, and to hold respect within the artistic community as well. His skill in creating songs that spoke to large groups of people, successfully marketing those songs through an understanding of how music would sound on record, and careful communication with his audiences to understand their interests and lives made him the most popular composer of his time, and a powerful asset for Japan Victor, Inc., his record company. The ultimate goal of the book is to show how popular songs can be utilized as primary sources to help deepen our understanding of historical contexts.
Call Number: ML410.N25 P37 2019
Goze by
In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the countryside as professional singers. An integral part of rural musical culture, the goze sang unique narratives of their own making and a significant repertory of popular ballads and short songs. Goze activities peaked in the nineteenth century, and some women continued to tour well into the middle of the twentieth. The last active goze lived until 2005. In Goze: Women, Musical Performance, and Visual Disability in Traditional Japan, Gerald Groemer examines the way of life, institutions, and songs of these itinerant performers. Groemer shows that the solidarity and success goze achieved with the rural public through narrative and music was based on the convergence of the goze's desire for a degree of social and economic autonomy with the audience's wish to mitigate the cultural deprivation it so often experienced. Goze recognized audiences as a stimulus for developing repertories and careers; the public in turn recognized goze as masterful artisans who acted as powerful agents of widespread cultural development. As the first full-length scholarly work on goze in English, this book is an invaluable resource to scholars and students of Japanese culture, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, and disability studies worldwide.
Call Number: ML3750 .G78 2016
Japanese Music
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
- JapanRead more about Japanese music!
Facts in Brief
Capital: Tokyo
Official Language: Japanese
Current Population: 125,120,000
Area: 377,975 sq km
Climate: Although summers are temperate everywhere, the climate in winter varies markedly from cold in the north to mild in the south. Typhoons and heavy rains are common during May–October. Temperatures in Tokyo range from −6°C (21°F) to 30°C (86°F).
Main Religions: Shintoism and Buddhism
Citation (2)
Japanese Music
Shinto
All Shintō music traces its origins to the myth of an erotic dance performed by the goddess Ame no Uzume no Mikoto before the Rock Door of Heaven to entice out the Sun Goddess, who was hiding her light from the world and causing crops to fail. Kagura, written with Chinese characters meaning ‘music (and dance) for the gods’, was regarded as a branch of wagaku, music of Japanese origin, as opposed to various kinds of foreign music being introduced at the court...the cycle of songs (kagura-uta) was re-edited in the second quarter of the 17th century, after a hiatus caused by the civil wars of the 16th century. The text of each song falls into two parts, the moto-uta and the sue-uta; in each part the first verse is sung solo and the later verses in unison chorus. Instrumental accompaniment is provided by a Wagon (six-string zither), kagura-bue (transverse flute) and hichiriki (short cylindrical oboe). In addition to mi-kagura, music of the imperial cult includes other ancient song-types: Azuma asobi, Ōnaobi-no-uta, Yamato-uta, Kume-uta, Ta-uta and Gosechi-no-mai.
Folk Music: Warabe
There are three kinds of Japanese song for children: (shōgaku-)shōka (songs for primary school use); dōyō (songs for children composed by professional musicians); and warabe-uta (traditional game songs). The last type is different from the other two mainly in that its form is simpler and it is always combined with some kind of game. Significantly, warabe-uta predominantly use traditional pentatonic scales and modes: they are ‘traditional’ products and are generally passed from child to child. Many warabe-uta are still sung by children, regardless of where they live throughout the country. Warabe-uta melodies, simple in structure, are usually within the range of a 6th or an octave, and in many cases they are based on one or two tetrachords. Text setting of warabe-uta is almost wholly syllabic. The metrical forms, however, depend largely on the form of the particular game. Skipping-rope songs usually have a slow duple metre, whereas ball-bouncing songs show more variety in rhythm, depending on how the players bounce the balls.
Theatre Music: ‘Nō’
This performance form combines elements of dance, drama, music and poetry into a highly structured stage art. Mainly based in the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya, it is performed throughout the country by professional artists (almost entirely men), many of whom are carriers of the tradition as passed down through family lines for numerous generations. There is also a wide following of both male and female amateur performers throughout the country who practise and perform one or several aspects of the form. An art that developed in Japan’s medieval period, it has in turn been a major influence on later performance arts, most notably kabuki theatre and the music of the koto.
Read more about Japanese music at Grove Online
Citation (4)
Composer Highlight: Yoko Kanno
Yoko Kanno
Japanese pianist, arranger, and composer.
Since 1988 she has composed and arranged select studio tracks for a wide range of mostly female Japanese pop artists. Her longest musical relationship has been with the singer Maaya Sakamoto, with whom she collaborated on eight albums between 1997 and 2009. Her initial forays into film music were for Japanese video games. Combining her pop studio work and game scoring, she developed a typically Japanese approach to film scoring based on polyglot styles, studio ensemble production, and embellished orchestral arrangements. Her first distinctive work accompanied a range of anime (Japanese animation) titles, mostly based on shojo manga (girls’ comics), which included theme music for Please Save my Earth (1994) and The Vision of Escaflowne (1996). Their floral vocal harmonies and swirling mix of real and synthesized instrumentation aptly interpret the baroque richness of shojo manga. Kanno's break-out score was for the television series ‘Cowboy BeBop’ (1998), which employed a range of jazz idioms to colour the series’ characters with an emotional complexity unexpected for anime at the time. Successive anime series established her creative power in moulding character through musical portraiture: ‘Earth Girl Arjuna’ (1998), ‘Brain Powerd’ (1998), ‘Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex’ (2002–5), and ‘Darker than Black’ (2007). Her feature film scores for live action titles, most of which have been screened at international film festivals, evidence her most delicate orchestrations and arrangements: Woman of Water (2002), Tokyo.Sora (2002), Kamikaze Girls (2004), Ashura (2005), Su-ki-da (2005), and Honey and Clover (2006).
Citations
(2): Location, Climate, Language, Religion, Flag, Capital (Japan), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 15 December 2021 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/jp.is.2
(3): Country Flag (Japan), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 15 December 2021 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/jp.FLAG
(4): Ferranti, H., Kishibe, S., Hughes, D., Adriaansz, W., Thompson, R., Rowe, C., Berger, D., Malm, W., Malm, W., Waterhouse, D., Marett, A., Emmert, R., Koizumi, F., Tanimoto, K., Kanazawa, M., Fujie, L., & Falconer, E. Japan. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 15 Dec. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000043335.