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Popular Music in Japan Popular Music in Japan Transformation Inspired by the West Tōru Mitsui Bloomsbury Academic Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 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. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Whilst every effort has been made to locate copyright holders the publishers would be grateful to hear from any person(s) not here acknowledged. 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 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. 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.