hosokawa shuhei on Tue, 9 Feb 1999 09:44:24 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Tanabe Hisao and Japanese Ethnomusicology [1/2] |
[part 2 of 2] Towards a Greater East Asian Musicology What Tanabe was seeking in the study of East Asian music was 'neither scale, harmony, nor compositional methodology, but moral virtue'.[36] In doing so he was clearly conscious that he was proposing an alternative to Western musicology. His Daito_a Ongakugaku [Greater East Asian Musicology] project dealt specifically with the absolute superiority of Greater East Asian music over Western music because of the presence in the former of moral virtue, the essence of Confucianism. Moral virtue was synonymous with divinity (shinsei) for Tanabe because he, in conformity with official doctrine, overlaid Confucianism on Shintoism, the core philosophy-religion of state politics in modern Japan. In a further expression of 'Japanese spirit, Western technique', Tanabe declared 'so-called rationalism' to be the only theoretical tool available to Western musicology--a puny implement when compared with moral virtue--which meant it was not qualified to contemplate Greater East Asian music at all. Western publications 'know neither the ethnic nor the racial soul of Greater East Asia. All they study are surfaces'.[37] The mission of studying its music thus falls to the Japanese because they are naturally sensitive to 'Asiatic soul'. However, when Tanabe described the scales and instruments of each piece in To_a no Ongaku, he (unwillingly?) borrowed the work of Western comparative musicology. And when he came to discussing the moral virtue of music, he merely repeated the official doctrine about ethnic/national superiority without defining what 'moral virtue' or 'divinity' might be. These notions were a priori for imperial science.[38] His writings are therefore open to the criticism that they go no farther than to combine Western 'superficial' analysis with formulaic references to Japanese or Asian spirit. When describing the objectives of their study, Tanabe explained that Greater East Asian musicology does not mean 'the discipline that researches daito_a ongaku' (that is, the music that pertains to the Greater Eastern Asian ethnicities/nations) but rather 'the musicology that should exist for the construction of Greater East Asian culture'.[39] In other words, musicology should not only focus on individual music cultures as they currently exist, but also on the moral and artistic foundation constituent of the spiritual unity of East Asia. Study should not be merely descriptive or analytical, as in Western science, but should be moral in itself and promote the unification of East Asian Music. The basis of this assumption is the mono-genetic theory of East Asian music, the hypothesis of the existence of a proto-music that generated all the musics of East Asia. It is the originary East Asian music and the ultimate goal of Greater East Asian musicology. Such a music, peculiar to 'Greater East Asia' and nowhere else, would be the perfect synthesis of all the music in the Empire. If Asia's huge territory is to be unified by Japan, it will (or should) have unified music dominating throughout. The search for the origin turns into the project for the future. At this point, ethnomusicology becomes the handmaiden of imperial science. Conclusion The internal contradiction within Greater East Asian musicology can be interpreted as a conflict between imperialism and nativism, a conflict characteristic to the process of Japan's modernisation. This nativism, however, does not draw to Japan itself but to 'China'--gagaku and Confucianism. It is Japan's cultural debt to China that legitimated her expansion to Korea, China and beyond and formed her East-Asia (to_a) as a political and cultural bloc. Therefore imperialism and nativism were complicit rather than contrastive. Japanese ethnomusicologists could not help but take the contradictory position that Japan should proclaim its Asian-ness (to the West) as well as its non-Asian-ness (to Asia). Asia was located between 'them' and 'us', a sort of twilight zone in Japan's epistemological map. As Tanaka notes, 'while they recognized difference in relation to the West, Japanese "interacted" with Asia only as an object of their own discourse'.[40] One of the forms of this imperial 'interaction' was the 'repatriation' of gagaku to China, Korea and Manchuria. By doing so, Tanabe supposed that a specifically Japanese national/imperial symbol could be converted into an East-Asian one. Hence, the key to understand the unachieved (or even uncommenced) project of Greater East Asian musicology is the politics and symbolism of gagaku. Today, the work of Tanabe becomes more meaningful when we question how his research practice was positioned in relation to the material, technical, political, economic and ideological processes of his time. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Makita Ban, who kindly lent me some of the Tanabe materials, and to Jennifer Milioto, the first critical and careful reader of the early version. This paper was presented at the 57th Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 1997, Washington D.C. Special thanks go to the panel discussants, Miriam Silverberg and Ikeda Keiko. REFERENCES Fogel, J. (1984), Politics and Sinology: The Case of Naito_ Konan (1866-1934) (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press) Garfias, R. (1975), Music of a Thousand Autumns (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press) Hosokawa, S. (1993), Minzoku ongaku [Ethnic Music], Music Magazine, November 1993. Kasuya, E. (1993), Senchu_ki no chu_goku ni okeru nihonjintachi o curosu ro_do [Crossroads of Japanese intellectuals in interwar China], Gendai Shiso_, 21:1. Kishibe, S. (1940a), Gendai shina ongaku ni tsuite [On music in contemporary China], Record Ongaku, 15:9. Kishibe, S. (1940b), Shinsei shina ongaku e no tenbo_ [Perspective on music in newly-born China], Ongaku Kurabu, June 1940. Kishibe, S. (1944), To_a ongaku ko_ [Essays on East Asian Music], Tokyo: Ryu_ginsha. Kurosawa, T. (1941), Tai ni okeru gakki no cho_sa kenkyu_ [Research into musical instruments in Thailand], Tokyo: Nihon tai bunka kenkyu_jo. Murai, O. (1993), Konkistado_ru no 'seifuku kokka' [The Conquistadors' 'Subjugated States'], Gendai Shiso_. Oki, M. (1941), 'To_a no Ongaku' o kiku [Listening to 'the music of East Asia'], Ongaku Kurabu, 8:9. Tanabe, H. (1906), Seiyo_ ongaku annai [A Guide to Western Music], Tokyo: Kinko_do_. Tanabe, H. (1908), Onkyo_ to ongaku [Acoustics and Music], Tokyo: Ko_do_kan. Tanabe, H. (1921a), Cho_sen ongaku ko_ [Thoughts on Korean Music], To_yo_ Gakugei Zasshi, 478-480, July-August-September 1921 (three-part). Tanabe, H. (1921b), Sho_so_in gakki no cho_sa ho_koku [Report on the Musical Instruments at the Sho_so_in] (with Kami Saneyuki and Ohno Tadamoto), in Teishitsu Hakubutsukan Gakuho_ [The Report of the Imperial Museum], 2. Tanabe, H. (1922), Bunmeishijo_ yori mitaru sekai no ongaku [The Music of the World Seen from the History of Civilisation], Tokyo: Keiseisha. Tanabe, H. (1927), Gendai shina no ongaku [The Music of Contemporary China], Tokyo: To_a Kenkyu_ji. Tanabe, H. (1929), To_yo_ ongaku ron [On Asiatic Music], Tokyo: Shunju_sha. Tanabe, H. (1937), So_kan ni saishite [On the inauguration of the journal], To_yo_ Ongaku Kenkyu_, 1:1. Tanabe, H. (1940), To_yo_ ongakushi [History of Asiatic Music], Tokyo: Yu_zankaku. Tanabe, H. (1941a), To_yo_ ongaku no insho_ [Impressions of Asiatic Music ], Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin. Tanabe, H. (1941b), 'Sleevenotes for To_a no ongaku [East Asiatic Music] ', Columbia (re-released on CD, COCG-14342, 1997) Tanabe, H. (1941c), Nihon ongaku no yu_shu_sei [The superiority of Japanese music], Tokyo: Shakai kyo_iku kyo_kai. Tanabe, H. (1942a), Daito_a to ongaku [Greater East Asia and Music], Kyo_gaku So_sho [Educational Book Collection], Tokyo: Kyo_gaku-kyoku. Tanabe, H. (1942b), Daito_a minzoku no min'yo_ ni tsuite [On the folksongs of the races of Greater East Asia], Ongaku no Tomo, 2:5. Tanabe, H. (1943), Daito_a no ongaku [Music of Greater East Asia], Tokyo: Kyo_wa Shobo_. Tanabe, H. (n.d.), Daito_a ongakugaku no kensetsu [The Construction of Greater East Asian Musicology], 1943? Tanabe, H. (1968), Nan'yo_ Taiwan Cho_sen ongaku kiko_ [Music Travels to the South Pacific, Taiwan and Korea], Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha. Tanabe, H. (1970), Chu_goku cho_sen ongaku cho_sa kiko_ [Music Research and Travelogue in China and Korea], Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, 1970. Tanabe, H. (1981), Tanabe Hisao jijoden [Memoire of Tanabe Hisao], Tokyo: Ho_gakusha. Tanabe, H. (1982), Zoku Tanabe Hisao jijoden [Memoire of Hisao Tanabe. Part 2], Tokyo: Ho_gakusha. Tanaka, Sho_hei (1937), To_yo_ ongaku gakkai kaishi no hakkan o shukusu [Celebration for the inauguration of the journal of the Society for Research into Asiatic Music], To_yo_ Ongaku Kenkyu_, 1:1. Tanaka, Stefan (1993), Japan's Orient. Rendering Pasts into History, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press. Yamamoto, H. (1989),Tanabe Hisao to cho_sen Li o_cho_ no gagaku [Tanabe Hisao and the gagaku of the Korean Li Dynasty] (bachelor thesis, Deptartment of Musicology, Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku). NOTES [1] See Kasuya Eiichi (1993), Senchu_ki no chu_goku ni okeru nihonjintachi o curosu ro_do [Crossroads of Japanese intellectuals in interwar China], Gendai Shiso_, 21:1; Murai Osamu (1993), Konkistado_ru no 'seifuku kokka' [The Conquistadors' 'Subjugated States'], Gendai Shiso_, 21:7 [2] See Robert Garfias (1975), Music of a Thousand Autumns, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [3] Tanabe Hisao (1970), Chu_goku cho_sen ongaku cho_sa kiko_ [Music Research and Travelogue in China and Korea], Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, p. 29, italics mine. According to Yamamoto Hanako, Korean musicologists insist on a different theory on the revival of Li gagaku, which holds that the Japanese gagaku office ignored the letter sent by the Li ensemble in 1918 to solicit financial support. Meanwhile, the Korean musicians themselves had founded an (admittedly poorly funded) educational institution that became the 'conservatory' of Korean classical music after Tanabe took his initiative. See Yamamoto Hanako (1989), Tanabe Hisao to cho_sen Li o_cho_ no gagaku [Tanabe Hisao and the gagaku of the Korean Li Dynasty] (Bachelor thesis, Department of Musicology, Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku). [4] Tanabe (1970), pp. 98-189. In the postwar reprint of his Korean diary, he modified the words naichi (mainland) and senjin (a pejorative term for 'Korean people') to read Nihon and Cho_senjin respectively, because he was 'embarrassed' by the colonial implication in the prewar terminology and he felt qualms of conscience for 'my beloved Korea' (p. 31). His sympathy with Korea is obvious. But everything he found to praise in it was connected to the high culture of the past, and he rarely mentioned the living Korean culture and people. [5] Ibid., pp. 172ff. See also Tanabe Hisao (1921b), 'Sho_so_in gakki no cho_sa ho_koku' ['Report on the Musical Instruments at the Sho_so_in'] (with Kami Saneyuki and Ohno Tadamoto), in Teishitsu Hakubutsukan Gakuho_ [The Report of the Imperial Museum], 2. [6] Keijo_ Nippo_, 8-13 April 1921. [7] The symbolism of gagaku as a cultural 'loan' is an issue that goes far beyond the scope of the present paper. The other problematic that I will not deal with is Tanabe's fieldwork in Taiwan and Okinawa, Karafuto (southern Sakhalin, 1923), and Micronesia (1934). See Tanabe Hisao (1968), Nan'yo_ Taiwan Cho_sen ongaku kiko_ [Music Travels to the South Pacific, Taiwan and Korea], Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha. [8] Tanabe Hisao (1940), To_yo_ ongakushi [History of Asiatic Music], Tokyo: Yu_zankaku. [9] In another book, Tanabe Hisao (1927), Gendai shina no ongaku [The Music of Contemporary China], Tokyo: To_a Kenkyu_ji, he proposed a five-step history for Chinese music: 1) Ancient period; 2) Hellenism; 3) Great orchestra period (the Sui and the Tang); 4) the rise of national music (the Sung); 5) the completion of national music (the Ming and the Ching). The title of this book, The Music of Contemporary China, is misleading since Tanabe does not deal with 'contemporary' music in the 20th century except for a three-page sketch of voices of street vendors that he came across in Pekin. [10] Tanabe Hisao (1941b), 'Sleeve notes for To_a no ongaku [East Asiatic Music]', Columbia (re-released on CD, COCG-14342, 1997), p. 18; Tanabe (1927), pp. 10ff. [11] Tanabe Hisao (1929), To_yo_ ongaku ron [On Asiatic Music], Tokyo: Shunju_sha, p. 33. [12] Tanabe Hisao (1921a), 'Cho_sen ongaku ko_' ['Thoughts on Korean Music'], To_yo_ Gakugei Zasshi, 478-480, July-August-September 1921. [13] Kishibe Shigeo (1940a), 'Gendai shina ongaku ni tsuite' ['On music in contemporary China'], Record Ongaku, 15:9; Kishibe Shigeo (1944), To_a ongaku ko_ [Essays on East Asian Music], Tokyo: Ryu_ginsha, pp. 8-11. [14] Tanabe Hisao (1941a), To_yo_ ongaku no insho_ [Impressions of Asiatic Music], Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin, pp. 89-90. [15] Tanabe Hisao (1982), Zoku Tanabe Hisao jijoden [Memoire of Hisao Tanabe. Part 2], Tokyo: Ho_gakusha, p. 184. [16] Tanabe (1941), p. 92. [17] Ibid. p. 91, emphasis mine. The postwar rewriting of this text (see f.n. 4) erased the passage of gratitude: Tanabe (1970), p. 317 [18] Tanabe (1941), p. 16. [19] Tanabe's disciple Kishibe Shigeo, the author of several standard books on Japanese music, agreed with Japan's role as a protector of Chinese tradition and a guide in modernisation. 'China', he notes, 'only partly accepts Western music; it has not experienced a true awakening [to it]. We [the Japanese] have an obligation to guide them, to bring them quickly to a realisation [of the necessity of cultural change] and to steer their [musical] innovation in the right direction. Japan and China are countries with a naturally close relationship, and I have no doubt that, if such guidance is implemented correctly and effectively, we will soon be raising the [cultural] level of Asian music and contributing to world music [sekai ongaku]' (1941, p. 26ff). Rhetorically Japan and China represent 'Asian music' and their contribution to 'world' music connotes the cultural ascendancy of Japan and China in (or conquest of?) the 'world'. [20] Tanabe (1941), p. 90. [21] Stefan Tanaka (1993), Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History, Berkeley, University of California Press, p. 108. [22] Two issues (October 1936 and June 1937) of Gekkan Gakufu, an established music magazine mainly for Western music, were edited especially for the Society prior to the opening issue of the Journal. [23] The affiliation of Asian music study with official oriental history is shown in Tanabe's acquaintance with Shiratori Kurakichi, the influential founder of the Department of Oriental History at the Tokyo Imperial University who took on the role of consultant to the Society for Research into Asiatic Music, and also with Naito_ Konan, the academic rival of Shiratori at the Kyoto Imperial University, who corrected Tanabe's misunderstandings about Li gagaku: Tanabe (1970), p. 189. [24] The first Japanese expert in Islamic music was Iida Tadasumi, who graduated from the Department of Western History at Keio_ University ('Eastern History' or to_yo_shi was dominated by sinology) but died prematurely in 1936. His knowledge mainly came from German sources. The apparent simplicity of his writings--a summary of earlier work--conceals the complexity of the 'trajectory of knowledge' from the Near East to the Far East via Germany. The history of Japan's Islamic study will shed new light on what Said exhaustively argued in his Orientalism. Iida's publications include 'To_zai ongaku bunka no ko_ryu_' ['The Cultural Exchange of Oriental and Occidental Music'], Gekkan Gakufu Nov. 1935-Oct. 1936; 'Arabia ongaku no sekaishiteki igi' ['The significance of Arabian music in world history'], Ongaku Hyo_ron, 2:5, Feb.-March, 1934; 'To_zai ongaku bunka no ko_ryu_' ['The intercourse of western and eastern music cultures'], Gekkan Gakufu, 24:11, Nov. 1935; 'Kaikyo_ to chirika Ibn Khurdadhbih no kiji ni mietaru to_ho_ gakki ni tsuite' ['On the oriental instruments described in the writings of Islamic geographer Ibn Khurdadhbih'], Ongaku Hyo_ron, 4, June 1936; 'Chu_sei arabiajin no ongakukan' ['The sense of music in medieval Arabia'], Gekkan Gakufu, 25:10, Oct. 1936. Kurosawa Takatomo was the first Japanese musicologist who conducted fieldwork outside the Japanese empire (Thailand, 1939). Two years later he published a report on Thai organology (Kurosawa 1941). Masu Genjiro_ was regarded as the first specialist in Indian music because of his 1932 trip to India. He became a board member of the Japan-Indonesian Association around 1940. [25] Tanabe Hisao (1937), So_kan ni saishite, To_yo_ Ongaku Kenkyu_, 1:1, p. 3, emphasis mine. [26] Tanaka Sho_hei (1937), To_yo_ ongaku gakkai kaishi no hakkan o shukusu, To_yo_ Ongaku Kenkyu_ 1:1, p. 2. [27] Hornbostel himself notes in his foreword to the collection: 'Widely varying interests--among the musical and educational, no less than the general, public--are calling for examples of Exotic Music' (sleevenotes of Folkways re-release, capitalised in original). [28] Tanaka, pp. 107ff. [29] Tanabe (1941b), p. 25. [30] Tanabe (1970), pp. 380, 403. These were 'Banto_kai' ['Pantanhui' or 'Peach Gathering'], by the Jilin Gagaku Kenkyu_sha, an amateur traditional music group, and 'Sanso shungyo_' [Shan zhuang chun xiao' or 'Mountain Mansion in the Spring Dawn'], by the Rehe Shengping Club, an ensemble of the Rehe Hermitage with a long tradition. They were classified as 'Manchurian gagaku'. In Tanabe's words, the former sounds 'so refined, elegant and beautiful that it reminds me of our gagaku' (1941b, p. 37), while the latter uses a lute-like instrument with a decorative motif of playing kimono girls that was presented by Japan as a gift to a Ching emperor toward the end of the seventeenth century (ibid., p. 39). Certainly, these remarks strengthened the cultural bond between Japan and Manchuria (not China). On various occasions around 1940, he referred to the Japanese misconception that Manchurian music was no more than a rural variant of the Chinese (1941a, p. 10). This prejudice, in his view, overlooked the distinct development of Manchurian music in spite of constant influence from (Han) China. He recommended to the Manchurian puppet government that the court music of Bohai, a dynasty (698-926) located around the then-territory of Manchuria, be transferred from the Japanese shrines that preserved it to Manchuria in order to found Manchurian gagaku (1941, pp. 92ff). According to him, the Bohai music was in fact medieval Manchurian gagaku. Just as with his opinion on the Tang gagaku mentioned above, he believes the repatriation of Manchurian gagaku to its birthplace would display Japan's patronage of and benevolence toward to the 'newborn state' as well as Manchuria's historical legitimacy (this country was not born in 1936 with Japan's intervention, however, but in the 'Middle Ages'!). [31] Oki Masayuki (1941), 'To_a no Ongaku' o kiku [Listening to 'the music of East Asia'], Ongaku Kurabu, 8:9, p. 55. [32] Tanabe (1941a), p. 2, not reprinted in the CD sleeve notes. [33] Tanabe (1941b), pp. 31-32. [34] Tanabe (1940), p. 60. [35] From 1942 on, with the enlargement of the theatre of war to southeast Asia, nanpo_ [the South] became the main arena for Japan's propaganda. This was shown in Nanpo_ no Ongaku [Music of the South], an anthology of southeast Asian music (Thai, Javanese, Sumatran, Burmese, Indochinese, Malay etc.), that was released in June 1942 by Nippon Columbia (supervised by Tanabe, of course). In the same month, Victor released Daito_a Ongaku Shu_sei [The Greater-East-Asian Music Compilation] with similar materials. In 1943, Victor founded the short-lived Institute for Cultural Research into Southern Music. There were some hundreds of references to 'South' music between 1942 and 1945. [36] Tanabe (1941b), p. 32. [37] Tanabe (1942b), Daito_a minzoku no min'yo_ ni tsuite [On the folksongs of the races of Greater East Asia], Ongaku no Tomo, 2:5, p. 29. [38] 'The music culture of our country, as the master of East Asia, has an obligation to guide the music culture of the whole Greater East Asia; this is nothing less than a historically necessary consequence. To create our New Japanese Music should mean not only the construction of Japanese music for Japan but also an appropriate music for East Asia. Hence, we ought to study not only the heritage of Japanese music that exists today, but also investigate traditional music in various places in East Asia and seize the spirit of Co-prosperity in it. This spirit should be the spirit of construction that guides New Japanese Music', Kishibe 1940b, p. 12. This is one of the clearest statements of the imperial implications of Japanese ethnomusicology during the war. [39] Tanabe, Hisao (n.d.), Daito_a ongakugaku no kensetsu [The Construction of Greater East Asian Musicology], 1943?; see also Hosokawa Shuhei, 'Minzoku Ongaku' ['Ethnic Music'], Music Magazine, November 1993. [40] Stefan Tanaka (1993), p. 190. --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl