Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan

Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan PDF

Author: Jennifer Milioto Matsue

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-16

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1317649532

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Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan explores a diversity of musics performed in Japan today, ranging from folk song to classical music, the songs of geisha to the screaming of underground rock, with a specific look at the increasingly popular world of taiko (ensemble drumming). Discussion of contemporary musical practice is situated within broader frames of musical and sociopolitical history, processes of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and the continued search for Japanese identity through artistic expression. It explores how the Japanese have long negotiated cultural identity through musical practice in three parts: Part I, "Japanese Music and Culture," provides an overview of the key characteristics of Japanese culture that inform musical performance, such as the attitude towards the natural environment, changes in ruling powers, dominant religious forms, and historical processes of cultural exchange. Part II, "Sounding Japan," describes the elements that distinguish traditional Japanese music and then explores how music has changed in the modern era under the influence of Western music and ideology. Part III, "Focusing In: Identity, Meaning and Japanese Drumming in Kyoto," is based on fieldwork with musicians and explores the position of Japanese drumming within Kyoto. It focuses on four case studies that paint a vivid picture of each respective site, the music that is practiced, and the pedagogy and creative processes of each group. The downloadable resources include examples of Japanese music that illustrate specific elements and key genres introduced in the text. A companion website includes additional audio-visual sources discussed in detail in the text. Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an Associate Professor at Union College and specializes in modern Japanese music and culture.

Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan

Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan PDF

Author: Jennifer Milioto Matsue

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-16

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1317649540

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Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan explores a diversity of musics performed in Japan today, ranging from folk song to classical music, the songs of geisha to the screaming of underground rock, with a specific look at the increasingly popular world of taiko (ensemble drumming). Discussion of contemporary musical practice is situated within broader frames of musical and sociopolitical history, processes of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and the continued search for Japanese identity through artistic expression. It explores how the Japanese have long negotiated cultural identity through musical practice in three parts: Part I, "Japanese Music and Culture," provides an overview of the key characteristics of Japanese culture that inform musical performance, such as the attitude towards the natural environment, changes in ruling powers, dominant religious forms, and historical processes of cultural exchange. Part II, "Sounding Japan," describes the elements that distinguish traditional Japanese music and then explores how music has changed in the modern era under the influence of Western music and ideology. Part III, "Focusing In: Identity, Meaning and Japanese Drumming in Kyoto," is based on fieldwork with musicians and explores the position of Japanese drumming within Kyoto. It focuses on four case studies that paint a vivid picture of each respective site, the music that is practiced, and the pedagogy and creative processes of each group. The accompanying CD includes examples of Japanese music that illustrate specific elements and key genres introduced in the text. A companion website includes additional audio-visual sources discussed in detail in the text. Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an Associate Professor at Union College and specializes in modern Japanese music and culture.

Music in the Making of Modern Japan

Music in the Making of Modern Japan PDF

Author: Kei Hibino

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783030738297

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1. Introduction (Kei Hibino, Barnaby Ralph and Henry Johnson).- PART I. Reception.- 2. Western Art Music in Pre-Edo and Meiji Japan: Historical Reception, Cultural Change and Education (Ayako Otomo).- 3. Western Musical Elements in Japanese Koto Music from the 19th to 21st Centuries: Sonic, Visual and Behavioral Spheres in a Context of Cultural Change (Henry Johnson).- 4. Guitar Making and Intercultural Communication in Japan and Australia (Gavin Carfoot).- PART II. Transformation.- 5. Black Intentions: Maki Ishii, Ryohei Hirose, Makoto Shinohara and the Japanese Avant-Garde (Barnaby Ralph).- 6. Scarlett, an American Musical Made in Japan; or, How Japanese Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Integrated Musicals (Kei Hibino).- 7. Like Some Cat from Japan: Masayoshi Sukita's Photographs of David Bowie as Japan's First Appearance in the History of Rock Music (Yuki Gennaka).- PART III. Cultural Flow.- 8. The Flow of Jazz in Japan: Why Jazz Resonates So Far from Home (Michael Pronko).- 9. Juna's Groove and Emi's Beat: Women and Rock in Modern Japan (Barnaby Ralph in conversation with Emi Yonekubo and Juna Serita).- 10. Manufacturing Identity: Femininity, Discourse and Representation in Japanese Popular Music (Aya Sato and Ayako Otomo).

Resonances of Chindon-ya

Resonances of Chindon-ya PDF

Author: Marié Abe

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2018-01-16

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0819577804

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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.

Music of Japan Today

Music of Japan Today PDF

Author: E. Michael Richards

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-01-20

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1527564886

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Music of Japan Today examines cross-cultural confluences in contemporary Japanese art-music through multiple approaches from twenty international composers, performers, and scholars. Like the format of the MOJT symposia (1992-2007) held in the United States, the book is in two parts. In Part I, three award-winning Japanese composers discuss the construction of their compositional techniques and aesthetic orientations. Part II contains nineteen essays by scholars and creative musicians, arranged in a general chronological frame. The first section discusses connections of the music and ideas of Japanese composers during the time surrounding the Second World War to Japan’s politics; section two presents recent perspectives on the music and legacy of Japan’s most internationally renowned composer, Toru Takemitsu (1930-96). Section three investigates innovative, cross-cultural uses of Japanese and Western instruments (grouped by common instrumental families - voice, flutes, strings), shaped by historical traditions, physical design, and acoustic characteristics and constraints. Section four examines computer music by mid-career composers, and the final section looks at four current Japanese societies, within and “off-shore” Japan, and their music: spirituality and wind band music in Japan, avant-garde sound artists in Tokyo, Japanese composers in the UK, and the role of cell phone ringtones in the Japanese music market.

Choose and Focus

Choose and Focus PDF

Author: Ulrike Schaede

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-01-15

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0801460557

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Between 2002 and 2008, Japan's economy saw constant expansion, a record among the world's advanced economies and Japan's longest period of economic growth since World War II. This remarkable achievement came about because of a transformation of Japanese business practices. This transformation was guided by strategies that enabled Japan's leading corporations, previously diversified to an exceptionally high degree, to become leaner, more nimble, and more competitive at home and in the global economy. In Choose and Focus, the first in-depth account of this strategic inflection point in Japanese business, Ulrike Schaede argues that the emerging practices and attitudes have created a New Japan. Drawing on profiles of several corporations, including Panasonic, Takeda and Astellas, Softbank, kakaku.com, and SBI E*Trade, Schaede explains how the fundamental principles of Japan's economy have been overturned. "Choose and focus" strategies, whereby corporations concentrate on core areas and spin off unrelated businesses, have completely altered the strategic logic of Japan's previous industrial architecture. These surprisingly aggressive moves, Schaede finds, have created new market opportunities for start-up enterprises and foreign investors, as well as a wave of mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers that have shaken Japanese companies out of complacency. Unlike the advances made by Japanese firms in the 1970s and 1980s, the current transformation is taking root in component and materials industries rather than in consumer products. Because of the relative obscurity of the changes and the overshadowing story of China's ascent, the Japanese corporate revolution has gone largely unnoticed among Western observers. Choose and Focus is required reading for anyone doing business in Japan or trying to understand how contemporary Japanese business works and how Japanese corporations have reinvented themselves to face the challenges—and realize the opportunities—of the 21st century.

Music in the Making of Modern Japan

Music in the Making of Modern Japan PDF

Author: Kei Hibino

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-07-29

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 3030738272

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This volume explores the notion of “affective media” within and across different arts in Japan, with a primary focus on music, whether as standalone product or connected to other genres such as theatre and photography. The volume explores the Japanese reception of this “affective media”, its transformation and subsequent cultural flow. Moving from a discussion of early encounters with the West through Jesuits and others, the contributors primarily consider the role of music in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. With ten original chapters, the volume covers a wealth of themes, from education, koto music, guitar making, avant-garde recorder works, musicals and rock photography, to interviews with contemporary performers in jazz, modern rock and J-pop. Innovative and fascinating, the book provides rich new insights and material to all those interested in Japanese musical culture.

Handbook of Japanese Music in the Modern Era

Handbook of Japanese Music in the Modern Era PDF

Author: Henry Johnson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-11-20

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 9004687173

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Exploring an array of captivating topics, from hybridized Buddhist music to AI singers, this book introduces Japanese music in the modern era. The twenty-five chapters show how cultural change from the late nineteenth century to the present day has had a profound impact on the Japanese musical landscape, including the recontextualization and transformation of traditional genres, and the widespread adoption of Western musical practices ranging from classical music to hip hop. The contributors offer representative case studies within the themes of Foundations, Heritage, Institutions, and Hybridities, examining both musical styles that originated in earlier times and distinctly localized or Japanized musical forms.

Music and the Making of Modern Japan

Music and the Making of Modern Japan PDF

Author: Margaret Mehl

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2024-05-29

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1800647050

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Japan was the first non-Western nation to compete with the Western powers at their own game. The country’s rise to a major player on the stage of Western music has been equally spectacular. The connection between these two developments, however, has never been explored. How did making music make Japan modern? How did Japan make music that originated in Europe its own? And what happened to Japan’s traditional music in the process? Music and the Making of Modern Japan answers these questions. Discussing musical modernization in the context of globalization and nation-building, Margaret Mehl argues that, far from being a side-show, music was part of the action on centre stage. Making music became an important vehicle for empowering the people of Japan to join in the shaping of the modern world. In only fifty years, from the 1870s to the early 1920s, Japanese people laid the foundations for the country’s post-war rise as a musical as well as an economic power. Meanwhile, new types of popular song, fuelled by the growing global record industry, successfully blended inspiration from the West with musical characteristics perceived as Japanese. Music and the Making of Modern Japan represents a fresh contribution to historical research on making music as a major cultural, social, and political force.

Shaped by Japanese Music

Shaped by Japanese Music PDF

Author: Jay Davis Keister

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-06-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1135879982

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Shaped by Japanese Music is an in-depth analysis of the musical world of an individual performer, composer, and teacher. Using an ethnographic approach, this study situates musical analysis in the context of its creation, demonstrating that traditional Japanese music is hardly an archaic song form frozen in the present, but an active sociocultural system that has been reproduced in Japan from the seventeenth century to the present day. The dynamics of this cultural system unfold in the musical experiences of Kikuoka Hiroaki, the leader of a school of nagauta music, who struggled to modernize the art form while trying to maintain the qualities he believed to be fundamental to the tradition. Through the focus on Kikuoka's school, readers will become familiar with conflicts in the recent history of this music, traditional Japanese teaching methods, and the technique of modern composition within a traditional form. Underlying all of these different analyses is the concept of kata (form), a Japanese aesthetic that helps shape musical forms as well as the behaviour of musicians.