Japan & Western Culture: Modernization and All That Jazz

(This is an essay I wrote in spring 1986 while an undergraduate in Japanese Area Studies at the University of Hawaii)

It is a continuing marvel and a source of wonder to see what Japan has been able to do in such a short period of time: Japanologists, scholars in many disciplines, and of course the general public, remain slightly mystified, at a loss to adequately explain how an Asian people, a nation not only separate and distinct in its heritage from the countries of the Western hemisphere, but one which had steadfastly and resolutely maintained near total isolation from those countries and the tremendous developments thereof, could in the space of little more than a century assume such a formidable stature in the world. Just as Japan in its isolation had been relatively untouched by the revolutions in the scientific, industrial, and political fields sweeping Europe, and by the expansion into newly ‘discovered’ lands that such advances made possible, so too in the artistic areas such as music Japan developed in rather solitary fashion.

The Tokugawa period was a time which saw a great flowering of music in Japan, and the crystallization of an aesthetic refinement characteristic of true classicism, even as Europe was simultaneously evolving the harmonic forms, structure and style which make it identifiably Western, from the medieval through the baroque, classical and romantic stages. Because of mutual ignorance of one another’s musical traditions, it could obviously not be said that Europe and Japan consciously followed opposite paths in the formulation of their respective art musics, or that they deliberately pursued antithetical rationales as to what constituted fine art. Rather, the inclination of each culture was permitted to lead to its own conclusions, culminating in totally distinct traditions of artistic expression.

As a consequence, when the Western world, led by the United States, brought an ostensibly superior or at least technologically ‘more advanced’ culture into forced interaction with Japan, the Japanese could not help but call into question the validity and worth of their own arts, and wonder if their musical system, for instance, which was so different from that of the ‘more advanced culture,’ was not itself inherently inferior, as well. It is therefore of great interest to me, and will be my objective herein, to discern, if possible, how it is that the Japanese did not come ultimately to view their own culture as inferior to that of the West, and moreover, how they were at the same time able to adapt to and prosper on the West’s terms. The ability of the Japanese, despite early ambivalence, to absorb and to assimilate Western cultural forms such as music in particular, is a model of Japan’s modernization process in general, and I would like to briefly examine the historical situation regarding the introduction of Western music into Japan, before discussing music and culture of the West and Japan comparatively.

The first introduction of Western music to the Japanese, upon the arrival of the Americans’ warships to Japan, and especially following the British ‘adventures’ in Kagoshima in 1863, was military bands. According to tradition, the rulers of the Satsuma domain were fascinated by the strains of music coming from on board the enemy vessel, and later employed European and American musicians extensively to train Japanese officers in just such music, so that before long this genre had a firm foothold in Japanese military life. Although one might expect pride to get in the way of adopting this music whole-heartedly, given the circumstances in which it was introduced, by the time of the Meiji Restoration drum-and-fife bands and the like appear to have already become widespread indeed. These were followed by official bands under the auspices of the national military ministries, from which program emerged the national anthem of Japan, composed by a musician of the Imperial court, in the gagaku tone system. This anthem, then, composed by a man who had no apparent interest in Western music, is an interesting albeit atypical example of Japanese traditional forms taking precedence over Western ones.

The history of music education in Japanese schools, however, in which character-building, maintaining good order, promoting good reading ability and enunciation, as well as a general moral training were the desired ends, was to be characterized by the pragmatic use of music as a means to that end. Izawa Shuuji, a young normal school director who nearly single-handedly established the basis for Meiji music education by courting the Ministry of Education’s interest in the influential American educator Luther Whiting Mason and his methods, and working to apply them to Japanese songs and instruments, exemplifies the ambivalence of the Japanese on cultural matters in this volatile period.

In his initial proposals to the Ministry of Education, Izawa shows great reservations concerning the appropriateness of using Japanese music as such in the classroom, citing gagaku, or refined music, as being too high and inaccessible to the common people, and zokkyoku, or popular songs, as being vulgar and unedifying. Since this is leading up to his avowed ultimate aim of compiling a Japanese national music, Izawa’s argument here would appear to be one advocating a new, egalitarian attitude towards society:

“By the national music is meant an establishment of such songs and musics as to be sung and played by us all, the Japanese people, whether high or low, at any place and at any time, without such a distinction of ‘refined’ or ‘common,’ by an assimilation of the best of our music and song proper of old and modern time, with those of the western countries, in case of our deficiency.”1

More significant than any possible egalitarian impulse in this thought is an earlier passage in the same official letter (which was signed solely by Izawa’s superior, of sorts, Foreign Student Supervisor Megata Tanetaroh), in which Western music, having originated in ancient Greece, is put forth as based on nature, and as being therefore in all qualities precise and unchangeable. Japanese music, gagaku notwithstanding, though also descending from a distant origin, is not founded upon natural principles, the letter goes on to say, and is correspondingly incomplete, and somehow unscientific. So in this light the search for a national music is clearly if implicitly to be based primarily upon Western forms and theory. As a phenomenon indicative of the era it is parallel and comparable to the proposal, a few years earlier, by Mori Arinori, Japan’s first diplomatic representative to the United States, that the Japanese language be abolished and replaced by English.

By the 1880s, however, a growing nationalistic consciousness combined with the restoration of Imperial authority and prestige evidently inspired Izawa to modify his stance somewhat regarding the superiority of Western music; in particular, gagaku, with its close moral and religious connections to the court, could not be made to suffer such a devaluation, or be dismissed out of hand. In response to this, and in search of a more solid theoretical basis for the compromise (setchuu) between West and East which was at the heart of the national music ideology (kokugaku), Izawa worked out a fanciful hypothesis to reason how Japanese music, at least the refined music (gagaku), and Western music as well, actually derive from the same source after all. By tracing the ancient roots of classical Japanese music beyond Korea and China to India, endeavoring to establish ‘Hindoo’ elements in certain gagaku compositions, and by implying that Greek music, already having been called the source of Western music, had itself come from India, Izawa managed to create a justification for all of the ‘purer’ forms of Japanese music.

This argument that Japanese and European musics have common ground is reminiscent not only of the earliest Japanese state’s incorporation of Buddhist doctrines, imported from China, into the native Shinto beliefs -- partially to justify the various kami as in actuality incarnations of Buddha -- but also the manner in which Confucian morality was embraced as a means of validating Imperial authority, in the Nara period. Perhaps, also, there is a certain amount of this belief in a shared origin between Western arts and Japanese arts, in the Japanese consciousness, or subconscious, if you will, and if so this might serve to facilitate their learning of Western music.

Let us turn now to the question of Western music itself, and in particular jazz, to see if, in the context of language and culture, there can be any persuasive clues as to whether or not Japanese should become proficient at it. Jazz is an especially interesting topic because of its being perhaps the most quintessentially modern, individualistic, and hence Western, artform. The music known today as modern jazz traces its roots in America back to before the turn of the 20th century, when an amalgam of Negro spirituals and hymns, worksongs and ‘field hollers,’ together with the popular tunes of the day, began to be incorporated with the musical instruments of the military bands, of which some, like the saxophone, were recent inventions. Black Americans, then as now, were the primary innovators of this form of music, which was characterized by the ability to unify disparate elements through the musicians’ skill at improvising spontaneously. This improvisation upon a melody, or later on, quite freely over the chords of a song, independent of the melody, naturally developed its own vocabularies as the music style evolved, and the sound and the feeling of this sort of improvisation not only came to be regarded as the essence of the style known as jazz, but it was precisely those artists who possessed this special talent for coherent improvisation who defined and expanded that vocabulary. Although over time, nearly one hundred years, jazz has splintered off into a seemingly endless number of varieties, from ragtime to Dixieland to swing to bebop to cool to free-jazz to jazz-rock and so on, and has been expressed in all sizes of groupings, from a solo vocalist or pianist up to 20- or 25-piece big bands and jazz orchestras, what is referred to usually as modern jazz originates in the genre known as bebop.

Bebop, or simply bop, is a style which was developed around the time of World War II, usually involving four or five players, typically a saxophone and/or trumpet, piano, bass and drums, in which standard show tunes and popular songs from the 30s and 40s provide the point of departure for elaborate and sophisticated harmonic and melodic variations. While the form of the standard tune is usually retained, theoretically advanced chord substitutions and the highly evolved and virtuosic melodic vocabulary render the tune, to the unfamiliar listener, to be at times completely unrecognizable. To excel at this style of jazz, whose originators were Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, one has to be thoroughly well-versed in the popular song forms and their harmonic structures, fluent enough on one’s own instrument to manage the complex, abstract but well-defined vocabulary, and to apply it to those harmonic structures, and yet in the final analysis must be able to spontaneously express it according to the whim of the moment.

In short, much must be learned and mastered, as in a foreign language, but the forms and patterns must be merely a jumping-off point for improvisation, and for expressing one’s own personality, or point of view. Despite the particularly specialized demands of this music, in which all players, not just those on the lead instruments, must be adept at improvisation with essentially strict harmonic parameters, and despite (or maybe because of) its beginnings during the war, outstanding Japanese artists have been achieving fairly considerable prominence in the world of modern jazz. A survey of significant contributors to jazz among contemporary Japanese recording and performing artists would have to include Watanabe Sadao, Ichikawa Hideo, Hinoh Terumasa, Itabashi Fumio, Honda Toshiyuki, and above all the by-now legendary pianist and composer, Akiyoshi Toshiko, who alone, remarkably, had already made sufficient inroads in New York in the 1950s to have played with some of the aforementioned American bebop innovators. It has been my privilege, while in Japan, to have met and performed with several of the better-known jazz artists there, and have found nothing in their particular lifestyles which reveal them to be iconoclastic, or the sort of social ‘misfits’ which one might expect, given their occupation in a society which has such clear delineations and consciousness of status levels as does Japan. Indeed, not only do the Japanese seem to be more interested, by and large, in jazz than the American public generally is, compared to other forms of entertainment, (in the same way as could be said for another American import, baseball), but it is the jazz musician of America who appears more alienated from his own society.

It remains, then, for us to examine the various social and cultural factors that might be relevant in determining the naturalness or likelihood of this sort of cross-cultural expression. On the surface of it, of course, there would seem to be a prohibitive degree of difficulty for a Japanese to be able to play jazz, or at least to be fluent, certainly. For starters, the ego of the Japanese person is said to be not as clearly developed as that of a Westerner, such as an American. A child in America is brought up from infancy to perceive itself as an autonomous entity, apart from and distinct from its parents, and to learn to be independent, within defined limits. Already there is a parallel here to the jazz artist’s function, in that his mastery of the improvisational techniques involves responding in a free and individual manner to the requirements of the song form, and within the boundaries of the chord changes. Because the jazz performer must be able to improvise, to play something of his own invention, and in a context others have also done so in, he is aware that he will be compared in his improvisation against others, and so his sense of individuality is necessarily rather well-defined.



He is an artist, or a performer, and so of course his sense of ego may be stronger than average, even in his own culture, but by and large he is the product of his upbringing in this respect, having been left to go to sleep by himself, from infancy, sometimes to cry by himself, and having been expected to eventually make decisions and be responsible for them. His parents, through encouragement as well as through criticism, served to strengthen his sense of separation from others. By contrast, the Japanese child is brought up in an atmosphere in which his own will is not in opposition to another’s, and his closeness and identification with his mother is so strong that the sense of ‘other-ness’ is not developed. In school in Japan, he will be trained to realize his sense of identity in the group, or the class, just as he has earlier been merged with his mother, and the sense of ‘other-ness’ he does acquire will be that of his family as a unit, as set apart, through the use of keigo, from that of his classmates. In addition, because the Japanese child is taught to fit in with the group, and to subsume his identity into the group, and because this is enforced by the use of shame and fear of ridicule, there will be an inherent reticence on the part of the talented individual toward displaying his virtuosity. Thus, there exists something which could be likened to a double-edge sword, serving to inhibit the sort of personal statement that jazz soloing calls for: on the one hand, there is a lack of the willful directness or self-assertion deemed essential in the West for making any really committed creative statement; on the other hand, a profound sense of wanting to blend harmoniously in one’s group, rather than making waves and so risking censure. To the extent that the cultural generalizations put forth by Japanologists such as Tamura and Goldstein hold true, this is then a situation in which the old proverb, ‘nails sticking up will be hammered down,’ aptly applies.

The nature of jazz groups and their formation is, it could be argued, incompatible with Japanese modes of organizational structure. Part of this is resulting from the peculiar nature of artistic or musical enterprises, to be sure. It would not make sense, probably, for a musical group to be based on seniority alone, and in the absence of any sort of criteria for rank, other than seniority -- which would mean length of service in the particular group, length of active career, or simply age -- merit and ability are the overriding concerns. The leader of a jazz group is not necessarily the oldest, but is very possibly the most advanced, from a creative point of view. If he is not the most gifted, or the most successful musician in the group, he will still need to supply adequate leadership to the organization, such as providing the compositions or arrangements to be played, the stylistic direction he has chosen to pursue, in which case the other members are participating simply because they share that aesthetic intent, or finally, the worthwhile lucrative proposition necessary to attract good players in lieu of a viable artistic potential. From a strictly musical standpoint, there is not an inherently vertical or pyramidal structure to a group, as since a musician’s role in a group is according to function, such as ‘bass player,’ there need not be any profound instability if he leaves the group, nor is any of the given musical roles in the group the most crucial. If the bass player leaves, another can be found, and although this subjectively affects the nature of the music, because merit is the primary criterion, in principle, the insertion of an even more talented bass player will make the group sound even better. More significantly, perhaps, in relation to the Japanese capacity to make this style of group work, is that in jazz, each player gets his turn to solo, at which time the others follow and support him; in other words, in a group in which the saxophonist is the lead instrumentalist, and the creative leader as well, when the piano is taking a solo, that player then is ‘holding the floor,’ and is for all intents and purposes leading the group. In any case, then, there is seldom an instance of players being chosen for, or remaining in, a group, for any other reason, or by any other means, than merit, that is, clear and proven ability.

Japanese who are away from home, say in the United States, are able, quite often, to get comfortable with more egalitarian behavior patterns than are the norm in their own cultural background. To an extent, I think it is possible that although the Japanese tend to feel that non-Japanese cannot enter into their world or truly understand the Japanese and their culture, they simultaneously feel on the other hand that they can enter and understand the society of the West. I think this is due to the reciprocal nature of most of English communication. Granted, a Japanese person’s awkwardness at not making the distinctions in verb forms he has long since learned to do automatically can be unsettling to him, this is more than made up for by the fact that by speaking English, he is free from what Herbert Passin calls ‘emotional resonance,’ which I take to mean all the psychological, interpersonal baggage that defines him to be Japanese. When using a foreign language, nuance and connotative value may be present which are unavailable in one’s native language. On the contrary, it is almost inevitable that a certain degree of the attitudes that may be alien to or at least inexpressible in one’s own language are picked up in the process of learning that new one. The consequence is that the use of English, in this case, by Japanese, can be sort of liberating; that is, one can express things in English which would come across rather badly in Japanese, specifically those concepts concerning the self. The existence of such expressions as mai-this and mai-that, Passin suggests, is evidence of increasing individualism, or at least more interest in self-fulfillment, and I am inclined to agree:

“The result is that it is often difficult to express this new individualistic spirit without sounding offensive. The overuse of the term for ‘my’ – watashi no, or ore no, or uchi no – smacks of selfishness. ‘Self’ (jibun) quickly becomes ‘selfishness’ (jibun-katte). It is easier, therefore, to use English, because the words do not evoke the same associations and resistances that Japanese does. The term maihomushugi is therefore a brilliant invention that skillfully expresses the modern notion that the individual and his own private circle or sphere are important…”2

By the same token, then, I imagine that for a Japanese musician, as for a Japanese person visiting America and speaking English, playing jazz could be a liberating experience, giving him an opportunity to express an individuality which might come across as brazen, if applied, for instance, to developing an outlandish new koto style. Whether the individualistic spirit comes first, and impels Japanese to learn English so they can express it, or whether the learning of English itself inherently fosters this spirit, is open to conjecture. As in the earliest Japanese state’s swallowing up, as it were, whole chunks of Chinese language for use as the basis for expressing concepts necessary and fundamental at that time, and in the Meiji period’s turn towards English words for their connotative value, and later evolving subtly different, uniquely Japanese meanings to them, so too it will be fascinating to see if jazz music finds a place of assimilation into a future musical language of Japan. This would be a far-reaching manifestation of wakon yohsai (“Japanese spirit, Western skills”) indeed.

One manner in which Japanese approach interpersonal communication, in fact which their language demands, is the systematic use of keigo forms, to affirm and respond to rank and status differences between people. Although this has been seen already as a contributor to the Japanese self-group awareness that is opposite the Western ego orientation -- and by implication, a capacity to learn and master jazz – in its use of formulae and special vocabulary keigo may provide a clue to the understanding of Western music. Chie Nakane says of keigo that “…the words are there to express what is required in any given situation if only the appropriate forms are part of the awareness of the speaker. In Japanese the awareness of the speaker is the most important element.”3 Similarly, in the learning of bebop jazz a most crucial emphasis is placed on the master of a melodic vocabulary, and a lexicon of harmonic formulae for substituting chords and applying the vocabulary to the various song forms is the tool by which an instrumentalist can eventually, with practice and creativity, achieve fluency at it. With mastery of these forms, a musician can move on to the business at hand, which is expressing himself, just as by skillful use of keigo a speaker of Japanese can impart the meaningful gradations of tone which are so much a part of social interaction.

As far as the transmission and cultivation of jazz ‘culture’ and a jazz community go, it could be argued that similarities to Japanese group structure exist. There is a tendency for jazz musicians, owing to the great diversity of style types under the general banner called ‘jazz’ and the consequent controversies over what constitutes ‘true’ or ‘pure’ jazz, to follow a particular artist and to emulate exclusively that artist and those of his bent. In this manner, a young musician may develop a relationship with an older or more advanced musician, preferably one who has studied with the artist who is the role model of both of them, and this can be a mutually rewarding arrangement. While this may be typical of mentor and protégé relationships in general, the narrowness of focus, and exclusive loyalty, as it were, to a particular ‘school,’ resembles oyabun-kobun relationships, I feel. A retired or semi-retired artist of some esteem will often set up shop, so to speak, as an instructor, gathering around him by the pull of his prestige in the music community a coterie of kobun-like disciples. The services the kobun, in this case, might be expected to provide for the oyabun could include taking over the instruction of less advanced students, performing certain concerts or engagements the senior man doesn’t care for or hasn’t time for, and so on. This sort of relationship among aspiring artists and their superiors also bears a distinct resemblance to the institution of iemoto, as it applies to the traditional Japanese art forms such as noh drama and hohgaku. This is a bit more extreme in rigidity than the sort of relationship ordinarily seen in the jazz world I’m familiar with, which I have been alluding to, but is close enough in principle that it could well be characteristic of the Japanese version, for which it sets a precedent, as described by Chie Nakane:
“The members of different schools hardly ever play together, although they share basically the same texts, and one will not attend the plays of other schools than his own…Not only do they not mix with members of other schools in the same field but also they do not change their master within the same school. It is highly appreciated if every individual keeps the vertical line once established between the master and his disciple….One realizes here the far-reaching structural implications of the golden rule of Japanese ethics ‘No man can serve two masters.’”4

In the traditional Japanese instrumental music known as hohgaku there are qualities which are to me seemingly at variance with the Japanese cultural patterns we have been discussing, such as the subordination of the individual ego into the group. Pieces involving two stringed instruments such as koto and shamisen, for example, make use of effects in which notes in unison are deliberately plucked out of phase, so that the timbre of each instrument can be appreciated distinctly. The well-known classic for koto and voice, Chidori no kyoku, features a counterpoint between the two in which, after being in synchronization for some time, one or the other will lag pleasantly behind, or dart ahead. Shakuhachi (bamboo flute) is used to give a lonely, highly individual personal statement, when played unaccompanied, as it often is.

I have often been puzzled with, and have long wondered at, the fact that in some ways the musics of East (including, but not exclusively, Japan) and West reflect opposite attributes to their cultures’ respective social or personal behavior patterns. Specifically, in the West, where individualism has been exalted as a value greater than that of the society, and harmony therein, music since the Middle Ages developed harmony, and continued development raised it to exceedingly great sophistication, be it in ‘classical’ or ‘jazz,’ while in the Eastern lands such as Japan, where a premium was placed on harmony and the subservience of the individual will to the greater good of society, music follows a solitary, if equally worthwhile, path of refining pure melody and rhythm alone, in which the yearnings of the human heart and soul are expressed in one voice at a time. Could it be that music expresses a side of a people’s character in a counterbalance to its societal needs or inclinations? I see the Asian’s innate ego-group self-image in close correspondence to the symphony orchestra of the West, in which no one part is important enough to stand alone, yet some are more crucial to the power of the unit than others, and are all devoted to the whole, the totality of the group. As suggested above, the strong will and well-defined individual ego of the West, one could imagine, if expressed aurally in music, could be very much like the lonely monophony of a shakuhachi or koto solo. Ultimately, it makes me suspect that on balance there are deeper intrinsic qualities in music that can touch people, and as language can sometimes be most profound by leaving something unsaid, or by giving a shading of a nuance or tone, so too music is functioning to please, push, and also to probe into the nature of human life. That Japan, in the final analysis, is indeed learning and adapting from the world outside herself, I take as a given, and it is with a similar spirit of willingness to absorb and expand, while remaining zealous for continuity, to what enables the Japanese to make jazz ‘their own,’ that I hope and expect America will face the future.

Notes

1. Ury Eppstein, Musical Instruction in Meiji Education: A Study of Adaptation and Assimilation, in Michael Cooper, ed., Monumenta Nipponica, Sophia Univ., Tokyo, spring 1985, vol. 40, no. 1, p. 13

2. Herbert Passin, Japanese and the Japanese; Language and Culture Change, Kinseido Ltd., Tokyo, 1980; p. 27

3. Bernice Z. Goldstein and Kyoko Tamura, Japan and America; A Comparative Study in Language and Culture, Tuttle Co., 1975, p. 144-145

4. Chie Nakane, Japanese Society, Univ. of CA. Press, 1970, p. 58-59