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2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page i

T R A D I T I O N A L F O L K S O N G I N M O D E R N J A PA N
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page ii
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page iii

TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG

IN

MODERN JAPAN

SOURCES, SENTIMENT AND SOCIETY

David W. Hughes
SOAS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page iv

TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

SOURCES, SENTIMENT AND SOCIETY
David W. Hughes

First published 2008 by

GLOBAL ORIENTAL LTD
PO Box 219
Folkestone
Kent CT20 2WP
UK

www.globaloriental.co.uk

© David W. Hughes 2008

ISBN 978–1–905246–65–6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by anyelectronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

David W. Hughes has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

The Publishers and Author wish to thank the Great Britain-Sasakawa Foundation
and SOAS, University of London, for their generous support in the
making of this book.

Set in Garamond 11.5 on 13pt by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd.

Printed and bound in England by Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page v

to Gina,

to Sue and Jerry Hughes,

and

to all ‘the folk’ of Japan

2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page vi
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page vii

CONTENTS

List of Musical Examples xiii

List of Figures xv
List of Tables xvii
Stylistic conventions xxi
Foreword xxiii
Acknowledgements xxix

1. Folk song in Japan: the background

1.1 Introduction: The heart’s home town 1

1.2 The word min’yo- and its changing meaning 8
1.3 Scholars’ definitions of min’yo- 14
1.4 Min’yo- and minzoku geino- 19
1.5 The concept of zoku in Japanese music 20
1.6 Musical features of traditional min’yo- 26
1.6.1 Metre and rhythm 26
1.6.2 Instrumentation 29
1.6.3 Polyphony 30
1.6.4 Ornamentation 31
1.6.5 Voice quality 32
1.6.6 Lyrics 32
1.6.7 Text setting 34
1.6.8 Scale and mode 35
1.7 Folk song, fo-ku songu and enka 39
1.7.1 Fo-ku songu 39
1.7.2 Enka 42
1.8 Summary 45
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viii CONTENTS

2. Song and music in the traditional village

2.1 Introduction: The hamlet as primary social unit 49

2.2 Class divisions and music in the traditional village 50
2.2.1 Traditional rural class relations 50
2.2.2 Elitist music and community music 53
2.2.3 Regional variation 55
2.2.4 Folk song and social protest 56
2.3 The folk song repertoire in the traditional village 61
2.4 Folk song life in the traditional hamlet 64
2.4.1 Gender roles in Japanese music life 65
2.4.2 Song as part of ‘calendrical observances’ 66
2.4.3 Work songs 72
2.4.4 Party songs 76
2.4.5 Bawdy songs 78
2.4.6 Songs of itinerant musicians 81
2.4.7 The villager travels 85
2.5 Folk song performance and transmission 86
2.5.1 Institutionalized transmission 86
2.5.2 Owning and stealing songs 88
2.5.3 Improvisation and composition 90
2.6 Summary 97

3. Folk song in transition

3.1 Introduction 104

3.2 The emergence of urban folk song: enabling factors 105
3.3 The first modern folk song: ‘Esashi Oiwake’ 108
3.3.1 From ‘Oiwake Bushi’ to ‘Esashi Oiwake’ 108
3.3.2 ‘Esashi Oiwake’ greets the twentieth century 110
3.3.3 Standardization and after 113
3.4 The pre-war folk song world 118
3.4.1 The first ‘folk songs’ and their diffusion 118
3.4.2 Standardization of accompanying instruments 121
3.4.3 The first folk song ‘boom’: the New Folk Song 122
Movement
3.4.3.1 Introduction 122
3.4.3.2 Lyrics 128
3.4.3.3 Music 130
3.4.4 The first min’yo- professionals 137
3.5 The war years and after 142
3.6 Musical tastes in transition 144
3.7 Summary 147
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CONTENTS ix

4. The modern urban folk song world

4.1 Introduction 153

4.2 Social parameters of musical preference 153
4.3 Attitudes towards min’yo- 158
4.3.1 Negative attitudes 158
4.3.2 Positive attitudes 160
4.3.3 Some opinions from Iwate 162
4.4 Who are the professionals? 165
4.4.1 Numbers and geography 165
4.4.2 Recruitment 166
4.4.3 Sources of income 173
4.5 Formal teaching of folk song 174
4.5.1 The iemoto system 174
4.5.2 Musical notation 180
4.5.3 Culture Centres 184
4.6 The repertoire 185
4.6.1 Eastern songs, western songs 185
4.6.2 Repertoire expansion 188
4.6.3 Repertoire expansion: a case study 191
4.7 The folk song bar 192
4.8 The role of the media and the recording industry 196
4.8.1 Television and radio 196
4.8.2 The record companies 198
4.8.3 Other private companies 200
4.9 Urban min’yo- contests 201
4.10Summary 203

5. The modern countryside and the performing arts

5.1 Introduction 207

5.2 Hamlet identity and local rivalries 208
5.3 Performing arts in the villages and towns 211
5.4 Preservation societies 212
5.4.1 The origins of preservationism 212
5.4.2 The birth of the hozonkai notion 213
5.4.3 The first folk song preservation societies 214
5.4.4 Post-war examples 215
5.5 Local single-song contests 224
5.6 City vs country 229
5.7 Tradition, identity, authenticity 234
5.8 Summary 237
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x CONTENTS

6. At the edges of the ‘folk song world’

6.1 Introduction 241

6.2 Min’yo-, furusato and nostalgia 242
6.3 Min’yo- and community-building 246
6.4 The newest ‘New Folk Songs’ and (inter-)national identity 248
6.4.1 Introduction 248
6.4.2 Lyrics 251
6.4.3 Music 252
6.5 Folk music and international socialism: Warabiza 256
6.5.1 History of Warabiza 256
6.5.2 Warabiza’s interpretation of folk material 260
6.5.3 Creative activities of the early Warabiza 261
6.5.4 The impact of Warabiza 263
6.6 Min’yo- meets other musics 264
6.6.1 Min’yo- and other Japanese traditional genres 264
6.6.2 Min’yo- arranged as popular songs 265
6.6.3 Min’yo- referenced in enka 268
6.6.4 Min’yo- and Western classical music 269
6.7 Summary 271

7. Japanese folk song: retrospect, circumspect, prospect

7.1 Introduction 275

7.2 The Nihon Min’yo- Kyo-kai as exemplar of recent trends 278
7.3 Min’yo- meets Tsugaru-jamisen, wadaiko and Okinawan music 280
7.4 Other recent developments 285
7.4.1 Evolved purists 285
7.4.2 Evolved festivals 288
7.4.3 Folk dance 289
7.4.4 A fo-ku shinga- approaches min’yo- 290
7.4.5 Kikusuimaru and boundaries 291
7.5 Tradition and music education 292
7.6 Modernization, Westernization and tradition 297
7.7 The future of min’yo-: beyond identity and tradition 302
7.8 A few final vignettes 305

Appendix 1: Texts of shin-min’yo- and related popular songs 310

1.1 Older shin-min’yo- 310
1.2 Shin-min’yo- from 1977 to 1981 318
1.3 Min’yo--connected popular songs, old and new 325
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CONTENTS xi

Appendix 2: Addresses related to min’yo- 332

Appendix 3: A marketing guide for min’yo- recordings 335

Bibliography 338
Audio-Videography 360

Glossary of Selected Terms 364

Index of Musical Works 369
Notes to Accompanying CD 373
General Index 378
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2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xiii

LIST OF MUSICAL
EXAMPLES

Ex. 1.1 ‘Sado Okesa’, excerpt: vocal, shinobue 27

Ex. 3.1 ‘Chakkiri Bushi’, excerpt 132
Ex. 3.2 ‘Kamogawa Kouta’, opening vocal 133
Ex. 3.3 ‘Suzaka Kouta’, verse 1 133
Ex. 3.4 ‘Kamogawa Kouta’, instrumental introduction 134
Ex. 3.5 ‘Yama no Uta’, pentatonic harmonization 135
Ex. 3.6 ‘Sendo- Kouta’, excerpt 136
Ex. 3.7 ‘Shima no Musume’, opening 136
Ex. 4.1 ‘Esashi Oiwake’, first 11.6 seconds as
sung by Aosaka Mitsuru 181
Ex. 4.2 ‘Shinodayama Bon Uta’, local version 190
Ex. 6.1 Ishikawa Akira’s arrangement of ‘Kiso Bushi’, excerpt 253
Ex. 6.2 ‘Sho-wa Ondo’, excerpt 254
Ex. 6.3 ‘Aozora Ondo’, excerpt 255
Ex. 6.4 ‘So-ran Wataridori’, excerpt 268
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xiv
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xv

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 0.1 Premodern provinces and districts of Japan, before 1871 xix
Fig. 0.2 Modern prefectures and districts of Japan, since 1871 xx
See plate section facing page 160
Fig. 0.3 Tanaka Yoshio, with the author and his wife 1
Fig. 1.1 Musicians for Bon dance ‘Nikko- Waraku Odori’ 1
Fig. 2.1 Travelling folk musicians with shamisen, from Hiroshige’s
‘Futagawa’ 1
Fig. 2.2 An ocha-kai in Iwasaki, Iwate Pref. 2
Fig. 2.3 The author with Kikuchi Kantaro- at Chaguchagu
Umakko festival 2
Fig. 3.1 The author and his wife on television with other
musicians: typical stage instrumentation and clothing 3
Fig. 3.2 ‘Dojo--zukui’ (mudfish-scooping) dance delights an audience 3
Fig. 4.1 Min’yo- class taught by Sugita Akiko 3
Fig. 4.2 Folk song bar Yoshiwa in Osaka, with typical ensemble 4
Fig. 4.3 Bon dance in Shinodayama 4
Fig. 4.4 Tokyo visitors receive tuition from Iso Bushi Hozonkai 4
Fig. 4.5 Aimono Hisajiro-’s notation of ‘Esashi Oiwake’, ca. 1909 5
Fig. 4.6 Present-day official notation of the Esashi Oiwake Kai 5
Fig. 4.7 Official notation of ‘Esashi Oiwake’ compared with
sonagrams of the singing of Aosaka Mitsuru and Sasaki
Motoharu 5
Fig. 4.8 Notation for trill as learned by Endo- Sayuri from her teacher 5
Fig. 4.9 Shibata Takasue’s notation for ‘Saitara Bushi’ 6
Fig. 4.10 Customer sings at folk song bar Oiwake 6
Fig. 4.11 Kanazawa Akiko in jeans 7
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xvi

Fig. 5.1 Bouchi Uta Hozonkai educational performance 8

Fig. 5.2 ‘Sanko Bushi’ lesson, with Senda Kanbei teaching the author 8
Fig. 5.3 ‘Esashi Oiwake’ class for tourists at Esashi Oiwake Kaikan 9
Fig. 5.4 Min’yo- group being televised 9
Fig. 5.5 Shishi odori being televised 10
Fig. 7.1 Students at Hamochi High School practise ‘Aikawa Ondo’ 11
Fig. 7.2 Uchida Akari, age thirteen months, sings at Kotobuki 11
Fig. 7.3 Uchida Miyune, Akari and Mai practise at Kotobuki 12
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xvii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 0.1 Provinces and prefectures of Japan xviii

Table 1.1 Koizumi’s four scale types 35
Table 1.2 The identity of the yo- and ritsu scales 36
Table 3.1 Musical preferences and age, 1932 145
Table 4.1 Musical preferences and age, 1971 155
Table 4.2 Musical preferences and age, 1978 156
Table 4.3 Kitakami area survey results 163
Table 4.4 New releases of min’yo- recordings, 1965–80 199
Table 5.1 Single-song national contests 225
Table 7.1 Musical preferences, 1999 277
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xviii

Table 0.1 Provinces and prefectures of Japan

 2240_Pre.qxd
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8:59 PM
Page xix

Fig. 0.1 Pre-modern provinces and districts of Japan, before 1871 (see Table 0.1). Other pre-modern names overlapped some
of these, e.g. Tsugaru (modern Aomori and northern Iwate) and Nanbu (modern southern Iwate). Prepared with the help of
Gina Barnes.
 2240_Pre.qxd
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8:59 PM
Page xx

Fig. 0.2 Modern prefectures of Japan since 1871 (see Table 0.1). Prepared with the help of Gina Barnes.
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xxi

STYLISTIC CONVENTIONS

odified Hepburn romanization is used for Japanese words. The five

M vowels of standard Japanese, romanized a i u e o, are pronounced
roughly as in Spanish, but with lips unrounded for u; a macron indicates a
doubled duration rather than any change in the quality of the vowel. Vowels
in sequence retain their original sound (thus, -ei- in geisha rhymes with
‘day’). Consonants are basically as in English, but y is always a semivowel (as
in English ‘yes’) rather than a vowel (as in English ‘tying’), so that kyu-
rhymes closely with English ‘cue’. An n at the end of a word, or followed by
another consonant or an apostrophe, is pronounced as a syllable-length
nasalized extension of the immediately preceding vowel – what linguists call
a ‘syllabic nasal’.When followed by m, b or p this syllabic nasal is pronounced
m. The r is ‘flapped’ as in Spanish pero.
Local dialects, which occur in many song lyrics, vary in ways too complex
to summarize. In general, I have romanized lyrics as if they were standard
Japanese, since indeed most people sing them with that pronunciation.
Many of the best-known songs are from the northeast, with its distinctive
‘zu-zu-’ dialect, where standard shi and ji come out more like su amd zu,
among many other differences; singers from elsewhere, however, never imi-
tate this (although my attempts to do so always draw smiles). Japanese is a
pitch-accent language rather than stress-accented (like English) or tonal
(like Chinese), but pitch patterns differ locally and have surprisingly little
effect on melody (see further §1.6).
Japanese poetic metre is counted in terms of what linguists call moras
instead of syllables. Thus a long vowel, which in some contexts functions as
one syllable, almost always counts as two moras – two beats – of a line, since
it is in effect a double vowel. Similarly the syllabic nasal n counts as one beat.
The word min’yo- ‘folk song’ thus takes up four counts of a seven-‘syllable’
line: mi-n-yo-o. However, since long vowels are often ignored in folk song, my
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xxii

xxii TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

use of macrons is perhaps inconsistent when romanizing lyrics. Otherwise,

long vowels are marked except in the common place names Tokyo, Kyoto
and Osaka.
With no accepted standard practice for the hyphenation and word division
of romanized Japanese, I have done whatever I felt would help the reader.
All Japanese terms appearing in running text are italicized, except for
widely recognized words (samurai, geisha, shamisen, koto, shakuhachi,
Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku, Bon, etc).
Japanese personal names, when cited in full in running text, are given in
Japanese order, surname first. This order is also maintained in the bibliogra-
phy, but there a comma has been inserted after the surname.
All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. In translating song texts,
I have tried to preserve the original order of images line by line – a necessary
compromise in a situation where space does not permit the inclusion of both
word-by-word and fully literary translations. Thus a bit of poetic flow is sac-
rificed for a bit of structure. I do this partly for consistency with the princi-
ples I use in translating Japanese ‘classical’ music lyrics, where the individual
images are often closely linked with musical gestures. In strophic folk song,
however, there is little relationship between semantic content and melody or
other aspects of expression. Within translated or quoted text, material
between square brackets has been added or adjusted by myself.
I have tried to cite English references even if the information is ultimately
from a Japanese source, as long as the English source guides the reader to
the Japanese original. For information on Japanese music in general, consult
the Japan sections of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
(Grove Sadie & Tyrrell 2001) and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music:
East Asia (Provine et al. 2001), plus Malm 2000, Wade 2005 and Tokita &
Hughes 2007. When the same information occurs in different works of one
author, I generally cite only the source where I first encountered it, unless
another source is deemed much more accessible.
References to the accompanying compact disc are given as ‘CD’ plus track
number. References to the Audio-Videography are in the form R + number.
Interviews and personal communications are cited as follows. Any time an
individual is cited as a source of information without further reference, it can
be assumed to have been a personal communication from some time
between 1977 and the present. I have only added the words ‘pers. comm.’
and a date when confusion about the source seemed possible or when the
timing of the comment seemed important to its proper significance. I accept
that best practice would have given dates for all such information, but this
was impracticable.
Brief cross-references abound, generally to a chapter section (shown as §,
or in plural as §§) rather than to a specific page. The General Index provides
further guidance. Terms that are used often are defined in the Glossary of
Selected Terms.
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xxiii

F O R E WO R D

his Foreword is intended to give the reader two things: a strategy for
T approaching the reading of this book, and, in the self-reflexive mode,
some information about my research experiences.
This book is an extensive revision and expansion of my doctoral disserta-
tion, whose subtitle has become this book’s title (University of Michigan,
1985; published by UMI, 1986). All old sections have been revised and
many new ones added.The number of musical examples has been increased,
photos have been added, and – most crucially – a compact disk now allows
a taste of the range of Japanese folk song.
Each chapter but the last ends with a section summarizing its contents.
Reading these summary sections first may help establish the overall frame-
work in the reader’s mind. With that much background, the reader should
survive the rather threatening sea of terminology in Chapter 1 without
giving up altogether.
Appendix 1 contains translations of several dozen ‘new folk songs’ as well
as of popular songs linked in some way to folk song. I have included these in
preference to extensive translations of more traditional folk songs, because
there are already several books available containing the latter (some cited in
note 3 of Chapter 2). But numerous translations of traditional verses are
found in Chapter 2 in particular.
The general reader can safely ignore all endnotes.
Steven Feld noted in the preface to the second edition of Sound and
Sentiment (1990) that several major new theoretical models or emphases had
impacted on ethnomusicology since his first edition, and that he would have
both researched and written differently now. The same is true for this book.
In the years since the ‘first edition’ (the dissertation) appeared, we have had,
in no particular order, Benedict Anderson and imagined communities,
Appadurai and globalization, more from Said on orientalism and ‘the Other’,
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xxiv

xxiv FOREWORD

the new ethnography and reflexivity, a stronger emphasis on gender,

Bourdieu, Giddens, space and place, phenomenology and hermeneutics,
studies of nostalgia and Japaneseness in Japan, and others.Taking any of these
fully on board would have meant a major rewrite at the expense of expand-
ing the ethnographic data. Several of these approaches do find their way
briefly into these pages, but given that we still have no good history or ethnog-
raphy of Japanese folk song’s development in the modern period, I have cho-
sen to concentrate on Japan and on data and interpretation, rather than on
comparisons with elsewhere or on testing or developing a theoretical model.
I have tried to pack in as much data as possible, again to fill the gap.This does
not make for a zippy read; for a more compact introduction to Japan’s folk
music, start with Hughes 2007, Koizumi & Hughes 2001 and Groemer 2001.

As to my research experiences: I lived, researched and worked in Japan from

1977 to 1981, during the peak of a folk song ‘boom’, and was fortunate to
become involved in both the professional and the amateur folk song worlds.
As foreigners have rarely entered these worlds, I had a curiosity value which
ultimately proved very convenient for opening doors. Solely by virtue of
being a foreigner with modest relevant skills and knowledge, I was asked
(astonishingly, even paid) to perform frequently in public, on stage, televi-
sion and radio; to serve as judge at folk song contests; to act as master of cer-
emonies for a recital by folk artists licensed to CBS-Sony; to ‘star’ in a ‘folk
song musical’ partly inspired by myself and my fieldwork (Ushioi no Sato by
Kato- Toshio, 1981); even to record, with my teacher, a commercial album of
Japanese folk songs. (The record company laboured under the misappre-
hension that an album of Japanese folk songs half of which were badly sung
by an American – with backing from some of his American friends – would
sell well in the United States; I merely laboured under apprehension, but
went ahead with the project because my teacher wished it and in order to get
a first-hand taste of the recording industry’s approach to folk song.) As a
result of such exposure and surprising attention, I was invited to visit several
communities around Japan to study the local songs.
Shorter follow-up visits to Japan were made in 1984, 1988, 1989, 1993,
1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2007, allowing me to add detail, fill in
gaps and – most importantly – observe Japan’s ‘folk song world’ after the
boom around 1980 had cooled down (sameta) to a low flame (teika), as my
friend Takahashi Yu-jiro- put it.
After much thought, I have followed the practice of my dissertation and
taken the entire period from 1977 to the present as my ‘ethnographic
present’. This is because the ‘folk song world’ has changed remarkably little
during these thirty years. When significant changes have occurred, I discuss
them explicitly and cite dates.
Much of my research consisted of participant observation, at many levels
and in many contexts of the min’yo- world. To indicate the diversity of my
2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xxv

FOREWORD xxv

experience, here are a few examples to add to my LP and my ‘min’yo- musi-

cal’. I sometimes was invited to join in the live singing or drumming for
village ancestral Bon dances (joining in the dancing was, of course, taken for
granted). I took formal singing lessons primarily with two contrasting teach-
ers: a full-time professional with a recording contract and hundreds of pupils,
and an amateur who taught only a handful of neighbours. In 1979, my wife
Gina Barnes and I were guest artists on an old-style folk song tour of north-
ern Japan (see Fig. 3.2): the troupe would steam into a town in our tour bus,
loudspeaker blaring an announcement of our concert at the local gymnasium
or town hall, then present three hours of variegated folk songs and dances.
Our co-artists on that tour (including such major figures as Asari Miki, Izumo
Ainosuke II and Sasaki Motoharu, whose various careers span the decades
from 1930 to the present) taught us more than can be conveyed in this book.
And I often visited with the members of local folk song preservation societies,
who were mostly elderly amateurs whose musical tastes and experiences were
frozen in the headlights of modernizing, Westernizing Japan.
Nor were these folk song activities hermetically sealed off from other
musics. Here is the musical reality of today’s Japan. One night around 1980
I went along to play shamisen for a friend (Dezaki Tayo II; see §4.4.2) who
was teaching a folk song class at a Tokyo community centre. Perhaps sur-
prisingly, many of her students, mostly middle-aged or elderly women clad
in kimono, stayed on to take part in the class that followed immediately in
the same room: ‘social dancing’ – fox-trot, waltz, cha-cha-cha and the like.
The women were at first eager to dance with me, since as a Westerner I was
presumed to be a master trotter; they soon learned why I had taken up folk
song rather than ballroom dancing. And the same Kato- who landed me in
the ‘min’yo- musical’ also forced the same long-suffering populace of
Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, to sit through ‘A Musical Evening with David
Hughes’ (‘Debito Hyu-zu Ongaku no Yu-be’). Kato-’s production had me shar-
ing the stage with several local professionals, with the wonderful ‘folk song
granny’ Ito- Moyo (see Index) – and with the local jazz trombonist and his
wife the opera singer, the city’s most renowned professional Western-style
musicians. These two Japanese from contrasting Western musical spheres,
and myself from yet a different Japanese one, somehow had to find some
common ground for one number (neither jazz nor opera being counted
among my talents). I suggested something like ‘St. Louis Blues’, with me on
guitar. Hubby instantly produced a lead sheet in Western notation for his
wife, then put on a recording of Bessie Smith’s rendition. Consulting the
notation, his wife was shocked: ‘But she’s not singing this melody at all!’
Never mind, just fake it, he suggested helpfully, but faking is not a skill
vouchsafed to divas. On the night, she sang it note for note from the lead
sheet, in rampant bel canto.
In return trips since 1981, I have largely managed to maintain a low
profile and avoid being drawn into the more outrageous types of event. But
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xxvi FOREWORD

in those prime research years, when Westerners interested in traditional

music were like extraterrestrials, it was difficult to avoid involvement even
when I wanted to. I did manage to firmly reject doing a vitamin commercial
for television, one which would have joined my Tsugaru-jamisen plucking to
the shakuhachi of fellow American John Neptune and the vocals of
Kanazawa Akiko, then Japan’s leading folk song star. (‘Don’t you at least
want to know the fee?’)
Through such experiences, I was frequently in the presence of performers,
and they responded congenially to my constant questioning despite generally
having much better things to do. (In 2000, the singer Hikage Yu-ko recalled
with a laugh my first visit to her father’s folk song bar Hideko in 1979: ‘You
were always asking, “What does that mean? What does that mean?”’) One
reason that I was treated so kindly was that many self-defined ‘modern’
Japanese consider min’yo- unworthy of serious attention in today’s world and
indeed may denigrate the people involved in it as old-fashioned, country
bumpkins, or even of loose morals; thus folk song fans are always delighted to
welcome a sympathetic newcomer to their ranks. Since the status of ‘Western
academic with beard’ is a relatively prestigious one in Japan (even wearing
jeans), my presence was also often used by those who wished to borrow some
of that misplaced prestige to increase respect for traditional folk song; I hope
they were successful. Upon hearing me sing on television or radio, listeners
often phoned or wrote to say how embarrassed they were that, despite being
native Japanese, they could not sing their own folk songs as well as the
foreigner (doubtless because they had never tried!), and that henceforth they
would pay more attention and respect to their musical heritage; I hope they
have.
Does all this performing activity indicate that I have mastered Japanese
folk singing? I suppose that a journalist from Action Comics (sic!), appropri-
ately reviewing my LP, put it best, if somewhat tactlessly: in terms of vocal
technique, maa, heta desu – ‘Well, he’s pretty bad.’ He did go on to grant me
what constitutes a compliment among traditionalists at least: my singing was
tsuchikusai – it ‘smelled of the earth’. I could, literally, have hoped for no
greater praise (although I did begin to use a mouthwash).
In November 2000, I updated the final paragraphs of my final chapter,
based on a moving visit to a min’yo- bar in Osaka a few days earlier. On that
evening I had listened to a six-year-old girl singing with gusto and incipient
talent, accompanied by her parents and grandparents, cheered by an appre-
ciative crowd. I had heard her at age three, and now I also watched her one-
year-old sister ‘sing’ while held up to the microphone by a relative (Fig. 7.2).
Six years later, I updated again to describe their continuing love for min’yo-
and their burgeoning talents.
I can never recall that incident without choking up. I love this music. It is
wonderful to see tiny children developing that same love. In the three
decades since I first tasted min’yo- , the fan base for this genre has plummeted
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FOREWORD xxvii

precipitously. Most younger Japanese seem able to appreciate min’yo- only if

arranged in some rock-based quasi-‘World Music’ package; even then they
have little regard for the lyrics and the world they paint. Educational policy-
makers have shamefully abandoned traditional music, leaving their children
adrift from their own parents and grandparents.
Doubtless most ethnomusicologists have experienced such emotions. We
expect and accept that the musics we have come to love will keep evolving
as they always have – that they must do this if they are to remain alive and
relevant. We know that tastes change, that performers will turn to other per-
formance modes or to other genres. And I know that this music, min’yo- ,
‘belongs’ first and foremost to the Japanese, not to me. But I cannot suppress
the feeling that modern Japanese are losing something of value. Musical
change is not value-free.
I will be pleased if this book suggests (among other things) that folk song,
far from being irrelevant to modern Japan, may also be, in some small
measure, instrumental in creating a more humane society. I am hoping that
the folk song teacher Otowa Jun’ichiro- was right when he said: ‘Folk song
builds people.’
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2240_Pre.qxd 11/26/07 8:59 PM Page xxix

A C K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

he road to Japanese folk song (although I did not realize it then) began
T at Yale University, where I studied Japanese language and linguistics. It
was Professor Samuel Martin who inspired me to tackle the language and
also, with others in the Linguistics Department, forced me to hone my crit-
ical and analytical powers. It was the most serendipitous of coincidences that
my first teaching job – in linguistics – took me to the University of Michigan
where Professor William Malm was presiding over an active Japanese music
performing group. His combination of enthusiasm and insight was irre-
sistible, and he proved a conscientious supervisor for the doctoral thesis that
formed the kernel of this book.
At Michigan, among many other contributory friends and teachers,
Professor Richard Beardsley gave generous guidance in the early stages of my
research. Professors Judith Becker, Norma Diamond and Aram Yengoyan, as
examiners of my doctoral thesis, also provided valuable comments.
So many people and institutions aided my research in Japan that I must
run the risk of seeming ungrateful by offering only a partial list. Professors
Kikkawa Eishi and Kishibe Shigeo helped me make initial contacts. At
the Performing Arts Division of the Tokyo National Cultural Properties
Research Institute, Messrs Misumi Haruo and Kakinoki Goro- during my
initial years, and later Misumi’s successor Ms Nakamura Shigeko, made
themselves readily available to me.This office became the scene of a monthly
folk song research gathering of performers, scholars and producers, whose
discussions were always extremely valuable. Professor Koizumi Fumio was
my adviser during my stay at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music from
1979 to 1981. The staff at these last two institutions have continued to be
uniformly helpful.
Among folk musicians in Japan, amateur or professional, there were so
many who took the time to answer my questions and demonstrate their art
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xxx ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

that I can only offer a giant ‘arigato-’ to them as a group. Many of them are
named in the body of this publication. In terms of formal teaching, I spent
the most time with Tanaka Yoshio of Osaka and his family, with Takahashi
Yu-jiro- of Tokyo and Sugita Akiko of Nara; I cannot begin to express my
indebtedness to these three teachers, especially to Tanaka Sensei (see Figures
0.3, 4.2). My fellow students under these three masters also have provided
many insights and fond memories.
Particularly for the years 1977–81, let me also thank collectively: the
members of the Traditional Performing Arts production division at NHK
Television; the staff at Japan Columbia Records, Japan Victor/JVC Records
and CBS-Sony Records (particularly the former for allowing me to become
a ‘recording artist’ myself); the staff of the monthly magazine Min’yo- Bunka;
the staff of the National Theatre; and all the other members of the broadcast
and recording industry who provided opportunities to experience the world
of professional folk song from the inside.
Through friends at NHK I met Kato- Toshio of Kitakami City, Iwate
Prefecture, who opened his home to me for several months in 1980, provid-
ing a base for my research into the folk performing arts of that area. He
introduced me to many fascinating people, all of them extremely kind and
patient, and he himself produced a flood of trenchant observations on the
‘folk scene’. On subsequent visits to Iwate, aside from Kato--san, the
folklorist Professor Kadoya Mitsuaki of Iwasaki similarly offered lodging,
introductions, guidance and much more of his time than his busy schedule
should have allowed. To all the people of southern Iwate, I owe an enormous
debt of gratitude and affection.
To the amateur performers (often members of local folk music preserva-
tion societies) in villages throughout Japan, I express my gratitude for
having been allowed into their communities. Of these visits I preserve the
warmest of memories.
Three years of preparation at the University of Michigan, before going
into the field, were supported by National Defense Foreign Language
fellowships awarded through the Center for Japanese Studies.The staff at the
Center provided a comforting human environment throughout my Michigan
years.
From 1978 to 1980 my field research was funded by the Japanese
Ministry of Education and by the JDR 3rd Fund. A brief return visit in 1984
was supported by Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where I held a
Research Fellowship. The Japan Foundation funded three months’ research
during summer 1988 and a six-month stay in 2000 (primarily for research
on Okinawan folk song). The British Academy enabled me to present papers
related to this book at the 1988 Melbourne meeting of the International
Musicological Society, at Hokkaido University of Education, Sapporo in July
1989 (combined with a quick bit of research), and at the Society for
Ethnomusicology meeting in Toronto in November 1996. Finally, the Japan
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxxi

Foundation Endowment Committee funded short, multi-purpose visits in

1999 and 2006. All publications under my name in the Bibliography can be
said to have benefitted from those trips.
So many friends and colleagues have contributed comments and insights
over the three decades of my min’yo- life that I truly can only thank them
collectively. Many have written works that are cited in the body of this book.
Sadly, during the three decades and more of my involvement with min’yo- ,
many of the people named in this book have passed away. I have avoided the
expression ‘late’, because truly these people are still with me.
I fear the time has come to take credit for any errors of omission or
commission, and to absolve my myriad interlocutors in Japan of blame if I
have misunderstood or misrepresented any of their remarks.
The traditional final word goes to the long-suffering spouse, in this case
Gina Barnes (Figs 0.3, 3.1). Suffice it to say that she did everything I could
have hoped for and then far more in order to help me complete this project,
despite the pressures of her own career. She took part in many of my min’yo-
adventures, and still does so today. We have both found many years of joy
and stimulation in the world of Japanese folk song.

DWH
London, June 2007
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CHAPTER 1

F O L K S O N G I N J A PA N :
T H E B AC K G R O U N D

1.1 Introduction: The heart’s home town

Min’yo- wa kokoro no furusato.

Folk song is the heart’s home town.

ne hears or reads this expression frequently in discussions of folk song

O in Japan. Among enthusiasts it has somewhat the aura of a religious
pronouncement. Of uncertain origin, the phrase spread through its use
in the introductory announcement on the weekly Japan Broadcasting
Corporation radio show Min’yo- o tazunete (In search of folk song), launched
in 1950 (Asano 1966: 204; Maruyama 1981: 25). Occasionally, the expres-
sion is inverted: instead of ‘Folk song is the heart’s home town’, we hear
‘Folk song is the home town’s heart’ (Min’yo- wa furusato no kokoro).
‘Home town’ is perhaps the most natural English translation of furusato;
‘old village’ is more literal, and ‘home community’ or ‘native place’ is often
more accurate since the furusato may now be anything from a tiny hamlet to
the megavillage called Tokyo. But given the term’s strong rural resonances,
‘(my) old country home’ may be best. To many Japanese, the furusato is an
ongoing source of identity, nostalgia and solace. Even second-generation
Tokyoites occasionally identify their native place not as Tokyo but as the
rural village or country town where their grandparents were raised, where
their cousins may still live, a place they may see only during the annual
summer ancestral Bon festival while visiting family graves, or at New Year.
It is a constant in a shifting world, a comfort when the urban pace is too
trying.
For those Japanese who cannot visit their furusato as often as they would
like, they can send their hearts, at least, through folk song. Japanese folk
songs are inextricably linked to local places, often to specific furusato. For
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2 TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

people who have no furusato aside from the big city, folk song can help them
imagine one – because Japanese folk song has come to the city.
Folk song’s close links with ‘place’, with specific locations on the land-
scape of Japan, make it a powerful tool for both evoking and satisfying
feelings of nostalgia. Nostalgia requires separation, loss, absence: as the
mythical American country song says, ‘How can I miss you if you won’t go
away?’1 So rural-to-urban migrants become aware of, and potentially miss,
their native place in a way that non-migrants cannot. But those who remain
in their birth community might nonetheless yearn for the life-style of an ear-
lier time – a way of life that they may never have experienced, that indeed may
never have existed and is thus only imagined, and that in any case may only
relate to a different place. Thus, the separation that triggers nostalgia may be
spatial, temporal, ideological or all of these.2
Folk song therefore, is, also inevitably implicated in events at a national
level. There is a tension between the need for Japanese today to function
as citizens of a modern nation-state, on the one hand, and the desire for the
benefits of belonging to a smaller-scale community on the other. Benedict
Anderson’s term ‘imagined community’ (1983) was meant to apply only to
the former, the nation-state, an artificial entity partially constructed through
the mobilization of symbols; in Japan, however, even the local community
may now have to be ‘imagined’ and constructed, so that people can be
‘re-embedded’ (Giddens 1990), relocated in a comfortable and comforting
‘place’. Folk song has a role to play in these processes, in the construction
of community and identity at all levels, and this is a recurring theme of the
present book.3
Folk song is implicated nationally partly through the impact of Appadu-
rai’s new ‘scapes’ (1996): mediascape, technoscape, ethnoscape, finanscape,
ideoscape.These same scapes ensure also that Japan’s universe does not stop
at its shores: it is an island only in a geographical sense. In most other ways
it is a part of the world at large, and ever more firmly so through the
processes of globalization.4
However, min’yo- – Japanese folk song – has been little affected by transna-
tional forces, and its sphere of performance is still largely confined within
geographical Japan. Performance tours abroad are infrequent compared with
other traditional music genres. Moreover, those Japanese most likely to go
abroad for more than a brief holiday are also the ones least likely to count
themselves among min’yo- fans (see e.g. §4.2); accordingly, the solace and
identity urban migrants find in songs from the furusato are less often sought
by modern-day Japanese overseas.5 Also, Japanese folk song has so far played
but a miniscule part in the ‘World Music’ phenomenon.
For most of this book, then, it is events within Japan that concern us, with
the global context impinging only occasionally. Moreover, we will be more
concerned with modernization than with post-modernism. My central pur-
R pose is to provide an overview of the world of Japanese traditional folk song
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FOLK SONG IN JAPAN: THE BACKGROUND 3

and its role in the ever-changing, ever-expanding universe that is modern

Japan. Urbanization, industrialization, Westernization, the growth of mass
media – all often grouped as aspects of modernization – have affected both
the music itself and the values and social structures surrounding musical
behaviour. One aim of my research has been to determine which features
of the folk song world have changed in the face of modernization and
which have remained constant, and why. Topics covered, aside from the music
itself, include professionalization and recruitment to the profession, stan-
dardization, song contests, urban–rural tensions, preservation societies, the
media, the concept of furusato and many others.
No full-length study of such socio-cultural matters exists. In Japan,
aspects of these topics have been addressed briefly in several books and in
frequent articles. Early and typical examples are Asano 1966: Ch. 9 and
Takeuchi 1973: Ch. 7, with later works adding little in the way of new per-
spectives on these particular issues. The most relevant works are referenced
at appropriate places below.
This is not to say that the literature on min’yo- has not grown in the past
few decades. My bibliography lists twenty-four full-length books by the
incomparable Takeuchi Tsutomu alone, every one of which is of value and
interest. (He has also been the leading radio broadcaster of min’yo- pro-
grammes and an important record producer.) However, most of these deal
either with the purely traditional side, historical aspects, song collecting, or
more recently (in the Min’yo- no kokoro series aimed at today’s aficionados
rather than at scholars) with learning to sing and to compete in contests. His
1985 book on these contests does indeed relate closely to the modern con-
text, and indeed has proven so attractive to competitors that it was re-issued
in 1996. Kojima Tomiko, another highly productive scholar, has produced
some useful small-scale studies of particular aspects of the modern period,
such as changes in transmission and the creation of ‘new folk songs’ (e.g.
1970, 1991, 1992).
There is also the mountain of publications resulting from the nationwide
Emergency Folk Song Survey (Min’yo- Kinkyu- Cho-sa). From 1979 to 1990,
under the auspices of the Cultural Affairs Agency of the Ministry of
Education, each of the forty-seven prefectures made field recordings and
published a report (some exceeding 500 pages). The reports, however, are
primarily song lyric collections, often with background on individual songs
and a few statements concerning the current state of folk song life in a par-
ticular region. Only some reports contain musical notation; a couple have
dance notation. This project’s field recordings are being catalogued and
eventually digitized by a team under Kojima Tomiko at the National
Museum of Japanese History. (See also §7.6, end.)6
The website www.1134.com/min-you/99bib1.shtml lists several hundred
twentieth-century Japanese-language books on min’yo-, only partially over-
lapping with those in my Bibliography. From their titles, none appear to deal
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4 TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

with the sort of sociocultural issues metioned above. The twentieth century
emphasized collecting, of both tunes and texts. Recent decades have seen
some excellent work on tune families, while research on lyrics has con-
centrated on tracing connections between folk songs of different regions
or eras or between folk song and other vocal genres. However, 2007 saw
the launching of a four-year large-team research project on min’yo-, led by
Hosokawa Shu-hei at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies
(‘Nichibunken’) and including myself; its themes closely parallel those of
this book, and the resulting publications should expand on issues raised
here.7
Western-language sources on any aspects of Japanese folk song are still few.
Short and concise overall introductions are Hughes 2008, Koizumi & Hughes
2001 and Groemer 2001, any of which might usefully be read at this stage.
Isaku 1973 and 1981 address different issues from the ones treated in the
present study and were based on a very restricted fieldwork experience, but
are still useful. The introduction to Groemer 1999 gives an excellent view of
one significant corner of this world, and the rest of the book translates the
autobiography of one important musician. Peluse 2005 and Johnson 2006
lead a growing number of studies on the Tsugaru-jamisen phenomenon,
which, along with wadaiko drumming, is one of the few traditional or ‘roots’
genres catching the interest of the younger generation.

The terms ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ in my title need a few words of

justification at this point. These terms, in their various forms, have been
characterized so variously by scholars that one hesitates to choose any one
formulation or to offer a new one. For ‘tradition’ in relation to music in
particular, Timothy Rice offered one solution to this problem in his study of
Bulgarian music: he provided four distinct ‘senses’ (1994: 12–15), frequently
problematizing each of these in elegant discussions. Thus there is a thorough
analysis of the irony that it is only in post-traditional, ‘modern’ times that
most people become aware of tradition as a concept to be cognized and
manipulated within their own culture. (Again, separation heightens aware-
ness.) Still, Rice managed such analysis without feeling the need to offer hard
definitions, and a central or basic default meaning was taken for granted and
used throughout the book in phrases such as ‘traditional costume’, ‘village
traditions’ and ‘learning in the traditional manner’.
In Japan too, modern-day discussions about folk song often trigger
debates about tradition (dento-) – as well as authenticity and similar concepts
– although usually only in rather formal and artificial contexts; examples
emerge below. For most of this book, though, the word refers simply to fea-
tures of Japan as it stood before about 1868. That date marks the beginning
of the Meiji period (1868–1912), when a new Japanese government encour-
aged modernization and Westernization in almost all spheres of culture.
R Despite 140 years of modernization, many aspects of present-day Japanese
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FOLK SONG IN JAPAN: THE BACKGROUND 5

culture retain much of their pre-Meiji character, and these aspects will
also be called ‘traditional’. This is why I write of ‘traditional folk song in
modern Japan’. However, this usage based on chronology and content must
be distinguished from Hobsbawm’s valuable if often criticized concept of
‘invented traditions’ (1983). We shall see that many Japanese too apply the
word ‘traditional’ to phenomena they know to be recent creations, occasion-
ally with devious intent but usually simply because they do not consider a
hoary time depth to be relevant to the notion. We return to this concept
in §5.7.
What about ‘modern’? ‘Modernization’ is, as implied above, a broad
category embracing several discrete though often interrelated processes.
Definitions have referred to criteria as diverse as the increased utilization of
inanimate sources of energy on the one hand, and the universalization of priv-
ileges and expectations on the other. It is, in any case, a process resulting in
cultural change. One can distinguish modernization from ‘modernity’, which
in Giddens’ sense (1990) is more a state of mind or of society than a process.
But the distinction is fuzzy, and Rice (1994: 322) uses ‘modernity’ in prefer-
ence to ‘change’ as an antonym to ‘tradition’.
Tradition may also be viewed as a process, though usually considered
largely homeostatic – that is, it attempts to maintain or re-establish equilib-
rium, resisting cultural change or channelling it within relatively narrow
limits. Even ‘invented traditions’ ultimately have the same purpose.
This characterization falters somewhat when, for example, Japan is said to
be ‘traditionally a borrowing culture’, well before globalization made us all
into avid borrowers. Does this mean that modernization – in part at least a
type of acculturation or borrowing – is actually part of Japanese tradition?
Once we accept the view that both tradition and modernization admit cul-
tural change, then we have the problem of determining which changes result
from modernization and which are a logical extension of tradition. Another
way of phrasing this problem is, Can we distinguish indigenously generated
from externally motivated change? And when traditional cultural elements
and patterns seem to survive unchanged, we must ask whether this survival
is, in the words of Bennett, ‘a lag phenomenon, or whether it represents a
stable adaptation to the new . . . Japan’ (1967: 449).
Our focus, however, is not on modernization per se but on one genre of
traditional music in a modernizing context. Bruno Nettl, in several publica-
tions (most prominently 1983: 172–86, 345–54 and 1985: 3–29, 149–66),
restated and refined a typology of responses of non-Western music systems to
Western music in the twentieth century, which I still find useful. (In this he
drew also on scholars such as Blacking 1977 and Kartomi 1981.) Among these
are abandonment, exaggeration, preservation, syncretism, Westernization and
modernization. Syncretism, Nettl says, results when the ‘central traits’ of the
two music systems are compatible and are merged into a new system. He
defines Westernization as the incorporation of central but non-compatible
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6 TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

elements of Western music with the intention of making the non-Western

system a part of the Western system. Modernization, by contrast, involves the
borrowing of non-central but compatible elements of Western music in such a
way as to preserve the essence of the non-Western system. (Defining ‘central
elements’, of course, is contentious.)
Thus, Nettl sees modernization as a way to guarantee the survival of a
tradition in living form, as opposed to mere preservation or to the loss of its
essence via Westernization. In this schema, the replacement of a traditional
bowed instrument by a Western violin does not of itself constitute
Westernization of the system but simply the adoption of a single Western trait
which may not replace any of the central features of the system. UNESCO’s
Intangible Cultural Heritage programme and the Japanese systems that
helped inspire it must, of course, wrestle with similar issues.
Because urbanization has been accelerated by the industrial and commu-
nication revolutions, it is often difficult to distinguish its effects from those of
Westernization and modernization. Urbanization, even in pre-modern times,
created its own environment for change: large concentrations of population,
usually a greater ethnic mix than found in a village or small town, often a
more adventuresome and younger population than in rural areas, greater cash
expenditure on leisure activities, and so forth. When combined with modern-
ization, the city can extend its impact rapidly via the media. The modern
urban musical culture is often characterized by increased opportunities for
patronage, by professionalization, commercialization (via e.g. the recording
industry) and in general by ease of access to foreign musical elements. Thus
the city should have a distinctive impact on the trajectory of musical devel-
opment. We return to Nettl’s ideas in Chapter 7.
The present study deals with a consciously and indigenously identified
‘folk’ music as it developed a dual identity (both urban and rural) in adapt-
ing to modernity. I have tried to demonstrate that, while the urbanized
and rural traditions are related, they have developed along unique paths
in response to (1) the differing needs of urban and rural residents and (2)
the differential effects of the environments (natural, human, institutional)
which condition these needs. These differences survive despite the ever-
shrinking separation of urban and rural via absorption, the media, travel,
national education and so forth. In both settings, a significant segment of the
populace assigns positive value to folk song and its cultural role – which was
not true in the cities a century ago.

Developments in Japan are often parallelled by those in other countries.

Georgina Boyes (1993) describes in chilling detail the ideological currents,
the hegemonic power plays, the urban–rural and class tensions lurking
beneath the surface of the English Folk Revival. As the concept of ‘the Folk’
began to settle in England and in that other class-conscious island nation,
R Japan, at approximately the same moment in the latter nineteenth century,
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FOLK SONG IN JAPAN: THE BACKGROUND 7

comparing subsequent developments should prove rewarding, but that is a

task for another publication.
Still, Japan is Japan. Some of the factors which, taken together, set Japan
apart as an interesting case study in musical change are as follows.

(1) As an early and successful modernizer and industrializer, twentieth-

century Japan followed a path unlike that of China or the countries of
Southeast Asia.
(2) As a country with a striking degree of ethnic and cultural unity,8 where
ninety per cent of the people consider themselves middle-class,9 Japan
has confronted different problems than, say, India, Turkey, Iran or the
countries of Africa and Latin America.
(3) The stylistic distance between traditional folk music and the interna-
tional popular music of the twentieth century is far greater than in most
Western European countries, with implications for the interaction of
those styles.
(4) Certain phenomena of modern-day folk song transmission shed light on
important aspects of the interaction of cultural values and modernization.
I have in mind features such as the iemoto (‘headmaster/househead’)
system, the Japanese-style folk song bar, and local folk song preservation
societies, all discussed in this book.
(5) The very fact that the Japanese have, during the past hundred years and
under Western influence, developed a major and flourishing cultural
category which they call ‘folk song’ (min’yo-) sets Japan apart from many
other non-Western cultures. Interesting comparisons can be drawn with
countries like England and the United States, whose folk song ‘revivals’
can be placed next to Japan’s min’yo- ‘booms’, and with Korea and
China, which have been influenced both by the West and by Japan in
consciously developing their own ‘folk song’ cultures (see Howard 1999;
Tuohy 1999).
(6) Japan shows a high degree of native activity in research and documen-
tation of traditional folk song. In particular, Japanese researchers have
generally paid more attention than those in China and Korea (see
Schimmelpenninck 1997: 11; Maliangkay 1999) to producing accurate
music transcriptions of actual performances. The years 1979–80 saw the
completion, in its fourth decade, of a mammoth project of folk song
documentation and transcription by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation
(the nine-volume Nihon min’yo- taikan, subsequently re-issued with CDs
of field recordings; see NMT in Bibliography) as well as the launching of
the Emergency Folk Song Survey described above. Non-governmental
concern with folk song is also impressive in scope.

Folk song in Japan today forms a fairly distinct category conveniently desig-
nated by the term min’yo- – literally ‘folk song’.10 Scholars use another term,
 2240_CH01.qxd 11/26/07 8:28 PM Page 8

8 TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

minzoku geino-, to designate the larger category of folk performing arts. A

study of minzoku geino- would generate relatively more insights about reli-
gion, ritual, symbolism, gender, changes in traditional village organization
and so forth, while studying min’yo- reveals relatively more about musical
change, urban–rural interaction, the birth of new social organs, commercial-
ism, and traditional values in flux. In short, the min’yo- world, more sensitive
to social currents, gives greater insight into ongoing social and musical
processes than would a study of the ultra-conservative world of minzoku
geino-. (But see Thornbury 1997 and Lancashire 1998 for studies of change
in the latter.) For such reasons, among others, I chose to focus on min’yo-.
However, folk song is partially embedded in the category minzoku geino-, and
often it seemed appropriate to shift the focus to the larger picture. Let me
state clearly that the decision to focus on the genre min’yo- does not imply
that the boundaries of this indigenous category can be consistently drawn,
nor that it is independent of other types of music. But despite its impreci-
sion, the concept of min’yo- is very real and important to the Japanese.
Since modernization with regard to folk song can safely be considered to
have begun in the mid-Meiji period, this study will focus on the events of the
past hundred years or so. My most intense fieldwork was conducted between
1977 and 1981, but with ten shorter visits since then. Given that the basics
of the ‘folk song world’ have changed very little between 1977 and today,
my ‘ethnographic present’ is in effect the last three decades. (Publicity for
a min’yo- concert in Tokyo in 2006 (Ho-gaku Ja-naru July 2006: 14) named
eight singers and one shamisen lute player – all of whom were already major
stars in 1981.) Significant changes during this period are noted at various
points, especially in Chapter 7. Chapter 2 deals with ‘traditional’ Japan, an
obviously fictitious entity whose temporal limits are discussed in §2.1.
Of course, ‘the West’ is not the only source of influence on other music
systems. But the influence of Asia or Africa on recent Japanese music life
pales into insignificance compared to that of ‘the West’ (despite the occa-
sional djembe, didgeridoo, cajón or kanu-n accompanying min’yo-). Thus, in
this particular study we are justified in concentrating on Westernization and
modernization. We shall touch on these matters again in Chapter 7.

1.2 The word min’yo- and its changing meaning

In the West, scholarly attempts to establish an agreed definition of ‘folk song’

or ‘folk music’ have proven futile, simply because there is no isolable unified
phenomenon to which such a concept could be wed – even in our own cul-
ture, let alone universally. Even in establishing a Weberian ideal type, there
is little agreement on the constituent features: Must folk songs be anony-
mously composed? Rural? Transmitted only via aural/oral tradition? Must
performers be amateurs? Must there be a communal orientation? Each of
R these criteria poses problems – so much so that Bohlman, in his book
2240_CH01.qxd 11/26/07 8:28 PM Page 9

FOLK SONG IN JAPAN: THE BACKGROUND 9

The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World, decided not to offer a single def-
inition at all (1988: xviii). In general, ethnomusicologists seem to be shying
away from offering etic definitions, focusing instead on native usage, as we
will do.
Nonetheless, heated and revealing discussions on the topic are frequent
among fans, performers and scholars. Debate rages over the nature and def-
inition of folk song, its place in the modern world, the correct or preferred
performance practice, the cultural value of folk performance, the very exis-
tence of the folk, and so forth.11 Similar discussions, equally revealing, are in
fact frequently encountered in twentieth-century Japan. Indeed, they occur
also in China (Tuohy 1999), Korea (Howard 1999) and other countries
where the Western Romantic concept of ‘the folk’ has taken root.
The term for folk song most commonly used in Japanese scholarly and
public discourse is min’yo- ( ),12 and an investigation of its scope and
meaning provides a useful starting point for the chapters to follow. It
will also be helpful to discuss now the evolution and semantics of certain
other Japanese terms which crop up later. Although this chapter necessarily
throws the reader into a sea of terminology, it will be convenient for
reference later on.
Early terms for village song, some from as far back as the eighth century,
included hinaburi, hinauta, inaka-uta, kuniburi, kunibushi (all compounds of
native Japanese morphemes meaning roughly ‘country song/style’) and
fuzoku(-uta), fuzoku being a compound of Chinese origin used in the sense
-
of ‘(rural) customs’. (For others from pre-modern times, see O nuki 1989,
Nakai et al. 1972: 3, NOD 1989: 46.) There is little hint of a concept of
‘folk’. Nor do any of these terms seem to have been current among mostly
non-literate villagers themselves, who in any case would have little reason to
refer to their songs as ‘country’ songs. The simple term uta was available to
describe all vocal music including courtly poems, which were indeed sung
and still sometimes are.
The word min’yo- – literally ‘folk song’ – is a compound of Chinese
origin, encountered in Chinese sources already by the fifth century (Asano
1983: 3). Its earliest known usage in Japan is a single occurrence in a dynas-
tic history published in 901 (NKD 1972: 18.704). Although the combina-
tion of the elements min ‘folk, the people’ and yo- ‘song’ was perfectly logical,
the term occurs only sporadically thereafter until the late nineteenth century.
Its modern use stems not from Chinese influence but from a re-emergence
around 1890, amid the Westernizing trend of the Meiji period, as a natural
and direct loan-translation of the German word Volkslied.13 Credit is usually
-
assigned to the writer Mori Ogai, who used the term in 1891 in translating
the title of Meyer’s Griechische Volkslieder, or his friend Ueda Bin; both had
recently studied in Europe (Machida 1971: 289; Asano 1966: 32, 1983: 3;
NOD 1989: 46). However, its presence in an 1891 dictionary (see below)
suggests that the term was ‘in the air’, as in other countries falling under
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10 TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

the Romantic spell. Indeed, just as the term’s modern currency stems
from a German word, so the German Romantic view of folk song crucially
influenced Japanese scholars’ approaches.
The term min’yo- did not, however, immediately win the day (see
Nakamura 1991). At first, several terms were used with little discrimination
-
by scholars of that period. An entry in the 1891 edition of Otsuki’s dictionary
Genkai reads:

Zokuyo- [popular/commoner songs]: A type of hayariuta. [Synonyms:] Zokka.

Zokkyoku. Min’yo-. Riyo-.

Min’yo- itself did not merit a separate entry; we can only guess at the reasons.
Hayariuta is from two native Japanese elements, our old friend uta ‘song’ and
the verb hayaru ‘be popular, faddish; spread’. All of the other terms listed,
however, are pseudo-Chinese compounds of the type favoured by scholars
but less heard among the traditional lay populace. The elements -ka and -yo-
mean ‘song’; -kyoku ‘melody’; min- ‘the people’; ri- ‘country, rural’; zok(u)-
‘common, popular, vulgar’.
I say ‘pseudo-Chinese’ because such compounds are not necessarily
borrowed from Chinese. Just as English makes new compounds from Latin
or Greek elements (e.g. ‘microcomputer’), so the Japanese often coin words
by combining pairs of Chinese characters, as the Chinese themselves do, and
pronouncing them in Japanized Chinese.14 In both cases – Latinate English
and ‘Sinate’ Japanese – the results have a scientific, scholarly ring. The pro-
liferation of Sinate terms in the sphere of folk song during the late nineteenth
century is an indication of the sudden increase in interest on the topic
among the intelligentsia.
During the early twentieth century, the term min’yo- gradually dislodged
the other challengers from its semantic area. However, this word born
among literati was slow to catch on with the wider public. One small bit of
evidence is provided by the first known recordings of Japanese music, made
in 1900 while the Kawakami Otojiro- Troupe was performing at the Paris
Exhibition; these were recently rediscovered and issued as R35 (see Audio-
Videography). Two selections are songs now known as min’yo-: ‘Yoneyama
Jinku’ and ‘Oiwake Bushi’. But in the notes left by the troupe, while many
others among the twenty-eight tracks are identified by genre (nagauta, hauta
etc.), these two are not. A few years later, they would surely have been called
riyo- or min’yo- by the members of this relatively urbanized troupe.
The stages by which the word min’yo- has come into general use reflect the
changing economic and musical relations between town and countryside. Its
spread is also our best evidence for the spread of the concept itself, as the
‘folk’ first began to believe that they were singing a special type of song.
Despite its urban origins, the word long lacked currency even in the cities.
R Country songs began to pour into Tokyo at the end of the nineteenth
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FOLK SONG IN JAPAN: THE BACKGROUND 11

century, as industrialization and improvements in transportation accelerated

urbanization (see Chapter 3). For several decades, however, these imported
songs were called by many different terms such as those given above. It was
possibly in 1920 that the word min’yo- was first used in reference to a public
performance, when a ‘min’yo- concert’ was advertised in Tokyo. According to
the organizer’s testimony, the unfamiliar word caused some confusion. Some
people bought tickets thinking they would be hearing the music of the Noh
theatre, since the character used for -yo- is the same as that for Noh singing
(utai); others, notably the Tokyo police who looked on with suspicion,
took the element min- in the sense which it was given by the growing left-
wing movement, anticipating a leftist rally singing ‘people’s songs’ (Kikuchi
1980: 43). Still, most ticket-buyers seem to have known what they were
getting.
Another urban understanding of the term is described by Kurata (1979:
338). In 1929, a well-known music critic wrote to a newspaper to complain
about the min’yo- ‘To-kyo- Ko-shinkyoku’ [Tokyo March]. This was not a
traditional rural song but a Western-influenced tune, written for a film
soundtrack; its lyrics are full of recent borrowings from English, such as
‘jazz’ and ‘rush hour’. Thus, the term min’yo- was often earlier understood in
three distinct senses, all etymologically reasonable and with distinct English
equivalents: ‘folk song’, ‘people’s song’ and (as here) ‘popular song’. Both
conceptualization and terminology regarding folk song were still unsettled.
In rural areas, meanwhile, the term was virtually unknown: people simply
called their local songs uta, the general and ancient word for song. This was
true of many rural residents as late as the 1960s.15 More specific terms such
as taue-uta ‘rice-planting song(s)’ could be used when precision was neces-
sary. Lively entertainment songs, usually of urban origin, sometimes made
their way into the village with wandering performers or with travellers who
had learned them at drinking parties, in the theatres or in pleasure houses.
These might be referred to as hayariuta ‘popular [in the sense of “spreading
among the populace”] songs’, but eventually they would just be considered
uta, on a par with other songs. Work songs brought in by a seasonal or per-
manent migrant worker, perhaps in conjunction with the introduction of a
new technology such as sake or noodle manufacture, were not considered
hayariuta but fell into the general uta category, to be referred to specifically
when necessary as, e.g., sake-barrel-cleaning songs, sake-mash-stirring
songs, etc. Actually, specificity was rarely needed, since most work songs
were sung only in one context.16
By the late 1920s, though, the word min’yo- had reached many rural areas,
perhaps particularly through the ‘new folk song’ (shin-min’yo-) movement
spearheaded by urban-based poets and composers (§3.4.3). These ‘new
min’yo-’ were often commissioned by local chambers of commerce and the
like to attract tourists, taking advantage of increased domestic travel since
the turn of the century. One such song, ‘Chakkiri Bushi’, composed in 1927,
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12 TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG IN MODERN JAPAN

is currently the only well-known min’yo- from Shizuoka Prefecture, and few
people would now call it a ‘new’ min’yo- at all.
The first quarter of the twentieth century also saw the spread of certain
local songs of the type that once would have been called hayariuta but were
now increasingly called min’yo-: songs such as ‘Esashi Oiwake’, ‘Iso Bushi’ and
‘Yasugi Bushi’ (§3.4.1). Each of these (and others like them) had a place-
name – a specific town or village – as the first part of its title, reflecting the
strong tendency in traditional Japan to identify cultural artifacts (from songs
to food to clothing) with specific places. Country folk could hear these songs
on commercial recordings after around 1905 and on radio after 1925, but at
first few could afford the equipment. More commonly they would hear them
performed by itinerant professionals or, if they had occasion to travel, by the
female entertainers in teahouses or inns.
The word min’yo- was thus first experienced by most people in connection
with songs from outside their area, in effect establishing a contrast between uta
and min’yo-: local versus intrusive folk songs. I found even in the late 1970s
that some elderly countryfolk, asked for a ‘min’yo- from your village’, would
offer a widely popular folk song such as ‘Hanagasa Ondo’, even while realiz-
ing that this song was associated with another region altogether. This shows
that min’yo-, a term indeed introduced from outside, was often perceived as
describing extra-community songs, having no applicability to locally rooted
songs. At this first stage, therefore, min’yo- seems to have come to mean some-
thing like ‘folk songs from outside known to us’. Furthermore, these outside
songs were usually heard sung by polished performers with relatively elabo-
rate accompaniments. Takeuchi (1981: 9) recognizes the existence of this
stage suggesting that to most people the term implied something like:

Songs [presumably with rural associations] sung by the type of people with
good voices, who appear on television and radio accompanied by shamisen
[3-string banjo-like instrument], shakuhachi [end-blown bamboo flute],
etc. . . . sung by good-looking men and women wearing fancy-patterned
kimono . . . who learned them in the city.

At the next stage, the concept apparently broadened to include ‘folk songs
from our area known to outsiders’. For example, some Shizuoka residents
who accepted the above-mentioned ‘new’ folk song ‘Chakkiri Bushi’ as a
fully-fledged local min’yo- would not grant that designation to more tradi-
tional work songs connected with tea-growing, seemingly because the latter
were not known in the cities and were neither heard on the radio nor
recorded by professional folk singers. Similarly, residents of Nara Prefecture
are wont to claim that there are no min’yo- from Nara – even though they
should be aware of the existence of some of the hundreds of work, dance and
ceremonial songs collected there even in recent decades, none widely known
R outside the circle of serious folk song fans (and some local residents). At this
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FOLK SONG IN JAPAN: THE BACKGROUND 13

second stage, then, to be called a min’yo-, a song had to be known outside of

its home area. What these two usages share is the requirement that a song be
widely known: min’yo- was being interpreted in its ‘popular song’ sense, the
concept of ‘folk’ still being little known. Presumably, a rural origin for such
a song was taken for granted.
Despite these examples, since the 1970s min’yo- has become widely (though
not universally) accepted as referring to all Japanese folk songs. This is par-
ticularly due to the influence of television and radio min’yo- programmes,
which have since the 1970s devoted much more time to little-known local
work and dance songs – and called them min’yo-. At the same time, with the
increased intellectualization concerning folk song in recent decades, accom-
panied by a new respect for rural lifeways as people gain the economic secu-
rity to complain about the human and natural environment in the cities, there
is a counter-trend which romanticizes the true rural song and its context and
excludes from the min’yo- category arranged versions by urban folk singers.
Consequently, it is common to hear purists say, ‘There aren’t any real min’yo-
anymore,’ or ‘Any song performed on stage is not a min’yo-,’ or ‘The only true
min’yo- are the work songs.’ In other words, the gradually broadened category
is being subdivided or narrowed anew by some speakers.17
Such purists aside, the basic outlines of the current concept of min’yo- are
relatively clear, though the limits remain inexact. People are occasionally unsure
whether a particular song should be considered a min’yo-, a shin-min’yo-, a
hayariuta, or maybe a non-min’yo- geisha-party song (sawagi-uta, zokkyoku,
etc.).18 But they have, in any case, come to recognize the existence of a type of
song called min’yo-, with its own associated activity spheres and personalities –
what is often called the min’yo-kai (‘folk song world’).
A Japanese website (www.worldfolksong.com/songbook/sokkuri/a005.htm)
called the song ‘Akatonbo’ (Red Dragonfly) a min’yo-.Yet the author accepted
the opinion that the tune, composed by Yamada Ko-saku in 1921, was influ-
enced by Schumann’s Introduction and Allegro Concertante in D minor, Op.
134 (1853): the first fourteen notes are identical. (Yamada had lived in
Europe for several years.) Although some Japanese have told me they actually
thought this was a traditional folk song and thus would call it a min’yo-, the
website author knew the truth but presumably chose the word because the
song is known and loved throughout Japan and has some folk flavour (e.g. a
pentatonic scale, bucolic lyrics). If challenged, perhaps s/he would have
accepted the alternative terms shin-min’yo- or do-yo- (composed songs for
children).
Very few non-scholars, of course, know the history of the word min’yo-.
Even professional folk singers may not have had occasion to garner this
information. Thus the singer Yamamoto Kenji from Aomori Prefecture
(b. 1943) says he heard somewhere that the term was coined by the famous
min’yo- teacher Goto- To-sui (1880–1960), who likened folk song to the voice
of the cicada: min, min – hence min’yo- (pers. comm., 1984).
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