Introduction
When we examine the nineteenth century in a global context, we can hardly overlook the fact of European dominance, not just through colonization and economic penetration but also as a model to be emulated.Footnote 1 Music, although generally neglected by historians, is one of the best examples.Footnote 2 Not only did military bands reinforce displays of power: European art musicFootnote 3 was the standard against which other music was measured and found wanting, and not just by the Europeans themselves. To this day, non-Western countries build opera houses and symphony halls. As James Parakilas put it so aptly, European art music or “classical” music “has become the most universal, the most popular, of classical musics, not because of its inherent musical appeal, but because of universal interest in the West.”Footnote 4
Nowhere did this appropriation occur so quickly and so thoroughly as in Japan, where it demonstrably occurred in the context of modernization following Western models. By the twentieth century Japan had become a musical power in its own right, contributing to the dissemination of European art music in its colonies, exporting musical instruments to Europe’s former markets during the First World War and revolutionizing piano production as well as audio technology after the Second World War. Equally significant is Japan’s position already from the 1920s as a leading consumer of recorded art music and an enthusiastic audience for touring artists from abroad. The roots of what is arguably one of Japan’s greatest success stories lie in the systematic introduction and dissemination of Western music by the government after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The subsequent reforms set Japan firmly on a course of modernization based on Western standards, and Western music was an important part of the package. The main routes for the importation of Western music were the military, the imperial court, the church, and the education system. Much research has examined these routes, but the focus has tended to be on measures “from above” through official channels and on Tokyo.Footnote 5 Only in recent years have some scholars begun to pay more attention to regional and local developments, most notably in and around the commercial cities of Osaka and Kobe.Footnote 6
Another aspect which for a long time received scant attention is the interaction between Western music and the traditional musical genres of Japan in modern times. As a result of the government’s full-scale embrace of Western music at the expense of traditional musical genres, the latter, although they continued to flourish, were increasingly relegated to a niche existence, and today most of them sound almost as unfamiliar to most Japanese as to Westerners. Although there are exceptions, practitioners of traditional musical genres tend to move in a world of their own, dominated by a system of transmission that severely limits influence from other musical styles and genres. This separation of musical worlds today is reflected in research, where there long seemed to be a tacit assumption that indigenous and Western music were always regarded as separate and irreconcilable.Footnote 7
This article challenges both the excessive focus on the nation’s capital city and the tendency to treat Western and traditional Japanese music in isolation. Indeed, it argues that the belief of significant actors in the possibility and desirability of creating a new music by combining the best of Japanese and Western music played a crucial role in paving the way for the latter. Undeniably, systematic nationwide dissemination was necessary for Western music’s quick rise to dominance. The main route for this was the education system. The introduction of Western music into the school curriculum was stipulated already in the Education Law (gakusei) of 1872, although practical reasons prevented the implication for several years. In 1879, the Music Investigation Committee (Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari) was established, which began to train students from 1880; and from the mid-1880s government-trained teachers gradually took up appointments at schools throughout the country. But the thorough appropriation of Western music by the Japanese could not have been achieved without the active engagement of individuals, many of them teachers dispatched from Tokyo to the regions, generally with minimal musical training, but often with an impressive zeal and sense of mission. These and other teachers trained in the modern schools might well be described as cultural brokers: for many people living far from the major cities the new schools would have been one of the first places where they encountered the signs of modernity.
The two Shikama brothers, whose lives and musical activities this article introduces, illustrate the importance of individual initiatives locally or even nationally, but in any case, outside the central institutions. Shikama Totsuji (1853–1928) and Shikama Jinji (1863–1941) grew up in the northern provincial town of Sendai, now the capital of Miyagi prefecture. Their musical careers began when they were both sent by the prefectural authorities to train as music teachers at the institute of the Music Investigation Committee in Tokyo in 1884, which became the Tokyo Academy of Music in 1887.Footnote 8 After their graduation in July 1885, Jinji returned to Sendai, where he taught at several schools and engaged in a variety of local activities to promote Western music. Totsuji initially remained in Tokyo. He too taught music in the public school system and in private institutions and engaged in various other musical activities. Among his numerous publications about music, the most important for historians today is Ongaku zasshi (subtitled, The Musical Magazine), the first Japanese journal devoted to music, which he edited himself from September 1890 until 1896 (publication continued until 1898). Ongaku zasshi is of immense value as an historical source.Footnote 9 In the context of this article, two features are of particular interest: first, the reports on musical activities in various parts of Japan; second, the numerous articles and reports about traditional music and on minshingaku, or Ming and Qing dynasty music. Minshigaku, a type of popular music from China that came to Japan via Nagasaki in the early nineteenth century, was widely enjoyed until the time of the Sino-Japanese war (1894–95), after which it never quite regained its previous place in the musical world. Although this article treats mainly the dissemination of Western music, the pages of Ongaku zasshi serve as an eloquent reminder of the variety of musical genres performed and enjoyed at the time.Footnote 10
Sendai and the Shikamas
Sendai, the capital city of Miyagi prefecture, is a political, economic, and cultural centre of the Tōhoku (northeastern) region of Japan. The region as a whole has long had the reputation of being “backward,” but also more “traditional,” the home of the “real” Japan. This reputation extends to music. There are few professional orchestras, no conservatoires, and only a small number of universities with music departments, mostly for training teachers. Traditional performing arts (or what passes for “traditional” today), on the other hand, are said to flourish in the northern regions. Sendai, however, was a significant regional centre already before the modern period. A castle town since 1600 and the capital of Sendai domain, it was the seat of the Date family of “outside lords.”Footnote 11 By the end of the Tokugawa period it was a flourishing city. After the abolition of the fiefdoms and the establishment of the prefectures in 1871, Sendai became the capital city of Sendai prefecture (from 1872 Miyagi prefecture). In 1873, a garrison was stationed in Sendai and in 1888 it became home to the Second Army Division. The railway line between Tokyo and Sendai was opened in 1887. When Sendai was accorded the status of a city in 1889, it had a population of around 90,000.
Sendai’s status as a prefectural capital also made it an educational centre.Footnote 12 Here too there was some continuity from the Tokugawa era when the castle town had been the seat of the domain school (hankō) founded by the Date clan. By the nineteenth century, the Date had even established a network of local schools, and there were also numerous private academies (juku), several of which developed into modern schools after the promulgation of the national Education Law in 1872. The prefectural Normal School was established in 1872, followed by other government schools, most notably the Second Higher Secondary School in 1886 which became the Second High School in 1894. Tōhoku University, the third of the imperial universities, was established in 1907. By the end of the Meiji period, Sendai was thus home to one of only three imperial universities and one of the highly prestigious seven “numbered” high schools.Footnote 13
Among the private schools, the missionary schools are particularly noteworthy because of the importance given to music instruction (mainly singing hymns) and church music. The influence of missionary activity was significant already from the end of the Tokugawa period, when several young samurai from Sendai, who had left Sendai domain, became converts to the Russian Orthodox Church in Hakodate. From the 1880s, missionaries of several denominations set up schools in Sendai. The first two, founded in 1886, were Sendai Shingakkō (Sendai Theological College) for boys, which in 1891 became Tōhoku Gakuin (Tōhoku Academy), and for girls Miyagi Jogakkō, later Miyagi Gakuin or Miyagi College.Footnote 14 They were followed by Shōkei Jogakkō and Sendai Jogakkō, founded in 1892 and 1893 respectively. All exist to this day. The first two were established by missionaries sent to Japan from America by the German Reformed Church, whose first missionaries came to Japan in 1879.Footnote 15 Practically all the missionary teachers sang and played an instrument, most often the piano and the reed organ (harmonium) at least well enough to accompany hymns. Miyagi Jogakkō, later Miyagi Gakuin or Miyagi College, subsequently established a music department which provided college-level training. Hardly any schools outside Tokyo, and none in Tōhoku, offered such high-level musical training.
Efforts to introduce Western music into the newly-established public school system in Miyagi prefecture began in the 1870s. In 1877, Ono Shōgorō, one of several young men who had been converted to the Russian Orthodox faith in Hakodate, published Kōshū yoshi (Training course magazine), which included an article in which he argued for the introduction of music lessons in schools. His call was taken up by the school teacher Yano Nariaya, who began to teach singing at his elementary school using text books published by the Tokyo Normal College for Women. His lessons were not part of the regular curriculum, but hardly any public schools at the time taught singing, so his course would appear to be one of the first of its kind.Footnote 16
In the 1880s the pace quickened, both through increased missionary activity and through the efforts of the local authorities. In September 1882, Imafuku Tatsuo from Miyagi Normal College became the first educator from Sendai to be sent on a short course at the Music Research Institute in Tokyo. He graduated in July 1883. His certificate detailed his achievements: singing and playing on the organ the first twenty-four songs in the first volume of songs for use in schools (shōka).Footnote 17 That same year Maedako Nobuchika (or Shinki, 1861/1862–1929), another convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, returned to his native town. He had studied music at the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Tokyo and then taught church music at several churches. Although his service to his church appears to have been less than satisfactory,Footnote 18 he, like the Shikamas, played an important role as a pioneering advocate of Western music. In about 1886 he apparently established a private music school with the impressive-sounding name Tōhoku Ongakuin (Tōhoku Academy of Music).Footnote 19 Contemporary reports in music journals suggest that this institution was extremely active and still flourishing in 1911 when it celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. Concert programmes of the period list several performers with the surname Maedako, including Nobuchika’s daughter Haruko and his son Wataru. Haruko reportedly never married and was active as a violin teacher even after 1945: she died in 1975 and was in her 80s. Thus, professional engagement with Western music lasted into the next generation.Footnote 20
It is Shikama Jinji, however, who is generally described as the first music teacher of note in Sendai.Footnote 21 The Shikamas belonged to the samurai class until it was abolished in 1876. Before the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, Shikama Nobunao, the father of Totsuji and Jinji, was a vassal of the house of the Date, the rulers of Sendai domain. In the Meiji period, Nobunao selected and bred horses for the emperor.Footnote 22 Born before the Meiji reforms, the two brothers received their early training in the Confucian classics and studied at the domain school Yōkendō.Footnote 23 Totsuji was then employed by Miyagi prefecture and married Tatsu, a geisha. According to his biographer, he developed an interest in music early on and learnt various musical instruments. In 1881, he reportedly published sheet music for the gekkin (“moon lute,” a round plucked lute with frets, used primarily in Ming Qing Music and hugely popular in the early Meiji period).Footnote 24 His younger brother Jinji was already a member of the “new” generation whose education spanned the period of transition from traditional education to the establishment of the modern school system.Footnote 25 He continued his studies at Miyagi Normal College (Miyagi Shihan Gakkō) from 1878 to 1881. Immediately after graduation at the young age of eighteen, he became principal of Kashima Primary School in Watari district.
In 1884 first Jinji, and, at the end of the year, Totsuji were sent by their home prefecture to complete a short course in Tokyo at the institute of the Music Investigation Committee. At this time, trained music teachers were in short supply, so the institute set up a special programme to train teachers from the prefectural normal colleges. In 1884, all the prefectures were invited to send suitable candidates. Forty-one prefectures responded, but only twelve sent candidates. (Fukuoka sent four).Footnote 26 Candidates had to take an examination, at which Shikama Jinji achieved the highest marks: even his marks were distinctly lower in the easy singing test and in arithmetic than in the other two subjects, reading and essay-writing. Although some students did miserably, all were admitted to the course, because the number of applicants fell below the institute’s quota.Footnote 27
Shikama Totsuji is not listed among these candidates. It is not entirely clear how he came to follow his brother to Tokyo a few months later: unlike Jinji, he was not employed as an educator, although he was working for Miyagi prefecture. Perhaps his strong interest in music made him persuade the authorities to send him along too.Footnote 28 Anyway, both brothers graduated in July 1885 (the university’s later yearbooks mistakenly give the year as 1886). The nine-month crash course consisted of singing (shōka), reed organ, koto (plucked zither), and kokyū (Japanese bowed lute). The Japanese instruments were used, sometimes in modified forms, as a substitute for the keyboard and the violin. Most schools, however, made every effort to purchase at least one reed organ.
After graduation Jinji returned to Sendai. It would seem that he hardly ever left his home prefecture after his return.Footnote 29 Totsuji, meanwhile, remained in Tokyo until 1896, when he, too, returned to his native town, although how long he stayed there is not known. In fact, very little is known about his activities after 1900.
Shikama Jinji as local pioneer
Jinji went on to a distinguished career in education after his return. Equally important were initiatives that were not directly part of his official appointment but did much to disseminate knowledge of Western music beyond the classroom. In this regard, he was typical of local pioneers in other parts of Japan. The reports in music magazines of the time include many examples of local activities, sometimes highlighting the role of named individuals.
Jinji held concurrent teaching appointments at several schools besides his alma mater, Miyagi Normal College. In the course of his career he taught, among others, at Sendai’s two lower secondary schools (Sendai Daiichi Chūgakkō and Sendai Daini Chūgakkō), at the Sendai Army Preparatory School (Sendai Rikugun Yōnen Gakkō), at the Hōzawa Shōsō Gakkō (a private school for girls),Footnote 30 and the Miyagi Prefecture Police Training Academy (Miyagi-ken Junsa Kyōshūsho). He acted as a school inspector and invited teacher at schools around Miyagi prefecture. In 1911, he officially retired from Miyagi Shihan Gakkō, but continued to teach there until 1932. In 1923, he became the fourth principal of Miyagi Prefecture School for the Blind (Kenritsu Mōa Gakkō), a post he held for ten years until September 1933, during which time he significantly contributed to the development of special needs education (tokushu kyōiku). All in all he held appointments in the prefecture’s schools for about fifty years: much of his career in Sendai schools is detailed on a large memorial stone erected by grateful students in 1958, seventeen years after his death, in front of the main hall of Kōmyōji temple in the northern part of Sendai—an eloquent testimony to the respect his achievements gained him. The inscription also mentions that he composed songs that were widely sung by the people.
Shikama Jinji’s activities went well beyond his regular appointments. This is evident from reports about musical activities in Sendai published in Ongaku zasshi, and the music magazines that succeeded it. Unsurprisingly, Sendai (and sometimes other parts of Miyagi prefecture) featured often in the early issues of Ongaku zasshi: quite possibly because Jinji was Totsuji’s main source of information about their home city. The earliest report about musical activities in the prefecture informed readers that Shikama Jinji of Miyagi Prefecture Normal College had taught summer courses in 1887 and 1889, with sixty participants in total. He regularly gave summer courses and lectures in different locations in Miyagi prefecture.Footnote 31 In 1889, the Miyagi Music Society (Miyagi Ongaku Kai) was founded by participants of the music training courses with the aim of disseminating music in schools.Footnote 32
Musical associations established by teachers and others with an interest in promoting music played an important role in Sendai and elsewhere by organizing regular concerts and lectures and were part of Shikama Jinji’s role as a musical pioneer in Sendai. Jinji was a founding member of another music society, the Hōmeikai (Phoenix Song Society), established in 1893 with the aim of “researching the true principles of music and at the same time to promote the essence of reforming customs and habits.”Footnote 33 Ongaku zasshi continued to report on the society’s activities in the following issues, including a concert in November the same year, where Shikama Jinji was named both as a composer and performer.Footnote 34 On 3 June 1894 the Hōmeikai organized a major concert in the city’s Gojōkan Hall. According to the report in Ongaku zasshi,Footnote 35 the audience assembled early in the morning and included staff from the several of the city’s schools, prefectural officials, journalists, supporters (yūshisha), women, children, and students—about 300 people in all. As a special guest, the society had invited Yoshimizu Tsunekazu (1844–1910), a well-known performer and teacher of the Satsuma biwa (plucked lute) based in Tokyo; he featured in four of the seventeen items on the programme. The concert began with the national anthem Kimigayo sung by all, standing up and accompanied by the reed organ and the violin, followed by an address by the president of the Hōmeikai, Shikama Jinji, who was also the head of the section for Western music. Given that “music reform” tended to take Western music as its primary model and that Shikama Jinji was regarded as a prime promoter of Western music, the programme is surprising: of the remaining eleven items only three are billed as Western music (seiyōgaku), and at least one of the five titles performed appears to be a traditional piece.Footnote 36 The other items were listed as wagaku (Japanese music), shingaku (Qing music), and yakumogoto (music played on a two-stringed plucked zither). Nor was this mixture of genres in one concert exceptional: many if not most concerts included a mixture of musical genres, and Japanese pieces played on Western instruments were common, although Western pieces were rarely played on Japanese instruments.Footnote 37
Shikama Jinji seems to have been more active as an organizer than as a performer. He also composed songs, an achievement mentioned on the memorial stone: several of them together with his brother Totsuji. Some were so-called “moral education songs” (tokuiku shōka), reflecting the role accorded to singing as a means of moral edification.Footnote 38 He also composed a war song during the Russo-Japanese War, “Yuke, yuke, danji, Nihon danji” (“Advance, advance, boys, sons of Japan”) and school (alma mater) songs (kōka) for several schools.Footnote 39 Jinji was also famed for his skills with words, a result of his early education in Chinese learning (kangaku). Apart from the lyrics for some of his songs, he also wrote tributes for teachers who died on the job. He was, moreover, a sought-after writer of inscriptions (often under his penname Seidō).Footnote 40
Shikama Totsuji—mediator between the capital and the provinces
Shikama Jinji was in many ways an exemplary disseminator of the new music in the education system at the local level, bringing back the knowledge he acquired in the capital and passing it on in his home region. His brother, Totsuji, on the other hand, although his name is hardly remembered today, was quite a significant contributor to musical life on a national level, not least through the publication of the musical magazine Ongaku zasshi. For his family, on the other hand, this eldest son of a former vassal of the house of Date must have been something of a black sheep, not least because his musical activities ate up much of the family’s assets.Footnote 41 Apparently of a restless temperament, Totsuji led a life that with hindsight seems to reflect something of the instability and confusion of the age.
After his graduation from the Academy in July 1885, Shikama Totsuji remained in Tokyo, where he engaged in teaching, publishing, collecting instruments, and even inventing a new one himself, as well as performing and organizing concerts. In the first years after graduating he taught at Tokyo Normal College (until 1888) and at Tōkyō Shōkakai. Established in 1885 in the Yūrakuchō district of Tokyo, this was the first of several private music schools offering crash courses in music for primary school teachers. He is listed as a teacher (of what, exactly, is unknown) at the Tokyo Academy of Music from 1892 to 1894.Footnote 42
The Tokyo Shōnen Ongakutai, the youth band he established in 1895, might also be classified as one of his educational activities. The first civilian band (the Tōkyō Shichū Ongakukai), led by retired bandmasters from the navy, was founded in 1886, while the formation of youth bands is generally dated from the Mitsukoshi Youth Band (Mitsukoshi Shōnen Ongakutai) established in 1909 by the Tokyo Mitsukoshi store at Nihonbashi. Other department stores followed Mitsukoshi’s example: the Itō Clothes Store (later Matsusakaya) Band in Nagoya in was established 1911, and the Osaka Mitsukoshi Band in 1914. The department stores recruited and trained young men to play for advertising purposes.Footnote 43 Shikama’s intentions, however, seem to have been mainly educational, as well as to contribute to musical reform (see below). He recruited boys and girls from the age of ten to the age for entering university. Rehearsals were on three afternoons a week. Instruments (mostly wind and percussion instruments, but strings are also mentioned) were provided. The repertoire was varied, including modern songs (shōka) and other well-known Western and Japanese pieces.Footnote 44
The following year, 1896, in May or June, Shikama Totsuji moved to Sendai, ostensibly because of his father’s illness, but perhaps also because he saw more scope for his pioneering activities in the provincial town, where there were far fewer men with even his very basic level of musical training.Footnote 45 A report in Ongaku zasshi names him among the founders and advising teachers of a new youth band in Sendai at a time when he was still based in Tokyo.Footnote 46 Only a year later the magazine reported that Sendai had three bands: the Miyagi Ongakutai for adults, Miyagi Shōnen Ongakutai for young people, and Shikama Senka’s (Totsuji’s) Joshi Ongakutai for young women.Footnote 47
During his time in Sendai he continued to publish songs. In September 1900, he and his brother published their Railway Song, which detailed the stations and landmarks on the line from Sendai to Aomori and to Hirosaki, Akita, and Yamagata.Footnote 48 Railway songs were highly popular at the time. Composed in the shōka style, with lively tunes and a march-rhythm, they celebrated one of the most powerful symbols of modernity and served as an aid to learning geography for schoolchildren. The most famous one, about the East Coast (Tōkaidō) line from Tokyo to Kobe, was published in May 1900 and soon reached the status of a popular hit: to this day, its opening bars signal the approaching trains in stations along that line. Totsuji’s creation of songs for educational purposes included a collection of Sangyō shōka (silk industry songs) published in 1901 for the benefit of the workers in the Sano silk reeling plant in Miyagi prefecture. The aim was to ensure that the overwhelmingly female workforce sang songs with suitably edifying lyrics as they worked. Left to their own devices, factory workers often sang songs either deemed vulgar or highly critical of their work conditions.Footnote 49
At some point (the exact year is unclear) Shikama Totsuji left Sendai, perhaps returning to Tokyo for a short time before traveling around the northern prefectures. A short report in the music journal Ongakukai (Music World) in 1915 describes him as ongakukai no genrō (something like “the grand old man of the world of music”) and quotes correspondence from him:
Totsudō is not a musician: carrying a brush in one hand and a koto [plucked zither] in the other, he writes and draws as he continues his pilgrimage through all the provinces. Long ago in Meiji 30 (1897) I happened to feel [this urge], and decided to travel around the whole country, staying where I felt an affinity, moving on when I did not, and so I travelled all alone first from Tokyo to the six prefectures of the North-East and to Hokkaidō, then through the two prefectures Akita and Niigata, and now I have come to Maebashi [in Gumma prefecture] where I have rested my staff and am writing in response to public demand.Footnote 50
In 1909, a newspaper report described his lifestyle less charitably as hōrō (roaming, wandering about like a vagabond) in Tōhoku.Footnote 51 According to this report, his wife and three surviving daughters were living in Tokyo. They may have moved back with him in 1906, as one source states. At any rate, his second daughter Ranko (1887–1968) was educated in Sendai and reportedly took over her father’s work in Tokyo.Footnote 52
Creating a nationwide network: Shikama Totsuji and Ongaku zasshi
Shikama Totsuji’s greatest achievement may well have been the publication of Ongaku zasshi, the first journal devoted to music. Music was previously discussed in other journals, of course, but Ongaku zasshi provided a specialized forum for all those who embraced the promotion of music as a cause—not least the increasing number of young men and women who, like Totsuji himself, graduated from the Tokyo Academy of Music and, unlike Totsuji but like his brother Jinji, went out to teach in provincial schools. Subscribers to Ongaku zasshi received a monthly reminder that they were part of a larger community, linked to other parts of the country and to its capital, and even (albeit to a lesser extent) to the wider world. From the first issue, dated 25 September 1890, the magazine carried the English subtitle, “The Musical Magazine,” and in his statement of purpose, Shikama Totsuji referred to a weekly musical magazine in Paris as well as the weekly music supplement of Le Figaro.Footnote 53 He detailed the wealth of musical activities already in evidence. In Tokyo alone, music was practised and performed by military bands, by the musicians at the imperial court, at the Tokyo Academy of Music, and in several secondary schools and colleges (he names some of them) as well as in other public and private schools, including the school for the blind, in the churches, in ladies’ and gentlemen’s clubs, and at their balls.
Totsuji’s enumeration mentions only the performance of Western music (with the exception of the imperial court whose musicians performed the traditional gagaku court music as well). Yet Ongaku zasshi covered not only Western music, but also the various traditional genres of Japan and minshingaku (Ming-Qing music). In fact, Shikama Totsuji, like other promoters of Western music, beginning with Isawa Shūji (1851–1917), the most important person behind the introduction Western music into the education system, embraced the idea of musical reform, or improvement (kairyō). While their Western teachers generally regarded Japanese music as hopelessly primitive and incompatible with European art music, Isawa and other reformers envisaged a new national music that would combine the best of both worlds. In practice these early efforts seldom produced more than transcribed traditional melodies in staff notation (with all the limitations the notation entailed) and, in the case of songs, sanitized lyrics. Totsuji expressed his views in his journal, for example in a two-part series in 1893.Footnote 54 They were not particularly original, but explain the diversity of Ongaku zasshi’s contents: Western music, he wrote, came to Japan complete with a theoretical framework and is characterized by harmonization, which Japanese music lacked. But any music, Totsuji continued, is the product of its environment and cannot simply be imported from abroad. To develop a new music for Japan, both Western and Japanese music have to be studied thoroughly. Staff notation will be used to produce sheet music and suitable instruments selected, and unsuitable lyrics will be improved. Totsuji also mentioned the class differences reflected in traditional music, but saw no need to discard indigenous popular music (zokugaku), believing that it could be improved.
The wide and divers scope of Ongaku zasshi thus reflected Totsuji’s aims of musical reform and promoting good music as a contribution to Japan’s overall civilization (bunmei) project alluded to at the beginning of Totsuji’s launch statement.Footnote 55 The magazine’s regular sections were, music (articles), songs, contributions, miscellaneous reports, reference, miscellaneous notes, company notifications and advertisements: the first few issues included a serial and some issues had a question and answer section. Many of the articles were written by Totsuji himself (under various pen names), at least until issue no. 58, published on 28 May 1896, in which Totsuji announced his return to Sendai. Until then, the magazine was published monthly apart from one or two delays. Issue no. 59 was not published until 8 August 1896, by which time Ongaku zasshi had been taken over by Kyōeki Shōsha, a major trading company that dealt in educational materials, including sheet music and musical instruments. From no. 61 (25 September 1896), the name was changed to Omukaku. The contents changed too. From no. 59, a section with literary contributions (bun’en) was introduced, as were longer, serialized articles by leading experts. Just over a year later, in February 1898, no. 77 became the last issue to be published, although there is nothing to indicate this in the issue itself. Presumably financial difficulties prevented the continued publication.Footnote 56 Shikama Totsuji’s name appears in Ongaku zasshi/Omukaku only a few times after he ceased editing and publishing it, so in effect it was no longer his work after May 1896.
For the roughly five years Shikama Totsuji himself edited Ongaku zasshi, however, it provided a wealth of information and food for discussion on subjects such as musical theory, particularly harmony (regarded as the defining characteristic of Western music); Western, Japanese, and Chinese musical instruments and musical genres; Western composers and musicians (starting with Jean Baptiste Lully in the first issue, presumably because of his significance as a composer of music played by the French-trained band of the Japanese army); as well as discussions of the role of music in education, public morality, patriotism, health, and Buddhism. The magazine regularly reported activities of the Tokyo Academy of Music and other institutions, and included reports from different regions, probably supplied by teachers at the prefectural teacher training colleges, many of whom would have been Shikamas’ fellow-graduates from the Tokyo Academy of Music. There were even occasional reports about the Japanese community in Korea and about Taiwan after it became a Japanese colony in 1895, as well as about North America or Europe. Songs, in staff or cipher notation and often composed by Totsuji himself, were also a regular feature of Ongaku zasshi, as were announcements and advertisements by his own publishing company Ongaku Zasshi Sha and others, mainly institutions offering music courses, and for educational material, sheet music, and musical instruments. Around the time Ongaku zasshi first appeared, Yamaha Torakusu (1851–1916) and Suzuki Masakichi (1859–1944) embarked on the nationwide distribution of their instruments, and Ongaku zasshi regularly carried advertisements for Yamaha reed organs and Suzuki violins. Yamaha Torakusu also made significant financial donations to Ongaku zasshi. Both companies concentrated on the educational market and the availability of relatively cheap domestically produced instruments contributed significantly to the dissemination of Western music. Indeed, Totsuji initially tried to develop the domestic production of violins himself, but gave up when he realized that Suzuki had beaten him to it.Footnote 57 He did however invent his own stringed instrument, the senkakin (named after his home town) and is the first Japanese on record as having performed on the mandolin.Footnote 58 These and his other activities naturally received extensive coverage in Ongaku zasshi.
The value of Totsuji’s magazine as a primary source regarding musical activities in the 1890s for historians today is obvious. But how was Ongaku zasshi received in its time? The magazine itself gives us some clues, as do other contemporary publications.Footnote 59 We do not know how many copies of each issue where printed and distributed,Footnote 60 but issue no. 2 lists 47 places where the magazine was on sale and no. 5 lists 107. Just over half of the locations were outside Tokyo. In several issues, “supporters” (the nature of their support is not specified) are listed, totalling about 150 in issues 6 to 18. Many of these were people Totsuji may well have met during his studies in Tokyo; musicians associated with the Tokyo Academy of Music and the court musicians (who studied or taught at the Academy).
In addition, forty-two individuals and organizations who made financial donations are named: besides Yamaha Torakusu, the largest contributor, these include the Satsuma Biwa Association—an indication that it was not just those involved in Western music who appreciated the magazine. Predictably, the majority of advertisers were based in Tokyo, but a significant number were from other parts of the country.Footnote 61 Finally, eleven magazines and twenty-four newspapers from around the country published favourable reviews, having been sent a copy of the second issue and asked for a response.Footnote 62 Praise for the magazine typically stressed its rich content and its potential appeal to educators, musicians, music lovers and even women and children. One enthusiastic supporter even likened Shikama Totsuji to Christopher Columbus.Footnote 63
It seems fair to conclude that even though Ongaku zasshi did not make enough money to ensure its continued publication, it was welcomed by contemporaries as a source of information and a forum for discussion. It must have been particularly valuable for music teachers working hard to disseminate what they had so recently learnt in the localities in which they found themselves. The magazine informed (and, possibly, inspired) its readers not just regarding new music, but also the new musical practices like music education in schools and public concerts (reports on musical activities often included concert programmes). Ongaku zasshi would certainly have reminded readers far from the capital with its substantial and growing musical public that they were part of a larger community.
While publishing Ongaku zasshi, Shikama Totsuji also published several other works. Already in 1888 he had authored or co-authored Kaichū orugan danhō (A pocket guide to playing the organ) and Gakki shiyōhō (How to play musical instruments), and in 1889 a compilation of songs for use in the home. More collections of songs followed, as well as Shingaku dokushū no tomo (A companion to teaching yourself Qing music) in 1891 and Tefūkin dokushū no tomo (A companion to teaching yourself the accordion) in three volumes in 1892 and Kanzoku gakki dokushū no tomo (A companion to teaching yourself wind instruments) in 1895.Footnote 64
Totsuji’s wife Tatsu (also known as Kotatsu in the style of the time), is named as the sole author or co-author of a collection of miscellaneous pieces and of biwa pieces (both published in 1894) and of a compilation of songs for children’s games (Yūgi shōka, 1891).
Conclusion
Both the Shikama brothers acted as cultural brokers in that they played significant roles in bringing western music to provincial Japan. Having learned the basics in the capital, Jinji became one of the leading teachers and promoters of music in his home town. His fellow graduates played similar roles. One example is Tsunekawa Ryōnosuke (1868–1906), a native of Nagoya, who likewise was sent to Tokyo by his prefecture (Aichi) in 1884 and after his graduation the following year pioneered the teaching and performance of Western music first in his home prefecture and then in Mie and Wakayama. He published a large number of song books and, possibly, the first violin tutor. Meanwhile he also taught and practised gagaku, the court music he had trained in from his youth.Footnote 65
Concerts like the ones organized by Shikama Jinji and Tsunekawa Ryōnosuke were often advertised in advance and reviewed afterward in the local press as well as (in some cases) in Ongaku zasshi and its successors. By treating the concerts as major events, they helped generate interest or what we today might call a “buzz” around the new music and the associated novel practices.Footnote 66
Ongaku zasshi, arguably Shikama Totsuji’s greatest contribution as a cultural broker, might also be described as contributing to such a “buzz,” but it did more than that. Ongaku zasshi provided a forum where local actors (as well as members of the musical community in Tokyo) could add to their often very rudimentary knowledge by learning about different musical genres and instruments, developments, and current events in the world of music, and they could follow discussions about the nature of music. It not only linked music enthusiasts across the country by making them aware of each other through reports from across the country, but to some extent it raised their awareness of being part of a worldwide community, not just with the English subtitle but also with occasional reports from other countries. Subsequent music journals adopted this model, with the longest-running of them, Ongakukai (Music world; sometimes subtitled “The Musical Japan,” published from 1907 to 1923), even boasted an office in New York for several years.
One of the most striking features of Ongaku zasshi is that, to a much larger extent than its successors, it included coverage of the traditional musical genres of Japan and of Ming-Qing music. This inclusion of different musical genres was also a characteristic of many concerts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even in Tokyo in the earlier years, although the practice continued for much longer outside the capital. Such concerts could also include indigenous music played on Western instruments or in mixed ensembles with Japanese and Western instruments (wayō gassō).
Concert programmes thus reflected the diversity of musical practices in Japan and the music the general population enjoyed, in contrast to the music promoted by the government. But the musical diversity was also in line with the idea of musical reform and creating a new music that would reflect the best of all worlds, as the idea was understood by Shikama Totsuji and Shikama Jinji. Narratives centred on the introduction of Western music tend to ignore the fact that the massive reforms after 1868 affected the different worlds of indigenous music in other ways than official neglect as a result of privileging Western music. The public concert itself was a modern innovation: the idea of sitting through an event devoted exclusively to listening to music was new and initially alien to most Japanese—as indeed it was to Europeans before the modern period. That performers of traditional music actively participated in such concerts shows how they adapted to change. Yoshimizu Tsunekazu, the biwa player who performed as a special guest in the Hōmeikai concert discussed earlier, exemplifies the way the most successful musicians used the liberation from the pre-Meiji status system and musical monopolies and the increasing commercialization to their advantage. A native of Kagoshima, he moved to Tokyo in the late 1870s, where he attracted many students and was one of the musicians who promoted Satsuma biwa of his native region, turning its music into a national genre. The concerts brought together musicians who would traditionally have remained in their separate worlds, thus providing the chance for cross-fertilization and experimentation. For their audiences, the concerts introduced them to a larger variety of musical performances than they would have been able to experience previously.
The varied content of Ongaku zasshi and that of the concert programmes reported in the magazine remind us that the sharp and unalterable distinction between Western and Japanese music was not universally assumed when Western music was first introduced. Nor can the musical forms of Japan be assumed to have some unchanging essential characteristic that forever separates them from the musical forms of other cultures. In fact, in his work about musical practices in the Osaka and Kobe area, Watanabe Hiroshi argues convincingly that this sharp separation and essentialisation did not occur until after 1945, after the idea of creating a “national music” had been thoroughly discredited because of its later association with the ultra-nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s.Footnote 67
The Shikamas, however, operated in a historical situation where the idea of a national music bringing together the best from European and Japanese traditions seemed a genuine and thoroughly legitimate possibility. Indeed, we might argue that this belief, together with the various hybrid practices which its adherents tolerated and in many cases actively promoted as part of their programme of musical reform (ongaku kairyō) opened the way to the thorough appropriation of Western music. That the kind of national music envisaged by Isawa Shūji and advocated by Shikama Totsuji ultimately never materialized does not mean that nothing emerged that we might call a “modern Japanese sound”; only that we have to seek it in popular music, including film scores, rather than in officially sanctioned music intended to represent the nation.Footnote 68 We must also recognize that “Western” music, including the canon of Western classical music, is Western in name and origin only. In actual fact, in terms of composition, performance, appreciation, and all other music-related activities, it has become Japanese.Footnote 69
Government measures alone could never have achieved this. Government measures provided structures within which individuals like the Shikama brothers could pursue their own agendas; and it was their enthusiasm and zeal that helped prepare the fertile ground for the further absorption of Western music.
